DIY Tech Tips

DIY Tech Tips & Guides will as always  encourage  the  loyal readers of this site to gain a little additional knowledge by keeping up to date on our superb tech tips, most of which you will find extremely useful  & applicable to your daily life.

Most of these tech tips are not too difficult to understand and will come in very handy, not just at home, but also at work. 

Frequent visitors to this site, will find a steady stream of these great tips. All you need do is check for a Diy Tech Tips article ! Oh and of course, should you have any questions, then please don’t hesitate to ask ;-)

 

 






1.  Squeeze more battery juice out of your phone

Smartphones lose out to normal phones in one way, battery life.  But for the Android phone there are ways you can conserve and squeeze more juice out of your smartphone.  One way is to lower the brightness levels of the phone itself and set the settings to turn on standby mode when not in use.  You can also install an app called the JuiceDefender.  This application will monitor your usage and adjust the data usage rate so that it does not leech too much of your phones power by using a non 3G data transfer whenever possible.  Most of the smartphones waste too much power in those push mail or weather update apps.

 

2.  Camera Search

 Android Phone has a feature called Google Goggles.  This App allows you to    search online by using an image.  Start the App and take a picture with your camera and your Phone will instantly search online for nformation with regards to the picture you have taken.  So you can do a search online even if you do not  know what that thing is to begin with.  Try taking a picture of a pretty gal and     allow your phone to do a search online.  Who knows you will get her facebook profile knowing if she is single, married or others.  LOL.. Just kidding.

 

3. Convert video formats for use in Android phones. 

 Most ripped videos are in popular video formats like AVI and DIVX which are not optimized for Android phones.  As a result of that, the video cannot be played on the phone.  The good news is that you can use Videora Android Converter to convert your video to be suitable for playback on an Android phone with a click of a button.

 

4.  Download a better e-book reader App

 E-book reading is not just limited to the iPhone, Android Marketplace also has a free e-book reading app called the Aldiko Book Reader.  It offers functions such as changing of background colors, font types and sizes to suit your reading preferences and ambient light.  It also allows book marking and read the table of contents of a book and even records your progress


5.  Lock your iPhone in portrait mode

Sometimes it can get very irritating when you are trying to read some news or play a game lying in a sofa or bed.  The iPhone keeps on rotating the display based on how you hold it.  You can lock the iPhone in portrait mode.  First double-click the home button, then swipe leftwards to reveal the icons on the left, click on the grey icon that looks like a lock.


6.  Transfer Lotus Notes To Android Phone

 Most large organizations will make use of Lotus Notes application for planning of meetings and tasks.  For users who cannot install the Google Calender Connector to sync the office calendar with your Android phone, you can export your Lotus   Notes calendar into the .ics format.  Then login to your Google Docs using the browser and import that ics file.  Now you will be able to check those appointments using your Android phone.

 

7.  Locate the nearest amenity

 Google Maps 4.4 are available for download to be use on Android phones.  You can make use of that App to find the nearest restaurant or shop or cinema.  There is a new Places icon in the latest version of Google Maps.  Press and drag the icon  to plant a short cut on the desktop for quick access

 

8.  View files and folders in Android.

 You can view your files and folders in your Android phone when you hook up the phone to your computer, but by default you are not able to do it on the phone itself, search for Astro File Manager from the Android Marketplace and install it.  Now you can move, copy, delete and navigate through the files on the phone directly.


9.  Saving SMS onto Gmail

Losing your phone is one thing, losing all the information inside the phone is another.  A lot of us have received a lot of information in the form of SMS.  You might want to store them permanently somewhere safe.  You can make use of the SMS backup App that you can find from the Android Marketplace.  There are quite a few to choose from.

 

10.  Read e-books or pdf with a mobile phone

You do not really need to get an e-reader if you want to read e-books.  If you don’t mind squinting at a small screen, you can always use software like Calibre to convert these e-books to be a format suitable for mobile phones.

 

With these DIY tech tips, you will be able to do more with the same device and become more productive.  Stay tuned for more of these tech tips in future articles.