iOS 7: Coming next week. Why should you update.

Apple's new mobile operating system, iOS is coming next week, and is set to bring about the biggest facelift and change to the operating system since it's introduction back in 2007. As with most updates to the iOS system, Apple has promised over 200 features and new additions to the system.

Many of the applications have been given a flatter perspective and the overall skeuomorphic designs from all of the inbuilt applications has been removed. A whole new pallet of colours have been introduced as well as the obvious facelift throughout the entire system.

From the lock screen there are a number of things that can be done, you can see your notifications, your view of "Today" which is a summary of things that might be relevant to you and your day (more on this in a moment).

There is a new control centre which is also accessible from this screen. The control centre provides you quick access to change some system settings, such as turning off or on:

• Airplane mode
• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• Do Not Disturb mode
• Screen rotation lock

In addition, you can also reach other features such as screen brightness, music controls, the all new AirDrop feature, airplay, as well as the camera, calculator, torch (turn the LED flash on), and compass.

Control centre is available from any screen you are viewing as well as the lock screen. Given that control centre links to applications which are not personally identifiable, this option is available from the lock screen and is on by default. However, you can remove it from the lock screen if you don't wish to have it left there for any reason.




The Today section of notification centre gives you a heads up on what's on your day. It gives you a quick overview of the weather - eg, showers with a high of 18, or sunny with a high of 30. Depending on the time of day it might give you the overnight low. In addition it will let you know if it's anyone's birthday, how long it will take for you to get to common destinations that you travel to such as work, gym, friends house, pub... Below this information will show you your calendar for the next few hours of the day, any stocks your following, and how they've changed throughout the day, and if you get right to the bottom it will even give you a heads up on the next day. Such as, you have an early start tomorrow with your first appointment at 6am.

Multitasking has been given a number of really excellent updates too, and not only aesthetically. For starters switching between apps is simple, easy and straight forward. In a similar fashion to what is currently the process, double clicking the home button will show your open apps, with a screen preview of what it looks like. You can then tap that screen preview to go straight back to where you were or you can swipe the screen away to close the application. There's also a number of stuff going on behind the scenes too for multitasking. From Apple's website:

Multitasking has always been a smart way to switch between apps. Now it’s even smarter. Because iOS 7 learns when you like to use your apps and can update your content before you launch them. So if you tend to check your favourite social app at 9:00 am every day, your feed will be ready and waiting for you. That’s multitasking in iOS 7. It knows what you want to do before you do.

Photos have also been improved, with a number of live filters you can set when taking a shot, and the way that the photos you have in your library are organised. iOS 7 automatically sorts your pictures into events or collections related to a holiday or a day trip you took somewhere. You can zoom all the way out too to get a year's glance at all your photos you have taken.

The last feature I'll mention here is the Air Drop feature. If you want to send a file or link or picture, or.. pretty much anything, you can with Air Drop. iOS 7 recognizes other devices around you and shows that persons face or name as a person you can send a file to. According to Apple:

Sending a photo or a document to someone via text or email is fine. But if that someone is right next to you, a text or an email suddenly feels like too many steps. Enter AirDrop for iOS. It lets you quickly and easily share photos, videos, contacts — and anything else from any app with a Share button. Just tap Share, then select the person you want to share with. AirDrop does the rest using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. No setup required. And transfers are encrypted, so what you share is highly secure.

There are many, many more features coming with iOS 7 next week, and these are just a few. If you want to see more, check out Apple's website which will have more info on iOS and you can see all the features there too.
http://www.apple.com/au/ios/ios7/



iOS 7 Promo video, from Apple:

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How to tether your iPhone with your computer

This is one I get asked a lot.

I have an iPhone/tablet/iPad and I want to share the Internet connection it has with my laptop when I'm on the road. How do I set it up?

Luckily, this is an easy one!

From your iDevice, hit the settings icon

Then choose the personal hotspot menu option (usually 3rd or 4th option)

Then slide the switch on the following page to "on".

After this is done, go to your laptop, and search for available wireless networks. Your iPhone's name should be in the list, and all you need to do is enter the password on your iPhones screen. Mine in this case is cheese47

Once connected on your laptop you should be able to get online and browse the Internet.

Note that this also works for any other devices you need to connect to the Internet that have a wifi connection, but no 3G or 4G or LTE access.

Hope this helped!

Any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below, and if this helped you or a friend, please share the love with the sharing buttons!

How to get Smiley Faces and Icons for texting on an iPhone [Emoji Keyboard]

I have been asked many times by friends how to get the smiley faces in their texts to their friends. Well, if you have an iPhone with the latest software update (currently 5.1) you're in luck.

It's quite simple to turn the keyboard on, and once it's on, you are ready to go. I'll put a quick caveat in, that this does work over iMessage, and other chat clients like WhatsApp, but I am not 100% sure on compatibility for general SMS messages. Some seem to work, some don't. Feel free to try and if it works - great! If not, maybe check the recipient has a recent phone with the most up-to-date software.

Here's the step by step guide of how to turn it on for iPhone.

On the home screen, go to settings.

Scroll down to General

Scroll down to select International

Choose Keyboards

Choose add new keyboard

Pick Emoji from the list

 

You should have two keyboards listed.

 Go to Home screen

Choose the Messages App

You should have a little globe icon in the corner of the screen, tap it.

Now you have the Emoji keyboard up.
You can scroll through the list of smileys by swiping left or right, and seeing all the options you have available to use and if you choose one of the icons down the bottom, this changes the tile set, and you have a whole bunch of new icons to choose from.

Hope that helps!

Feel free to share this article with your friends using the share buttons below.

How do I get the battery percentage my iPhone?

Sometimes the little icon in the top right hand side of the screen just isn't enough to know how much juice your battery really has.

If your like me, and you find charging the phone annoying, or you'd rather avoid it if you can, a good way to check to see if the battery is going to last you the rest of the day is to use a percentage value to find out how much charge your battery has left in it, which can be the difference between having a usable phone later in the day if you go out somewhere that evening, and might need your phone.

Apple don't have this option turned on by default, and to the extend of my knowledge, it's only available as an option from the iPhone 3GS models and newer, so if you have a 3G, your sweet out of luck, and you may as well stop reading here.

To set up the battery percentage meter, follow these steps.

1. Go to settings
2. Click General (you may have to scroll down a bit)
3. Choose usage
4. Scroll right down to Battery Usage heading
5. Slide the switch to "ON"

You'll notice that the battery's charge value, in percentage has appeared next to the battery icon. This will indicate to you the amount of battery remaining and will permanently be displayed there until you turn the switch to "OFF"

Hopefully this will help you manage how much battery you've got and help decide whether you need to charge again sooner rather than later. It may also help you see how much usage your phone is actually taking up during the day, and allow you to kill any unnecessary apps running in the background.

Setting an Email Signature [How-to]

If you send a lot of emails, and you use emails for business or some kind of organisation or you just want to better represent yourself when creating an email to people, an email signature is a good way to go about this.

An email signature is a tagline or default bottom section to an email which outlines who you are, who you work for, and ways to contact you.

Depending which email program you use there are different ways to set it up so I'll run through what a signature should look like, followed by a few client walk throughs to get you started.



How a signature should look:


Generally there are a few ways about doing this, and can depend on if you want to include a logo or not. In my example I have decided not to include a logo, but I will point out where it could be placed if you did decide to include one. Keep in mind this is just how I like a signature to look, feel free to customise in any way you wish.
-----------------------------------

Regards,

Firstname Lastname
Position Title
Department

Company or Organisation Name (can be replaced with a logo)
e: name@example.com
p: (123) 4567 8910
w: http://www.example.com/
-----------------------------------


Setting up a signature on Mail for Mac:


When you've got mail open, follow these steps.

1. Click the word Mail, next to the Apple icon
2. Choose preferences from the drop-down list
3. Along the tab up the top, select signatures.
4. Click the plus sign
5. Type a name for your signature
6. Type the signature in the box on the right.
7. Tick the box that says to match the message font.
8. Ensure that Place signature above quoted text is ticked
9. Close the box
10. Open a new email, and you should see your signature there.

Setting up a signature on Outlook 2010:

Open outlook, and follow these steps

1. Open a blank email.
2. On the message tab, in the group "include", click signature
3. Then click Signatures...
4. In the email signature tab, click new
5. Type your signature in, and hit save
6. Close the box and you should be back in your blank email
7. Click the signature button again, and you should see your signature
8. Click the saved name, and it will appear at the bottom of your email.

Setting up a signature on an iPhone, iPad, iPod:

Get to your home screen, then select settings.

1. In settings flick down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Choose this option, the scroll to Signature
3. Choose signature, and you'll have a box where you can type your signature
4. If you don't want a signature at all, delete any text here.
5. If you'd like to change the default "Sent from my iPhone" then simply remove the text you don't want and type the text you do.
6. When done, choose the back arrow, and you'll be back in settings.
7. If you hit home, and go to the mail app, and create a new message, your signature should be automatically populated.

I hope this guide was simple enough for you, but if you were unable to get it to work, or you have a different version of one of the programs I've listed a guide for, feel free to make a comment below and I can add a guide for your version, or at least point you in the right direction :)

Setting up any printer to use with AirPrint for iOS devices.

I'll start off by saying this problem has annoyed me for a while.

When I first learned of AirPrint, I thought great! What an awesome idea, then I learned that Apple only wanted to limit it to a specific range of printers and this annoyed me, why couldn't we just use any printer attached to a computer that was part of the same wireless network to print?

Apparently, according to many, many other people, I'm not the only one who thinks this way, and thanks to the developers at Netputing there is a solution! They've designed a handy little piece of software which allows sharing over the wireless network in your house to provide for AirPrint. And it works well.

Without re-writing their webpage, head over to http://netputing.com/airprintactivator/airprint-activator-v2-0/ to download their latest version, as well as a handy video and screenshots for set up. Normally, I'd be happy to do that here, however they've already done the hard work and made it simple to use on their site.

The best part about their software? It's free. If however you do like the software, and you'd like to thank them for their hard work, they do have a donate button on the top of their site, and for such a great, simple piece of software that works so well, you may decide you'd like to contribute. I did, as I have been really happy with it.