Now here’s a slick little trick fresh off the boat from those wacky folks at Macworld that will have you wondering, “why didn’t I think of that?”
You know how you get tons of calls each week or month that are from solicitors, political pollsters, and that weird uncle who will just not leave you alone? Well, if you get those calls on your iPhone, here’s a neat way to avoid having to answer the phone to figure out who’s calling.
Yahoo! has rolled out a new update to the Yahoo! Mail app for iOS that introduces support for multiple accounts and Yahoo! Small Business email.
If you’ve tried to use Siri to call or text someone, you know it’s pretty simple. Just say, for example, “Call Joe Smith,” and Siri will call the person named Joe Smith in your Contacts App.
But did you know that Siri can also identify people via their relationship to you? You can say, “Call my brother,” or “Text my daughter,” and Siri will call or text that person, provided you’ve done a little set-up in the Contacts app.
You can also use Siri to define these relationships, so you don’t even have to open Contacts. Here’s how.
Cobook, the non-sucky contacts app for iOS and Mac, has today added Livecards. Livecards are a way to share your contact info with other people. Instead of relying on those lazy idiots to update your details, you take care of it. The resulting changes are pushed to everyone who has your Livecard in their Cobook.
Yes, this is exactly how address books should have worked ever since the internet was invented.
LinkedIn has launched a new iPhone app today called LinkedIn Contacts, which promises to make it easier to stay in touch with your most important relationships. It brings all of your contacts together in one place, then provides you with alerts for birthdays, job changes, and more.
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Cobook, the excellent contacts replacement app for iPhone, has added something called Livecards in a brand-new 2.0 update. Livecards is a way to make sure your contacts are always filled out and up to date, without you doing anything.
Thread is a contacts app for the iPhone and iPad which follows the current trend in flat, minimalist interface design. If you’re a fan of the latest Twitterific, or Letterpress, then you’re going to love the look of Thread.
Tired of welcoming our Google overlords? Have a free Gmail account, and just lose your contact sync via Exchange? Well, why not put your contacts over on iCloud for easy synchronization across all your Apple products? Makes sense to me.
Here’s how to do it.
As a person with a funkily spelled last name, at least for English speakers, I appreciate that Siri tries to say my name, but I never really assumed she could pronounce it correctly. If you’re having trouble with Siri’s pronunciation of any of your contact names, here’s an easy trick to get her to say it correctly.
I’m sure you’re like me and get tons of email from people you don’t necessarily want email from. While OS X Mail has the new VIP feature to group important contacts into one mailbox, what about all those emails from contacts you feel are less than important, but might want to keep around, just in case.
There is a way to sort all those emails from non-important contacts, using Smart Groups in the Contacts App as well as a Smart Mailbox in Mail app. Here’s how.
We liked Cobook first time round, when it appeared on OS X as a clever little contacts database hidden inside a tiny Menu Bar icon. Now it’s on iPhone, and just as clever as before.
Here’s a hidden little piece of OS X Mountain Lion: you can view your friends’ tweets from within the Contacts app, provided you’ve added your Twitter account to OS X, and then updated your Contacts with the social networking service. Now that Twitter is directly integrated within OS X, you can connect to the service with many different apps, like the Notification Center and Contacts.
Here’s how.
With the latest iOS 6 update, all your iPhone using buddies around the world are going to start syncing their Contacts to their Facebook account, hoping to automate what can be a fairly tedious process. Unfortunately, if you haven’t set your Facebook account settings to get your real email address into the sync information, your friends are going to just get a useless @facebook.com email address attached to your contact on their iPhone, and no one wants that.
Fortunately, there’s a way to fix this problem, and make sure Facebook’s secret switch to their own branded email addresses in your Facebook contact information doesn’t go any farther than it already has.
OS X Mountain Lion added some new security features to an already fairly secure operating system (not perfect, we know!). One of these features is an alert you get when you use an app that wants to access your Contact information from the Contacts app on your Mac. When you see this, you’re able to allow or deny that app access to your contacts – this is there to help make things a bit more transparent, and hopefully more secure.
Once you’ve given that access, however, that app gets tracked as one that can always access your Contacts info. If you want to change that access, today’s tip will help.
Adding Twitter information to your contacts has been a slow, manual, one-contact-at-a-time affair. If you wanted to get all your friends’ Twitter names into the Contacts App before OS X Mountain Lion, you’d need to open Contacts, edit each contact, and paste or type their info into their specific contact card. The length of time that would take, depending on the number of folks you know and/or follow on Twitter, kept most of us from even thinking about doing it.
However, with Mountain Lion, Apple and Twitter have made it a lot easier. Here’s how to add them all in one fell swoop.
Are you wondering why I said anachronistic? Well, seriously, the old-school world of fake leather and book bindings is goofy enough when it’s a real world item (unless it’s the sweet BookBook case for your iPhone…drool), but the skeumorphic leather and book bindings in newly-named Calendar and same-old-name Contacts apps in OS X Mountain Lion are ridiculous. I haven’t used a paper calendar or address book in years, even in the days before the iPhone. I know – gasp – there was life before iPhones.
Here’s an app that will remove this fugly visual choice – then you can forever thank us for helping you use your digital world just a bit more, erm, digitally.
Antivirus software specialist Bitdefender has found that nearly 19% of iOS apps access your address book without your knowledge — or your consent — when you’re using them, and 41% track your location. What’s most concerning is over 40% of them don’t encrypt your data once it has been collected.
That’s all going to change when iOS 6 makes its debut later this year, however.
The iOS6 beta brings much finer-grained controls to the privacy settings, letting you specify just what services any app will have access to. Previously you’d get an alert whenever an app wanted to know your location. Now you’ll see the same kind of alert when apps ask to use data from your calendars, contacts, reminders and photos.
The core apps and features in Apple’s iOS operating system have looked largely the same since the original iPhone made its debut back in 2007. Put certain iOS 5 apps — Calendar, Contacts, Maps, YouTube — alongside those from the original iPhone OS and you’ll notice hardly any difference.
However, Apple could be gearing up to make some changes in iOS 6 that will introduce a fresh new look to the iPhone. This summer we could be waving goodbye to that traditional iPhone blue that has adorned iOS apps for the past five years and saying hello to sexy silver.
There has recently been a lot of concern into the way in which our iOS apps access our personal data, and then what they do with it once it has been collected. Since the whole Path debacle in particular, users seem to be more concerned by the issue than ever before.
BitDefender is one security firm looking to capitalize upon that concern with a new app called Clueful, which promises reveal what each of your apps is doing with your data and identify the “misdemeanant apps on your iPhone.”
The app privacy scandal caused by Path’s iPhone app is still leaving its mark, as members of the U.S. Congress have sent out letters to 33 prominent App Store developers to better understand the issue. “We want to better understand the information collection and use policies and practices of apps for Apple’s mobile devices with a social element.”
Apps like the official Facebook and Twitter clients are among the list. Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman and Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member G. K. Butterfield have requested that the developers behind such apps reveal how Apple imposes its privacy standards and how the standards are implemented.
In addition to the new features we detailed earlier today, Apple’s second OS X Mountain Lion beta adds a nifty security feature that will prevent third-party applications from accessing your contacts without your permission.
A new version of social networking app Path is now available in the App Store for iPhone users. Path 2.1 features several new features and improvements, including a Shazam-like ‘Music Match’ tool for identifying music playing around you.
The app’s camera features have also been improved with focus and exposure options and a new setting called “Pow!” for creating comic book-style pics. Nike+ integration has been added to let you journal your runs in Path.
Are you still emailing contact cards and photos to your friends? Did you know that you can transfer them instantly with a fist bump using the free Bump app? The best thing about Bump is it’s not just available on iOS, so you can use it to send contacts and images to friends on Android devices and other smartphones, too.
Here’s how to get started.
Apple has officially responded to the contact sharing debacle that was highlighted by the Path iPhone app last week. After it was discovered that Path secretly uploaded a user’s entire contact database to its own servers, the controversy sparked more discussion about how Apple needs to enforce its user privacy guidelines more to protect customers.
Third-party apps will have to ask for permission to access contact data from a user, according to Apple. The issue will be remedied with an upcoming iOS update.
