Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Skype 3G and WiFi Calling on the iPhone for Regular & Video Calls
Dec 31st
I personally haven’t been pressed to figure out ways to get free calling on my iPhone 4. Largely since I’ve been slowly working away at an AT&T Wireless Rollover balance of over 3,500 minutes I currently have.
Plus, when you call anyone else with an iPhone, you’re basically going to get a free call since they are covered under the mobile-to-mobile free minutes part of the cell plan. (Although with the iPhone rolling out with Verizon this year, you won’t be as confident of your free minutes.)
So for free audio calls, Skype for iPhone just hasn’t been of interest to me thus far. I know others that are big Skypers on the pc too, so it makes sense for them to download and use it with their pre-existing Skype user network. But for me – for regular audio calling, I’d just as soon use my cell plan minutes.
Video calling is a different story — Apple’s Facetime has been a huge hit with me.
It is a great way to connect with the kids when we are away from each other. I’ve even most recently Facetimed home when I was in our local ShopRite grocery picking up some milk since there’s free WiFi in many parts of town. The novelty is still there for video calling with friends and family, even though I regularly video conference for business and with my social media network of associates.
But now, it looks like you don’t have to be connected to wifi at all. 3G video calling is a reality now, thanks to Skype. The only snag here is similar to Facetime – the other party needs the same thing on their phone or PC. Of course the network effect is in play here as more people within your network use Skype, the more useful and utilized it will become.
Overall, Skype is probably going to be a game changer, unless Apple begins to allow 3rd party apps to Facetime on devices other than the iPhone/iPod Touch and on Macs.
Check out the cheeky promo video that Skype just put out to announce their Skype Video Calling on the iPhone:
BTW, there *IS* a difference between Facetime and Skype Video on the iPhone/iPod Touch. You can see in this video comparison of the two, that Facetime is much clearer, less jumpy in video and overall a better experience. But Skype does two things that might let it become the default choice for many people — 1) It works over 3G, where Facetime requires WiFi on both sides. 2) You can make Skype video and audio calls with PC users in addition to Mac users. Facetime is Mac only at this point.
Go get Skype for iPhone now — and let me know what you think about the new video calling feature. Leave a comment below!
Mail Photos As Postcards To Anyone From Your Cellphone For $0.99
Dec 29th
Recently, we reviewed the camera capabilities of the latest and greatest cell phones on the market. Whether you have the 5 megapixel camera onboard the Apple iPhone4 or the slick 12 megapixel cam on the Nokia N8, most people carrying current smartphones can snap photos in a flash at decent quality.
Most of the time, we email the photos right from the phone to friends. But there are times when the photos come out so nice or the event was extra special — so an emailed photo doesn’t really do justice to the memory captured with the cell phone camera.
I’m testing out a new service from CellPhonePostcards.com which creates photo postcards on the fly and mails them via snail mail to anyone in your address book online. Now, I should be able to send a physical postcard to anyone I take a photo with on the spot and they’ll get it within a couple of days — all without licking any stamps.
The service is actually pretty ingenious. You take the photo, and then send the photo via text messaging (MMS) to the service at 77468 (it spells “PRINT” on the phone keypad) and include the hashtag shortcut of the person in your addressbook online, say #KENNY.
The service identifies you via your caller ID and then looks up the person’s address based on the hashtag name you sent. They’ll print the text message message as the postcard message on the back and mail out the photo postcard to your recipient.
All this costs $0.99 per postcard. Given the postage cost of the actual postcard stamp and the going rate for printing out regular photos at the local drugstore like CVS, that means the service costs less than 50 cents for each time you use it. Totally reasonable in my book. The only catch is that you have to pre-pay for bundles of cellphone postcard credits as a 10-pack or more. So $9.90 for 10 postcards at a time. Still, not a bad deal!
Here’s a video that explains the service and how to send a cellphone photo postcard:
UPDATE: Right now, if you sign-up for a new account, they’ll give you 10 free postcard credits – including postage – to try out the service. If you’re going to sign-up, please share a comment below about what you’re expecting or what you find useful or convenient about the service.
How To Perform A Hard Master Reset on the Apple iPhone 4
Dec 28th
There are a couple of scenarios when you want to do a complete master reset for your Apple iPhone4.
But remember, if you proceed with this operation: This will erase all data, all preferences, all settings and put it back to factory default settings, as if you pulled it out of the box.
It is something you should do as a last resort, but quite effective if you need it!
One circumstance would be if you’re selling or giving your phone away to someone else. In any case, be certain you want to do this before you go ahead. The process will give you one last warning on the way too.
HOW TO DO A MASTER RESET ON THE APPLE IPHONE4:
- All you have to do is go to the SETTINGS menu app.
- SCROLL DOWN to the last item — and click on “RESET”
- You’ll get several options: Settings, All Content & Settings, Network settings, Keyboard Dictionary, etc. CLICK ON “ERASE ALL CONTENT & SETTINGS”
- On the warning screen, click “ERASE iPHONE“
- Wait for the device to wipe all the data on the phone and come back to life!
Here’s a video walking you through the process in case this isn’t clear enough:
Nook Color e-reader Playing Catch AND LeapFrog With Kindle
Dec 28th
I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore today, sipping a wannabe Starbucks drink in their cafe — It’s a Starbucks coffee, but not really. They don’t brew the same coffee as Starbucks stores (no Pike Peak, etc). They don’t take Starbucks cards. They don’t . . . enough of that already.
Well anyway, B&N is now jumping on the eReader bandwagon as they go full-force and push their own device – the Nook. The original Nook was/is horribly S…l……….o………..w. The user experience is dismal. The responsiveness is so slow you might fall asleep, not by reading, but by simply waiting each time you try for any action on the device. This of course is the Kindle-wannabe solution. It’s a little cheaper than the Kindle. And it’s a lot slower than the Kindle. (BTW, the web experience on the Nook is unbearable too).
Now they’ve come out with the NOOKcolor (the official way they are trying brand it — which in itself is lacking. If they have the “Kc” sound in the middle, why don’t they combine it and make it NOOKolor” or NOOColor” or something else. Everyone else calls it the Color Nook. If you’re going to force something unnatural, you might as well go all the way, but that’s a completely different story) to try and leapfrog over the Kindle experience.
Or are they trying to be a big-time iPad wannabe? If so, they’ve failed again. Just look at the browser (based on Android) — You’ll see how this website, www.essistme.com, is rendered completely distorted with menus and other elements overlapping each other – ugly:
And at $249, it about $100 more expensive than a Kindle. That’s expensive for an eReader that doesn’t work as smoothly and perfectly. It’s also too cheap to be anything close to an iPad-type epxerience. If you’re going to want to surf, access email, etc, you might as well invest another $250 and get an iPad or one of the other tab computing devices coming out like the Samsung Galaxy Tab. So we’re confused — Just what are you trying to be Color Nookie?
You’ve Read This Far. . .
If you’re still here reading this post, you must be interested in this “ultimate [wannabe] reading experience”. So here’s an unboxing video for you so you can know exactly what’s in the box:
Poor Man’s iTunes: How To Download / Extract mp3 Audio From YouTube Videos
Dec 25th
iTunes = Lots Of Choices
There are over 13 million music songs priced at 69¢, 99¢, or $1.29 each on the Apple iTunes store as of 2010. That’s a lot of downloadable music content.
YouTube = Even More
But there’s another source of audio content that some people don’t think about — YouTube. I still use iTunes (or the Amazon mp3 store) for regular music downloads. But I also like to listen to other types of audio content to make good use of my time on my commute, waiting in lines, and other periods of downtime.
YouTube actually has tons of video content that is great even for the audio portion alone — I’m talking about lectures, tutorials, podcasts, interviews, sermons, and speeches. But by having them trapped within a video doesn’t make it as useful when you want to listen to it on the run (and sometimes literally!).
Extract Audio From YouTube Videos
The question is how to get the audio out of a video file on YouTube?
A couple of sites lets you download just the audio within a YouTube video. All you have to do is supply the video url and let them know if you want a regular or high quality version of the audio to be extracted.
Free Download Helpers
Two sites that work well (there are a bunch!) are:
-
www.video2mp3.net
-
www.vid2mp3.com
After the site does some quick thinking, it supplies you with a download link or even a direct URL to pass along to someone else so they can grab the audio file as well.
There’s over 150 million videos on YouTube supposedly. That’s a whole universe of potential mp3 files to download for you! Enjoy!
Free Tech Support For Your Christmas Tech Gifts
Dec 25th
If you’re like most homes, you’ve probably unwrapped one or two Christmas gifts today that require a battery or outlet to plug it in.
Today’s gadgets are increasingly complex and require more than a QuickStart guide. Sometimes it can be frustrating since you want to get the tech toy up and running asap, right?
Well, BestBuy has opened up the lines to give everyone access to their GeekSquad tech support this week. If you have a computer, HDTV, iPod, smart phone, GPS, DVD player, Wii, etc and you are have some questions on how to set it up, get on the phone or fire up the web browser for a web-based chat with GeekSquad support.
It’s completely free this week until the New Year.
Hey, even if it’s not about a new toy, use GeekSquad this week to troubleshoot that annoying problem you’ve been having with your printer or webcam or media player or Tivo or . . . .
The cool part is that their tech support is available 24/7.
Just call 1-800-GEEK-SQUAD or click over to their TechSupport live chat page
A Snapshot of the Top 5 Snapshot Cell Phones Today
Nov 10th
The photographic capabilities of mobile phones are increasing with each new batch of handsets and now it is almost impossible to find a high end smartphone which does not offer high definition video capture along with a high megapixel count for still shots.
Here are five of the best. . .
iPhone 4
With a five megapixel camera and LED flash the iPhone 4 is the best in Apple`s range when it comes to taking pictures. It also has the ability to shoot 720p video clips at a smooth 30 fps and has extra features such as touch to focus and various effects to apply. A forward-facing VGA camera supplements its rear-facing snapper for video calling and with 16GB or 32GB of storage space on board you can capture hours of footage and thousands of photos without filling it up.
Nokia N8
The N8 is intended to be a serious camera phone, so it is no surprise to see its 12 megapixel camera outclassing every other handset in this list. With a Xenon flash it is also the most capable when it comes to illuminating dark spaces. Digital zoom of up to 30x magnification is on offer when you are taking stills or recording video in 720p HD and like the iPhone it has a forward-facing secondary camera for video calls. Geotagging is applied to both videos and photos so you can find out the location later and there is 16GB of onboard storage space expandable by an extra 32GB if you buy a separate microSD memory card, which should be more than enough for all of your media.
HTC Desire HD
With an eight megapixel camera and dual LED flash the Desire HD is able to handle solid still photographs and can also shoot video in high definition at the same 720p resolution as its rivals. You can enable the LED flashes to act as a light for videoing in dark situations and you can tweak the settings from sharpness to exposure using simple on-screen sliders which are touch sensitive and intuitive. The autofocus is fairly competent although unlike other phones you do not get a dedicated macro mode for close-up shooting, which might be a problem for some users.
Samsung Galaxy S
Like the Desire HD this is an Android smartphone and it packs fairly similar five megapixel camera which matches up with the iPhone 4`s unit. Thanks to the 1GHz processor onboard it is responsive and easy to capture images or shoot video at 720p. You can find Galaxy S variants with 16GB or 8GB of onboard storage, which should give you enough room to work with as long as you upload images from time to time. Sadly the lack of any kind of flash, LED or otherwise, means that when the light is dim the Galaxy S is less than perfect.
BlackBerry Torch
Another five megapixel camera is affixed to the Torch, showing that this is the de facto image capture resolution for a high end mobile phone. An LED flash is also present although it is not as bright as the dual-LED solution of the Desire HD or the Xenon flash found on the Nokia N8. You can alternate between different shooting modes depending on the situation, but a lack of HD video capture lets it down.
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!