Great iPhone and iPad devices

Not to be outdone by our sister post, the February App of the week, here comes the February Device of the week blog post.  February's devices covered a couple of different areas.  There were two devices that helped you keep track of things, Tile and the Tagg Pet Tracker.  There was what I consider may be the Device of the year, the Lacie Fuel which provides much needed storage wirelessly to your iOS devices (and computers too!).  Then finally there was the Jawbone UP, a great tool to help you keep up with your sleeping, eating and overall health.

Now my first device, the Tile, is not out yet, however it's completely SOLD OUT it's pre-orders.  To the point where close to 50,000 Tile's have been pre-ordered to date!  Not bad.  So what is Tile?  Let's find out...

Tile is a tiny square device that attaches to stuff you don't want to loose.  Could be a piece of luggage, a child's back-pack, a set of keys.  Here's what it look like.  In the screen capture below, it's attached to a keyring.  So you can see, the device is quite small.

The Tile App lets you find your Tile(s) anywhere they may be.  You can have up to 10 Tiles on one account, and you can share access to your Tiles with friend or family members.  If triggered, an alert is sounded.  If you can hear the alert, you can find the Tile.  Another cool feature, your Tile App remembers where it last saw the Tile, which should help you find it if you can't remember where you left it...

Some other cool features:  The App lets you know when you are getting "warmer" to your Tile.  There are no batteries needed, the Tile lasts 1 year, and  you'll get a reminder when it's time to order your new Tile.  For more info, or to order your Tile device, head over

Keeping with the previous theme of helping you find things, the next App I want to highlight is the Tagg Pet Tracker.   The Tagg system is very cool.  It lets you to track your pets location and activity from your computer and you iOS device as well.  Your can see where your dog is, and monitor it's activity levels as well.  The tracker is lightweight, and it easily attaches to your pets collar, and if your dog swims, it can even be worn while swimming...Nice!  The tracker basically turns your pets collar into a GPS device, awesome!

For additional information, or to purchase this great device for your pet, head on over

Ok, switching gears from our tracking devices, here is a device that I'm nominating for Device of the Year.  The Lacie Fuel.

Ok, so what is the LaCie Fuel?  It's a 1TB (that's 1 TerraByte, or 1000 giga bytes) of wireless storage!  Now, I know what you are thinking, it's a 1TB hard drive, right.  So what's so special about this one, there are plenty of 1TB hard drive out there, right?  Well Yes, there are plenty of 1TB hard drives available, but how many of them have wireless capability, and how many of them connect to your iOS device??  As far as I know, this is the first, and coming from LaCie, a company that makes some of the best external drives available, that makes it awesome!  You can share the Fuel with up to 5 devices, at once! It even works with the AppleTV.  How does it work?  The Fuel creates it's own wi-fi network!  Get this, you can stream HD movies to three devices at once!!  How awesome for a family vacation!  You'll also download the Seagate media app to all the devices that you wish to access the Fuel.  

This is just tremendous!  It turns your 16GB iOS device into a 1TB iOS device.  

The Fuel cost $199, consider it priceless for the extra storage it gives your iOS devices.    

Ok, wrapping up my February devices, the Jawbone Up.  

The Up is way more than a device, it's a personal health tracking system.  The Up has a companion iOS app that syncs what the Up captures, and displays for you.  So what exactly does the Up track you ask?  Many things...:).  For one, it tracks your sleep.  You set up your sleep goals, and the Up then tracks how long you slept, how long you were in light sleep, deep sleep, how long it took you to fall asleep, and even if you woke up!  How cool is that?!?

You can also set goals for your steps during the day (my goal is 10,000).  The Up tracks your steps, then you can sync the Up to your iOS device to enter your steps.  I Sync my Up periodically through the day.  Some people sync once a day, it's totally up to you!

The most challenging part of the Up system is tracking your eating.  The device won't do that for you, that is a manual process, but with the App, you can scan in your food and it captures all the information about what you just ate!  So if you are looking for a way to help yourself keep track of your health, check out the UP.  I've been using it since Valentines day, and I love it.  It's helped me monitor things I never thought of, and can help you as well!

Ok, there's your more in depth breakdown of the February Device of the week postings.  I hope you've found the breakdown helpful, and I hope you check the devices out.

Until next time, best to you and your devices!

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iOS 8...A Preview

Are you comfortable with iOS 7 yet?  If not, lets hope you get there, and quick!  Because iOS 8 is right around the corner!  On Monday during the Keynote of the WWDC Apple gave us a preview of the fantastic things coming our way this fall in iOS 8, and there are many!

Among the features that have me most stoked, are the awesome features that allow Apps to share data, or what I will refer to the Unification of your Apple technology.  Imagine you are in your home office, located on the lower level of your house.  Your iPhone is upstairs in your bedroom.  iPhone rings, and so does your iMac!  That's right, your Mac's (running Yosemite) will have the ability to answer calls from your iPhone!  Whoa, want to run that by me again fella??  You read correctly.  Oh, and did I mention that your iPad can answer that call coming into the iPhone as well?  There are some caveats to the above, your devices need to be on the same wireless network for that incredible feature to work.  You'll also be able to start an email on your Mac, and finish it on your iOS device, or vice versa, very cool indeed.  One of my favorite new features is iCloud Drive.  Apple's looooong overdue attempt to bring iCloud to the mainstream user.  iCloud Drive will add many new Dropbox/Google Drive like features.  For starters you'll be able to upload any file type to your iCloud Drive, and you can do it easily on your Mac using Finder!  Apple didn't announce an iCloud Drive app for the iPhone or iPad, but I can't imagine it's far behind.  For now, on your iPhone or iPad you'll have to go into the App the uses the particular file to open it.

Within iMessage, Apple has revealed a new push-to-talk, as well as push-to-video feature that's akin to those same services within the very popular WhatsApp and the Voxer App.  

There's interactive Notifications, which from the looks of it will be very useful.  If you get a message while you are creating a presentation in Keynote, and don't feel like going to the Messages app, you'll be able to reply directly from the Message Notification, that is cool!

There are some great updates to the Mail app, as well as Spotlight Search that I think you'll find incredibly useful

There's also a new native feature on the iOS keyboard that Apple is calling QuickType, that uses "language models" to predict words before they are typed.  How long till an App can type what I'm thinking!!  Yikes I bet that's not too far off my friends...:).  

There's a new feature called Mark-Up, which is an extension to both Mail and Safari that let's you edit attachments by drawing on them.  I'll wait to make any judgements till I use this feature.  

Here's another great feature that should help in your everyday life.  Perhaps not right away, but definitely in the long haul, Apple's new HealthKit App.  Consider it a one stop shop for all your health data that other Apps currently collect, like Jawbone's UP.  Apple has teamed up with key partners, including Mayo Clinic to help you keep track of measurements that matter most to you.  

Lastly (for now), Siri has even gotten smarter.  This is a good thing, because I've started to use Google's Now feature (found in the Google App) on my iPhone because I've found it works far better than Siri.

There will be plenty more to information on iOS 8 in the coming months prior to it's eventual release (early fall 2014).  I'd love to hear from you as to the features you are most excited about.

Until next time, best to you and your devices!

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Merging contacts on your iPhone and iPad.

Merging contacts on your iPhone and iPad.

Do you a contact problem on your iOS device?  Do your duplicates stress you out??   It’s practically inevitable that duplicate contacts appears on your iOS device either by accident, typos, through sharing vCard information with others, or from something as basic as a contact changing their name and addresses, for which an additional entry gets added. Prior to iOS 7, there was no simple way of handling multiple contact entries on your iOS device, but that has finally changed, and now there is an easy way to merge those contacts directly and easily!

Ok, this will be fantastic for those of you that experience DCS!  Because this is done on your iOS device, you do not need to to sync to iCloud, iTunes  or any other computer for the change to take effect, you simply make the change directly on your iOS device, and iCloud, takes care of pushing the changes automatically to any other iOS and OS X devices that use the same Apple ID.

I've got screen captures just below to assist.
This fantastic new feature is not actually called Merge, but rather Link Contacts, which is possibly why it’s  often missed, or overlooked, regardless, here is what you do!

From your iOS device, tap the Contacts app (or on your iPhone, tap the phone app) , open the contact you wish to merge another duplicate contacts with.
    Next, tap on the “Edit” button
    Scroll down toward the bottom to find Link Contacts, then tap on the green plus icon “(+) link contacts…” to link/merge the contact with another.
    Then, locate the contact to merge (either a duplicate or a changed addressee) and tap on the name, then tap on “Link” in the corner
    Repeat for more than one duplicate, otherwise tap on “Done” to finish the merging

Yeah!!  This instantly links/merges all contact details from the two (or more) contact cards into a single contact entry, it does not overwrite any information, it simply merges all details into a single contact.

In the screenshots below, the address information for multiple AT&T contacts has been merged into a single card. The first contact edited will be the one that accepts the merged details:




Once you click “Done”, there will only be a single contact for the details you merged (linked), in this example I've Merged/Linked two AT&T accounts.

One great thing about the “Link Contacts” method is that although it merges the contacts,  it can very easily be  undone if you decide to unmerge/unlink the contact details. To do that, just go back to the contact in question, tap on “Edit” and then tap on the red (-) icon along the linked contacts details.

There are other ways to Merge/Link contacts,  but I'm not going to address those here.  Today I simply wanted to point out a great feature that was added to iOS 7.

So now it's up to you!  If you are loaded with duplicate contacts, you've been given the green light to get rid of them!  It may take some time, but will definitely be worth it.  Free you device of DCS!

Until next time, best to you and your fewer contacts...:).

Merging contacts on your iPhone and iPad.

Smartphone (Handphone)

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Great iOS Apps.

Well I sure am glad we are out of February, it was ridiculously cold!  Hopefully that didn't stop you from checking out the great apps I highlighted last month on The MacMentor's Weekly posting on Facebook for the App of the week.  My goal with the app of the week postings is to make you more aware of the great tools out there for your iOS devices.  Then at the start of each new month, give a more in-depth review of those apps with these blog posts.

Ok, so the 1st app highlighted this past February was a cool note taking App that is a nice companion to Evernote.  The app is SwiftKey.

SwiftKey uses what it calls predictive technology, to advance the keyboard by learning how you write to better provide autocorrect and smart next word predictors or predictions.

SwiftKey Note gives you a cool new way to capture your thoughts, in an easy to use, beautiful app.  

SwiftKey is like Artificial intelligence for your iOS device.  The more you use it, the smarter it gets.  Even better, it connects with your EverNote account to further personalize your experience by making predictions based on your EverNote archive of notes.  Below you see screen shots from the SwiftKey app.  Under the +, you see the Elephant Head icon, which is the EverNote icon.  So you can create a note using SwiftKey, and store it in Evernote.   

One of the best features of SwiftKey is that it gets smarter as you use it more, and learns to adapt with you over time.  You can track your typing stats in settings, and watch your typing and productivity get better and better!  

Ok, for the week of February 9th, I choose the new app from Facebook, Paper as that weeks App of the week.  Facebook has been one of the top 50 iOS apps since it came out some six years ago.  But honestly, the app is tired and has needed a facelift for quite some time.  Well Facebook finally gave itself that needed facelift, sort of.  The Facebook app hasn't changed, but they did create a new one, called Paper, that is fantastic, and provides a much better user experience.  

One of my favorite features in Paper is the ability to Edit Sections.  Sections provide you with the ability to view things that the original Facebook app did not offer, sort of like news sections from different Sections of life.  The different Sections offered range from Pop Life, to Flavor, to Planet, to Family Matters.  

To get to Edit Sections, from the your page, or section (which is your home page, screen capture 1 below) take your finger, and swipe down on the screen.   That takes you to the Facebook Section (2nd screen cap below).  On that page, take your finger and swipe down

 Now you are taken to a page that will look similar to the one below.  

Next, you'll click on the Edit Sections field which takes you to a screen similar to the one below.  The lower portion of that screen let's you pick what will be displayed on your "Paper".  It's a cool concept, and adds some much needed life to what was an incredibly dull, boring Facebook experience on your iOS device.  

Once you've added the sections you wish to view, you click done (upper right corner of your screen), and you are taken to what is your Paper home screen.  From there you swipe along the lower portion of your screen to view the posts of your Facebook friends.  If you wish to view a post, you tap on it.  Notice below, the post in the middle that reads "Happy Independence Day".  I tap on that, and it full screens (2nd screen cap below).

So, all in all, Paper is a very cool, much needed update to the Facebook App.  If you visit the Facebook App on a regular basis, I highly recommend downloading and using the new Paper app instead!

Next up, an App that I use regularly to keep track of my to-do's.  It's called, Wunderlist.  

Wunderlist is flat out awesome!  It not only tracks your to-do's, but lets you create numerous to-do lists.  It's super easy to use interface lets you get up and going very quickly, and it's companion apps for the Mac and PC make it that much more lovable (not to mention, Wunderlist can also be accessed via the web!).  

When you open Wunderlist on your iOS device it looks like the screen cap below.

If you want to add a list, notice in the screen cap above the "+Add a list...", simply tap that and you can create a new list.  To create a new to-do, simply tap anywhere on the right side of the screen, and it brings you to a screen that looks like the one below.

Next, type in the name of the new to-do (I've typed "Create new blog" in the field).  Next, click the Done button.  It brings you to an editable screen (like the one below).  

From there, you set your to-do's Due Date.  If you wish to be reminded by Wunderlist, you can have it Remind you.  You can add a subtask, and finally any notes you wish for the particular to-do.  I've added screen caps below to take you through the process.  

All in all, Wunderlist rocks.  Oh yeah did I mention its FREE!  That doesn't hurt either...So if you want an App that gives you a bit more than the Reminders app that comes with your iOS device, go and download Wunderlist.  It's ease of use, and cloud syncing make it an A-list App!

The last App that I highlighted in February is "Keeper Password and Data Vault".  I've had many many clients and friends say to me, "how do I keep track of my numerous passwords, it's getting overwhelming"!  I absolutely agree.  Most of you probably have anywhere from 5-20 different passwords (maybe even more) to access everything from your AppleID, to your email, to your bank account, to countless other sites you access on your iOS device as well as on your computer.  There are endless App options out there to store your passwords, I choose Keeper because it gets fantastic reviews, it's works across platforms, it's easy to use, and its free!  

For obvious reasons I'm not going to show screen caps of my Keeper.  Some important things to know are:

Keeper uses work-class encryption technology, including 256-bit AES data storage.  PBKDF2 encryption keys (what are those you ask?   It's really great encryption technology is what you need to know!).  They also use Double encrypted syncing, and what's called Two-factor authentication.  If you don't understand that, just know it's great technology to keep your passwords safe!  

So, I hope you enjoy checking out and using the Apps that I highlight each month.  If you have a suggestion for the App of the week posting, by all means, don't hesitate to share it with me.  I love finding new apps to share!  

Till next time, best to you and your devices!

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