MD's RATTOTD

>> really awesome tech tip of the day

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Funny thing...

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iOS 6.1.2 is now live. Please be sure to update your iOS devices.

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iOS 6.1.1 is live. Be sure to update your iPads and iPhones.

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Quickly back up Email, Contacts and other data in Outlook

Zombies are coming. To quickly back up all Outlook-related email, contacts, tasks, calendar and other data, simply launch Windows 7 Explorer, navigate to your main HDD (generally C:\) and search for all instances of .pst files by typing "*.pst" in the Explorer Search Bar like so:

Then right-click, copy and save to where ever you'd like to keep your data back up. I suggest DropBox. After all, there's no sense in backing data up to the very computer you're hedging your bets on to mitigate system failure in the first place.

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Credit: Rob Cottingham

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Why Microsoft Got Into the Gaming Business

Yet another cautionary tale of innovate, assimilate or die. This time told from Goliaths of the tech sector.

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Apps!

So the Apple Clock app built into every iOS device (introduced to iPad for the first time with iOS 6) is pretty awesome. The interface is clean, slick and it can handle tracking current time in different timezones, manage multiple alarm clocks (which is easily controlled via Siri: "wake me up at 5:00am and 7:00am"), and manage two types of timers (one running timer with lap splits, another that expires and rings after a predetermined time).

Note that the iPad version got a nice little facelift when it released alongside iOS 6:

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iOS Spotlight Search - USE IT!

Ever pick up a friend's iPad or iPhone to show them something only to find yourself aimlessly hunting for that app you were looking for only to give up and hand it back to them? Well save yourself some time by simply using Spotlight Search built into iOS. Simply swipe to the left from the home screen until you see the search and key in what you're looking for. You'll almost always find what you're looking for on other people's devices faster this way and you may even find things on your own device faster.

Swipe left until you see the search bar:

  Start typing what you're looking for and voila, Spotlight does the rest:

Another neat thing you can do is limit where Spotlight sources its search data from as well as change the order in which results appear (e.g. if you want to prioritize Apps over iMessages in the results queue). You can make these adjustments by navigating to Settings >> General >> Spotlight Search

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Apps!

Ever wonder how much bandwidth you're getting at work, home or anywhere you're currently streaming data from?

Try SpeedTest by Ookla. It's free and works for WiFi, 1xRTT/EDGE, EVDO/HSPA and LTE.

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That's a link above, by the way.

Personally I found this a lot more convenient to use than the printed version.

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Home Screen Shortcuts

Are there websites you visit pretty much every time you pick up your iPhone or iPad? If so, do yourself a favor and save these websites as buttons on your iOS home screen so you can get to them faster.

First navigate to a website you visit often and tap the export/action button (appears along the bottom of the screen on Safari for iPhone and along the top of the screen on Safari for iPad):

Next, tap "Add to Home Screen"

Finally, edit the name to reflect how you'd like to see it listed and watch as iOS creates a new "app" on your home screen:

To that end, many of the "apps" on my home screen are in fact home screen shortcuts that point to web apps I frequent. I think you'll find many instances that web apps are actually better than their dedicated, standalone app counterparts. Can you spot which are websites vs. dedicated iOS apps in the screen cap below?

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Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.

Credit: inkcinct.com.au

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Find My iPhone / iPad

Every now and again it still surprises me that people don't have Find My iPhone installed to their iPhone or iPad. If you're a naysayer on the account of location tracking, one way or another your device is being tracked. So to those people I say: get over it. Otherwise, if you the idea of loss or theft is of but marginal concern, then this app is for you.

Interestingly, this app does not come preloaded into iOS. You'll need to download it (for free) from the App Store. After downloading the app to each of your iOS devices, you log into the app using your Apple ID. Upon logging in, the app will geo-locate all devices that have been enabled for tracking via Find My iPhone. From here you can do a bunch of neat things like, well, locate your device, make it beep, display messages or call-back numbers and even brick it.

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Open 24/7

Do you want to ensure that you have always access to your office workstation, 24/7? OK, don't answer that.

Let's just say if you'd like the peace of mind in knowing that you can access your work computer, do what I do and save all relevant VPN and remote desktop apps and settings (via screen shot) to your DropBox account. This way you know you have access anytime and anywhere there's a reliable laptop and internet connection.

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Misconception: Facebook is a social networking website

Ok, so the description above is not entirely false, just moderately inaccurate. Ancillary features and generally accepted falsities aside, a good citizen of the web understands that Facebook, above all else, is a content engine and data sharing platform used to serve up more functionality than the average person is comfortable wrapping their head around. And I'm not talking simple gen-1 advertising features either. I'm talking about a full bodied app development and deployment environment. In some respect, you could call Facebook an operating system and you wouldn't be wrong. Anyway, if you're looking for a quick history lesson, there's a wiki for that. That aside, what I want to get into today is a quick tip for managing any app integration you may or may not realize is tethered to your Facebook account.

Facebook apps either: A) work directly from the Facebook platform (e.g. you play a Facebook game from within Facebook by logging into Facebook.com); B) work via API outside of the Facebook environment (e.g. when shopping on Amazon.com, Amazon provides you with product suggestions based on your "likes" and and group affiliations from within Facebook), or; C) some combination of both. Often times, Facebook apps also post content automatically on your behalf both inside and outside of Facebook as a means of self-replication.

If you're not thinking "hmm, who's using my data and how?" after coming to grips with this fundamental data-sharing relationship, well you have another thing coming. Fortunately, Facebook is just as fantastic about being up-front with who you're about to elicit a data exchange with (surely you've seen the pop-up warnings, no?), as it is with letting you tweak data permissions on a very granular level once you've authorized data sharing.

To review what apps are linked to your Facebook account, log into Facebook and navigate to and click the "gear" icon (top right of the window) and click on Account Settings:

From Accounting Settings, click "Apps" in the left hand pane and you will see all Apps currently tethered to your Facebook Account:

You can now expand each listed App summary to show more details like posting and notifications preferences by clicking on the "Edit" links. It's here that you'll be able to modify data sharing settings to your liking:

If you prefer to delete Apps outright, simply click a corresponding "X" button after which a confirmation window will pop-up with more information:

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iOS 6.1

Apple just rolled out it's most recent iOS build that promises significant mobile enhancements. Among the most anticipated is support for wider global LTE access for both iPhone and iPad. But since I neither have an iPhone 5 or a 4th gen iPad, the updates I'm most jazzed about are listed below.

You can now reset your Advertising Identifier. The Ad ID system built into iOS is a feature offered to App developers that allows them to integrate App usage into customized ad placement, in-App. While customized ads don't bother me, it's the opportunity for exploiting yet another means of usage tracking that does. If you share my concern and if you haven't already enabled limited ad tracking, do that first. Then click the "Reset Advertising Identifier" button to effectively anonymize you (well, insofar as ad tracking is concerned) and make it as if you were a brand new user with a brand new device from the perspective of those apps that do use ad tracking. Settings >> General >> About >> Advertising:

One neat, but arguably minor update is the ability to purchase movie tickets via Fandango using Siri. In past builds of iOS 6, it was only possible to look up movie times, synopses, ratings and trailers - not buy.

Another neat, albeit minor, feature is a redesign of the media button styling accessed by double-tapping the home button from the lock-screen.

Finally, in what may arguably may be the biggest-little-change in this update is a built-in error-reporting tool in Apple's Maps app. In addition to the regular UI overlay, pin, print, traffic and listing options you get when swiping up from the lower right corner of the Maps interface, you now get a not-so-small button that allows you to report issues with mapping that you may be experiencing.

You may have also noticed that Apple has opted to call out its data sourcing partners in Maps. Notable entities in the call-out line-up are Tom Tom, Acxiom, DigitalGlobe, Intermap, MDAIS, Urban Mapping, Yelp, the CGIAR Consortium, Flickr, NASA, the US Census Bureau, US State Department, US Geological Survey, and the National Geo-spatial-Intelligence Agency (DoD).

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New update released on 1/28 lets you send voicemail and record and post video right from your iPad or iPhone. Sweet.