Author: Emily Dolloff

  • iPhone's Panorama Mode

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    I’m lucky enough to be in Key West this week work on some improvements at our store here. The temperatures are a bit cool for Key West this week, but at least I wasn’t around for the blizzard that hit Vermont earlier in the week.

    While I’ve been down in Key West I’ve been mixing up work and play, and have been taking advantage once again of some amazing features on my iPhone. I continue to be amazed with the quality of photos I can take with this phone. As I’ve been using my phones camera feature more than usual over the last month with my travels I thought now is a great time to talk about panorama mode in the iPhone. This feature has been around for several generations of phones so it’s not new, but until you try to fit in a photo of a breathtaking sunset or try to capture in a photo of just how vast the water around you is you probably haven’t needed to capture on camera more than what’s just directly in front of you.

    Since iOS 6 phones have been able to use panorama, so I’ll start with a few tips. First you’ll want to hold your iPhone in portrait orientation. Open the Camera app and swipe left three times on the viewfinder to switch to panoramic mode. This is same process you use to switch from photo to portrait. You’ll want to start with the left side of the image in the view finder, hit the round start button (same button you hit to take a photo) and move the iPhone smoothly and slowly continuously to the right to capture the scene. If you move your hands too fast you will get a blurred image, alternatively if you happen to bounce your hand or wiggle your hands too much you will also get a distorted image. If you move up and down too much during the shot you will get black jagged lines in the image. Sometimes it takes a few attempts to get the image right, so hang in there!

    Here are a few tips. Your iPhone will stop taking the panorama automatically when the arrow reaches the end of the line, but you can stop taking the panorama photo at any time before then. So if you don’t want an unsightly tree or the group of people taking photos next to you in your shot you can easily cut them out.

    While we generally think of panoramas as wide vistas, you can also use the iPhone’s panorama mode to capture vertical panoramas as well like a large tree, skyscrapers and more. You can take the photo the same way you did with the phone in portrait mode, the only difference is that you simply hold the phone horizontally.

    Panorama mode works by combining a lot of separate photos into a single image. You can take advantage of that fact by creating some interesting effects:

    You can have someone appear in both the left and right sides of a panorama. After you have panned past the person on the left side, have them run around behind you and have them jump to the right side of the scene! If your in the passenger sear of a car, try capturing a panorama of an interesting screen by taking advantage of the cars motion… the photos come out pretty cool!

    Not every panorama photo comes out the way you might envision, sometimes that’s the fun and frustration of photos! I’ve gotten some pretty silly photos just from accidentally jostling my phone unexpectedly or having someone or something suddenly jump into a photo.

  • Mark and Navigate

    Most of us have used and know how to search in Maps where specific locations, maybe you even use Siri to help you look up directions for places you are going. But have you ever wanted or needed directions when you did not have an address or a name of a business? On a recent vacation to Disney I had an opportunity to use Maps without having a specific address address. If you’ve ever been to a large theme park or just a big venue you know how hard it can be to navigate back to a location. Amongst a maze of unnamed aisles or streets of vendors and endless lines of cars in parking lots it can be easy to get twisted around.

    Luckily, the Maps app in iOS has you covered for these situations with a feature that allows you to mark any location and then get directions back to that point. It’s easy to use and provides several enhancements, but like many things in iOS, you might not be aware of these features from the beginning.

    First, marking locations might be easier for you if you use the satellite view in Maps. If you’re in the standard Map view that shows just the street, tap the “i” button in the upper-right corner and you can get the satellite view. I discovered this feature by accident myself. OK, it wasn’t me, it was my 6 year old! Sometimes kids really are the best teachers.

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    Once in the satellite view, position the map over the area you want to navigate to, and then pinch to zoom in. To mark the location, press and hold the exact spot. You can do the same thing in the regular Map view, so don’t feel like you have to be in the satellite view to do this. A pin will appear on the map at the marked location. On the iPad, a panel appears on the left side of the screen with controls and more options. With the iPhone these options appear at the bottom of the screen. From this panel:

    **Get directions:** Tap directions to start navigating to the marked location. The button defaults to tell you how long a drive will be but you can easily switch to walking distances and other means of transportation. You can also tap the route summary to see more details and perhaps choose a different route if that option is available.

    **Move the marker:** To reposition the marker slightly, tap edit location; for a more significant change in location press and hold on a new spot.

    **Share the marker:** If you’re trying to explain to others how to get to you or your marked location, tap the share icon and then an app like messages or mail will appear so you can send the link to your directions.

    **Delete the marker:** Simply tap on remove marker

    **Make a favorite:** For a marked location that you might want to use repeatedly, tap add to favorites and give it a name. After that, you’ll be able to search for the location by name. Maps automatically syncs your favorites via your iCloud account. You can then access your location from another device at a later date if you want.

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    As I mentioned in the beginning of my article I utilized many of these features on my recent vacation. I literally would have been lost without them! I have navigation built into my car, but found Apple Maps to be significantly more useful when driving as it provided me with multiple routes for most destinations and was fairly accurate for traffic issues and potential faster routes. I easily navigated back to our parked car when we left the theme park also easily located points of interest in our surrounding area. Living in a rural state I don’t always get to use all the features in my devices and apps. It was comforting to know thanks to my devices this country girl could make it in the hustle and bustle of busy cities!

  • Rosa Parks

    Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress later…

  • Swipe Your E-mail Care Away

    If your inbox is anything like mine you understand the frustrations in keeping it clutter free. I actually have multiple e-mail accounts that…

  • Swipe Your E-mail Cares Away

    If your inbox is anything like mine you understand the frustrations in keeping it clutter free. I actually have multiple e-mail accounts that I use or monitor, further adding to some of my frustrations. There are all kinds of apps, techniques and advice on how to better manage the many messages that flood your inbox every day. Honestly, dealing with too much e-mail is a lot like dieting. Almost any approach will work, at least for a while. The hard part is finding what fits best with your work style or just staying committed to whatever practice you’ve decided to embrace. Built into the Apple operating systems or iOS are a fairly large set of techniques and features to help you organize your inbox.

    In the last several months I feel like I’ve rediscovered just how useful and invaluable even my iPhone is with its mail features. When I’m out of the office or visiting some of our retail locations I almost exclusively use my iPhone and between the organizations features of Mail and iCloud drive there’s very little I can’t do. Swiping is a critical action on the iPhone (or iPad) to uncover all kinds of features within mail and now with El Capitan and Sierra many of these swipe features also work on your Mac with a magic trackpad or mouse.

    Most users know if you swipe your finger to the left or right you can quickly manage your messages in mail and quickly archive or delete your message. A quick swipe in either direction will by default archive or delete your message immediately our of your inbox. But there is more to the swipe than just a simple delete.

    In iOS, when you swipe a short distance to the right and an unread message (from left to right), Mail displays a read button. You can either tap it or keep swiping to the right to mark the message as read. If the message has already been read, that button changes to unread. This swipe is great for those who like marking message as unread to keep them around for later processing.

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    Swipe left (from right to left) a short distance, and you get three buttons. Archive, Flag, and more. Tap archive to store the message in an archive mailbox which is good for getting it our of your inbox without deleting it. Flag will mark the message with a flag so you can find it quickly in your mail’s flagged box. I love this feature! I probably utilize the flag features in my mailboxes several times a day and would be lost without it! You can swipe all the way to the left to archive the message with one motions. Some mailboxes will display delete when you swipe rather than archive. Not to worry though, it’s just going to your trash rather than an archive folder and you still can access the e-mail if you delete it by accident. I recommend going into your mail preferences and make sure you have delay in how soon your trash really dumps your mail permanently. For my work e-mails I have my settings set to never actually empty my trash. You never know when you’ll need an e-mail from 10 years ago and for me, it’s happened!

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    If you tap more, you get a bunch of additional options, depending on the message, that can include: reply, reply all, forward, show related messages, mark (so you can flag), file and more. File is probably my favorite feature and I think it’s better than the file feature in Mac mail. I file almost all my e-mails in folders based on their content rather than deleting them. Staff write what we call weekly reports each week and daily I get cash out reports from the retail stores. When I pull these kinds of e-mails up on my phone and use the folder option, iOS automatically suggests what folder it thinks it should go into and most times it correctly defaults to the folder I want. It makes handling bulk yet standard daily e-mails a breeze to file with iOS. So far I haven’t see this feature work on Mac mail.

    If you try these features on your Mac (make sure your using the magic track pad or magic mouse) you will see many of these options I’ve talked about available, but know that not all of them may be there. In my opinion the features are better in iOS (who would have thought I’d be saying this!) When iOS first came out and then a few years later when it hit the first iPad we all had a laundry list of things we wish these mobile devices could do.

  • Frederick Douglass

    We are celebrating Black History Month all of February and today we will honor the memory of Frederick Douglass, a former slave that…

  • Product Review: Elgato Eve

    I continue to play around with home automation products. As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, it’s ok to take baby steps into home automation. I’ve been slowly adding devices in my home and started with installing outlets around my home that I can use with HomeKit. I’m not sure yet if any of these smart outlets will help to reduce my energy usage in a significant way, but it sure makes me feel better to know my kids are really turning off the lights.

    Over the past week I’ve installed and have been playing around with the Elgato Eve wireless weather sensors. Both units measure temperature and humidity. The room sensor adds air quality and the outdoor sensor measures air pressure. Setting these sensors up is quick and easy. Simply download the free app from the App Store, sync them to your phone by verifying a serial number and you’re ready to go!

    The “*Eve wireless weather sensor*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88351/elgato-eve-weather-wireless-outdoor-sensor installed quickly outside. The sensor reports the temperature, humidity, and air pressure with what I would consider fairly high accuracy. I did initially set up the unit inside and one observation on the negative is it took quit some time to accurately report on the outside temperature. It’s also important to note that it’s only water resistant, so you’ll want to install it in a location outside where it’s out of direct contact with the elements. I set up the Eve “*room*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88350/elgato-eve-room-wireless-indoor-sensor in my bedroom. I have some allergies and wondered if I would notice a difference in some of my symptoms based on its air quality readings and humidity. I’ve been making a greater effort to let fresh air circulate through my room, a challenge sometimes in Vermont winters. I have noticed my breathing is better since being able to monitor the air quality closer.

    Aside from the ability to simply better monitor weather conditions via HomeKit from anywhere, the Eve app itself provides you with accumulative data. I can look for example and see what my average room humidity has been over the last week specifically in my room. To see this more detailed information you do need to use the Eve app. HomeKit cannot provided the detailed maps and statistics, but the benefit of HomeKit is I can see all of my various HomeKit enabled devices at a glance.

  • Elgato Eve

    I continue to play around with home automation products. As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, it’s ok to take baby steps into home automation. I’ve been slowly adding devices in my home and started with installing outlets around my home that I can use with home kit. I’m not sure yet if any of these smart outlets will help to reduce my energy usage in a significant way, but it sure makes me feel better to know my kids are really turning off the lights.

    Over the past week I’ve installed and have been playing around with the Elgato Eve wireless weather sensors. Both units measure temperature and humidity. The room sensor adds air quality and the outdoor sensor measures air pressure. Setting these sensors up is quick and easy. Simply download the free app from the app store, sync them to your phone by verifying a serial number and you’re ready to go!

    The Eve “**wireless weather sensor**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88351/elgato-eve-weather-wireless-outdoor-sensor installed quickly outside. The sensor reports the temperature, humidity and air pressure with what I would consider fairly high accuracy. I did initially set up the unit inside and one observation on the negative is it took quit some time to accurately report on the outside temperature. It’s also important to note that it’s only water resistant, so you’ll want to install it in a location outside where it’s out of direct contact with the elements. I set up the Eve “**room**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88350/elgato-eve-room-wireless-indoor-sensor in my bedroom. I have some allergies and wondered if I would notice a difference in some of my symptoms based on its air quality readings and humidity. I’ve been making a greater effort to let fresh air circulate through my room, a challenge sometimes in Vermont winters. I have noticed my breathing is better since being able to monitor the air quality closer.

    Aside from the ability to simply better monitor weather conditions via HomeKit from anywhere, the eve app itself provides you with accumulative data. I can look for example and see what my average room humidity has been over the last week specifically in my room. To see this more detailed information you do need to use the even app. HomeKit cannot provided the details maps and statistics, but the benefit of HomeKit is I can see everything at a glance.

  • What To Do When Your Mac is Frozen

    It’s probably happened to you at least once and it’s worse than the spinning beach ball. It’s the scary black screen with multiple languages alerting you to restart your computer. I’ve seen it countless times on customer machines over the years and once or twice on my own computers. Most users come in with concern and fear on their faces; what just happened to their computer?

    This black screen is often referred to as a kernel panic and I like to describe it as the computers equivalent to your car’s check engine light. It’s a very generic error that can means something has gone horribly wrong or your computer just simply needs to restart. Generally the only way to know if your kernel panic was the result of a serious problem is running diagnostics, typically performed by a technician. I once experienced this with a 15in MacBook Pro of mine. I was sitting in my living room looking up something on the internet and BAM kernel panic. I was stuck with a machine that was completely unresponsive, locked up and displayed a scary black screen. My computer had never before indicated any kind of performance issues and was working perfectly fine until it locked up on me without warning.

    If you should find yourself in the unlucky position of having your Mac lock up on you due to a kernel panic you will need to restart your computer. How you might ask? When your computer is locked up and unresponsive to your keyboard, mouse, trackpad, etc the only way to restart your computer is to hold down the power button for about five seconds. This will force your computer to turn off and it will shut down. I would suggest letting your computer sit for about thirty seconds and then turn the computer back on again. With the new Touch Bar MacBook Pros you will need to press down on the blank touch ID button until you feel and hear a click.

    It’s never advisable to shutdown and restart your computer by just holding down on the power button and you should only do this in situations where you have no other choice. Forcing your computer to shut down by holding the power button can cause corruption and loss of data among other things. However, when your Mac is frozen there is no other option. In many cases this lock up is a one time deal, as was the case with my MacBook Pro. The machine only ever locked up the one time. Like your cars check engine like, the kernel panic can be caused by any number of benign issues from a bad memory chip to a logic board issue. Certainly it’s recommended that if your machine locks up again you should have it looked it, but more than likely it’s just an isolated event.