Iphone 5 – ios 6.1.2 – Battery drain problem

So couple of days, after a normal night on charge my iphone 5 ran out of battery by the time I got home from work, it was like someone had flicked a switch!

After reading various forums etc, people were saying turn off this and that, basically things you’re not really using. I did think that it defeated the object slightly, having a super functional smart phone that you had to then turn every setting off because it drained the battery!!

Anyway…eventually I tried what follows and it has seemed to of worked for me. (Not sure why apple have not made this info more available!?)

Go to;

Settings – General – Reset (at the bottom) – Reset all settings.

This won’t get rid of any data or anything, you will have to do your ringtones and screensavers etc again though.

Hope this helps and saves some time and frustration!

 

Alternative Apple iPhone 3GS headphones / earphones as recomended by twitter followers

zbud_blackUPDATE 26.02.12:  I thought I’d update this post as there are a few more headphones on the market that will work as per the Apple iPhone headphones (and cheaper) for the 4 and the 4s. I had a look in my local tescos the other day as I have lost another set of Apple headphones and both sets of Addidas Seinheisers are out of action.

I bought these and they work perfectly KIT Sound iPhone Stereo Earphones with Microphonebut also while I was there I saw these Bliss Black Metallic Earphones available in various colours and for those (like me) who loses or breaks them all the time, pretty cheap to.

Please add anything else you find to the comments on this page to keep it up to date, thanks!

After not having too much success with a google search for an alternative replacement set of headphones for my iPhone 3GS I turned to Twitter for some advice. I got quite a response so I thought I would share the tweet recommendations. Note: I have popped into a reseller and they did tell me that apple would replace a faulty set still within the 1 year manufacturers warranty.

Apple [Link]
Replacements for the headphones that ship with the iPhone £21 and the in ear earphones are £59 on the Apple site.
Z.buds [Link]
These look awesome, durable, not to expensive and all the iPhone functions.
Griffin [Link]
SmartTalk and TuneBuds Mobile. Two solutions and not too expensive, both do not have volume control though.
Bose ipod buds [Link]
A little more expensive, in line microphone but no volume.
Klipse Image S4i Earphones [Link]
Looks like a good set of headphones, a little expensive although comes with a 2 year warranty, microphone but as far as I can see no volume control.
Etymotic hf2 Hands-free Headset [Link]
Again going for the sound quality higher end of the market, a little expensive mic, control, but again no volume.
JVC HA-KX100 [Link]
Affordable, mic and control but again no in line volume.

Tuning up the iPad for the office, streamline your tablet for business use

I bought my iPad for 2 main reasons, firstly to make the 1:30hr train journey to work bare able with some light entertainment and the other to make myself more efficient at my work both in the office and on the train.

Choose your Apps wisely, it will be different for everyone depending on your industry and function but there are apps out there for most purposes. Most of the good ones are not free so I urge you to do some research, ask around or install the free version to find out if it suits your needs. There’s nothing worse than purchasing something that is completely not what you though it was. It’s not like you can return an App.

So here’s my build so far and I will go into more details on certain apps in separate blog posts. The following apps are my productivity apps, in my opinion these are apps that make me more efficient in my daily tasks. In my opinion the best apps are the ones that span across your Mac desktop / laptop, iPad and iPhone. So, my first recommendation does just that, it’s free and it will be appropriate for most.

EvernoteEvernote – Evernote is a intuitive note taking app that with all the basic functions you will need to make, save and organize your notes. The beauty is that I can start my note taking in a meeting or on the train and when I open the desktop of mobile version my notes are there waiting for me right where I left off.

KeynoteKeynote – Another app that is available on Mac, Pad and Phone. I have now started using keynote for presentations after doing some testing on importing PowerPoint presentations. Obviously industry standard for most, this was more of a need than a want, more on this in a separate post. My other keynote recommendations are to download the keynote remote for your iPhone, you can not only control your presentation but also check your notes remotely. Finally, buy the adapters for VGA connection and hdmi.

Dropbox – You’ve probably used this before but again a great app for syncing your files across all your devices.

SimpleMindSimpleMind – I had the trial version of this software for a day before I bought the full version. There is loads of mind mapping software out there but I found this one did exactly what I needed to do and it has really helped me get some sleep after large brain dumps.

Sketchbook ProSketchbook – what it says on the tin, it’s a digital sketchbook full of nice features to produce some really nice visuals.

Bamboo Paper – a simpler sketchbook but great for quick visualization that you would usually scrawl on a bit of paper to explain something.

Tips and tricks
You can open PDF attachments on your emails in iBooks, just click the icon in the top right.

Wondering what BT Openzone and BTFon is? And why your iPhone automatically connects to it

Just thought I’d look this up as my phone always connects to these WIFi networks blocks the 3G and I don’t get my emails.

Firstly to fix it, go to settings, wifi networks then forget the network.

BTFon is a joint collaboration between BT and Fon. Despite being a little annoying it’s a genius idea! Basically anyone with a BT wifi modem can sign up for an account and those without can purchase a Fon wifi modem for £29.99, as long as you are sharing your home connection at no detriment to speed or cost (they recon) you can pick up free Wifi while on your travels.

BT Openzone is a similar concept but a paid for shared Wifi service that works in a similar way as the wifi hotelier you can pick up as part of your mobile phone tariff.

IPTV – The 4OD Player and ITV join iPlayer on your Playstation 3

I’m always watching 4OD on my laptop as I never seem to be in at the tme shows I like to watch are on. For a while now the PS3 has had the BBC iPlayer in the video section of its main menu but after the latest OS update Sony had introduced the 4OD Player (read more) and the ITV player (read more), brilliant! there’s not much you can’t do now on your games console and like most technology shifts at the moment there is no need to upgrade your hardware just your software.

We have also installed an internet enabled TV, the Panasonic Viera in one of the meeting rooms at work and am currently testing with some of the Apps, will keep you posted! isn’t it funny how television moved onto the PC and then back to the TV, just more conveniently!!

Here’s where the Backslash is on an Apple Mac keyboard when working in windows

Just a quick one as my post on where to find the hashtag on an Apple Mac keyboard seemed to help a lot of people out.

I have VMWare installed on a few Macs running Window XP and Vista on various computers and it has recently become necessary to type a backslash when entering a user name and password. Unfortunately the key is not in the same position as in the Mac OS.

Bottom left hand corner, the ~ key (I think its called the tilde key next to the z)

Digitizing your DVD / Film collection, software, settings, exports, codecs, file size etc

The other day a colleague, Ryan Garner! you may have heard him on Simon Mayos drive talking about iPad sales (tech expert) no big deal! said he was thinking about digitizing his DVD collection. It got me thinking, it’s about that time that hard drives are so big and compression routines so efficient that we all should start to think about having our films as files. I have a few DVDs as digital downloads and a few I have converted for my iPhone but with 160gb of ps3 hard drive sitting there doing nothing why haven’t I taken the iPod mentality with my DVDs and got them all on a hard drive. So it’s testing time.

I started by looking at the old iPod exports I had done a few years ago but I was after something that wouldn’t look to degraded on a 40″ TV. I remembered having a download available with my x-men origins DVD I bought recently and so download it to look at the file. It was slightly bigger at 8 x but still what would this look like on a 1080 tv, I was optimistic as it looked pretty good in full screen on the MacBook. So the next step was to play it from the PlayStation. No transfer need, see Media Streaming from an Apple computer to a PS3 using MediaLink….  No worries, here to help!

So, next to look at some software, exports settings and codecs. My preferred DVD ripping software is Handbrake on the mac but have a search on Softpedia or Download.com if you are using a PC for alternatives. Handbrake has a few export presets so I tried a few to compare results. When these exports are played back on laptop there isn’t much in the quality although the files sizes can differ dramatically. I exported another targeting the file size to around 700 mb, this produces a very low bitrate and a noticeable reduction in quality. I next produced an export with a targeted bitrate. Many video files on my laptop had a bitrate of around 1500 so I thought it would be interesting to see what file size this produced. The results were a medium size file, approximate 2 gig and a good quality. The test would be though which files I could play through the TV and still be happy with the quality. My opinion is that if you are after DVD quality videos you need to target the 4 to 5 gig file size with minimum compression. If you are happy to notice slight pixelation in your image and funnily enough this occurs on the flat chunks of colour then go-ahead and start reducing the bitrate.

There Is other software and codecs that do the same sort of job, DIVX has a very good compression routine and produces small file sizes in high quality, just make sure you check what file extensions your devices can playback before you compress your entire collection.

Media Streaming, MacBook Pro, PS3, Xbox 360, MediaLink, iTunes Part 2

Ok, I didn’t manage to get this to work completely but as I think it might be down to the network I am going to post it anyway. I almost managed to stream the music from my MacBook Pro (iTunes) through the Xbox 360. The idea of this is to have all music in one central location to avoid duplication of songs and double handling when it comes to updates.

Also, if you don’t have your mac set up to run a Windows environment or need to improve your Bootcamp set up follow my blog post that talked about an easy installation of VM Fusion using your Bootcamp partitioned drive. I did need to import the Bootcamp Partition in order to mirror the music folder in OSX and Windows.

I didn’t use the medialink streaming server software, instead I opened up VMFusion and loaded Windows Media Player. In the VMFusion Setting found under Virtual Machine I then turned on folder sharing and mirrored the music folder where the iTunes Media folder resides. By doing this I was able to use the Add to Media Library under File In Windows media player in order list all my music without actually copying anything over into this environment.

Next, make sure all you media sharing is turned on in the windows environment (I’m using Vista) you can do this via Library > Media Sharing > Share my media to: in Windows Media Player, the Xbox 360 icon should appear in the box below,  or choose Control Panel > Classic View >  Networking and sharing > Media Sharing > Change.

With everything on, turn on your XBox 360. Go to My Xbox > Music Library and select your computer, you should see your playlists…. problem is, mine won’t play!!

If anyone can get ths working please expand in the comments area?

See how I got this to work on the PS3

Favourite and most used iPhone Apps for March 2010

Without a doubt copilot continues to be my most used app on the iPhone and the constant updates to it’s functionality I think make it the best VFM Sat Nav App.

A couple of recent additions to make life easier include My Movies and Tap Forms

My Movies has a handy little bar code scanner that queries imdb for your DVD data and cover graphics. The app only failed to recognise 2 DVDs out of 201, although it only takes a couple of minutes to manually add the information yourself.

Tap forms allows for you to input much of your vital data that you have on various forms and bits of paper all over the place, things like driving license number, account numbers, national insurance etc.

Oh, and a quick mention for Voucher Cloud. Often these types of Apps make me wonder whether the content warrants an entire App but in this case the location finding and number of businesses that have signed up for it makes it very worth while. Watch this space for reviews on the new hotukdeals Apps that are in the making.

Record / Screen Capture what you do on your XBox or PS3 as video footage

Ok, I’ve been doing a bit of usability testing recently and thought I’d push the boundaries of what I can record and offer as video output. In theory anything with a video out I can record, so there was no problem with most mobile phone devices so I thought i’d rig up and record my gaming.

Here’s the xBox and ps3 setup. I used an Apple MacBook Pro to record the video with a Formac Studio analogue to digital converter. It meant that I could take a digital signal to the computer and still run the xBox into the TV and keep playing a game.

Couple of things about the ps3, sometimes, on some tv’s you’ll have trouble with the analogue inputs so you have to go into the playstation menu while you are in your usual setup and then select analogue and restart. Not going to talk you through the setup it’s pretty self explainitory although here it is

And here is some sample footage.