The iPhone Mom

I’m ending the week of “How To”s with an index of past tips and tricks that I’ve covered on the site. Probably a bit of a cop out but between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, sewing projects, grocery shopping, PTO responsibilities and laryngitis my how-to-it-ness is tapped out.

How to show the percentage of battery life left in your iPhone 3GS

Getting a refund for an iPhone app

Share apps by Mobile E-mail

Re-downloading lost purchases from iTunes

Share purchased apps with multiple devices

Get rid of annoying Facebook notifications

Send multiple photos from your iPhone

App Management in iTunes 9 and also a bug fix for this

Top Ten Mom Tweaks for my iPhone – part one

Top Ten Mom Tweaks for my iPhone – part two

Subscribing to Podcasts

Sharing iTunes libraries

Anyone else have any tips or tricks to share? Anything you’d like me to research for future posts?

When iTunes 9 was released it gave people the ability to share iTunes libraries with other computers on their network. My husband and I have our own iTunes accounts and libraries. He buys music and I buy apps but they stay on our own computers. When we wanted to share apps we had a work around that we did. I’m not going to share it though, trade secrets and all plus there’s no need anymore because with Home Sharing it’s really easy to pass on the good stuff in your iTunes library.

Here’s how you do it. First you’ll need to authorize your iTunes account to work on the other computer. Do this by clicking on “Store” and then “Authorize Computer.” Watch out because you’re only able to authorize your account on five computers. Next you’ll go to “Advanced” and “Turn on Home Sharing”. You’ll enter in your iTunes account information again and you’ve turned on Home Sharing – for your computer. You have to repeat this process with the other computer you’d like to share with and you must use the same account to turn on the Home Sharing on each computer you want to see. Originally I turned mine on and my husband turned on his and then we were stumped as to why it wasn’t working. He figured it out before I did (he usually does) and we turned off my Home Sharing and then he turned it on using his iTunes account. Viola – there we were.  When you’ve successfully turned on the sharing for multiple computers you’ll see the word “Shared” in the left hand column of iTunes. Underneath that will be home icons with the names of the libraries.

Now it’s time to decide what exactly you want to share in the “Preferences” window. If you use a Mac you’ll find this in the iTunes menu, for a PC it’s in the edit menu. Click on “Sharing” here and you’ll see you’ve got some choices to make.  You’ll want to check the box next to “Look for shared libraries”, this will give you access to the other iTunes libraries on your network. If you check share my library…” you’re giving others access to yours. You can be as generous or stingy as you want with your library. I choose to share my music, movies, TV shows, and purchased items (this covers apps). If you’d like even more control you can set a password. This would probably be a good idea if you were sharing libraries across a network at work. You could give your password out to friends and you’d be able to keep that guy from the third floor from lifting your Wicked soundtrack.

When you click on the libraries listed under “Shared” they will load into your iTunes. Now you can drag and drop things from that library into your own.  You can also go through the library and select everything that you want to copy , then click on the “Import” button at the bottom right of the screen. Here’s a trick that we just discovered tonight as I was putting this together. When my husband first set up the Home Sharing he had everything set to automatically transfer from my library to his and vice versa. This meant that whenever we both had iTunes open our libraries would share everything, whether we liked it or not. So I ended up with all of his blues music and he ended up with the apps that are constantly revolving on and off my iPhone. Tonight I discovered a solution. Happy Day!! When you are viewing someone’s library there is a “Settings” button that appears in the bottom right of iTunes. Give that a click. Now you can select what you want to automatically transfer. I have now selected nothing. If I want something from his library I will have to drag and drop it and that is just fine with me. I went ahead and made the same changes for him so he won’t find the pregnancy trackers showing up on his phone anymore. 

Two last things- If you have extensive libraries then you’re going to have quite a list when you’re viewing the shared ones. To get around this click on the button next to “Show” at the bottom of iTunes. Here you can choose to show all items or only the items not in your library. Finally, something else I learned the hard way. Shared libraries don’t show up unless the person has iTunes open on their computer. One day I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for my husband’s library in my iTunes. I finally called him because he’s purchased a CD that I wanted to copy. I’m sure he was laughing at me when he explained that minor detail  about the other library actually having to be opened before it could show up over the wireless network. Don’t know how I thought I was going to see it since his Mac was in his car, at work. I must have been thinking the hamsters in my PC weren’t spinning their wheel fast enough or something else equally logical.

Happy Sharing Everyone!

Podcasts are one of the best things about iTunes. Most are free and  are available as either audio or video and some are even available in HD.  There are podcasts dedicated to broad topics, like parenting. Others focus on more specialized subjects, like the one that’s dedicated to news and information about that Farmville game that keeps taking over my Facebook news feed. Good podcasts publish new episodes on a regular basis and  provide great advice, information or entertainment. Sometimes you’ll even get all of that in one package!

Alright, so why would a mom want podcasts on her iPod? First of all, they are usually free. If you pick one up and you hate it then you’re not out a cent. If you love it then you’ve made a killer investment. Secondly, podcasts can be helpful. There are podcasts on cooking, do-it-yourself projects, couponing and parenting. And last, but not least, you can find great podcasts for your kids. Podcasts = free entertainment for my  kids = a little alone time for me.

So you’ve decided that you’ve just got to grab some podcasts, how do you do it? The easiest way is to make a visit to the iTunes store and browse through the podcast section. Here you’ll see lists of podcasts that iTunes is spotlighting. You can also follow the quick links at the top right of the screen. If I’m looking for a podcast on a specific subject I usually use the search feature in iTunes. I type in my key word and it will pull up everything (music, apps, TV shows, podcasts, etc.) that applies. Then I’ll view the list of podcasts and decide if any look worthwhile.  When you’re looking at a podcast’s description you’ll see a box that says “Listeners Also Subscribed To:” and then a list of more podcasts. I’ve found this is a great resource for finding additional podcasts on the same subject. Podcast description pages will list all of their episodes, the length of each one, a release date and episode description. If you see a TV icon next to the episode’s name that means it’s a video podcast. If the TV isn’t there you’re looking at an audio podcast. 

Ok, you’ve found the absolute perfect podcast – now what? You’ve got two options. The first is to click on the “Get Episode” button next to the podcast episode that you’ve chosen. Do this and that one episode will download into your iTunes library.  Your other choice is to click the “Subscribe” button that appears at the top of the screen, under the Podcast’s name. If you do this then you’re subscribing to the podcast. The most recent episode will download into your iTunes library and each time a new episode is published it will download automatically. BUT, you don’t get the previous episodes automatically. To download those you’ll either have to click on each episodes “Get Episode” button or look at the podcast in your iTunes library. You’ll see a list of all the previous episodes and a button that says “Get”, Click on that to download past episodes. It’s also possible to directly get podcasts from the iTunes app onto your iPhone/iPod Touch. However, you’re only able to download episodes, you cannot subscribe from there.

Podcasts just sitting in your iTunes library aren’t going to do you a whole lot of good. You can watch them there but you really ought to get them onto your iPod. You can drag and drop them onto your device or you can set things up so they’ll sync automatically when you connect your iPod to the computer. Here’s how I manage that on my iPhone. I go to the “Podcast” tab that shows up when I double click on my iPhone in iTunes. Next I check the box “Automatically include” and get specific about what podcasts I want syncing up with my phone. You have tons of choices for what to sync – all unplayed episodes, the five most recent, the three most recent unplayed and so on. Personally, I have things set up so that some podcasts automatically sync and others (the ones I don’t watch regularly) I keep in my library. I’m still set up as a subscriber for them but the new episodes collect there instead of on my phone. I can go into the library and drag and drop the episodes that look interesting. It’s just my way of trying to keep my iPod from becoming too cluttered. Got to save memory for other stuff!

Hopefully all that rambling makes sense. It takes a little bit of time in the beginning to search out worthwhile podcasts but once you subscribe to a few you’ll have  terrific, free resources that will automatically come to you.

Here are some of my favorite podcasts.

Sesame Street Podcast – these are mini video episodes that are put out once a week. They run between four to six minutes long and are great entertainment for the kids. Free Sesame Street!

Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman – an audio podcast that my girls find hilarious. I’ve got this one set up to sync with their iPods. The episodes are published less frequently but they’ve got all the humor from the PBS show Fetch! 

Family Fun TV – video podcasts featuring projects from Family Fun magazine. The magazine that I love to get in the mail but makes me feel like a bad mommy because I somehow never get around to doing all the projects that’d make me one of those “fun moms”.

The Mighty Mommy’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Practical Parenting – I haven’t listened to many of these but I like what I hear. Everything from safety proofing your bathroom to battling boredom to making it through the school parking lot safely.

The Dealista’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Getting More for Less Money – The title of this one says it all.

My husband likes the podcasts for How Stuff Works, Discovery Channel and Ted Talks. What about you? What podcasts do you like?

Yesterday I talked about my top ten easy tweaks that I’ve applied to my iPhone. Today I’ll finish out that list. (Part One)

6. I name my alarms. This is such a simple trick but it helps me keep track of what all the buzzing and ringing means.  Open up the Clock app and tap the edit button and then the arrow to the right of the alarm that you’d like to name.  You’ll see where it says “Label”, tap that and then delete the generic “Alarm” and type in whatever you’d like. When the alarm goes off this name will show up on your screen. I have two alarms that are set to go off as we’re getting ready for school in the morning. The first goes off five minutes before we need to head out to the bus stop. This one is named “Five Minutes” – catchy, I know. The next alarm goes off five minutes later and is named “Move it or walk to school!” By now my kids have read those words often enough that ringing gets them running right out the door.  Mission accomplished.

7. I’ve also customized how the iPod buttons show up on my phone. Open up the iPod and tap the “More” button.  Now tap edit at the top left of the screen.  Tap and drag the icons for what you want on that bottom iPod bar. I have Playlists, Artists, Albums and Videos.  You can rearrange these in any order you’d like. I like mine this way because it’s less buttons to push if I’m looking for music in the car.

8. I like the Spotlight Search feature that was introduced with OS 3.0. All I have to do is type in a name or keyword and the iPhone scours my phone for it. By default the search looks through the applications on the phone, mail (to, from & subject lines), calendar items (by event name, location and those invited), iPod contents and the full text of notes.  Frankly, this was too much searching for me so I learned how to customize the search itself. Go to the iPhone’s  Settings and then tap General and then Home.  Now tap “Search Results”. From here you can check/uncheck the things you want searched. You can also rearrange the order of the results that are displayed.  You will see some lines to the right of this screen.  Tap those and then drag the categories into the order you’d like them displayed.

9. I like to have photos attached to the phone numbers for friends and family who call my phone frequently. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, a quick glance at my phone can tell me if I want to answer or not. No reading required! Second, if I’m going to be unable to answer the phone I’ll tell my son which calls he can answer. He’s a pretty good reader but it helps to have a pictures show up so he knows who’s on the other line. I don’t have many photos of extended family on my iPhone so I need access to photos that are stored on my computer. To get these I created a folder on my computer named “Photos for iPhone Contacts”. Again, I know you are floored by my creativity. In this folder I collect photos that I want to use with my iPhone contacts. Now in iTunes, when my iPhone is connected I click on the “Photos” and then choose “select a folder” right after where it says “Sync photos from”. The folder I choose is the one I just mentioned. When my iPhone syncs it will pull in any photos that I’ve recently saved in that location. Voila, they are now on my phone and I can match them up with my contacts. This will work for any photos that you want moved from your computer to your phone, just choose the appropriate folders.

10. Finally, a tip that is an oldie but goodie, a simple trick that I use more than any other. To get back to the home screen on my iPhone all I need to do is tap the Home button. No matter which screen I’m on, one push and I’m back to the beginning. No unnecessary swiping for me.

You’ve finished my list and are hopefully still awake. What are some of your favorite tips for making your iPhone work with your busy mom life?

I’ve got ten easy tweaks that I’ve done to make my iPhone work for me and my mom life. Today I’m going to list the first five.

1. I got rid of the “Sent from my iPhone” message that shows up by default at the end of every email sent out from the iPhone. Did you know that was there?? You can customize what goes at the end of your emails in Settings. Tap the settings button, then “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”. Scroll down until you see “Signature”. Tap that and type in whatever you want to say. My signature is simply my first name but maybe I’ll shake that up one of these days.

2. I customized the apps that show up in the bar at the bottom of the screen. The ones that will be there when you purchase your phone are Phone, Mail, Safari and iPod. You can’t delete any of these factory installed apps but you can move them around. To do this hold down on the app icon in the bar that you’d like to move. Wait for it to start wiggling and then drag it to it’s new spot. Now you’ve got a free space at the bottom of your screen. Tap and hold on the app you want to move and drag it down to the bottom space. Because this bar shows up on every iPhone screen I like to keep the bottom space reserved for apps I use constantly. As of today they are Phone, Mail, Edibles and iPod. Although I’m not using Edibles as often as I should, it’s mostly there to induce guilt.

3. I arrange the rest of my apps according to what they’re used for and how often they’re needed. The apps I use most frequently are on my home screen. The next few screens are for apps that I use less frequently. Then I’ve got the ones for my kids grouped together. I’ve found that if I do this my kids are less likely to rearrange the apps themselves. Before iTunes 9 came along rearranging apps was a big, fat pain. Now that you can do it within iTunes it’s much easier. This link will take you to my previous explanation of how to make that work for you.

4. Since my kids are on my iPhone fairly regularly I’ve set up some restrictions as to what shows up. I’ve gotten rid of You Tube and disabled the installing of apps from the phone. I’ve also set up ratings for the music and podcasts that are allowed to be played. I don’t have restrictions on the ratings for TV Shows and Movies but that’s only because the videos on my phone are mostly for my kids anyway. If I did have a movie that I didn’t want them to see I’d set up the ratings and simply disable it when I wanted to watch. You can also set ratings for the apps allowed on your phone. When I originally did this I set it to not allow apps for 17+. I’m embarrassed to admit that I then spent over an hour trying to reinstall the Facebook app because it had disappeared. I’d download it and install it but it was nowhere to be found! It finally dawned on me that the app wasn’t showing up because it was rated 17+. So learn from me! Some apps have that rating because they have the potential to display material rated 17+ and they’ll be blocked whether they ever show that content or not. Because of this I don’t have restrictions set up for my apps. I wrote a post explaining more about Restrictions when the new OS 3.0 originally came out.

5. If your kids are on your iPhone at all then you know how quickly they can drain a battery! To conserve battery life you can turn off blue tooth, push notifications, and Wi-Fi, lower the brightness of your screen and lower the time until your Auto-Lock kicks in. I plug my phone in every night and generally about halfway through the day too. It is my only phone so I’ve got to keep it charged. Read more of my thoughts on this here.

Come back tomorrow for part two of my list!

For the week of November 30th I’ve decided to take a break from app reviews and focus on some “how tos”. (That word doesn’t look right does it?) I’ve got some things on my list that I’m going to have my husband explain and then I’ll translate it all into mom language. You know, simple, straight forward, my time is limited so get to the point language. Do any of you have things you’d like to learn how to do with your iPhone? Any iTunes questions? If so, leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can put together.

I haven’t run into this bug but apparently there’s trouble when you try to arrange apps that isn’t already in a space on one of your home screens. Luckily the folks at cnet.com are on it and have come up with a fix. You can read about it here.

This new iTunes 9 feature had me excited. Why? First of all because I’ve never liked the way you sync apps in iTunes. I have this big list of apps and have to scroll through them all when I want to reinstall an app. Takes me too long. Second of all (and this is the big reason) because my kids are constantly rearranging the apps on my phone. I like to have my apps separate from the ones my kids use. To get them where I want them to be I was constantly moving those wiggly apps around and do you know what? They don’t go where you want them to go the first time. Not for my fingers anyway. So after the kids went to bed I downloaded iTunes 9 and checked out the applications screen for my iPhone….and was disappointed. Where were the home screen and the app management I’d been told about? They had to be there right?? Took me more time then I’ll admit to realize that you have to also install the iPhone OS 3.1 to see it. Ohhh. This created a new issue as I ran into some trouble installing OS 3.1. But when it was all said and done I had the beautiful app management up and running in my iTunes. Right off the bat I’m loving it.

So how does app management in iTunes 9 work? Here’s the tired mom’s version of what to do.

1. First you’ve got to download iTunes 9 and the OS 3.1. Be prepared.

2. Click on your iPhone on the left hand side of the iTunes screen.

3. Click on the applications tab. You should see a list of all your applications and your iPhone’s home screen. Next to that you’ll see all of your iPhone’s screens, numbered from one to whatever you’ve got.

4. Ready for this – click on an app and drag it where you want it to go. It can be on the same screen or you can drag it over to one of the numbered screens on the side.

5. You can re-order the screens on your iPhone by clicking on one of the numbered screens. It will be highlighted and then you can drag it up or down, changing the page order as you go.

Some tricks:

- If you place your mouse over an app icon then the small “x” in the top left will appear. Click on that to remove the app from your iPhone.

-Now here’s what’s going to be my favorite part of app management. You can move more than one app at a time. Just click on an app and then control click on another and another and so on. Now drag the group to a new screen. They’ll all go at the same time. Slick.

It only took me five minutes to get my iPhone reorganized and ready for my kids to mess it up again. Anyone else discover any tricks to the new app management feature in iTunes 9?

When I upgraded to the new iPhone OS3 I heard that you’d be able to email multiple photos. I was excited. Then I tried to do it and couldn’t figure out how to do it. So the next time I wanted to email out some photos I tried to do it and couldn’t figure  it out. And so on and on and on. Now keep in mind that I had a baby the beginning of July. Right in the middle of summer vacation and that means that ALL my kids are home ALL day long. Fellow moms out there know exactly what that means. It means that it is impossible to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds because you are constantly being interrupted. Trying to figure out how to make the photos work was beyond me.

Last night my husband emailed me three photos. They all arrived on my phone in one email. Taking advantage of the fact that there were no children talking in my ear I asked him HOW DID YOU DO THAT? Now when I tell you how he did it please remember that it’s summer and I just had my fourth child, because I’m feeling pretty dumb for not figuring this out on my own. I’m owning up to my ignorance just in case there are some you out there who are also trying to mail multiple photos. I’m going to save you from having to ask your husbands for help.

Open the camera on your iPhone. Tap the small square on the lower left of your screen and then tap “Camera Roll” in the top left of the screen. This pulls up all your photos at once. Now tap on the “forward” icon on the lower left of the screen. Then tap on the photos you want to email. You can select up to five. At the bottom it now says “Share, Copy and Delete”. When you’ve selected all your photos tap “share” and then email away.  You could also select copy (self explanatory I think) or delete to clean up your camera roll.

Hope this helps another mom out there!

Are you on Facebook? I am and it drives me crazy to get all those silly notifications. I don’t mind the ones about comments and wall posts. It’s the ones about Willy’s Sweet Shop or how many “amazing” points I’ve earned that make me nuts. Luckily I came across an article that explains a simple cure for this problem. So simple I’m embarrassed to tell you that I couldn’t figure this out on my own.

Here’s what you do: On your Facebook page click on the notification button in the lower right corner of your screen. Now click “see all” and you’ll see all of your notifications. On the right side you’ll see everything that’s authorized to notify you. Uncheck the boxes for the things you don’t want sending notifications. And there you go.

Click here to see the post that explained this to me. Thanks Mashable.