by Fadia, Ankit
This ensures that your hands can be on the steering wheel instead of on your phone and, at the same time, you don’t end up missing any important text messages or emails. You can hear all the incoming messages, either directly from the speaker of the mobile phone or through the Bluetooth earpiece. The application also allows you to configure an auto response that will automatically be sent out whenever you receive a message, alerting people that you are driving and will get back to them as soon as possible.
DriveSafe.ly and the DriveSafe.ly logo are registered trademarks of iSpeech Inc., used with permission.
There is a premium version of this app available, known as DriveSafe.ly Pro, which even allows you to reply to any received email or text message by simply speaking into your mobile phone. There are numerous subscription packages that you can choose from, based on your requirements.
DriveSafe.ly and the DriveSafe.ly logo are registered trademarks of iSpeech Inc., used with permission.
24. How to send stuff from your browser to your mobile device
< 60 Seconds
Have you ever been reading an interesting article online in the browser on your office computer, and wished that there was a way to continue reading it on your mobile or tablet when you left the office? Have you ever looked up directions to some place on Google Maps on your computer and wanted to send them to your mobile or tablet so that you could access them while you are in the car? In such situations, the obvious thing to do is to email the URL web address of the web page to your own account. There is an easier method.
Using the Google Chrome browser, it is possible for you to sign in to your Google account, so that any open tabs, bookmarks, apps and browser preferences that you have get automatically synced across all your devices (computers, mobile phones and tablets). This will eliminate the need to email links to yourself. Please note that most modern-day browsers like Mozilla Firefox also support this functionality.
Google Chrome and the Google Chrome logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
To do this, start Google Chrome on your computer, click on the Settings button and then select the Sign in to Chrome option. You will be asked to log in to your Google account so that all the open tabs, apps, bookmarks and browser preferences in your Google Chrome can be automatically saved to your Google account and synced across all your devices.
Once you have signed in to Google Chrome on your computer, you can click on the Advanced link > Advanced sync settings button to manage the various settings related to the browser auto-sync feature.
Google Chrome and the Google Chrome logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
To get maximum benefit out of the auto-sync feature, make sure you install the Google Chrome browser on all your mobile phones and tablet devices and enable the Sync option on all them by signing in to your Google account.
Once the syncing feature has been enabled across all your devices, you can make full use of the auto-sync functionality. With it enabled, you will be able to automatically see the same page on your mobile phone, tablet and home computer. Simply start the Google Chrome browser in any of your devices and select the Other devices tab in the bottom bar of the browser.
This will display all the tabs that are currently open—or were open when the last sync happened—in Google Chrome on all your other devices, hence allowing you to access them easily and quickly. Not only can you use this option to access open tabs from one remote computer, you can also use it to access open tabs from all the multiple computers, devices and tablets that you are own. Just remember to sign in to your Google account and enable the auto-sync feature on all of them.
The reverse is also possible. If you open some tabs in Google Chrome on your tablet or mobile device, you will be able to access it from your office computer! For example, if you open a newspaper article in the Google Chrome browser on your tablet or mobile device, from your computer you can automatically access the same page.
By auto-syncing your tabs, bookmarks, apps and browser preferences across all your devices, you can share content between them easily and quickly.
25. How to make web pages print-friendly
< 60 Seconds
Whenever you print an article from a website, a lot of junk in the form of images, advertisements, and navigation links also gets printed. This not only makes the printed pages appear very cluttered and unprofessional, but also ends up wasting a lot of paper and ink. This is why a very useful app called PrintFriendly (http://www.printfriendly.com) exists. This app cleans all the junk from web pages and gives you a clean printed page.
To use PrintFriendly, simply start your browser and connect to its website http://www.printfriendly.com and, in the space provided, enter the web address or URL of the web page you wish to print cleanly.
PrintFriendly and the PrintFriendly logo are registered trademarks of PrintFriendly, used with permission.
Click on the Print Preview button to display a clean version of the web page that you want to print. When you do this, PrintFriendly will remove all ads, images and navigation bars which are normally present on the page. You can either print the page directly at this stage, or choose to save it as a PDF file so that you can view and print it later on. You can also choose to change the font size of the text on this page to suit your preferences.
PrintFriendly and the PrintFriendly logo are registered trademarks of PrintFriendly, used with permission.
It is also possible to integrate PrintFriendly into most popular browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and others. This will ensure that you can make use of the benefits of PrintFriendly with a single click of the mouse and do not need to keep visiting the PrintFriendly website each time you want to print something.
26. How to type faster on a touchscreen Android device
< 120 seconds
A common complaint about using touchscreen devices is that it slows down your typing speed as compared to a phone with a traditional keyboard. Have you ever wanted to unleash your typing skills so that you can type faster and better on your touchscreen Android phone than ever before?
SwiftKey is a very useful Android app that learns your writing style, adapts to it and allows you to type faster and more accurately on your touchscreen Android device by predicting and auto-correcting what you are typing. Usually, while you are typing on your mobile device, you can either input text normally or using the T9 predictive text functionality. Think of SwiftKey as a much more evolved, improved and smarter version of T9 predictive text.
SwiftKey can be downloaded from http://www.swiftkey.net for approximately $1, and is arguably one of the best apps you will ever buy for your Android device. SwiftKey makes use of the openness of Android to take control of the keyboard function of your device and make it work much better than before. It is currently available only for Android users.
Once you download SwiftKey on your Android device, during the installation process, it will replace the default keyboard style being used by your device with the SwiftKey keyboard. It may seem a little complicated at first, but just follow the instructions on the screen and everything will fall into place.
SwiftKey and the SwiftKey logo are registered trademarks of TouchType Ltd, used with permission.
Some of the wonderful features available in the SwiftKey app are the following:
1. Word prediction technology SwiftKey makes use of a very powerful and accurate word prediction technology that analyses what you have typed so far, searches its own internal database to figure out how sentences like yours are framed by others and predicts what you are going to type next even before you actually start typing it. For example, I was typing the text ‘Why are you’ and it automatically predicted the next possible words as ‘doing’, ‘going’ or ‘waiting’. It doesn’t end there—out of the predicted words, it displayed the most likely (or most commonly used) word in the middle and highlighted it, making it very easy for me to pick it without actuall
y having to type it out.
SwiftKey and the SwiftKey logo are registered trademarks of TouchType Ltd, used with permission.
2. Space prediction technology
If you forget to type a space between consecutive words, SwiftKey is still able to figure out what you are typing. For example, ‘Whatsreyoudoubgtobught’ automatically becomes ‘What are you doing tonight’. In other words, SwiftKey’s space prediction technology allows you to type without using spaces!
SwiftKey and the SwiftKey logo are registered trademarks of TouchType Ltd, used with permission.
3. Spelling correction
It will automatically correct any mistyped or misspelled words for you on the fly as you type.
SwiftKey and the SwiftKey logo are registered trademarks of TouchType Ltd, used with permission.
4. Personalization to your writing style
The best thing about SwiftKey is that it can adapt and learn your personalized writing style by going through your posts on Facebook, your Gmail account, your tweets and so on. For example, if you use some phrases or slang regularly in your email account, the next time you are typing it on your Android device, SwiftKey will be able to predict it as soon as you start typing.
SwiftKey and the v logo are registered trademarks of TouchType Ltd, used with permission.
5. Continuous learning
The more you type using SwiftKey, the better it will understand your writing style and adapt to it.
6. Long Press
When you long-press the period key, SwiftKey will automatically predict the most commonly used punctuation marks, making it easier for you to type punctuation marks.
7. Support for 54 languages
SwiftKey supports input in various languages.
8. SwiftKey Flow
The most exciting development from the SwiftKey team is the release of SwiftKey Flow beta version (available from http://www.swiftkey.net/flow/), which promises to transform the way we type on our touchscreen devices. It allows you to type an entire sentence without even once lifting your fingers off the screen. It is almost as if you are swiping instead of typing.
Apps that also allow you to type faster on your touchscreen mobile devices are:
Swype (http://www.swype.com)
8Pen (http://www.8pen.com).
27. How to fight spam in your Gmail account
< 120 Seconds
According to reports, more than 90 per cent of all email being sent over the Internet is spam. The good news for Gmail users is that Gmail does a much better job of fighting spam than most other email service providers out there. If you are using Gmail, chances are that most spam messages do not even make it to your inbox. However, in the odd case that spam emails do make it through Gmail’s filters, there are a few simple things you can do to fight it.
Any email that you may have received in your inbox can be reported as spam to Gmail by simply clicking on the Report Spam button found above the opened email. It is a good practice to report the spam message to Gmail, rather than simply deleting it, since it helps Gmail grow its database of known types of spam messages.
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
If you notice that you are receiving the same spam message over and over again, it is also possible for you to take more serious steps to counter it. Maybe you are receiving the same marketing email from the same company every single day. Or maybe you are winning the same lottery in Nigeria every other day. In such cases, it is highly recommended that you create a filtering rule to automatically delete such messages even before they appear in your inbox.
To create a filtering rule, simply open the spam message you have received, click on the More button and then select the Filter messages like these option.
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Gmail will automatically analyse the spam message and create a filter based on the email address at which the spam message had originated. You may modify the filter if you want and, once you are done, simply click on the Create filter with this search option at the bottom right corner.
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Gmail will now ask you what action you would like to perform when email messages matching the filtering rule are received in your inbox. In this case, since we are trying to fight spam, I suggest selecting the Delete it option. This will ensure that any future email you get from the email address will automatically be deleted without even appearing in your inbox. You can use this technique to fight spam, block unsolicited marketing emails or even reject messages from an annoying ex!
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission
There is also another way of fighting spam—disposable email addresses. A number of websites ask you for your email address for registration, verification or other purposes. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if they will end up spamming your email account or not. This is where disposable email addresses in Gmail come into the picture.
One of the lesser known facts about Gmail is that if your email address is http://[email protected], any email sent to http://[email protected] will also automatically get delivered to your real email account http://[email protected]. You can create as many disposable email addresses you want with creative names of your choice without even officially registering them with Gmail. Try it out! The reason why these disposable email addresses work is that Gmail basically ignores everything after the + sign and before the @ sign in your email address.
This means that if you are worried that a particular website may end up spamming you or misusing your email address, it makes sense to give them a disposable email address (like http://[email protected]) instead of your real email address ([email protected]). Such a strategy will ensure that you can still receive legitimate emails from the website, since all emails sent to your disposable email address will come to you. In case the website ends up spamming you, you can just set up a filter in your Gmail account to automatically delete all emails sent to [email protected] without them even showing up in your inbox.
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
28. How to share stuff online easily and quickly
< 60 seconds
If you wish to share an interesting web page with someone else, you have to copy the web address, open your email account or a social networking site (Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo or others), paste the web address and then hit the send or share button. There is an easier and faster way called Shareaholic.
Shareaholic is an extension that is supported by most popular browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and others) and can be downloaded for free from https://www.shareaholic.com/. The only thing you need to do is to create an account before you can start using this service.
Shareaholic allows you to quickly share links across popular platforms like email (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and others), social networking (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Orkut and others), bookmarking sites (Delicious, StumbleUpon and others), blogs etc.
Shareaholic and the Shareaholic logo are registered trademarks of Shareaholic Inc., used with permission.
Once installed, Shareaholic will appear in the form of a new button next to the URL address bar in your browser. Whenever you are viewing a web page that you like a lot and want to share with the world, click on the Shareaholic button in your browser.
Shareaholic and the Shareaholic logo are registered trademarks of Shareaholic Inc., used with permission.
Shareaholic and the Shareaholic logo are registered trademarks of Shareaholic Inc., used with permission.
Shareaholic will display all the available platforms using which you can share the link or web page with your contacts. Select any platform you would like to use from the list displayed by Shareaholic.
For example, I wish t
o share a newspaper article with my friends using Facebook and Gmail. All I need to do is open that newspaper article in my browser, click on the Shareaholic button and then select Gmail and Facebook. Within a few seconds, Shareaholic will open new tabs in my browser which will allow me to instantly share the web page with anyone of my choice.
29. How to use your phone to be punctual
< 60 Seconds
Do you have trouble making it to your meetings and appointments on time? With Bounce on your phone, you can make use of technology to tell you when it is time for you to leave from your current location, so that you make it to your next appointment location on time.
Bounce is an app that is currently available for both the Android and the iOS platforms. Once installed on your mobile phone, Bounce keeps track of your GPS location, the times and locations of the appointments listed in your calendar and live traffic data en route to your appointment locations, so that it can give you timely reminders to leave on time and not be late.
Bounce and the Bounce logo are registered trademarks of Bounce, used with permission.
Bounce and the Bounce logo are registered trademarks of Bounce, used with permission.
You can go into Settings and configure how long before leaving you would like to be reminded. It is also possible for you to add buffer time for things like parking, walking to the car etc.
30. How to extend your mobile phone’s battery life