Tips for hassle free use of iPhone by boosting the battery life

• Turn off Fetch New Data for Mail

Go to Settings -> Mail ->Fetch New Data and turn off Push. Select the option "Manually" from the Fetch options given below. Open the Mail app to receive the emails whenever you wish to read.

• Auto-Lock feature

Go to Settings -> General ->Auto-Lock. Set the Auto-Lock to 1 Minute to save the battery life.

• Turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

When you are not using any Bluetooth devices with your iPhone, turn off Bluetooth. Go to Settings -> Bluetooth and turn off. Similarly turn off Wi-Fi when you don't use it. Go to Settings -> Wi-Fi to turn off.

• Turn on Auto-Brightness

Go to Setting -> Brightness and turn on Auto Brightness. The sensor will detect if you are in bright or dark lighting condition and adjust the brightness of your iPhone as per the condition. This will protect your eyes as well as save battery power.

• Adjust Equalizer

Go to Settings -> Music ->EQ. Set EQ to "Flat" to conserve battery power.

• Update to the latest version of the iPhone software. 

• Turn off Location Services

Go to Settings ->Privacy ->Location Services. Turn off the location services and whenever you open a app that requires location services, it will ask you to turn on the Location services in settings. You can either turn on the feature at that moment or use the app without enabling the service.

• Keep the iPhone always in room temperature. Avoid leaving the phone either in too hot/cold conditions.

• Turn off Notifications 

Go to Settings ->Notifications and turn off notifications for those apps from which you don't want to receive any notifications.

• Once a month, drain your battery completely and then recharge to save battery lifetime. 

Note: All the above stated tips or some of them can be used, based on the preferences in the elements of the iPhone that are intensely being used by the particular person.

Create your own ScreenCast

What is a Screencast?

A Screencast is a video of your computer screen with audio narration.

Many Screencast applications are available in the web and Camstudio is one of them. It is a free open source screencast application.

How to create a Screencast with Camstudio?

• Go to http://camstudio.org/, Click on the Download links at the middle of the page. Download and install the application on your computer.
• After installing open the CamStudio program.

• You can see the buttons to Record, Pause and Stop your screencasting.
• Go to Options -> Program Options and select "Minimise Program on start Recording". This helps the application to minimise its window automatically when you start recording.
• By default no audio is recorded. If you want to record audio, Go to Options -> Audio Options and select "Audio Options for Microphone".
• Select the "Region" on the computer screen to be recorded. 

• Begin recording your How to videos, lectures etc by clicking on the red circle (Record Button). After finishing your task on the screen to be captured, press F9 to stop the recording. 
• Now you will be prompted to save the avi file on your computer. You Screencast is now ready to be shared on YouTube.

 Who can benefit more from screencasting technique?

• Software Professionals - to demonstrate software features.
• Teachers - for tutorial purpose.
• Students - to organise seminars and for e-learning.
• Business Professionals - for publicity, training etc.

I have created a sample ScreenCast and uploaded in YouTube.

How to embed the sample video from YouTube in this post?

• Go to your YouTube video.
• Right click on the video and select "Copy embed html".
• Come back to the blogger post and select HTML view instead of Compose view.
• Paste the html code copied from YouTube to the existing html code. Postion the code as per your wish for target position.

Note: Many other paid ScreenCast applications are available in the market with more and more features. Based on the type of use and the price they can afford, one can use the screencast program which suites them best.

Declutter your Wallet with iPhone's PassBook feature

We have too many cards to carry with us these days apart from the debit/credit cards. Some of those cards are Loyalty cards, Reward cards, Airline Cards, Gift Cards, Store Cards, Coupons, Tickets etc. iPhone's new built-in app named PassBook (A Virtual wallet) can help you to declutter your wallet and store all your cards digitally in a single place. In order to use the PassBook effectually, you need to add your cards to the PassBook. Let me show you how to add the Starbucks Card to your PassBook.

• Tap on the PassBook App.

• To add Starbucks Card to PassBook, you first need to download the Starbucks app. Hence tap on the "Apps for PassBook", which will direct you to the App Store and show all the apps that are compatible with PassBook.

• Install the Starbucks App. Open the Starbucks app and sign in to your Starbucks account. You can enter the numbers on the back of your original starbucks card into the app and the added card will be shown.

• Tap on the Manage button, and tap on Add Card to PassBook.

•  Go to PassBook and you can see the Starbucks card added to PassBook.

If you have added your favorite store locations in your starbucks account, once you enter the store, the iPhone uses its location services to know where you are and display you the right card (now starbucks card) on your lock screen before you even think about the card. You can show the barcode to them and get your coffee.. Usually the Pass displayed will contain a barcode for scanning, some additional information like balance, expiration date etc based on the type of the card.

Note: The process of adding cards to the PassBook is different from one company to the other. But once the respective app is downloaded it's easy to add the card by following the onscreen instructions.

Post to Facebook and Twitter from Notification Center - iPhone

With ios6, we have got the facebook and twitter accounts in-built in the iphone rather than depending solely on the apps. Tweeting to twitter and Posting to Facebook can be done rapidly from the iPhone's Notification Center.

Make sure you have signed into facebook and twitter accounts through Settings. To do that, Go to Settings, scroll down to Twitter and Facebook widgets, provide your User Name and Password in the respective columns and sign in your accounts.

How to post easily to Twitter/Facebook?

• Scroll down the status bar at the top of the screen and the Notification Center will be shown with the two columns "Tap to Tweet and Tap to Post".

•  'Tap to Tweet' - Twitter

Note: You can tap the "Add Location" to add in your current location. 

• 'Tap to Post' - FB

Note: You can tap on "Friends" to confine the post to certain group of friends alone.

Online Content Syndication

Currently Web Content Syndication is one among the online content marketing strategies present in the web world.

What is Content Syndication?

In current web circumstances, any established expert level website with high traffic has been forced on a constructive basis to provide high quality (strong and healthy) contents to satisfy their end users. At the same time there are people who write really valuable content in their websites but end of the day not able to generate traffic to their websites as they failed to meet factors like marketing, SEO ranking, elevating exposure level , appropriate advertisement etc. To conclude well-built websites are in need of contents and content writers are in need of viewers. Here comes the Content Syndication method in which the content writer send the contents to other websites with the help of intermediary named Content Syndication networks/Providers/Partners who distribute the content to members (highly trafficked website creators, bloggers, microbloggers) of the network with fee charged for service. PR Newswire is one of the world's largest content syndication provider.

The Content Syndication is done easily with RSS technology. Initially the publisher should look for an appropriate syndication partner. Then the publisher should set up some form of Content Syndication agreement with the syndication partner. The agreement should have some form of compensation to the author either to give monetary compensation or include author's name/web address in the content going to be circulated. The Syndication agreement can be categorised in three types.

• Licensed -  The syndication Partner pay some fee to the original author for distributing the content to it's members and also retains a backlink to the original content's website. This is the safest method for the author. Exemplar for Licensed content syndicate - http://www.newstex.com/

• Ad-supported - The publishers get share in the advertising revenues generated from the content circulated to the end users.

• Free - No payment is involved and the publisher is satisfied just with exposure got from the distributed content.

Benefits to the author:

Publicity, Money, Traffic to your website.

Benefit to the second level publisher:

Flow of consistent content i.e no shortage of contents to the websites.

Note for content writers:

One common talk is that writers who go for syndication find their content all over the internet (duplicate sources) and lose their rights on the article. And if a higher level website publishes your content, there are chances they will become the topmost source of the content in the web search like Google/Yahoo which may affect your SEO ranking. Each writer has their own goals. Some writers simply want their articles to be read by billions of people and some other want compulsory compensation for the work done by them. Hence whether to syndicate or not is purely based on the individual's goals. Syndication may not be appropriate for every writer. But the writers should carefully choose the syndication partner and review the syndication agreement thoroughly before proceeding to syndicate.

To finish off, we can say that inspite of a few downbeats, this Online Content Syndication is beneficial for content creators, distributors and consumers in some way or the other.