Blog Archives
Make Custom iOS Shortcuts: No Jailbreak Required – app quick look
I just ran across this post over at iDownloadBlog that details a great App named Icon Project. The short of it is: If you’d like a way to create custom shortcuts and quickly get to settings or even make one touch phone calls Icon Project can create it for you. It is very much worth the cost of $0.99.
This for me is a very handy and welcomed App. One of the Apps I’ve been missing the most without jailbreak is SBSettings. It does not feature the convenient toggles like SBSettings but it’s a close second and keeps you from having to “drill down” to your most commonly accessed settings.
The best thing is Icon Project allows you to customize the Icon with borders, backgrounds or even your photos/designs. There wasn’t designs for some of the common settings so I quickly created my own in Photoshop and used them as seen below.
If you’d like the same look for your iOS device, purchase Icon Project then save the following images to the photo roll on the device you are customizing and apply the image by tapping on the camera icon while creating the shortcut in Icon Project. In order for the shortcut to work you have to use the correlating preference shortcut address found here by copying and pasting into the URL section under “Select Type” in Icon Project. Update: Apparently the URL shortcuts no longer work under iOS 5.1. So if you want that functionality you’ll have to stay with 5.0 or less.
Brightness
Bluetooth
Wi-Fi 1
Wi-Fi 2
Location 1
Location 2
Network
Tether
Music Prefs.
Background to create your own
Check out the post over at iDownloadBlog for more information and a quick video demo of the App.
Photo Stream: What Is It? How do I use it? Does it really work? How To / Review – iOS 5, iCloud
Updated 03/11/2012
Photo Stream was one of the iOS 5/ iCloud features I was most looking forward to. The ease of having my photos pushed directly from my iPhone (which is pretty much the only camera I use anymore) to iCloud then automatically to my other devices (in my case a Mac and an iPad 2) seemed too good to be true… Here’s my findings intermixed with a how-to for you to set up Photo Stream for yourself.
What is it?
This is how Apple describes Photo Stream:
“Take a photo on an iOS device. Or import a photo from your digital camera to your computer. iCloud automatically pushes a copy of that photo over any available Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection to the Photos app on your iOS devices, iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac, and the Pictures Library on your PC.
If you have Photo Stream enabled on your iOS device, every single photo you take appears in a special Photo Stream album that holds your last 1000 photos. You can’t edit or delete photos from your Photo Stream. If you want to touch up a photo or keep a favorite shot permanently, simply save it to your Camera Roll.
But since your Mac has more storage than your iOS device, it automatically imports every picture from your Photo Stream into your photo library so you can edit, delete, and share the ones you want.”
Is it as simple as it sounds?
The best way to understand Photo Stream is to realize what it is not. It is not a online album that synchs your photos to your liking between all of your devices. It’s important to let this idea go (which I believe is the source of many complaints concerning Photo Stream) because if you don’t you will be disappointed with it.
It’s best to think of Photo Stream as just a constant flow of photos (which is implied in the name) that acts as a conduit to route photos to your other devices. Like a stream of flowing water, at anytime you can grab a bucket, dip it in, fill it up and haul it to a different location. Otherwise you have no control over the water, just how much you take and where you transport it to.
How does it work on iOS?
On iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) every photo you take (screen shots too) will be added to your Photo Stream and uploaded to iCloud. Those photos will also save locally (camera roll) only on the device you took the photos with. If you want to save any of the photos from Photo Stream locally on another iOS device you have to save them manually.
To turn on Photo Stream on your iOS device go to: Settings> Photos
To save manually from the stream to another iOS device: 1. While viewing a photo select the corner arrow icon to save image from Photo Stream
2. Select Save to Camera Roll
How does it work on the Mac?
On the Mac side, Photo Stream works almost the same except you have 2 options: turn on/off Automatic Import and Automatic Upload.
• With Automatic Import on: every photo that is uploaded to the stream will automatically save locally on your Mac in the iPhoto library.
• With Automatic Upload on: every photo you import into iPhoto (from any camera or other source) will automatically upload to the stream.
Note: Both of these options are ON by default.
Turn on Photo Stream in iPhoto on your Mac or toggle the other settings here: iPhoto > Prefrences > Photo Stream
How does it work on Apple TV?
I do not own an Apple TV so I cannot comment on its Photo Stream functionality.
Does it work on a Windows PC?
Yes, it does. You need to install the iCloud Control Panel in order to enable this feature. Once you do you’ll be presented with this:
Click here for step-by-step instructions for Windows PC setup
Can I really Not Delete Photos from the Photo Stream?
Well, No and Yes. You cannot delete individual photos from the stream. So if you take 5 photos of the same subject (say in attempt to get the better lighting with each shot) every attempt will upload and you cannot individually get rid of the ones you’d prefer not to keep.
Update 03/10/12: With the release of iOS 5.1 and iPhoto 9.2.2 Apple has added the ability to delete photos from the stream. Yay!
(The following is a how-to delete the entire stream which was more important prior to individual deletion being added to Photo Stream)
What if I want to delete the entire stream?
1. login to iCloud at www.icloud.com
2. Select your user name in the right hand top corner of the iCloud main selection page
3. Select: Advanced
4. Select Reset Photo Stream
Does it really work?
Keep in mind Photo Stream only uploads when your source device (the device you’ve taken the photos with) is connected to Wi-Fi. The photos are suppose to automatically upload once you’ve made that connection, even if you were not Wi-Fi connected when you took the photos. This feature has been a little hit and miss for me:
• Hit: I was on a road trip last week and I took some photos with my new iPhone 4S without a Wi-Fi connection. Once I got to my destination I connected my iPhone to Wi-Fi. A little later I was talking with my wife who was at home. I had her check iPhoto. She opened iPhoto and within minutes the photos that I took several hundred miles away showed up.
• Miss: On the return trip home I took several more photos while having no Wi-Fi connection. Once I got home my iPhone automatically connected to Wi-Fi. A bit later I opened iPhoto on my Mac to look at the photos, they had not shown up. I waited for about 20 minutes, checked again and they still hadn’t shown up, I wait again and still nothing. Since there is no option to force a “synch” with Photo Stream I resorted to turning Photo Stream off and on again. When Photo Stream reloaded the new photos finally showed up.
I’ve also played around with the “master reset” a few times and each time I did a reset it required that I toggle Photo Stream off and on again on both my iPad and iPhone before the Photo Streams would clear out. Apparently this is normal behavior:
From the official FAQ: “On your iOS devices, go to Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream and turn Photo Stream off. This will delete all the photos from your Photo Stream album. If there are any photos you want to keep on your device, make sure to add them to an album or save them to your Camera Roll first.”
Bottom Line
As I stated in the beginning, if you understand that Photo Stream is not a “multi-device, synch-able cloud based photo album” you’ll probably be fairly pleased with it. The price is right since it’s a free service and the photos stored in the stream do not count against your iCloud limit. Photo Stream does work and it sure is nice to have photos automatically show up on any iOS device you have enabled. Not dealing with cables, synching, or using transfer apps and or the old tried and true “email to yourself trick” makes it worth the few quirks of what feels like a very 1.0 version. I hope Apple keeps improving Photo Stream and doesn’t treat it like the iOS Photo App which was neglected for several major iOS revisions before receiving a bit o’ love with the iOS 5 update.
This post is by no means meant to be a complete guide to Photo Stream. If you want to learn more be sure to check out Apple’s Photo Stream FAQ.
Add Words To iOS 5 Auto-Correct Dictionary
From Josh Sunshine @ theAppleBlog
“Before iOS 5, the only ways to add words to your auto-correct dictionary were either to type the word over and over until your iPhone or iPad learned it, or to add a contact with the word as its name. Neither of these were ideal. Luckily, iOS 5 introduces a much easier way to teach your device new words.
To add a new word to the dictionary, tap Settings, then navigate to General > Keyboard. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a Shortcuts heading. Don’t be put off by the name; this is the place to teach iOS new words, but it’s called shortcuts because it’s primarily used to create typing shortcuts, similar to TextExpander.
Next, tap the Add New Shortcut… button. You’ll be taken to a new screen with two text fields, labelled Phrase and Shortcut. The important one is Phrase, at the top. This is where you need to type the word you want to add to your dictionary. The Shortcut field, as it says, is optional. That’s where you’d add a shortcut that expands into the phrase you added (more on that in a minute).
After typing in a word or phrase in the first field, tap Save at the top of the screen and your word will be added to the auto-correct dictionary. Now, when you type that word anywhere on your device, auto-correct should leave it alone, and if you spell it slightly wrong, it should suggest that word, too.
If you’d like to enable TextExpander-like functionality, you can fill in the Shortcut field. For example, you could type “eml” as the shortcut, and set the phrase to your email address. After tapping save, whenever you type “eml”, auto-correct will suggest your email address. It’s very useful for words and phrases you type a lot, and since the feature is baked into iOS, it works in every app, not just those with support for TextExpander Touch, which was the way to get this functionality before iOS 5.
Some useful words to add to the dictionary
I’ve found it incredibly useful to add some words to my iPhone’s and my iPad’s dictionaries. For instance, I’ve added all my email addresses (I have quite a few!) with different shortcuts; my main email address is “eml”, my iCloud email address is “ieml”, and my Gmail address is “geml”.
Other helpful words to add are words you’ve made up yourself – I have a few of those, too – and nicknames for people. That way, you won’t have to battle auto-correct to type words that don’t really exist.”
Create A Bootable Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Flash Drive
From SubRosaSoft.com
“Apple has announced that with the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the operating system will be available only via download from the Mac App Store. Past versions of the Mac OS X operating system have always been available for purchase on a bootable DVD and with some systems like the MacBook Air, they’ve been included on a bootable USB drive. To create your own bootable USB device using your own flash drive (note that the device must be at least 4GB or larger), follow the instructions…” HERE
Caricatures Made Easy on iPad – creative
Check out this iPad caricature tutorial over at The Flaming Stylus that utilizes an app called Toon Face Maker (on sale now for $0.99). Looks like fun. I think I’ll have to give this a try.
More from The Flaming Stylus:
Let’s face it, caricatures are cool. Being able to do your own is even cooler. Today I’m going to show you how to create your own caricature using Toon Face and ArtRage. The results will look great and you won’t even have to make a trip to Six Flags.
Don’t be intimidated. This is a lot easier than it looks. We’ll do all the heavy lifting in the Toon Face app. Toon Face is a fun app that let’s you create caricature portraits simply by selecting pre-drawn features like eyes and noses. No art skills needed.
For this project we’ll need to create three portraits in Toon Face and then use an art program like Art Rage to bring the portraits together and draw them bodies.
