by Michael Sheehan on January 23, 2012
in Apple, application, Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Gadgets, General, Hardware, HTD Tech Tip, iPhone, Mobile
For a few months now, I have been using the iPhone 4S and enjoying the wonders of Siri. There have been literally thousands of posts on tips and tricks that you can do with Siri (and I’m sure the one that I’m about to mention has been covered in some form or another). For those of you hiding under an anti-technology rock, Siri is a voice activated assistant that can help you find all sorts of information as well as act on a variety of voice commands.
So, I have been scratching my head on trying to find something “different” to use Siri for and I believe that I came up with something interesting and helpful – a spelling assistant.
I’m an absolute horrible speeler – sorry speller (groan). I am so lucky that spell check is built into just about every device around (computers & smart phones specifically). I’m more about simply getting the words down digitally and then fixing the errors after the content has flowed from my brain and to my fingers. Heck, I even type much faster than I can write (I hate hand-writing anything!). So, while it is nice that most words will be caught using a spell checker, sometimes you ARE actually hand writing something, or you know how a word sounds but for the life of you, can’t remember how it is spelled.
One time, after living a few months in Spain and speaking/thinking in Spanish, I actually forgot how to spell “of”. I had hand written “uv”. Wow! More recently, when I was typing out an article, I couldn’t remember how to spell “manure”. Whatever I typed, simply didn’t look right and when I tried to look it up in a Dictionary app, since I was so far off (e.g., “maneuare”) the Dictionary didn’t provide me any help.
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I have been in search of a really good way to wrap up my MagSafe power adapter for both my MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The reason being, if you simply wrap them up the “conventional” way, you run the risk of fraying the connections which increases the risks of electrical shocks or shorting out your power adapters. And to replace the power supplies, be prepared to pay around $80 (and I do recommend getting authentic Apple products if you DO have to replace them).
I watched a few videos of people working with the “shortened” version of the power supply, where you utilize the flip out prongs that are built into the brick. Personally, I found these to just be an “OK” solution but not really good for those people, like me, who use the full cord that includes the 3-pronged plug and the heavy cable.
So, I came up with an extremely inexpensive solution and process that allows you to have some pretty good cord management while also preventing those dangerous fraying of your power cords. Before I dive into my solution, below is a picture of my old, Band-Aid solution, which in the end, actually didn’t work because my power supply shorted out and wouldn’t work any more.
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by Michael Sheehan on November 29, 2011
in Apple, application, Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Fix It, Gadgets, General, how to, HTD Tech Tip, iPad, iPhone, ipod, Mobile, Software
I kept hearing about how with iOS 5, you could set up Reminders that would trigger when you arrived or left a particular location. It’s a pretty neat concept. You can program in an address, like your work, and set up a series of to-dos that magically remind you when you are geographically near that location. Or perhaps, you are at a vacation home and need to have a checklist pop up as you leave the location (e.g., did you check to be sure the hot tub was set to low). It’s a smart use of GPS technology to let your brain focus on other items at hand.
So I was very excited to set up some shopping lists that would pop up when I arrived at my local supermarket. Only, I had a problem, I couldn’t figure out how to put in the additional geo-location details to my to-do’s or reminders (and I’m supposed to be good at this stuff). After a bit of digging, I figured it out (and I’m a bit surprised that Apple seemed to bury this functionality into the app).
Here are the steps to create and configure a Location-based reminder:
1) Create a new Reminder. Remember, choose an iCloud-related list. I tried to do this with a Task list that was synced with my Outlook/Exchange profile and the location setting does not show.
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by Michael Sheehan on October 28, 2011
in Apple, Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Fix It, Gadgets, General, Hardware, how to, iPad, iPhone, ipod, Mobile, Software
The upgrade to Apple’s iOS 5 is a few weeks behind us now and most people are up and running on it. And, now the iPhone 4S is out in the market and more people are migrating over from older iPhones to the new iPhone 4S. I haven’t heard of too many issues as part of the upgrade process, though my upgrade on my iPhone 4 was a bit chaotic. I had to go through a restore from backup a few times (I can’t remember all of the exact particulars but it was quite involved, including a few hours of restoring all of my data and applications).
However, one thing that I remember clearly was once I “thought” that I had completed my upgrade and restore from backup, I couldn’t launch ANY applications. Well, let me rephrase that. I COULD launch all of the standard base applications that came with iOS5, but none of my 3rd party applications would launch. I would click on them and then they would appear to launch but then immediately quit or crash! It was extremely frustrating!
But I figured out what the issue was and how to fix this issue of crashing applications after the upgrade.
Essentially, I had not let the restore process complete. I had lots of applications, music, photos, data, etc. on my iPhone and since I was restoring from a previous backup, I hadn’t let the process works its way through. And the reason why I thought I was done with the restore is because of the following: there is a big but subtle different between iOS 4.x and iOS 5, synchronization on iOS 5 now takes place in the background. You are no longer greeted with the “Sync in Progress” screen.
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