Tag Archives: tips

Five iPhone Tips

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I recently got an iPhone, and like any good geek, immediately started banging my head against things I didn’t know how to do. If you’ve had an iPhone for awhile now, you probably already know these, but if you’re a newbie like me, these tips may help you out. Some of these tips will only work on the 3GS.

Use Google Sync to sync your contacts, calendars, and gmail

I was able to get my gmail to load on my iPhone using IMAP pretty easily, but it was trickier to get my contacts to sync. At first I was using iTunes to sync my contacts, but that would grab EVERY gmail contact, and didn’t get my calendars. Google Sync is the way to get around that. Basically, it sets up an exchange connection, and then your contacts on your iPhone are synced with the “My Contacts” group in your gmail contacts.

Email Full-Resolution Photos

I love uploading photos from my phone to Flickr, but by default the iPhone sends smaller resized versions. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to get the full-size ones. Just press and hold on a photo in your gallery until you get the copy option, and then paste it into your email to send to Flickr. Works like a charm.

Enable Autofill in Safari

Despite the fact that the Autofill button is visible on every form in Safari, it doesn’t work unless you enable the option in Preferences. Why isn’t this enabled by default?

Make Your Own Ringtones For Free

It’s really easy – just take an MP3, convert it to AAC, and then change the extention to M4R, and when you import it into iTunes, it’ll show up as a ringtone. I did it, and now I have the greatest ringtone ever.

Make Your Logon Screen Transparent

Simple trick to make it look like your login screen is a pane of frosted glass, letting you see your icons underneath.

How to Become a General

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There was a brand-new second lieutenant who was very ambitious and wanted to be a general. So one night at the officer’s club the young officer spotted this old general sitting at the bar. So he went up and said, “How do I become a general?”

And the old general answered, “Son, you’ve got to work like a dog. You’ve got to have moral and physical courage. There may be days you’re tired, but you must never show fatigue. You’ll be afraid, but you can never show fear. You must always be the leader.”

The young officer was so excited by this advice. “Thank you, sir,” he said, “so is this how I become a general?”

“No,” said the general, “that’s how you become a first lieutenant, and then you keep doing it over and over and over.”
– Colin Powell, “The Best Advice I Ever Got“

First, Light a Fire

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The best advice my father ever gave me was to start a fire.

My family owns a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. For nine months a year, it sits empty, and during the summer, various branches of the family take turns vacationing there. It’s beautiful, but the first family in has the responsibility of “opening” the cabin for the season — cleaning, yardwork, de-winterizing, etc. It’s a lot of work, and when you first arrive after two full days of driving, it can be pretty overwhelming.

My father would often volunteer to open the cabin. When we arrived, he made a point to always start by lighting a fire. Not because you need one right away, but because it’s a quick, simple task, and when it’s done you immediately feel like you’ve accomplished something.

When I’m doing production work on a website, there’s usually a daunting list of tasks in front of me. I need to create the page templates, populate all the content, slice up all the images, and QA every page of the site in several browsers. Whenever I start to feel overwhelmed by it all, I remember my father lighting a fire, and pick a simple task to knock out of the way quickly and build momentum.

Once you get in the zone, you can plow through a giant list of tasks pretty easily. At the start of a project, your biggest challenge is motivation, so do yourself a favor and start your job by lighting a fire.

Note: This was originally posted on my work blog, and I’m re-posting it here for archival purposes.

My Parent Hack got Published!

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In the aftermath of Zoe’s cold, I sent a tip into Parent Hacks, and it got posted today!

My ten-month-old daughter has a terrible cold right now, and she has developed a fear of the nose wipe. Anytime she sees me coming towards her with a rag or a kleenex, she turns her head away and hides – usually by rubbing her hands over her nose, spreading around everything I was about to wipe up.

The trick I’ve discovered is that if I throw the rag over her face, like we’re playing peek-a-boo, then I can quickly “pat” around her nose and mouth, and she still thinks it’s a game.

If I try to wipe, she figures it out, so the “pat” technique is important!