How To Quickly Load Business Card into Contacts: App to load Business Cards

May 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Business cards are great ways to share contact info, but unless people start including QR codes on their cards (some people are), loading them into contacts apps is a pain. Here’s an app to load business cards in seconds.

  1. Download Cardmunch (free) from the app store.
  2. Open Cardmunch, and log into Linkedin (they own the app, so you have to log in – still free).
  3. Take a picture of your card, using the in-app camera function. Make sure text is crisp, and clear. Submit it.
  4. Walk away (or close the app). You’re done. In a few minutes, your card will load into your contacts, without you having to enter a single piece of data, and as a bonus, it will load data from their linkedin profile for you too, giving you instant access to more info on them.
  5. Your welcome, for the time savings.
iphone app to load business cards

baby loves his business cards – and he uses the app to load business cards

 

P.S if you see this. If there’s an app to load business cards into your iPhone, there’s an app for everything.

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Filed Under: app, app review, apps, business, how to, tutorial Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Ditch The Bars And Actually Measure Your iPhone’s Signal Strength With This Tutorial

February 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Frustrated by the bars? Does the typical confining five bar arrangement leave you with more questions than answers? When I measure signals, I use a hidden feature on the iPhone that gives you an exact measured numerical value to indicate signal strength, and I’m going to teach you how to get it yourself, and decipher what it means to you.

iphone signal bar number

First I’ll give you the details on how to get the numbers:

  1. Go to your phone app.
  2. Enter *3001#12345#* as if making a call. This will take you to a hidden application called “field test” with a variety of cool measurements. For our purposes though, we’re only coming to this area as a step.
  3. Press and hold the “hold/power” button on the top of your phone until the slide to turn off slider appears. DO NOT TURN OFF.
  4. Now quickly switch from the power switch to holding your home button. Don’t stop holding until you’re back at your usual app screen/springboard (the official name).
  5. All Set. Your bars should be replaced with a number (measured in decibels) which I will show you how to understand below. If you ever want to switch back to bars, all you have to do is tap the number, and it will switch back, and you can even switch back and forth whenever you’d like.

How To Read The numbers, and what they mean

The number represents your signal strength. It will always be negative, but the closer you are to 0, the better your signal. For example, a -40 is a very good signal, while a -110 is very slow. For a decent connection, you’ll want something -78 or better.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. Leave a comment if you’ve got any great iPhone tips and tricks to share.

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Filed Under: apple, ATT, how to, ios, iphone, tutorial, Verizon Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How To Make Realistic Ghost Photos With No Special Effects Skills- Tutorial

February 13, 2013 By 1 Comment

Who here has watched one of those ghost hunting shows? Come on, and admit it Mr.science. You like watching them flaunt their cool gadgets to prove mythical creatures. And how about those creepy pictures in the dark where they’re walking through furniture? Want to know how to do that? I’ll teach you how to do that with only a camera and yourself. SCARE YOUR FRIENDS.

 

What You’ll Need:

  • A dark room. Not a photographic “dark room” but rather a room with very little light
  • DSLR, superzoom, or other large sensor digital camera with controllable shutter speed
  • Piece of Furniture
  • Ghostly Costume- because ghosts from the 50s didn’t where Nike t-shirts and jeans
  • Free Photo Editing Software. Even programs like iPhoto will work for this
  • Rudimentary Knowledge of how to operate said camera
  • Flashlight

Top Tip:

To make it extra scary, include a detailed background behind your scene, such as a poster. The poster will be visible through the person, giving them a further ghostly appearance.

Steps to make your ghost photo:

  1. Put on your costume. Be creative. I created a lab setup and put on a lab coat I had from last halloween and a creepy wig.
  2. Set up your camera on a tripod. With long exposures, the worst thing you can do is let your camera shake. If you don’t have a tripod, at least set your camera up on a solid flat surface.
  3. Focus your lens. Autofocus doesn’t work in the dark, so you’ve got to focus manually before you turn out the lights.
  4. Further configure your camera. Automatic ISO is best, and you’re going to want a shutter speed of at least 15 seconds. Most DSLRs max out timed shutters at 30 seconds.
  5. Put your furniture in the shot. Scout out a place where you can quickly hide it.
  6. Turn out the lights. Use your flashlight to navigate and find the shutter. Turn the flashlight out BEFORE you turn on the shutter. For a cool fog effect, leave the door open a crack for a tiny bit of light leak. Be careful not to let too much in though, or it could ruin your image.
  7. Start the shutter. A.K.A Click the photo-taking button on your camera.
  8. Stay out of the shot and count out half of your shutter speed.  For example, if I shoot at 30 second exposure, I’m going to count to 15.
  9. After getting halfway through. Run to where your furniture is, push it out of the view of the camera, and pose for the remaining 12-15 seconds until the shutter closes.
  10. Review your shot to make sure you got it.
  11. Load your shot into your photo editing software.
  12. Increase the brightness just a tad, and crop it to crop out unnecessary areas of the room. Even the automatic optimization tool iPhoto will fix your photo enough in a single click to make it clear and scary.
  13. Share your photo and scare your friends.

How this works.

Your camera sees you in its’ sensor for the last 15 seconds, and your furniture for the first 15 seconds. It essentially blends you with the furniture, and fades you naturally based on how long you’re in the photo, while the background is solid. This is similar to the principle behind the blur of fast-moving people in timelapses of streets.

The lack of light does two things: It gives you a darker, ghostlier appearance, and it prevents the image from being overexposed. Remember that ever 1/1000 of a second that your shutter is open, it’s exposed to light, and long shutter speeds without the right equipment in even dim daylight can completely overexpose it, and make it one indistinguishable white blob.

Are you going to give it a try?

Notice that the shadow is on the chair from both sides, breaking reality

Notice that the shadow is on the chair from both sides, breaking reality

IMG_1220

“Hey Mom, I Can pass through chairs”

 

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Filed Under: camera, DSLR, how to, photo, photography, tutorial Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

How To Blog From a Mac: 10 Crucial Mac Blogging Apps

January 25, 2013 By

Blogging is a blast, and Macs are my favorite computers, but it’s a challenge finding good blogging software to get my daily post done from. A few apps are absolutely critical to my blogging, and I think the’d be helpful to you too, so I wanted to share them with you.

10 Best Mac Blogging Apps

  1. MarsEdit: MarsEdit isn’t cheap at $40 but it is hands-down the best mac blogging client available. It offers integration with nearlyever blogging CMS, including WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Tumblr
  2. Photobulk: Best two bucks I ever spent. Photobulk makes it really easy to make and position watermarks, resize photos, and do it all in bulk. It’s very well designed, and serves its’ purpose very well. And at $2, it’s cheap.
  3. Adobe Photoshop CS6: This is a bit out of reach for some bloggers, so a good free solution is GIMP, an open source software which is comparable. Photoshop is another vital app of mine, great for creating unique graphics, and things that will last. I also frequently design secondary elements of my site, and buttons using photoshop. It’s a valuable tool, and very versatile. Also good for book covers.
  4. iBooks Author: If you want to easily lay out a great looking ebook, this is the best option there is. iBooks Author is 100% free, and offers a variety of free templates, and page layouts that make laying out and organizing your ebook a breeze. You can even export straight to the iBooks Store, or to a PDF format. Unfortunately it doesn’t offer Epub exporting, but PDFs can be converted to Epubs for free using converters like this one.
  5. Evernote: I use an odd mix of Evernote and Apple Notes to keep track of all of my ideas on the go, and thanks to the cloud they all nicely sync straight to my computer. The additional forms of post that can be added to Evernote ultimately give it the lead, and for the price of free it’s excellent.
  6. Wunderlist: Are you a mess? I am. Wunderlist is my taskmaster, and that beautiful, functional list design on the mad app keeps my tasks managed, and my posts somehow make it out on deadline. Thank you Wunderlist.
  7. Grandview: For the “grand” price of free, Grand View offers a brilliant distraction free interface that goes beyond the concept of a white page. You see only one sentence at a time which shrinks to fit the page as you type more text. The whole concept is stop you from constantly looking forward and back at what you’ve written. It’s great for getting good ideas down on paper, but not so great for spelling, which naturally suffers because you don’t see the full text until the end. Fantastic if you’re willing to proofread.
  8. Skype: Microsoft’s Skype is fantastic for making connections, conducting interviews, and saving time communicating with important people that can grow your blog. Video chatting truly is the way of the future.
  9. Pages: Apple’s pages is another valuable resource for creating white papers, ebooks, et cetera. You can export to .Doc, PDF, and even .Epub (the universal Ebook format) meaning that you can create a document and have it ready to be sold on Amazon in minutes. Pages also has a wide variety of nice templates that help to make for a nice layout for any document. Charts and graphs are easy to make, look great, and screenshots of them work well in blog posts. Everything is manipulable by drag and drop. It’s excellent, and it’s only $20 which is a small price to pay.
  10. Google Drive: I rest really easily knowing that any post I write, or image I save is backed safely up in the cloud, and Google drive is really good at that. It’s also nice to be able to edit a document from anywhere and have it up-to-date and ready to publish wherever you end up.

Also Read Our List of 34 Great Blogging Resources and Tools

There are a lot of good apps out there for blogging and writing, and I’d love to find out some other good ones from you. What do you use in your blogging? How many of the above do you use?

 

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Filed Under: app, app review, app store, apple, Blogging, help, how to, ibooks, Link Post, list, mac, new media, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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