Archive for the ‘tips & tricks’ Category

7 Essential iPhone Tips

Monday, November 30th, 2009

7 Essential iPhone/iPod touch Tips

by Jeff Carlson Send Email to Author

I’ve owned an iPhone since shortly after it was introduced – yes, I was one of the saps who paid $600 for the original model just before Apple dropped the price to $400. Despite using it every day, and eventually upgrading to an iPhone 3GS, when I started writing “Take Control of Your iPhone Apps,” I was happy to discover many new techniques that had previously slipped under my radar.

The $10 book covers the main built-in apps – Calendar, Phone and Contacts, Safari, Mail, Messages, Camera, Photos, Maps, Compass, and iPod (plus Music and Video on the iPod touch) – as well as Apple’s free Remote app. It’s available for purchase and download now, and there’s also a bundle deal to buy it with Ted Landau’s excellent “Take Control of iPhone OS 3,” which was also just released.

Here are a few of my favorite techniques from the many I collected for “Take Control of Your iPhone Apps.”

Silence an Incoming Call — I don’t always answer my phone. If the phone rings when I’m talking to someone face to face, I prefer encouraging the caller to leave a voicemail message rather than interrupting my conversation. One option is tapping the Decline button on the screen, but that involves more attention to the phone (and away from the person I’m with) than I’m generally willing to give.

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No, you’re not infected…

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous is concerned about a very scary looking website. I attempt to calm the waters.

I used Yahoo to search for something and was sent immediately to the following [redacted] site. I believe my Mac was invaded and don’t know what to do!

First, relax. Your Mac wasn’t invaded, infected, compromised, co-opted, or conquered. If you’d clicked through a few of those dire pop-up warnings you might have been as amused as I was to see a phony Windows Security Alert appear on a Macintosh. What you’ve encountered is termed “scareware”—a scam that attempts to frighten those confronted with these pages into downloading a hunk of software that will allegedly deal with the problem.

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Disable bouncing Dock behavior

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Are you annoyed by bouncing icons in the Dock—and I’m not talking about the bounce when you open an application, but when a program wants to get your attention. Like when iChat has a video chat request, or System Preferences wants your OK to install a new panel, or Software Update found an update to install. The main problem I have with the bouncing icons is that they’re never-ending; once they start, they won’t stop until you switch to the application to end the bounce.

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Don’t panic about Liquid damage

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

We’ve all had an “oh poopie” moment involving liquids: Time slows down, you watch as the glass tips over, its contents cascading (beautifully, in another context perhaps) over the rim and onto the table. The rivulets of beverage roll in a miniscule tidal wave across the surface, over the edge, and drip to the floor. All in the span of a few seconds.

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System Preferences panel for .DMGs

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

OS X has a number of options for handling disk images—settings for such things as automatically opening them, moving Internet-enabled images to the trash after opening, verifying checksums, and more. You control all of these options (and a few more) in Disk Utility’s preferences panel.

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Authentication Tokens on iPhone

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

VeriSign has released an iPhone app that lets you supplement a user name and password login at several Web sites with a well-regarded and cryptographically robust method of confirming your identity. AOL, eBay, and PayPal are notable among current sites supporting the system.

The free VIP Access for Mobile application relies on a unique credential created for your iPhone based on its phone number, and confirmed with an SMS message sent to that number. Once the credential is confirmed with this looped-back process, the program generates a unique 6-digit token every 30 seconds using an algorithm that’s uniquely derived from the credential. (VIP stands for VeriSign Identity Protection.)

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Workday Quality Over Quantity

Saturday, February 28th, 2009


Quality over quantity whiteboard guidelinesThis succinct set of workday guidelines is a nice blueprint for getting productive on the important stuff and ruthless about cutting the crap. Written on a unknown “major corp” whiteboard pictured here, they read:

QUALITY vs quantity, UX process.
Check email ONLY:

  • 10AM
  • 1PM
  • 4PM

Send any time
Set email to check every 3 hours.
NO email on evenings.
NO email on weekends.
EMERGENCY? = Use phone.

FOCUS 1-3 Activities max/day
LOG 1-3 Succinct status bullets every day on team wiki

MINIMIZE chat
MAXIMIZE single-tasking

OUT by 5:30PM
~No excuses~

These common productivity edicts are worth repeating!

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Can’t Afford Data Recovery Now?

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

We’ve all been effected one way or the other with the struggling economy. It’s the expenses you don’t prepare for, or expect that hurt the worst. A car breaking down, an illness or injury; add a myriad of household repairs to the list and your budget is blown in the blink of an eye.

The average computer owner/user has never suffered a hard drive failure and often doesn’t realize it’s even possible. Sadly, disaster strikes when you least often expect it and often offers little to no warning for preparation.

So what should you do when you lose your data and recovery services just aren’t in the budget? First of all, DON’T MAKE REPEATED EFFORTS of booting or access attempts on your own or under the direction of a non-specialized recovery company. Each and every time the attempt is made the situation can be made worse or irreversible.

The best advice is to remove the hard drive from the system (if you’re unsure of how to do this have a professional do it). Place the hard drive in an antistatic bag. Label it with a date of the crash and a description of the contents you had stored on the drive that may be most important. If you have a safe or safety deposit box you may store it there. Otherwise, a shelf in your home office or similar out-of-the-way type place is fine. Bottom line is that a hard drive can survive years without further deterioration as long as it is in an even-temperature environment. No high-level humidity or extreme cool temperature conditions. Your hard drive can outlast this economic recession, whether it’s 5 years or 50 years. (shutter)

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