All You Need to Know about Your iPhone and iPod Touch. News, Tips, Tricks and, the Best and Funnest Applications

Here is a short list of the tips and tricks you might find useful when surfing the web with mobile Safari. Some of these weren’t that obvious to me, so I thought I should share them with you.

• Rotate the iPhone by 90 degrees to surf in landscape mode.
• Double tap on a column zooms that column in for better reading. Double tap anywhere on the screen to zoom out again.
• A tap on the status bar (where the carrier, time and, battery information is shown) propels you right to the top of the current web page. This actually works in some other applications as well.
• Tap and hold down the finger on a picture to save that picture into the camera roll of the Photo application.
• You can sync the bookmarks between mobile Safari and your Safari installation on your desktop computer.
• When you are entering URLs you can omit the www. part of the address.
• When entering URLs into the address field you can use the top level domain shortcut I described in The Advantages of a Virtual Keyboard.
• A little lock icon on the left of the address bar shows you whether you are using a secure https connection. This is useful, because normally you will not see the scheme name (http, https, etc.) of the URL.
• Sometimes you want to see where a URL is pointing to before opening it. Tap and hold down the finger on the URL for a second. A little bubble will show you the link’s name and destination.

That’s all that comes to my mind when I think about how to best use mobile Safari. Have I forgotten some useful tips and tricks? Leave a comment to share your secret power tips with us.

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With software update 2.2 it is now possible to turn auto-correction on or off. I think this has been the second most often requested feature right behind cut and paste, which was by far the most often requested one. You can find the auto-correction switch in the settings application under General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction.

Another feature which might be useful to you is the “.” shortcut. If switched on, you can tap the space bar twice to enter a period followed by a space character. The switch can be found in Settings > General > Keyboard > “.” Shortcut.

Have you noticed the little globe key to the left of the space bar in the keyboard screen shots? You can choose from different international keyboards in the settings application under General > Keyboard > International Keyboards. For example, when you need to write emails in different languages this is a convenient method to switch between different keyboards and languages. Just press the globe to switch to the next configured language. This will not only change the keyboard layout, but also the auto-correction dictionary. When you have pressed the globe, the language you have switched to is displayed on the space bar for about one second. For me, switching between different keyboards comes in handy when I want to write emails to my Spanish speaking friends.

One feature I wasn’t aware of before I read about it this week is the capability to hit the shift key twice to switch to caps-lock mode. You also need to enable this feature in the settings application under General > Keyboard > Enable Caps Lock. You might want to use this feature if you need to yell at your COLLEAGUES, when writing them an email.

If you need to enter special letters like German umlaute (ü, ö, ä) or the Spanish letter eñe (ñ) just tap the underlying key and hold it for a short period. You will notice that a contextual menu appears where you can choose the special letter from. This also works when entering email addresses or URLs, as depicted in the screen shot.

Last but not least, here is one of my favourite keyboard tricks. You can enter characters by swiping on the keyboard. This is helpful when you need to enter passwords which are often a combination of letters, digits and special characters. For example, you can enter a digit by tapping on the 123 key and then swiping to the number key you want to enter. When you have entered the number just release the key and you will notice that the keyboard switches back to the mode for entering characters again.

Now, try these tricks with a device which has a real physical keyboard.

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Did you know that the iPhone has a built-in scientific calculator? Just open the calculator and rotate your iPhone by 90 degrees into landscape perspective. You will see that your plain old calculator application has much more to offer. Just explore it and feel the difference.

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Do you know Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret? Actually it is quite simple. Suppose you have a life goal, but have not got there because the goal seems insurmountable. The life goals may be something like I want to run a marathon once in my lifetime, or I want to give up smoking. There is a simple method to reach your goal: write it down and then make sure you take one little step each day in your goal’s direction. If you want to have success in anything, you must ensure to take action every day. For example, to quit smoking is easy: but just avoid the next cigarette. Take baby steps.

This is exactly what GoalKeep is good for. Define your goal by writing it down and then check off each day whether you did something to reach your goal. After a few days you will see a chain of check marks in GoalKeep’s calendar view. You will be proud of yourself and this will give you the motivation not to break that chain.

I know this may sound a bit theatrical, but I think this little app really has the power to change your life. In the last weeks I succeeded in remaining a vegetarian. Moreover, I am exercising every day and formed other habits which seemed important to me. Though it is really too early to tell whether the success is sustainable, I wholeheartedly recommend this little app to you. It is well worth its price.

Here is how I use it.

• I open GoalKeep each morning and go through my life goals and plan the actions I want to take that particular day. This encourages me to go after my goals.
• Throughout the day I take my baby steps I planned in the morning.
• At the end of the day I add a little check mark to the chain.

As the app description states, it is really a great motivator to have a visual feedback and see what you have done in the past to reach your goals. 

And remember, don’t break the chain.

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With 2.1 it was cumbersome to keep all of your apps up to date. In 2.2 Apple brings back the Update All button, which does what it indicates. No more jumping between App Store and Home screen will be necessary. You will also find that with 2.2 the applications get updated right where they are on your Home screen.

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Although only about 0.79 (74 / 10,000 * 100 = 0.79) per cent of all App Store applications are installed on my iPhone, it got crowded: five pages filled with 74 icons. If you need to get from your last installed application to the very first, that means a lot of swiping. But Apple made the Home button even more intelligent with 2.2. When you are on one of your Home screens (where your application icons are) a press of the Home button will propel you right to the first Home screen. Maybe this will convince you to finally upgrade.

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When you were writing SMS with more than four lines on the iPhone you might have noticed a little problem. With firmware versions 2.0 and 2.1 it was impossible to scroll up to the beginning of the message. This is fixed in version 2.2. Maybe this will convince you to finally upgrade.

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