iTips and Tricks

So guess what I did today?????  Yup, played with my iPhone!  I bought an app called iPhone Secrets Tips and Tricks.  I have almost read all the tips and have learned MANY new things that work with all our idevices!  I'll share a few..............

Emoti keyboard - So if you go into your settings and choose general, scroll down til you see keyboard.  Then choose international keyboards.  Here you will find a list of many languages for the keyboard.  You will find a list of many languages and one called emoti, which is how you get those fun emoticons.  When you want to use them click the little globe that will now appear on your keyboard!


Maps - So this is cool yet somehow a little disturbing.  If you click the maps button  on the main page of your device and type in an address it will pin it on a map.  If there happens to be a little person next to the pin, you can click the person and it will show you a picture of that exact location!  It works, I found all my houses I have ever lived in.  The pictures are about 3 years old... I know this because my house was just in the building stage and that is when we built.  Cool but freaky!  You can swipe the picture for a panaramic view.  This would be wonderful for Social Studies!


Saving your Battery - There are a few things you can do to save your battery.  Do not leave your device in push mode for your email and notifications.  Turn it off so that you actually have to hit your email button for your email to update itself.  Also set the brightness of your screen to a lower lighting level to save your battery and make sure you turn off any apps that run using your location. When your device is constantly updating your location it is wasting battery.  Remember any apps you use are constantly running in the background.  Double press your home button and a list of all running items appears across the bottom.  Touch the minus sign to completely turn them off, this DOES NOT delete the app.

Siri - I am very excited to read the section about Siri (my personal assistant that "lives" in my phone!!!!)  I see that I can train her to know who my contacts are so I can say things like "Calll my husband" and it will find his number in my phone.  I can also set my profile so I can say things like "Remember to check the mail when I get home." and when my location registers me at home, Siri will remind me!  Cool huh!

Iphone users.... for 99 cents I am pretty sure you will learn something with this app!



 

Keeping it organized

So how are we going to keep the iPad organized and not distracting for an impulsive 7 year old? My thought is to have it ALL organized in folders. Then to only pull out 2 or 3 apps that are part of the lesson for that day or that week. Everything else will remain in folders hidden away until needed. This will take away from wanting the really fun apps instead of the "work" apps.

In App purchases

With many of the free apps I have for my children I am bombarded with in app purchases.."that only cost 99 cents mom!".  Well here is a link to an article to make sure those 99cent purchases are not being made.

Beware the Sync

Okay so I learned something new after a few frustrating hours today.  You CAN NOT delete pictures from your ipad unless you do it during a sync.  When you are syncing the ipad you can select which photos you want to be on your ipad.  The sync is initially set up to sync all your photos which ended up being half of my memory on the ipad.  So I had to resync it selecting only the few photos I wanted.  the help I found did say you could delete pictures from the Ipad that you took with the Ipad (don't ask me how)!

And why did I learn all this?  Well I was attempting to rent my first movie from the itunes store to watch with my hdmi connector on my tv!  I'll let you know how that goes in another post.
Christine

Shutting Off your Apps

Soooooooo apparently hitting the lovely little button to take you home is not the way to actually shut an app completely off... who knew?  Now it is not a problem until your children have so many apps continually running in the background that your battery life is being sucked out of your ipad faster than your internet connection.... well not quite but you get my drift.  Here's a link to show you how to really get them to quit running.  any other tips on shutting apps down are greatly appreciated!

http://www.theiphonemom.com/how-to-turn-off-apps
Christine