TimesToCome Mobile

1) To quickly lock your device click the power off button

2) To quickly open the camera when the device is locked -> click the power off button -> swipe up on the camera icon next to the unlock slider at the bottom

3) To change the volume while locked double click the home button

4) To add keyboard shortcuts ( type a few letters and it will autofill in the rest of the text for you ) go to Settings->General->Keyboard->Shortcuts

5) To dictate Siri must be on ( Settings->General->Siri ) and you must be connected to the internet. A microphone will appear on your keyboard – tap it to begin dictating

6) To turn off notifications from appearing in the notification center go to Settings->Notifications->(chose the app to remove) ->Select none for the Alert style, then turn notification center off

7) Press the on/off button to silence a ringing phone, press twice quickly to send the call straight to voice mail

8) Block calls but not the internet ->Settings-> (turn airplane mode on) Go to WiFi and turn it on

9) To use a different signature on different email accounts go to Settings->Mail,Contacts,Calendars->Signature and check Per Account

10) To get written map directions instead of spoken, tap the icon that looks like a list next to the 3D icon on the bottom left of the maps view

11) Go to Settings->Maps and change the label size ( scroll to bottom) to small to get more detail on your maps

For a whole lot more information see:
iPhone User Guide

Now that you have the newest, latest, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, etc what do you do with the old one?

You can trade them in for an Amazon.com gift card Amazon Electronics Trade in

Or you might try eBay Instant Sale which will give you cash back via PayPay.

This morning, before my coffee, I plugged in my iPhone to sync and it refused. A moments checking reveled an enormous ‘other’ file. I’ve no idea how it got there while I slept.

To fix this:
Don’t sync the iPhone before your morning coffee. (j/k)

I didn’t want to lose any app or personal info so in iTunes I unchecked everything that wasn’t an app or on the info page. Then sync’d again. This removed the huge other file.

Then I resync’d all the previous items; music, photos, podcasts etc and everything is fine.

I’m not sure what the other file was, some people claim to have found huge photo caches, some large app caches, neither of those make sense in my case. But it’s fixed and the fix was reasonably painless so I’m good with that.

One of the fun things we first did when GPS hit our WM phones was to Geocache. Geocaching is a game in which people leave small items semi hidden with gps coordinates for you to find. An excellent starting place is Geocaching.com.

I signed up for an account and found at least 50 caches with in a bike ride of my home. I spent much of last summer locating and tagging the caches I located. It’s a nice way to break up a bike ride or walk.

The TUAW has an article on how you can use your 3G iPhone to join the WM mobile users in Geocaching.

If you have an iPhone it’s just as easy.  Open Google Maps and type the lat and long into the search box [ N 30.234 W 90.234 ] and it’ll bring up your cache location.