With iOS 5, Apple included Emoji as a standard keyboard option, obviating the need for separate Emoji apps (previously the only way to get the cute characters on your iOS device). The Emoji option continued in iOS 6, adding a bunch of new cute characters, as well as some welcome gay and lesbian avatars as well.
If you haven’t enabled Emoji yet, or you want to disable it for whatever reason, read on.
Battery life in the iPhone age, right? It’s a conundrum we’ve all had to adjust our behaviors for. Before the iPhone, I can remember going days, maybe even a week or so in between battery charges. The advent of an iPhone in my life brought with it a new behavior – charging it every night. I use my iPhone for almost everything these days, including getting around town, communicating with loved ones, and checking email while out and about, so it makes sense that the battery drains quickly.
There are a few third-party apps out there that keep track of your battery usage for you. Turns out, though, if you just want a quick looksee at how much life you have left in your iPhone or iPad’s battery, you can look in the iOS Settings app itself.
Ever needed a way to use your iPhone to control your iPad camera, or vice versa? No? How about using your iPod touch as a baby monitor, with an iPad upstairs to monitor your baby’s nap time? Or keeping an eye on a pet in the other room with your iPhone? You might want to take a picture with your iPhone on a tripod, to get a large group of people in the shot, because let’s face it, no one’s arm is that long.
With Blux Lens, a remote for Blux Camera, you can do just that. Here’s how.
Personally, I’ve never had a problem with Apple Maps in its current iOS 6 incarnation, but many people have. Now that Google Maps is out for iOS, though, there’s an easy way to get around using Apple Maps, using the transit option.
Here’s how.
Do you present a lot? Maybe PowerPoint or Keynote presentations in front of lots of busy professionals? Have you ever had that nightmare where you get to your hotel and realize that you forgot to make the presentation you give the next morning? Yeah, me neither.
However, if I did wake up to that horrifying reality, I’d grab Stitch, an iPhone app that lets you make video presentations using your own pictures and text in minutes, right from your iPhone. Here’s how.
So, there you are, sitting on the airplane, with your iPad on Airplane Mode. But you’re also on one of those newfangled jets that actually offers internet via Wi-Fi. What’s a jet-setting iOS user to do? Why, turn on Wi-Fi while still remaining in FAA-compliant Airplane Mode, of course.
Here’s how.
If you’ve read these tips for any length of time, you’ll know that there are plenty of settings on your iPhone that were designed first and foremost for people with various disabilities, but that can be extremely useful for those of us who don’t have a specific disability, as well.
Flash-powered alerts are one of these features; for those with hearing impairments, using the iPhone’s flash to let them know when a notification alert has happened is critical, as they may not be able to hear an audible alert, nor the telltale buzz sound the iPhone makes when set on a flat surface.
If you want to use this same notification feature yourself, perhaps when having an audible alert, vibration or otherwise, isn’t viable, here’s what to do.
Yesterday, I tipped you off about #NoCrop for Instagram, an app that lets you submit full-sized photos to the social photo service with very little effort.
Today, I want to look at Recygram, another free app that works with Instagram, letting you send photos from your voluminous Instagram archive to Flicker and Tumblr, as well as download them or compress them for sharing. Sounds like a great way to archive all those Instagram pics, right?
Here’s what to do.
Want to preserve your entire photo, without having to crop it, and save it to Instagram for all your many followers to enjoy and Favorite? Well, you could pull it to your Mac, create a square canvas, add sidebars with an image editing app, and then put it back on your iPhone, ready to send to Instagram, but who wants to do all that?
#NoCrop–the app, not the hashtag–has you covered.
Dropbox is a great service, and I use it both professionally and personally. I share files with friends, presentations and documents with co-workers, and I upload my iPhone photos as well as a secondary backup to PhotoStream, which can be touchy at times. Problem is, I need to ask people if they’re Dropbox users, get the email they’ve associated with the service, then log in to Drobpox and create a shared folder with that person’s email. It’s useful, and not too difficult, but it can be tedious.
That’s where ProxToMe comes in. This free app does all the discovery for you, letting you share any file from your Dropbox account with any other ProxToMe user nearby. Slick!
I’ve been driving a lot lately, and have been wanting to listen to ebooks on my iPHone as I do so. It’s fairly simple to turn on VoiceOver and have what sounds like Siri read my books to me, but honestly? She’s a terrible narrator. The VoiceOver voice is heavily robotic, and it’s difficult to understand what’s being read to me most of the time, so I end up giving up or contemplating purchasing an audiobook from iTunes.
But I’d really like to just continue the ebooks I already have on my iPhone while I’m driving. That way I can listen to them while in the car, but actually read them when I’m not. NaturalReader just might be part of the solution I’ve been looking for, so I figured I’d share it here with you.
So, you’re surfing along on your iPhone or iPad and you want to email your buddy a fantastic new site that you’ve found. You hit the Share button, and then curse because it sends it to the default iOS Mail app. But you use the Gmail app! How will you fix this horrible, first-world problem? With a bookmark, of course.
Here’s how.
So, you can scour the internet to get tips on what kinds of things you can ask Siri to do, right? Heck, we have several specific Siri tips right here on Cult of Mac.
But what if you just want to have a nice list of the commands that Siri will know and answer you with? Well, ask her!
In iOS 6.1, Apple switched from using the unique identifier in the actual hardware of its iOS devices (UDID) to the more software-centric Advertising Identifier. This way, advertisers can track user behavior for the purpose of serving them relevant ads anonymously, and those very same users can reset and even turn off that tracking feature. It gives us users just a bit more control over who sees and can use our data, even the anonymous kind that advertisers track.
If you want to control your own advertising destiny on your iOS device, here’s how.
Let’s face it, even if you focus on your relationship, dress better, learn how to cook, and practice better grooming habits, the only person you’ll always be in a relationship with is you. In fact, you will be a better person to be around if you take the time to work on your self, first and foremost.
That doesn’t mean you need to eschew all relationships until you reach some sort of inner nirvana state, but it does meant that spending a little time, every day to become more confident, happy, and to engage in positive behaviors will help you become a better person, which is ultimately what makes you a better partner and lover.
That said, here are a few iPhone apps that can help you with you.
Guys, gals, ladies, gentlemen! In order to keep that special someone in your life, you’ve got to work on your relationship. I know! It’s Scary! However, there are many iPhone apps out there to point you in the right direction. So, while cooking the perfect meal, dressing well, and bathing regularly are important, if you’re a selfish jerk on the inside, it won’t matter.
With that in mind, check out the following three apps that will help you connect and communicate to become a better person and partner in your own right. Still, bathe regularly, ok?
Anyone knows that the key to anyone’s heart is their stomach, gender stereotypes be damned. If you can make that special someone the perfect meal, you’re way closer to being a better lover than someone who has to continually order out. Making a meal for another human being is a delight for both the cook and the recipient, feeding both mind and soul, if done well. What better way to show you care than with a meal you make yourself?
The problem is, how? First off is confidence. As Julia Child said, “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” Equally important for us cooking newbs, however, is a good cooking app or three.
Check these out for your Valentine’s Day dinner, or any time you want to make your significant other feel just a bit more significant.
Fashion! It’s something we all either dread or avoid, right? Ok, maybe not all of us. But what of those among you who have no clue how to dress up for a fancy date or dinner or night out? How will you ever find out?
iPhone apps, of course! Whether you’re gearing up for a fancy night on the town for Valentine’s Day or beginning a more thorough process of bringing your wardrobe up to date, here are three apps that will help you increase your sartorial intelligence just a bit more, making you even more desirable to those you want to impress
Look, folks, it’s Valentine’s day coming up this week, and you know what that means. Either you’re a full-on V-Day fan and you’re out to get the best gift and/or date for your significant other, or you’re one of those haters who sees this as nothing more than a crass attempt to pry even more money out of your pocket in the service of an outdated social ideal.
Either way, though, you can better yourself. Here are several apps that will make you a better person to attract that special someone through your attention to personal grooming.
I’ve used iPad notepad app, Penultimate, since I’ve owned an iPad, and I bought an iPad 1 on day, well, one. I love the idea of keeping several Moleskine-type notebooks on my iPad to carry around with me.
That’s when I have my iPad. Sometimes, I don’t. Or I have my iPad mini. Or my iPhone. Or just my Mac (I’m spoiled, I know). That’s when I use Evernote, so I can take notes on any of these devices and have them accessible on any of the others.
When I found out that Penultimate is now both free and syncs with Evernote, I knew I had to share with you how to get it all set up so you could have the joy that is synced Evernote Penultimate notes!
Fandango is pretty cool. You can buy tickets right on your iPhone with the Fandango iOS app, send them to Passbook, and then just waltz right into the theater without stopping at the box office. Of course, you’ll still need to stop at the concessions stand, unless you’re smuggling in a bunch of wrapped candy in your coat pockets. Just sayin’.
Using Fandango is fairly easy, but Siri can make it easier still in iOS 6.1. Here’s how.
It used to be that in order to call a number overseas from the U.S., you’d dial a number like this one: 011 44 55 5555 5555. These days, however, it’s more common to see a number like this: + 44 55 5555 5555. But where do you find that plus symbol?
We’re here to tell you.
Sometimes when you’re shooting a video with your iPhone, you might want to snap a quick still photo of whatever you’re recording, right? You might think you’d need to stop recording the video, tap on the toggle button to switch the iPhone back to still photo mode, and then snap, but you’d be wrong (I was, when I thought that.)
Turns out you don’t need to do anything so convoluted. Here’s how.
Ok, get it out of your system. I’ll wait.
Ahem. So, by one-handed reading, I’m really talking about being able to hold your iPad mini or iPhone in your left or right hand, much like you can with a dedicated eReader device, like a Nook Simple Touch or a Kindle. The ones with buttons on them allow you to hold the reader in one hand, like you would with a paperback while lying in a sun chair by the pool, or in bed at night.
Here’s how to make your iPad or iPhone work more like that.
Sorting your photos into albums is a great way to only show off the photos you want to to the people you want to show them off to (follow that?). It’s also the way some third party apps, like Instagram or Camera +, will sort the photos you edit within them. Renaming those albums, however, isn’t entirely intuitive. Here’s how to do it, simply and quickly, right from the comfort of your own iOS device.