Category Archives: Computers & Electronics

iPhone Tips for Beginners

Computers & Electronics, Internet, Lifestyles, Recreation, Social Networks & Online Communities, Technology

So You have a New iPhone!

iphone-tipsSo I am assuming that you have just got yourself an iPhone and with it a plan that comes with 3G coverage so that you can access the web wherever you are. These days the plans are very reasonable but if you don’t have web access then you can use the wireless features of the phone when you are in an area that has wireless coverage.

In that lovely new box there are a few goodies but one thing that there is not is an instruction booklet – I guess that Apple think that you can get all the information online in their help manuals but sometimes that just doesn’t cut it and even some basic things need a small about of explaining when you first start using it.

Firstly, I have to say I now love my iPhone and wouldn’t want to be without it, which is what I guess Apple want you to think! It has loads of great features and by downloading apps you can use it for more and more things. Anyway, here are a few basics to start you off.

How To Change The Sim Card

It sounds obvious but from experience I looked and looked for where the iPhone SIM card went and couldn’t find it! So in order to change the iPhone SIM card you will need the SIM card pin that came with your phone (it looks a bit like a paper clip). Use the pin end on this to poke into the hole at the top of the phone and the SIM card holder will pop out of the top of the phone. Whenever you need to open the SIM card holder you will need to use the pin.

Synching Your iPhone

Firstly, in order to synchronise your data with your computer you will need to have iTunes installed and also have an iTunes account. These are pretty simple to set up if you do not already have one.

You will need to link your iPhone to iTunes via a usb port on computer with the usb cable that was supplied with your iPhone and within the iTunes interface you can synchronise your contacts, music, calendar and pretty much everything else on your iPhone (except downloading photos).

Once you plug your phone in iTunes should start up automatically and it will start synching all the data on your phone. Don’t unplug your phone until it has finished.

Copying Photos from your iPhone

You can choose photo albums to synch up to your phone within the iTunes interface but it seems you can’t synch your photos down 🙁

If you want to copy your photos down from your iPhone to your computer then you basically need to do this in Window Explorer. Open the phone in explorer and copy them to your chosen directory.

However, this does not always work so one other way of doing it is to use Google’s Picasa tool to import the photos.

How To Change the Number of Times The iPhone Rings Before Voicemail Cuts In

When I first got my iPhone it would ring only 4 times and then go straight to voicemail which I thought was very annoying as more often than not I did not reach the phone before it stopped ringing. After much investigation, I found that they way to change the number of rings on your iPhone before going to voicemail was as follows:

Call *#61#

Take a note of the number that comnes through as ‘Forwards to’

Dial *61*/Forwards To/*11*n#

where n= no. of seconds that you want it to ring for before going to voicemail. After a bit of trial and error I set it to around 30 seconds to give me a chance to find the phone!

Battery Power

From my experience the battery on the iPhone lasts between 10 hours and two days but obviously it depends on how much you use it. You can recharge the battery with the USB cable either through your computer or with the power adapter for the USB cable that plugs into the mains. You can also buy many music systems to play your iPhone music through and these will charge your iPhone while they play.

How Do You Take a Screenshot with Your iPhone?

Well this is actually a really easy thing to do once you know how. All you have to do is to navigate to the page that you want a screenshot of, then you press down the power button at the top of the phone and at the same time you hit the round ‘home’ button on the bottom of the front screen.

This saves a shot of the screen to your camera roll where you can do whatever you like with it!

How To Take A Screenshot on Your iPhone

Computers & Electronics

Well this might seen like an impossible thing to do but actually, once you know how, it is pretty simple. This can be really useful if you want to write instructions about something or if you just want to email what you can see on your phone to someone else. In any case there are many reasons why you may want to take a screenshot on your iPhone!

So, all you need to do, once you have the screen that you want a picture of, is to hold down the power button on the top of the phone and at the same time press the ‘home’ button that is the circular one on the front of the phone at the bottom. This will save the screenshot to your camera roll.

Want to Buy the Raspberry Pi?

Computers & Electronics, Shopping

If you have heard all of the buzz about the Raspberry Pi recently, which is a computer that you can buy for around £22, then you may be wondering where you can buy the Raspberry Pi?

Well the buzz has been so big that stocks of the small personal computer have already sold out on their launch date. However, more stocks are on the way and although currently you can only buy one piece per order, bulk orders will soon be possible.

The development of the Raspberry Pi was inspired to make schoolchildren more keen on getting into the coding and development of programs that children of the 80’s used to do on simple basic computers like the ZX Spectrum. The ‘computer’ doesn’t come in a case but instead is just a motherboard that can be connected to a monitor or TV.

In future many more jobs will involve some kind of coding or computer programming and the launch of the Raspberry Pi is hoped to encourage schoolchildren to build on these skills and thus be more employable.

Two companies are currently distributing the Raspberry Pi and they are:

Premier Farnell and RS Components 

Web Traffic From Portland Oregon

Computers & Electronics, Internet

As website developers we have a number of websites on the go right now and it seems that something strange is happening in the Google Analytics stats. Quite a few websites have been showing increased views so I did a bit of investigating on why this might be and found something strange.

A number of websites have a bunch of direct traffic from Portland, Oregon, US. This traffic is direct (i.e. not coming through a search engine) and it has a 100% bounce rate and zero time spent on the site. This leads me to believe that this Portland Oregon web traffic is being sent by some kind of automated system. By why would anyone bother doing this? What would be the point and what would they achieve by doing it? Maybe it is some kind of testing.

Also is it only a small number of websites that this is happening to or are there other people that are affected? Maybe if you have got to this page then you are experiencing the same weird direct traffic from Portland, Oregon. If you are then please let me know by leaving a comment and if you have any idea why this might be happening we would be interested to hear from you.

How To Add a Network Place

Computers & Electronics, Internet,

When Microsoft change things with each new edition of the Windows sofware it can sometimes be difficult to find how to do something that you thought was pretty simple and commonplace in the past. One example of this for me was to use ‘Add Network Place’ when you wanted to connect to a folder that was on a website where you had documents or images stored – previously this was a pretty simple thing to do.

But now in Windows 7 I have found that it seems to be hidden in the depths of things and is not immediately obvious.

Anyway, to add a network place in Microsoft Windows 7 you need to do this:

Open Windows Explorer
Click on Tools
Map Network Drive
At the bottom of the next dialog box you have the link to ‘Connect to a website that you use to store your documents and pictures’
After that you just need to enter the website address and you are sorted.

You will then find the link under the Computer section in the left hand folders menu.