Extending Battery Life in iOS 11

In Apple’s iOS 11 {as 11.0.3 (15A432)}, shortened battery life/power has been a source of continual complaint form many.

Part of the reason why, is that in iOS 11, the Bluetooth & Wi-Fi features can NOT be turned OFF from the “swipe” menu, which is accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

Instead, what that “switch” does, is to

Phubbing: What Is It, And How To Avoid It

Could Phubbing Be Secretly Ruining Your Marriage?
By Kylie Matthew

(This IS a problem. I see it all too often in my counseling practice. – Debbie Preece, MA)

New research suggests this pernicious problem is wrecking emotional havoc.

Do you spend more quality time with your phone than you do with your spouse? Are you compulsively checking for notifications and endlessly scrolling through your social media feeds while in the presence of your honey?

If this sounds like you, you may be one of millions of people experiencing what is a relatively new psychological condition known as ‘phubbing’ that, according to influential new research, may be slowly eroding your relationship with your partner.

Phone addiction is a ‘thing.’ Seriously

Phubbing is a portmanteau of ‘phone’ and ‘snubbing’ and occurs when conversation is interrupted by attention being given to a smart phone rather than the person you’re with. When it’s your loved one who bears the brunt of this compulsive action, it’s called phubbing – partner phone snubbing.

It’s a phenomenon directly resulting from the emergence of ‘phone addiction’ that, according to an extensive review of recent studies on the condition, is a problem tightly linked to unprecedented technological development over the past decade.

Unlike other forms of behavioral addiction such as gambling or gaming, in the same report it was noted that phone addiction seemingly affects young, extroverted women more than anyone else. (All ages and sexes are vulnerable.)

This isn’t surprising according to one of Australia’s foremost experts on relationships. “This is

How To: Make A Mediocre Picture Better

Admit it.

You’re not a Professional Photographer.

That is to say, you don’t make your living with a camera. And, probably never have.

That’s okay. It’s not a problem. But by the same token, you probably wouldn’t know The Rule of Thirds, backlighting, high-key, or the difference between an ƒ-stop and ISO/ASA. And, that’s okay too.

But… if you want to make better pictures, you’ll want to learn to a few tips and tricks to improve the images you do make.

The smartphone’s ubiquity has made picture-taking commonplace. And the democratization of photography via the iPhone, and other smartphones, has been a veritable dream come true for George Eastman, Kodak’s late founder, who wanted to put a camera into everyone’s hands. And to give credit where credit is due, Steve Jobs, late founder of Apple Computer, is probably the man who was actually able to do that.

Seen below, we have a snapshot taken indoors of a beloved pet dog named Bug, who is lying on his back on the sofa in a very cute state of repose.

Original image – Bug, the dog

It’s a good image, but could be made better.

Here’s how.

Overall, the image seems

Is God an Abortionist?

The Bible never mentions abortion.

It doesn’t suggest it, nor does it even hint at it.

The Bible doesn’t forbid prostitution.

In fact, there are many things the Bible doesn’t even mention.

But it does forbid eating pork, shrimp, oysters, mussels, clams, cheeseburgers, wearing clothing made with cotton/polyester blended  fabric, that a man should marry his brother’s wife if the brother dies before impregnating her, and several hundred other nonsensical rules, regulations and laws – almost all of which were religiously based upon ignorance.

At the time the Bible was written (approximately 4000 BC/BCE), there was no understanding of Germ Theory (1864). No one understood Bernoulli’s Principle (1783). In fact Bernoulli wasn’t even born then. No one understood the physics and principles of lift, low pressure, high pressure, or how weather systems occurred. Even the beer and wine that was made then was thought to have been made magically – as if it were some kind of mystical gift from the gods, a god, or the God. They had no idea – were literally clueless – that it was through fermentation, because

#iPhoneography Tips & Tricks

The iPhone is a simple, though powerful tool. It’s ease of operation often belies the sophisticated mathematical and computer algorithms which undergird it’s operations. The integrated movie and still camera is one of the iPhone’s highlights, and Apple, Inc. makes every opportunity to improve the images the camera produces.

Quite honestly, the iPhone is perhaps my favorite creative imaging tool… as you may likely attest, if you’ve been following my photo stream for any time. There are very few things the iPhone can do that my Nikon DSLR cannot. There are a few features on the iPhone which the Nikon does not have, and vice versa. One is the Nikon’s ability to create RAW images, whereas the iPhone creates only JPEG images. By the same token, the iPhone has a “Burst” mode, whereas the Nikon does not. And I’ve been able to obtain images with my iPhone that my Nikon could never get, such as bluebird hatchlings in their nest box.

The diminutive size of the iPhone belies it’s strength, and the ubiquitous modern smartphone with integrated camera is now so commonplace that

Apple Recall: iPhone 5 Battery Replacement Program

Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The affected iPhone 5 devices were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a limited serial number range.

If your iPhone 5 is experiencing these symptoms and meets the eligibility requirements noted below, Apple will replace your iPhone 5 battery, free of charge.

Eligibility

If your iPhone is in working order and exhibits the symptoms noted above, use the serial number checker below to see if it is eligible for this program.

Only iPhone 5 smartphones sold between September 2012 and

Could Not Activate Cellular Data Network

iPhone 5 Error message: Could not activate cellular data network

Ever had this problem?

You’ll notice one other thing about the display on the iPhone.

As you look atop the image, you’ll see numbers instead of the “bars” used to display signal strength. The number -103 is a numerical signal strength indicator, which the proper, and only way to indicate signal strength.

Just in the case you’re not aware of the technical aspects of signal strength, or what the number means, signal strength is measured as a loss.

The number itself is

iPhone Field Test Mode

Tired of those useless crummy bars for signal strength indicator for cellular or Wi-Fi service?

Ever tried to figure out how to get a numerical signal strength indicator on your iPhone?

Wonder no more!

How to get numerical signal strength indicator on iPhone

Simply enter

Wrong Passcode – try again

Got iPhone?

Sure.

Chances are, you do.

Wrong Passcode iPhone screen shot

The iPhone is the world’s most popular selling cell phone.

This screen shot was made after entering the wrong Passcode.

Once the wrong Passcode is entered several consecutive times, the iPhone

What does Unified Info mean on iPhone?

Among the standard WordPress offerings are statistics on each blog, and corresponding search terms that were used to discover any particular entry. Those are very powerful tools, and in the proper hands, can be effectively utilized.

It’s interesting to read the search terms that often lead to this blog, and to this point, though I have considered opining on some of the more “fascinating” or “peculiar” entries, I shall share something a wee bit less salacious.

In fact, it’s not salacious at all.

One such entry was “what does unified info mean on iPhone“?

First, consider what the word “unified” means.

“Unified” means “to make, or become united, uniform or whole.”

The prefix “uni” means “one.”

By implication, unity, unification, or unified means that exactness is present. There is no variation, or difference.

Things are as one. They are made into one. To unify is to make into one.

New Contact on iPhone – Note the data fields.

New Contact in “Contacts” address book on OSX
Note the data fields.

Sample Contact entry in “Contacts” address book on OSX.

Quite simply put, “Unified Info” on the iPhone means

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer gives new iPhone 5 to all Yahoo! employees & pays their cell phone bills

In reality, she offered a choice from among 6 smartphones.

She is also also going to pay its employees data and phone bills.

—

Marissa Mayer Just Gave Every Yahoo Employee An iPhone 5

Nicholas Carlson | Sep. 15, 2012, 11:32 PM
New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just sent an email to all of Yahoo’s full time and part time employees in the US, promising them a new Apple, Samsung, Nokia, or HTC smartphone.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer with Michael Arrington founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch at TechCrunch Disrupt September 14, 2011. Photo by Kevin Krejci

“People are happy,” says a source at the company.

A couple weeks ago, we reported that new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was considering giving every Yahoo employee a new iPhone or Android smartphone.

Mayer has now put that plan into motion through a program Yahoo is calling “Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!”

We learned about this plan from an internal memo, which we received from one source and confirmed with another.

Through the program, Yahoo employees will have a choice of phones: iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC EVO 4G LTE, or Nokia Lumia 920.

Yahoo is also going to

Hospitals get ready… set… go… Wireless!

The revolution will not be televised.

It will be handheld.

Because the future is now.

—

Medical Devices in Hospitals to Go Wireless

FCC Is Expected to Vote to Open Up Spectrum, Easing Patient Monitoring and Making Product Development Less Risky

Hospitals are getting ready to cut the cord.

In place of knots of wires stuck to patients to monitor their blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level and body temperature, doctors and the companies that supply them hope to use Band-Aid-like sensors to accomplish the same task wirelessly.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote Thursday to open up spectrum for wireless medical devices, raising the possibility of easier hospital-patient monitoring, fewer tubes in emergency rooms, and more remote monitoring at home.

The shift will make it easier to track patients’ conditions, improving the odds that health problems will be caught before they become an emergency, analysts and clinicians say.

Wireless Hospitals

While wireless technology has boomed for phones and computing, it has been slower to take hold in the medical sphere. Hospitals have

The Digital Pushback: Resistance to i-Progress in e-Medicine

What would it be like if you could to to your clinician’s office, and within a few minutes have a complete analysis of your blood done to detect whatever bug might be growing in there simply by the DNA of the organism?

It’s being doing now.

But why is there resistance to progress?

—

The Wireless Revolution Hits Medicine

• Updated April 16, 2012, 11:42 a.m. ET

Eric Topol talks about the upheaval that’s coming as the digitization of health care meets the smartphone

By RON WINSLOW

After 14 years as chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Eric Topol moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 2006 to become director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, which was established to apply genetic discoveries to personalized medicine. Three years later, he helped launch the West Wireless Health Institute, for which he is vice chairman and which is investigating use of wireless technology in the delivery of health care.

The convergence of these two fields—genomics, marked by the rapidly plummeting cost of sequencing a person’s entire genetic code, and wireless, with its flurry of innovative health-care apps—led Dr. Topol to write “The Creative Destruction of Medicine,” a book that offers an illuminating perspective on the coming digitization of health care. It’s also a reminder that while medicine is one of the globe’s premier drivers of innovation, it is also a conservative culture that now finds itself buffeted by transformational change.

The Wall Street Journal’s Ron Winslow discussed the implications with Dr. Topol. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Unnecessary Boundaries

WSJ: Let’s start with the title. “Creative Destruction” is a provocative term. What needs to be destroyed?

DIGITAL DOCTOR Eric Topol advocates the transformative power of technology like the MinIon, a disposable device being developed to sequence parts of an individual’s DNA; a mobile patient monitor enabled by an iPhone app; the Zio patch, worn above the heart to check for irregular heartbeats; and a contact lens embedded with a chip to measure eye pressure for people with or at risk of glaucoma.

DR. TOPOL: There are two levels. One is that in medicine, everything we do essentially is

iPhone Photography Tips & Tricks III

Perhaps you’re read the two preceding entries in this series.

That would be “iPhone Photography Tips & Tricks,” and “iPhone Photography Tips & Tricks II.” (Had to clear that up, you know. It never hurts to be certain, right?)

Apple continues to improve the camera application on their iPhone, and in the 4S, the resolution of the camera has reached 8MP, and sports all-new optics. Not only does it shoot 1080p HD video, but it boasts a  f/2.4 aperture, improved backside illumination sensor, excellent auto white balance, advanced color accuracy, face detection, and reduced motion blur.

As well, the 4S model iPhone has 60 percent more pixels than the camera on iPhone 4.

While the improved camera sensors in the iPhone 4S have increased its sensitivity, it is ultimately the glass that makes any camera’s pictures worthwhile. And the appearance of a five element lens in conjunction with a larger aperture allows better quality light, and more light to reach the camera’s sensors, which results in a clearer focus and significantly improved pictures, overall.

However, those hardware improvement don’t say much about other really cool integrated camera features in iOS 5. And just so you’ll know, iOS 5 will work on the iPhone 3GS,  iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad, iPad 2, iPod touch 3d & 4th generations.

One useful feature available on all iOS devices is

iPhone Photography Tips & Tricks II

In the previous iPhone photography Tips & Tricks entry, I shared instructions and examples on how to use the iPhone‘s 5x zoom.

In this entry, you’ll see actual screenshots of the zoom adjustments, along with another useful built-in photography help.

Screenshot of the activated built-in Zoom feature on the iPhone. The photo's a bit fuzzy, because it's tough to get a screenshot quickly while maintaining a composition!

Recall that the iPhone’s zoom feature may be accessed two ways: 1.) by a

iPhone photography Tips & Tricks

Do you use an Apple iPhone?

Chances are, you do.

How would I know, and why?

Quite simply, not only does the Apple iPhone continue to dominate the smartphone market with innovations, but worldwide and domestic sales of the smartphone indicate market share dominance. In other words, Apple is the “worldwide number one single manufacturer of smartphones by revenue, profit, and volume.” Tom Kang, Director at Strategy Analytics, reported that in 2010 alone, Apple shipped over 100 million smartphones.

But you didn’t necessarily want to read a marketing and sales report – right?

On to the iPhone tips and tricks.

The  iPhone’s integrated camera has the ability to zoom up to 5x.

The zoom feature may be accessed two ways:

Oh baby, you’re so scannable!

Those quick-response (QR) codes you see spreading far and wide give smartphone users a painless way to go to a company’s website, get discounts or gather contact information. But some QR codes are scanned more than others. Why? Is it because those winning QR codes are so creatively designed?

Researchers at Lab42 wanted to know “what makes certain codes so scanworthy,” so they conducted an online survey via social networks of 500 Americans over 18, and found out that

Apple iPhone screen shots

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen these screens in any other venue. Of course, there are probably several screens I’ve not seen. As I discover them, I’ll endeavor to post them.

QR Code is now here!

What you’re seeing is the URL for this blog in QR Code format. QR Code is the next generation of bar code, and is

Apple’s iOS inherently more secure

Once again, Apple Computer rises to the top!

How?

Their iOS does NOT use Flash.

McAfee reported that Adobe software products such as Flash and Acrobat were the “clear choice of malware authors and cybercriminals.”

iPhone 4 Reliable… and Accident Prone

SquareTrade, a third-party, electronics warranty-issuing business, has extrapolated data from their database of insured iPhones and has discovered some fascinating results.

AT&T data taxing Class Action settlement reached

Everybody hates lawyers… until they need one.

While some would go so far as to extol alleged virtues of the abolition of taxation, asserting that no one should not pay any taxes whatsoever – such as the radical liberal Mises Institute, whose ivory towered Social Darwinistic professorial adherents theorize of such a Utopian society – the vast majority of us live in the real world, where taxation upon income, purchases and transactions are a daily part of life.

However, the purpose of this post is not to espouse a particular position, but to inform. Toward that end, it very much appears that for many years, AT&T Mobility has – in violation of applicable federal, state and/or local law(s) – independently taxed Internet service it provided to smartphone owners – such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, etc.

Thus, if you have ever used any AT&T Mobility Internet service – whether you have ever owned a smartphone or not (there are numerous cell phones that can access the Internet, even though they’re not categorized as “smartphones”) – you are a member of a class, and are entitled to a settlement.

For your convenience, there are few questions with answers posted below; and for further reading and details, the link to the website is: ATTMSettlement.com.

Apple confesses: iPhone Signal Strength Indicator “totally wrong”

Apple Computer (NYSE: AAPL), stunned the world today by announcing a critical error in the design of their iPhones, which has been present since the devices were first manufactured and sold in 2007.

It seems that the “bars” indicator – which has been used as a signal strength indicator, albeit an inaccurate and faulty one – is even more faulty than previously thought! In fact, it’s AFU – All Fouled Up. (That’s nice parlance.)

For those of you who do not know how to read radio signal strength indicators (and that’s very likely most folks), they’re expressed in negative numbers. The higher the negative number, e.g., -108, the weaker the signal. Conversely, the opposite is true: The lower the negative number, e.g., -16, the stronger the signal.

My iPhone 3GS is jailbroken, and one feature I have employed on it is a numerical signal strength indicator for the Cellular and WiFi signals. Here are two screenshots to illustrate.

UPPER LEFT CORNER: Cellular signal strength indicator using "Bars" - Note also, the WiFi signal (on the RIGHT of the AT&T) is much stronger than the cellular signal.

UPPER LEFT CORNER: Cellular strength indicator using the accepted numerical standard - Note also, the WiFi signal (on the RIGHT of the AT&T) is much stronger than the cellular signal.

Oh!

And if you’re looking for a job…

Apple Computer is looking for Antenna Engineers, too!

Read on to see their mea culpa and want ad.

iPhone 3G[S]

Perhaps the story of the iPhone could appear as a feature on the teevee show “Modern Marvels.”

My tenor is somewhat sarcastic, for as I am writing, my iPhone is, and for very nearly the past month, has been nothing more than a chic lovely paperweight.

I have a 32GB iPhone 3G[S] which I purchased at a “race horse” price – $150. It was refurbished. It had not even one scratch on it, and was brand-spanking, shiny new when I peeled the protective plastic off the screen.

In short order, I unlocked and jailbroke the 3.1.2 OS phone using blackra1n, which is a free/no-cost tethered jailbreak – meaning it must be attached to the computer during the process. The baseband is 5.11.07.

To clarify, “unlock” refers to

Wings on my ass – a cause of blindness? My iPhone story in Lent.

This is the season of Lent. It’s a strictly Christian observance… well, it actually has its roots in the Jewish Passover.

Oh well.

Christians are the “new Jews.” Oy vey!

I started out thinking I’d share about my iPhone troubles – I have an unlocked and jailbroken 32G 3G[S] iPhone.

Yeah. Top of the line.

iResisted doing that – purchasing an iPhone – for quite some time. I used  – and still do – use a Palm Treo 650, and have never had moment’s trouble with it. NEVER!

I used it to surf the web, and sent e-mail from about four accounts, three of them associated with my work, all from different organizations. One day, several years ago, at a family reunion in MS, someone told me something had fallen out of my pocket. Looking down, I saw the stubby antenna lying on the floor. Loathing to pay the very-nearly $40 for a screw and tiny piece of plastic, I reverted to using two devices – as I had done previously with a Nokia “candybar” style phone, and Palm Pilot.

Back to Square One… right? Two devices… one phone, and one computer/calendar/appointment/memo/address/contact gizmo.

A few months back, I bought the iPhone for