Escape From The Comics World With ComiXcape

ComiXcape is based on a story of a little boy who is keen on comics and is incomparably good at sling shooting. His love of comics is so strong that when not in trouble, all he does is to drink in each drawing story! Once being punished for his pranks, the boy gets obsessed with comics and turns into its character.

With ComiXcape you’re able to follow him and experience unbelievable adventures in the fictional world of comics. This marvelous tour takes you through four countries and three continents, and with different challenges to put up with, you get a final prize – a ticket for the next destination full of new quests! While travelling from one country to another and proving your shooting skills, you’ll have to get the little boy out of the troubles whenever he gets in one and help him get back to the real world. Whether you’re able to do it or not will be unveiled once you’ve played all the levels!

ComiXcape enables you to make your own target by uploading a picture of a friend, or more logically someone you don’t like, and use it as a target while demonstrating your shooting skills. You can then share the photo on Facebook and let your friends know how you shot them!

The “info” (i) option is available from the menu between the levels, providing a few short, curious and interesting facts about each country visited. This means that besides having fun, you enlarge your knowledge as well.

ComiXcape is available in the games category in Apple App Store  for only $0.99. The game is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires iOS 4.0 or later to be fully functional. What are you waiting for? Go get ComiXcape, prove your sling shooting skills and have fun in escaping from the world of comics!

Some Tips You Need For Better Photography

Even the Apple’s favorite application  is connected to photography . Probably that is enough to be an iPhone camera-lover and even be obsessed with capturing images on your mobile. However iPhone camera is improving from generation to generation.  Thanks to its small, portable, and discreet form, iPhone is now the most popular camera in the world, you are lucky if you got one. That is why you should not miss the chance to document your daily life and keep connected to the practice of photography.

Here are some tips which will help you to improve your shooting style, effectiveness and efficiency.

First of all, you need maximum image quality, so go to Settings and adjust it.

Then discover your go-to shooting application and keep it on your home screen. Great moments are unrepeatable, that is why you need quick access on it.

You need to get comfortable shooting with one hand because sometimes you have to “work” extremely.

Did you know if you tap on different areas of the screen, you will be able to set up lighting and exposure effects?

You can work wonders with some applications! So try your images to be well composed, think creatively while shooting.

But not every application meets all your creative needs. Though, you can create your own style with testing multiple applications.

Capturing patterns and textures is not insane at all because you can use them later as layers in various applications.

You should back up your photos often and keep applications up to date.

As the matter of the fact taking photos and editing them in applications is taxing on the battery, always keep a charger or battery pack handy.

Apple’s New Strategy for Selling Its Handsets in Hong Kong

As we all know, after an incident at the Apple store in Beijing, selling of iPhone4S has stopped in China. But the company has turned to a new, safer tactic to sell its most wanted device. The new system do not allows reserving an iPhone without inputting full credentials, including government photo ID matching the name and ID number. This is meant for keeping out scalpers who use bots to snag up phones in the reservation system.

If you want to buy an Apple Phone in Hong Kong, you need to enter your information on newly set up page on the Hong Kong Apple online store site and enter a lottery. You have only three hours to put in for a phone, between 9am - 12pm. If you are a lucky one, Apple will email you by 9pm that evening, letting you know instructions on pick up your handset the following day. When a “winner” goes to the store, one needs to show the marching ID. 

Sure, it is a very strict system not to be allowed to walk in and buy the phone, but violence from people who attacked the store in the releasing day of iPhone4S, was stricter. 

The new reservation system is only for shoppers in Hong Kong, it is unknown yet whether Apple rolls this out across the country.

Add/Remove Individual Calendars from Google Sync

Probably you have a lot of different calendars arranged in your Google Calendar and wonder how to manage which calendars display across the different devices you sync to. Google has provided an easy and straight-forward way of doing this if you are set up through Exchange ActiveSync. It is as simple to do, as following the steps below.

Setup Google Sync on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch; go into Safari and point it to m.google.com/sync in order to manage your devices.

Then you have to select your desired device. If you have ever synced other devices, you will see them all displayed with a time-stamp of your last sync.

After you tap the device you would like to manage, you will have an opportunity to select any calendar you want synced to your device. If you want your device not to be synced with any calendar, you can de-select them as well.

Tap ‘Save’ and you will be taken back to your device selection. Then open up your calendar application and allow it a moment to sync up your new calendars. If you tap ‘Calendar’ at the top-left, you will be able to see a list of all calendars and verify that only the specific calendars you selected have been synced.

Now you have full control over your mobile calendar! Enjoy!

Treadmill Desk Plans

I've been promising this for a while. I apologize for the delay, but it's been a hectic month and I wanted to write up instructions that were easy to follow. I also wanted to make sure my desk continued to be sturdy and usable before writing it up. Finally, I'm ready, and this post will detail how I built the treadmill desk I've been blogging and tweeting about for the last month.

I've been using this desk for a little over a month now. Since December 21st to be exact. Despite Christmas (and multiple Christmas parties), New Year's Eve, socializing and drinking after the New York City Tech Talks, and a family vacation, I've still managed to lose 23 pounds, and I've done it just by going to work. To say I'm happy about how this is working out would be an understatement. I still have quite a bit more weight to lose, but it all seems very doable now.

Before you decide to build a desk like mine, there are a few things to consider. First, the reason I built one rather than buying one is because my rig is much heavier than the typical one. I have a Mac Pro with two 27" ACD monitors and a large number of peripherals. If you work with a lighter setup, like a laptop plus monitor, or an iMac, then you might want to consider buying a pre-made treadmill desk. Building the desk won't save you a significant amount of money and it will take a fair bit of your time. Plus, it requires you to already have a number of tools. Plan to spend at least a full day building this. For me, it was closer to three, but that's because I had to experiment a lot to come up with a design that was sturdy enough to make me feel comfortable putting 200+ pounds of expensive kit on it.

A company called LifeSpan makes a treadmill desk that looks sturdy and may be a better option for many of you. It's not cheap, but when you factor in your time, it's probably not much more expensive than buying a treadmill and building a desk according to these plans. I would have bought one if I had been confident I could buy one that would work with my setup.

Also, before committing to a full treadmill desk, you can setup a makeshift desk for considerably less money in order to try it out and make sure it's going to work for you. I didn't have any problem adjusting to walking while working, but building a treadmill desk is a significant investment of time and money, so you might want to make sure it's going to work for you before investing.

Finally, make sure you go slow when you start and that you get good shoes that fit you well. Here's another tip: Definitely consider getting some underwear designed for exercising. Though this isn't really exercise, it is a lot of movement over the course of the day and something like Under Armour instead of regular cotton underwear can save you some definite pain and suffering.

When I first started, I was averaging about 1.3 miles per hour and was spending between three and four hours a day on the treadmill desk, then working from my laptop the rest of the day. I could have handled walking faster, but I kept my speed slow so I could adjust to typing and mousing while walking. The point of the treadmill desk isn't to work up a sweat (though you may if your office is warm), but to be in constant motion. Long and slow is better than fast and short.

I find I tend to increase my speed and/or time each Monday. After taking a day or two of rest, I come back able to walk longer and/or faster. After 5 weeks, I'm now averaging about 2.2 miles per hour for about six hours per day, which equates to about 1500 calories burned per work day. I don't think I'll increase my speed any more, as my ability to mouse precisely seems to degrade when I hit 2.3 or 2.4 miles per hours (I might be able to go a bit higher using the trackpad, though, which seems less impacted). I do plan to keep increasing my time on the treadmill until I'm spending every working hour on it.

So, if you're still with me and still intent on building your own heavy-duty treadmill desk, let's start.

Note that this desk is designed to be used with this treadmill, so if you're planning to use a different model, some adjustments might be needed. This treadmill is designed just for walking, is shorter than most treadmills, and has the speed and other controls on the handle in addition to the console, which is important because the console will be hard to reach while using the desk unless you disassemble it.

Last thing before we begin: I'm providing the information on what I did. It's your responsibility to make sure the desk you build is sturdy enough for your gear and to make sure you're taking necessary safety precautions while building it. While you don't need to be an expert carpenter to build this desk (I'm certainly not), you do need to know how to use a variety of different tools and to use them safely.

Tools List

• Table saw or circular saw
• Saber saw, or jigsaw
• Drill with ¼" bit and 1" bit
• Phillips head screw bit for drill or electric or manual Phillips head screwdriver
• Swage tool for ⅛" wire rope crimping sleeves, or alternatively a hammer and anvil or heavy-duty pliers (but a swage tool like this one will make your life easier)
• Heavy duty cutters capable of cutting ⅛" wire rope
• Palm router, router (the power tool, not the networking device), or router table with ½" or ¾" rounding bit (optional)
• Respirator (for sanding and for applying paint, lacquer, and/or polyurethane)
• Safety goggles or glasses (no, really)
• Rotary sander, mouse sander, or lots of elbow grease
• Sawhorse or cinder blocks to put wood on while cutting, sanding, and painting it
• Level
• Ruler or measuring tape
• T or L Square

Parts List

• 8 - equal lengths of 1¼" diameter galvanized steel threaded pipe (20"-24" see pre-build instructions to calculate length)
• 2 - equal lengths of 1¼" diameter galvanized steel threaded pipe (20")
• 8 - 1¼" diameter galvanized steel flanges
• 4 - 1¼" diameter galvanized steel T-couplings
• 4 - 5" long threaded pipe nipples (1" diameter galvanized steel)
• 8 - 1" diameter galvanized steel flanges
• 1 - 10' length (or longer) ⅛" wire rope
• 48 - ¼" (#20) wood screws (½" long)
• 6 - crimping sleeves for ⅛" wire rope (actually, get a few extra, they're cheap)
• 3 - ¼" eye-eye turnbuckles (not eye-hook or hook-hook)
• 2 - 1¼" thick wood boards, 24" x 48" (if you are getting them custom cut instead of using stock pieces, get one 24" x 48" and the other 18" x 38" instead)
• Wood stain or paint, shellack, polyurethane - depending on how you want to treat the wood. I went with black gloss paint followed by a coat of shellack, followed by a coat of polyurethane, (optional - even just plain wood will work and I won't be giving detailed instructions on how to paint or polyurethane)

Pre-Build Instructions

Determine the pipe lengths for the 8 equal length threaded pipes. Threaded pipe comes in standard pipe lengths (24" is one of the standards), but most hardware chains (in the US at least) along with most plumbing supply shops will cut pipes to length and thread them. It is important that you get your desk the right height, otherwise it will be uncomfortable. I'm 6'3, and I used 24" lengths, which is comfortable for me, but if it were any higher, it would not be. If I were building it again, I'd probably use 23½" lengths. Unfortunately, because of the treadmill's arms, if you go less than 20" on these supports, you may have problems. If you're short enough that this will be a problem, you may need to look at a different treadmill model. You can accommodate a slightly shorter desk by moving the desk back from the treadmill console a bit, but if you move it back too far, you'll run out of room to walk.

Keep in mind, as you're calculating the lengths, that reducing the pipe length by one inch will reduce the desk height by two inches. If you're unsure about what lengths to use, your best bet is to stand on your treadmill, put your arms out as if you were typing, and measure the distance from the ground (and make sure that position is above the arms of the treadmill).

The completed desk height will be approximately equal to (2 * pipe length) + 6". The flanges, desk surface, and T-coupling contribute to the height and amount to approximately 6" in height.

Threaded pipes don't all screw together to exactly the same point, so the height will vary a small amount, and you may need to adjust the height of some legs by adjusting the flange tightness or using shims to get the desk exactly level.

Build Instructions

1. Take one of the two wood boards to serve as the desk surface (if using custom cut pieces, this will be the larger piece).
1. Using the 1" drill bit, drill two holes Using the diagram at the end of this blog post as a guide. These holes will be used for attaching guy wires.
2. Again, using the diagram at the end of the post as a guide, cut out a 24" x 6" notch at the back (the same side of the desk that you cut the holes for the guy wire) using a jigsaw or sabersaw. This notch will be for the treadmill console panel and to make sure you have enough tread in front of the desk to walk comfortably.
3. (Optional) Using a router with a ½" or ¾" self-guided rounding bit, bullnose the desk edges to get rid of the sharp edges and corners. This is optional, but it makes the desk look nicer and decreases your chances of a deep forehead gash should you ever stumble while walking. You can, of course, use more decorative edge treatments if you are so inclined, but a simple bullnose looks nice, is less deadly, and won't accumulate dust, crumbs and other detritus of your workday the way some of the more ornate edge treatments will.
4. Sand the surface and edges of the desk very, very well, starting with a medium grit and working up to a finishing grit. When done, you should be able to run your palm over the entire surface area without feeling any grit or imperfections or getting slivers . A circular or mouse sander will make your life much easier.
5. Paint or stain the surface to your tastes, making sure to let it dry completely. If you choose to shellack and/or polyurethane, you'll want to let it dry for 48 hours after the final coat before assembling your desk (even if the instructions say you need less time - trust me on this one).
2. Take the other piece of wood.
1. If you didn't get the pieces custom cut, cut the second piece down to 18" x 38". This will be the riser for your monitors.
2. Repeat sub-steps 3, 4, and 5 that you did on the larger piece of wood on this piece of wood (in other words, do the same edge treatment, if any, then sand and paint or stain just like you did with the other piece)
3. Assemble the legs. The following instructions need to be done twice, one for each pair of legs. From here on, you'll want to assemble the desk where you want it to go. Once assembled, it will be very, very heavy and difficult to move. Please note: pipe threads, especially if you had the pipes custom cut, will potentially be very sharp. Be careful. I learned this the hard way; learn from my mistake and save yourself some pain and blood loss.
1. Take two of the eight equal length pipes and screw them into opposite sides of a T-coupling. When done, you should have one long, straight piece with a perpendicular opening for another pipe to be attached. Make sure you have tightened them as tightly as you can.
2. Screw a flange onto each end of the connected pipes. Screw until they're tight, but don't go too tight - you can unscrew the flanges to make minor height adjustments for leveling.
3. Repeat the previous two step to create a second identical piece
4. Take one of the two 20" lengths of pipe and screw it into the remaining socket on the T-coupling of one of the pieces you just constructed. You should now have a very big, very heavy "T". Set this aside for a moment.
5. Attach the other assembled piece to the other end of the 20" pipe to create an even bigger, even heavier "H". Make sure all pipes are tightly screwed in and aligned
6. You've just completed the supports for one half of the desk
4. Once the paint, stain, or other treatment on the wood is fully dry (48 hours… really!), take the larger piece of wood and put it top down on the floor so the bottom is facing up. You're going to screw in both leg pairs (the Hs you built out of pipe) into the wood using the flanges and wood scres. You want them just far enough apart for the treadmill to fit between them. Measure the treadmill width to determine the distance. I used the actual treadmill width plus one inch. Once positioned, secure the legs tightly to the bottom of the desk surface using 16 wood screws.
5. Attach the guy wires
1. Cut two lengths of wire rope. Take one length, loop it around one rear leg just below the T-coupling (the rear leg is the one on the same side of the wood as the notch and holes) and secure it with a crimping sleeve. Make sure you really crimp hard to make sure the wire rope can't slip out when you tighten the turnbuckles later.
2. Repeat the last step with the other piece of wire rope on the other rear leg.
3. Take one turnbuckle and unscrew it as far as you can without it coming apart.
4. Loop one of the two wire ropes you connected to the legs through the turnbuckle and crimp with a crimping sleeve.
   
5. Repeat with the other wire, attaching it to the other end of the turnbuckle and making it as snug as you can. Now, you should have a wire that stretches from one rear leg to the other, but is probably not too tight and may even sag a little.
6. Tighten the turnbuckle until just barely snug. DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN. This guy wire provides inward lateral support. Until we have balanced it with outward pulling guy wires, tightening can actually harm the stability of the desk and rip out the wood screws securing the leg. Err on the side of under-tightening at this stage.
7. Repeat the steps above, this time running a wire from the cross support near the rear leg to the hole in the corner of the desk, again, tightening the turnbuckle until just snug.
8. Repeat the previous step for the other rear leg.
9. You now have wires pulling both inward and outward, so you can alternate tightening turnbuckles until the wires are good and tight. Don't tighten any turnbuckle more than two full turns without turning the others. Stop when the wires are taught. The inward guy is much stronger than the outward ones because it pulls straight, so once you've got the guys taut, you probably want to match a single turn of the turnbuckle on the inward guy turnbuckle with a turn and a half of the outward.
6. It's time to stand your desk up. You might want help from a second person while doing this, as the desk will be very heavy, and you don't want to put too much pressure on the legs while lifting. Once the desk is stood up, it's time to check to make sure the desk is sturdy enough for your kit. If all went well, there should be very little lateral play and none forward and back. There will be a small amount of side-to-side play, but it shouldn't wobble, it should move no more than maybe a half inch and should come immediately back to its original position. It should feel sturdy. If not, play with the turnbuckles, or consider adding more guys. An additional set of guys that run from the bottom of the rear legs should give additional stability, though I didn't need to on mine. Make sure to add inward pulling guys only to the rear legs. Adding them to the front legs will interfere with your ability to walk on the treadmill.
7. Take the four pipe nipples and the eight 1" flanges. Attach a flange to each end of each of the pipe nipples. These will form the supports for the monitor stand.
8. Position the four supports on the desk. There are two approaches you can take here. The obvious one is to center the supports and monitor riser. If you're not using a Mac Pro, this is probably the best bet. If, however, your setup contains a Mac Pro (or other large tower computers), you're probably going to want to offset the riser to one side or the other. The Mac Pro is 9" wide, so you need at least that much space from one end of the riser to the edge of the desk. I have my Mac Pro on the left, so the riser is off-center to the right leaving a little more than 9" on the right side of the desk. Place the riser on top of the supports and adjust until the configuration works for you, then use the remaining wood screws to screw the riser supports into the desk and the riser. You may need a short screwdriver or a screwdriver with a 90° bend to tighten all of the screws, as the 5" pipes don't leave a lot of room between the two boards.

Guess What? That's it. Position the treadmill if you haven't already, and you're ready to go.

Here's the desk diagram showing the placement of the console notch and the two holes for guy wires.


Here's a better view of the "H" legs and guy wires. Please excuse the mess. I can't currently get behind the treadmill desk to clean it, and haven't had the gumption to relocate it yet.


Here's a picture of the desk and riser. Notice how my riser is off-center to make room for the Mac Pro:

Promote Your Free Apps On iPhone Blog For FREE!

Dear iOS App Developers, here is an important announcement for you: we give you a chance to get a free review on Apple iPhone Blog every week! The promotion concerns to FREE apps only and starts on Monday, January 30th! 

Please follow these easy steps to get started:

1. Go to our Facebook Fan Page  and submit your app by placing your app’s iTunes link in the comments in Free App Promotion Tab. 

2. Invite your friends and associates to vote for your app!

All the apps are inserted in Poll options as soon as they’re submitted by you. Everyone is then allowed to vote for the app they’d like to be reviewed. The app that gains the majority of the votes by the next Monday will be reviewed on our blog exclusively for FREE, meaning that you reach 1500-2000 target users in less than a day! Your App links are inserted, promising approx. 200 downloads within the first 48 hours!

Once the winner app is announced and gets the free review, it is removed from the poll options, while other apps continue to compete to become next week’s winners, with their votes kept! The promotion never ends, so you will definitely become a winner one day! 

Do not miss your chance, submit your app now  and start voting for it on Monday!

Winning Tips:

• The earlier you submit your app, the more votes you are able to gain. 
• You can share the poll among your friends and ask them to vote for you.

We will notify you when the poll goes live. Wish you all luck and thank you for supporting Apple iPhone Blog!

Apple’s First Quarter Results Are Unbelievable in Every Area

Apple has an amazing success in first quarter, ended on December 31. Can you imagine 110 million people went to an Apple store in during the period of time?  That means approximately 22.000 customers per Apple store per week. 

But the most important thing is quantity of sold items. It is worth mentioning that iPhone sales have increased, as the company has sold 37.04 million gadgets which is 128% jump over the comparable quarter in 2010; as for iPad (15.4 million) and Mac (5.2 million), their sales beat estimates as well. Consider Apple has not been able to produce as many iPhone 4Ss as it would have liked and it was not even able to sell the phone in China. 

Though, Apple stores are not all where the company hits their record-breaking sales figures. It has 13.000 points of sale in the world for the iPhone, including Think big box electronics retailers, carrier stores, and the like.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said: “We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs, Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash on hand. Revenues from iTunes hit $1.7 billion. More than 140 million applications and pieces of content were downloaded on Dec. 25. iCloud has 85 million users. There are now 550,000 apps available. Developers of such apps have earned more than $4 billion, $700 million in Q1.

(Summary of Apple Applications 2011).

Analysts wondering: if everything went Apple’s way, what would the quarter have looked like? And when will this amazing growth spurt end if none of those problems can lay the company low? How do you think?

One More SIRI Hacking

Hackers are continuing working on SIRI and they are discovering something new in it everyday. 

As for now, we meet with Lingual - a new jailbreak-only tweak, from Code Themed team, that allows translation from English to 30+ languages. The developers hope to include translation to English in a future update. We have not installed the tweak, but some people have reported that they have tested it and it works flawlessly, quickly pulling in results using Microsoft’s Bring Translate API as a backend. Its only limitation is that backend is not strong enough and sometimes fails to correctly translate phrases. But it is said that developers of Lingual cannot be held accountable for Bing’s shortcomings and they have done an important work in such a short period of time. This could prove a useful tool at your disposal.

To use the tweak say to SIRI: “translate [something] to [language]” or “what is [something] in [language]?” No icon will be added to your home screen and no settings are available for the tweak. Just install and talk to SIRI.

One More SIRI Trick

We are continuing to collect useful information about SIRI  and SIRI is continuing to surprise us. 

Today’s trick is about how to quickly access birthdays with SIRI.  Rhythm of life is tiring and routine that is why sometimes we forget very important things, e.g. birthdays.  But an amazing feature of your phone   is here to help you. You will not have to worry, fake a distraction, jump out the window, race to the car, etc. just because you forgot special someone’s special day. Just make sure you have the birthday recorder in your calendar in your iPhone4S , all the remaining will be done by SIRI. 

You just need to hold down the Home button until SIRI  pops up; then ask SIRI “When is […’s] birthday?” consider you can also ask your own birthday, e.g. “when is my birthday?” or ask the question with proper names. You can include even relationships, for example “When is my wife’s birthday?”, provided they have been added to the contact. After you ask the question wait for SIRI to answer.

Now you can be an inattentive as never before. Just do not forget to ask SIRI  the question permanently. 

Wow.

Just… wow. Those are crazy numbers any way you cut it.

Calendarium App Review

Meet another winner of our Holiday Promotion – Calendarium! A new, easy to use calendar that makes each of your day special!

Helping you to discover many interesting things about every day of the year, with Calendarium you never get bored. The app suggests a new way to combine calendar of historical events with times of sunrise/sunset, number of week, day, day length, moon phase and more!

Available in the reference category in the Apple App Store, you can grab Calendarium for only $0.99! The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requires iOS 4.0 or later to be fully functional. 

Calendarium features English and Polish languages and the current version available is 1.1, with the latest update bringing option to share events by twitter, as it supports Twitter for iOS5 and all the bugs are fixed.

With Calendarium you learn about the events that took place in the past that day. The detailed information about the hours of sunrise and sunset, moon phase and day length can also be found. 

Here is the list of app features:

• Discover historical events and holidays and share it with your friends via mail, SMS or twitter;

• Sunrise and sunset time;

• Week number, day number, weekday and year;

• Number of days passed from 1 Jan and days left to 31 Dec;

• Moon phases;

• Day length;

• Geographic coordinates;

• No Internet connection required;

• Also in Polish.

Meet The Winner - The Quiz

Remember our Holiday Promotion on Facebook? The polls are over today, with the winners announced! Since the very first day of the promotion, The Quiz has been an unconditional leader, managing to uphold the top position till the last day in FREE apps! So here is what the app is all about:

Have you ever experienced that awkward moment, when you feel just stupid, as you find out you have no answer to some general or common sense questions? The Quiz is just that…

Found in Games category in the Apple App Store , this free app has been rated 4 stars out of five. The free version features "Big 20" quiz with only 200 questions, but other more than 3000 questions are also available in other three In-App Purchases, covering all categories and ensuring great time with truly testing your knowledge! The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires iOS 4.2 or later to be fully functional.

All the four different quiz formats (one free and the rest three costing $0.99) sum up in various scoring systems, helping you to rank higher in the Game Center Leaderboard, as your final result is calculated by the a sum of correct answers of all quizzes!

Top In-App Purchases of The Quiz include three different types of challenges, containing:

• Survival- you have a minute to answer the questions and 3 “lives” that earns additional seconds to your time due;

• Take a Risk Competition- with 20 questions to answer, each of which may double your score or make you lose;

• Three Minutes – with no time limit for each question, you score as much, as many questions you manage to answer correctly.

The Quiz features very well written English questions, nice UI and bizarre quiz layouts, making the app a great one to try with your family or friends to find out who is smarter. 

And some good news for those who already own the app – the update is going to be rolled quite soon, making this fantastic app even better! Also note that hundreds of new questions are being added on monthly bases, so keep up tracking to maintain your positions while competing with others!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the iBooks Author EULA

I've been debating whether to post about the iBooks Author EULA or not. In general, I've been trying to avoid hotly debated and controversial subjects here for the simple fact that those discussions tend to eat up a lot of time and often aren't very productive. My opinion on iBooks Author and iBooks 2 is fairly close to some other authors I know. Because this is something that's near and dear to my heart, however, I figure it's worth a few words. And with me, a few words is usually more than a few.

There's been a lot of foofooraw since the iBooks 2 announcement last week. There's been all sorts of stories, tweets, and blog posts about how Apple is going to "steal your work" if you use iBooks Author. There's also been the all-too-familiar refrains of just how evil Apple is. It all seems vaguely familiar. Almost like… almost like we've been here before, what with all the people gnashing their teeth, rending their clothes, and complaining to the heavens about how evil Apple is because of the developer agreement app store guidelines iBooks 2 EULA.

There's also been a lot of complaints about the fact that Apple is using a proprietary format rather than using and extending ePub 3.

None of this bothers me terribly. Oh, it's not that there aren't things I would want different if I were King of the World, but the reality is that deciding whether to use iBooks Author is just another business decision for me. Emotional outcries and hyperbole are all well and good, but they don't change the parameters of the decision. Business decisions inherently involve risk, and the risk here is at a level that I'm perfectly comfortable with.

Before I explain why, though, I want to put up front that I'm not a lawyer. Well, that's not technically true, but I'm not a practicing lawyer and I'm not YOUR lawyer, so don't take anything I say as legal advice. I'm just explaining why I'm not concerned. If you have concerns, you should take those concerns to your lawyer before making up your mind.

The EULA

Make no mistake, the iBooks 2 EULA is poorly written and vague. The mere fact that people are up in arms is testament to that fact. And if the ambiguity that is there bothers you, don't use it. There are plenty of tools for creating eBooks, so if you think the risk of Apple "stealing" your work is too high, using another tool solves the problem.

There are several reasons why I'm perfectly comfortable with  the risk involved. In no particular order, those reasons are:

• It's simply not in Apple's long-term interest to take ownership of authors' books and Apple can almost always be relied upon to do what's in their own long-term best interest. Getting 30% of every iBook sale means they are motivated to keep authors happy. More than that, though, they need authors to want to write for this new platform in order to establish it as the dominant interactive next-generation eBook platform. Stealing books won't get them to that goal. Suing authors who publish non-interactive versions of their content for other platforms like the Kindle or ePub won't either.
• Although the wording is certainly vague enough that you could argue more than one interpretation, the capitalization of "Work" in the EULA (meaning it has a specific contractual meaning) combined with the verbiage, "Work you create with this software" implies that the intent is to restrict only the application-specific output. In other words, the most likely intent as I read it is to cover the proprietary file format used for the new features not supported by other existing eBook platforms.
• Even if that weren't the intent, from a purely evidentiary point of view, the other file formats that iBooks Author exports to are open, standard formats and it would be difficult for Apple to prove a particular non-interactive work was "generated" with iBooks Author even if they really did want to try and "steal our books". A PDF generated from iBooks Author would be nearly impossible to distinguish from one generated using Pages by simply copying and pasting the content from iBooks Author .
• The EULA contains the following phrase: Title and intellectual property rights in and to any content displayed by or accessed through the Apple Software belongs to the respective content owner. Basically, it explicitly states that the ownership of any content you create outside of the app and import into it is completely unaffected by any "book stealing" clause, even if such a thing existed. This seems to counter the notion that Apple is trying steal our intellectual property in the first place because unless the words and images were created directly in iBooks (as opposed to being imported from Pages, Word, Photoshop, etc.), Apple would have no claim to the content anyway. Their claim would be limited to the way the content is formatted. Again, from an evidentiary standpoint, it would be incredibly hard for Apple to prove you created the content in iBooks.
• The deal we're getting with iBooks Author isn't all that different from the deal we get when using Xcode as iOS developers, and the language of the agreements aren't all that different from each other either, and that's worked out pretty well so far.
• And last, but not least, the kicker: Let's say, for giggles, that "book stealing" was Apple's intent, and such an intent was found to be both legal and the actual intent of the contract, and Apple decided to exercise those rights to steal my books. You know what? Even with all that, it's still a hell of a lot better deal than I've ever gotten from a traditional publisher. Apple is offering 70% of the sale price to me. The most favorable contract I've ever gotten from a publisher starts at 12% of the net price the publisher gets from the distributor, wholesaler, or retailer (which is half or less of the retail price). That percentage does slowly escalate up to 20% if I sell a ton of books, but if I publish a new edition of an existing book, the escalators go back down to 12% and I have to start all over. To put this in more concrete terms, if I were to sell a book in the iBooks Store for $9.99, I would get $6.99 per book sold, which is about four times what I get when one of my current $39.99 books sells, and I'd get that money months sooner. Oh, and guess what? I don't own those books published through a traditional publisher, either. My publisher can even have someone else update the book and can continue to use my name to promote it, even if I don't like the revisions or think the update sucks.

You can go on about what Apple "might do" or "could do", but the fact is that contracts aren't magic. If Apple wanted to screw me, there's no doubt they could, with or without this language. They've got a disproportionate amount of power in this contractual relationship because they have the audience and the platform, and they also have a ton of money and lots of really, really good lawyers. If they came after me, the merits of the case would matter little because I couldn't afford to defend myself against them, anyway. That's a risk, sure, but based on my past dealings with Apple, them trying to use the legal system to screw me seems a very remote possibility, and I'm willing to accept that risk. The language of the contract does almost nothing to change the amount of risk here for me. It's little more than a red herring as far as I'm concerned.

ePub 3 vs. iBooks 2

Many people have suggested that Apple should have used the existing ePub 3 standard and worked with the standards body to extend it in whatever ways Apple needed it extended. Instead, they decided to create a proprietary file format using the older ePub 2 specification as a starting point. It is important to note, however, that Apple is not advertising this new format as being ePub; we only know it's based on ePub 2 because people have reverse engineered the generated .ibooks files.

Now, I'll be honest. In a perfect world, I'd prefer to see Apple using an open standard here. But, there isn't an existing open standard that does what Apple wanted to do, and working with a standards body to revise existing standards to meet their needs for a yet-to-be-released piece of software would have tipped their hand about the software they were developing. People would have known exactly what Apple was working on from the things they were requesting of the standards body, which would have given competitors an advantage and could have hurt Apple's negotiations with publishers. Apple's culture is steeped in secrecy, and many would argue that this secrecy has been a contributing factor to their repeated successes over the last decade. Anybody who follows the company and understands the way they work knows exactly why they made the choice that they did here. Was it the best choice for Apple? Only time will tell, but there are obvious reasons why they would think it might be.

It's also important to note that iBooks Author is completely and totally free. But really, nothing is free. TANSTAAFL. Developing both a platform to do what iBooks 2 can do and developing a tool to create content for that platform was not a trivial task and Apple almost certainly devoted a lot of resources to getting it done and to getting existing publishers on board. Apple doesn't write software to be nice, they write software to make money. In this case, they're not making money directly, but make no mistake, it was written to make Apple money. The fact that they are not letting people use this free product to compete with them, or to create works for competing platforms should surprise no one. We, as users, authors, and publishers might desire such a tool and might have all sorts of reasons why such a tool would be an awesome thing for us. But so what? I'd like a pink unicorn that farts money. That doesn't mean I should expect somebody else to find one and give it to me for free.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

Lastly, several people on Twitter have pointed out that Apple's move here seems frighteningly similar to what Microsoft did throughout the nineties with their infamous "embrace, extend, extinguish" campaign. There's definitely some uncomfortable similarities, but I'm not quite ready to put this in the same camp… yet.

First, iBooks is not the dominant eBook platform, so any suggestion of a monopoly would be silly. Amazon sells far more Kindle books than Apple sells iBooks, and there are other eBook platforms, including Barnes & Noble's Nook, Kobo, and Sony's eReader to name just a few of many. The very idea of embrace, extend, extinguish requires monopoly-like control of a market to be effective, which Apple doesn't remotely have here (yet). There's also been no evidence (yet) of an attempt to "extinguish" the open ePub standard, or to brand the proprietary extended version as the standard. iBooks still supports ePub, and until Apple moves to change that, we're missing the most important and deadly of the three Es, without which there's really no harm, no foul.

The Bottom Line

To quote the narrator in Peter Pan, "all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again." Many developers railed against the "unfair" restrictions of the iOS developer agreement, the inability to sell apps outside the App Store, and the review process. I'm sure there will be similar teeth-gnashing the next time Apple creates a new market or platform, or revises any of the agreements related to any of the existing ones.

And certainly, there have been bumps in the road, some of which are still around. But overall, iOS has proved to be a great platform for developers to be on. The number of iOS devices in the world now numbers in the hundreds of millions, and many of the owners of those devices have shown a willingness to pay for content, including apps, movies, and books. It's not the gold rush the mass media thought it was four years ago, but it has been fertile grounds providing a great many people with a living, including me.

It's not a perfect place, but personally, there's no other place I'd rather be. The fact that I can now do both of the things I do professionally (write apps and write books) on those same fertile grounds, excites me. The fact that I can do things while writing my books that simply weren't possible before excites me even more.

Absolutely, things could change in the future, but I'll worry about the future in the future if I need to. For now, I'm happy here and thrilled about the possibilities that iBooks 2 and iBooks Author represent.

Apple and Android Are Getting Closer Day By Day

Though Android is still the leader in mobile operating system race, after releasing of the iPhone 4S, the gap is getting smaller. 

According to a study from Nielsen which was conducted among 75,000 consumers over the age of 18, releasing of iPhone 4S had an enormous impact on consumer purchasing decisions. Among those who bought a new smartphone in December, 44.5% chose an iPhone, compared to just 25.1 percent in October.

Android continues to lead among all U.S. smartphone users with 46.3 percent, but it declined from 61.6 percent in October to 46.9 percent in December. As we all can see, Apple's phones’ growth is a great detriment for Android.

We should consider, that 46% of U.S. mobile consumers had smartphones as of December 2011, so in 2012, as more people buy a smartphone, the battle between the companies is set to get even hotter, however if Apple releases iPhone5… 

Apple In Education – Introducing Textbooks And iTunes U

At Apple's "Education Event" at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the company unveiled reinvented textbooks, calling them a "new textbook experience." The freshly introduced books are graphical, interactive, and take advantage of features such as 3D imaging, embedded video, and multi-touch gestures. The books will be available for the iPad users to download directly from the iBooks Store.

If you’re wondering how the publishers will manage to make those new iBook2 textbooks, here’s an answer for you: there will be a new Mac app rolling out, as Apple announced. The new assisting app will significantly facilitate to design and format these new interactive textbooks, allowing users to embed HTML, 3D objects, interactive image galleries, Q&A, and so on, and allow the creators to publish their work to Apple's iBookstore directly from the app! Moreover, the authors will be allowed to update the published books, in case there are some typos and other petty errors captured.

iBooks Author, allowing you to create dynamic, current, engrossing, and truly interactive e-books, is available for free in the Mac App Store for everyone who desires to become an early adopter!

Few of the iPad-based education program partners were also announced, including Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt —together making 90% of the textbooks currently available in the US! The companies mentioned will be filling the new "Textbooks" category in iBooks 2 with high-school level textbooks, and are piloting the new iBook Author app as well. Covering every subject level of study for high-school students, the textbooks will be available for $14.99 or less at launch – while the publishers will be able to set their own prices, but only in return for selling them exclusively through iBooks, so $14.99 appears to be the standard option by now.

The event was noteworthy for one more thing – iTunes U offering by Apple, for syncing your iBooks textbooks to your iPad. While Apple's Eddy Cue unveiled the new iTunes U app, designed to look a lot like iBooks 2, strictly a portal for accessing all types of educational materials, including a class syllabus, full course notes and videos, as well as iBooks notes. 

Apple has teamed up with some of the world's top universities such as Duke, Harvard and many more, suggesting them to offer course materials for the part-time students as well, including lecture videos, quizzes and so on. Furthermore, though iTunes U used to only be accessible for the University students and lecturers, Apple has now made the app accessible to K-12 school districts, universities, and colleges in 26 countries! 

However, there are two important things to note:

1. An iTunes Store account is required to access iTunes U course materials, so you should create an iTunes account first.

2. iBooks textbooks are readable only on iPad.

As a conclusion, it should be said that the era of heavy and dull textbooks is over! Although no iPad3 or iPhone5 was announced, the students now are still much luckier to have as strong and considerate supporter as Apple. Let us know your thoughts about iBooks Textbooks and iTunes U below in the comments! 

Save Your Time And Effort!

You can save time and effort entering common information like name, email, phone number and well used phrases with setting up shortcuts. Did you know iOS 5 has a special feature that allows you define a word or phrase to a key combination; the feature is called “Shortcuts.” It is very easy to set, just follow the steps below.

Go to settings, click on General, and click on Keyboard. You will see a predefined shortcut which is triggered by tipping omw; here you need to click on Add New Shortcut. Choose a username, email address or phrase you use a lot and type in. To trigger the shortcut, choose a letter combination. Just hit the Save button, now it is stored for future use, then you can add as many as you wish. When you are finished go to General, tap Keyboard and you will see there a list of your shortcuts.

As for Notes, open up an application that you can type into. Type in the shortcut one of your phrases; as you see here are the whole phrases open up in a bubble below.  If you hit the Space Bar, the whole phrase appears…

Is not this a good way not to waste your time and nerves?

By the way, if you want us to review some features of your iPhone, do not hesitate to let us in comments. 

iPhone 5 Concept Video

Although, it’s only 3 months passed after releasing  of iPhone 4S,  people are already waiting  for a new phone from Apple. Rumors  about the new phone are endless and they never calm down.  As we know, physical design of the iPhone 4S  and 4 is similar to each other, but iPhone5 is expected to be completely different. Though, until a keynote speech we can never be sure about the final product.

As for now, a mock-up video has been spread which depicts re-imagined iPhone by totally removing the Home button. Author of the video is a designer Kris Groen who has shown us his vision about the new generation of Apple phone, his own concept design.

The most different thing in “Groen’s iPhone” is that it does not have Home button. Author of the design replaced the button with two separate Home buttons on each side of the handset, located midway up. Groen, based on a user experience point of view, believes that ‘squeezing’ both of the new Home buttons together would take you directly back to your Springboard. The new buttons would also allow for fast application switching when used individually.

Another important change is screen size of the phone, which is increased to whopping 4-inches diagonally with Retina display. Some people want the iPhone to be bigger; others think the current model has perfect screen size because anything bigger will be uncomfortable, just like other smartphones.

What about you? How do you feel about the concept? After seeing the video below do not hesitate to let us in comments.

Sometimes Even Apple Loses

Patent war is not something new. Motorola vs. Apple is not new as well. As for now, patent war continues and it continues between Apple and Motorola again.

Three Apple patent infringements were set aside this week by the International Trade Commission, claiming against rival smart phone maker Motorola Mobility. The company which owns a vast mobile industry patent portfolio was accused by Apple of infringing three patents, including two that cover touch screen technology.

Though, Apple lost a ruling in its efforts to block imports of Motorola Mobility. A Motorola press release notes that the Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") in the US International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Motorola Mobility, finding no violation for any of the three Apple patents listed in Apple's suit. The ALJ found no violation for any of the three Apple patents listed in Apple's suit.

Motorola's senior vice president and general counsel said: "We are pleased with today's favorable outcome for Motorola Mobility. Motorola Mobility has worked hard over the years to develop technology and build an industry-leading intellectual property portfolio. We are proud to leverage this broad and deep portfolio to create differentiated innovations that enhance the user experience." 

Apple’s defeat at the hands of an International Trade Commission (ITC) this past week now stands on the record. Generally ITC rulings are important because it may impact the import/export of products into various countries. Although, they are so long-drawn-out, offending companies manage to modify their products to escape a sales ban.

Mess in China

As promised , selling of the iPhone 4S in China and in other countries has begun. No Apple product was launched without long lines and frustration but all the expectations have been exceeded now. Some fights were breaking out near the Apple’s “main store in Beijing” between the people who just wanted to buy the phone. Some of them waited overnight in the freezing cold (-9 degrees) to become the first to purchase the phone.  

The store was pelted with eggs too from a crowd of about 500 people. Reason of the action was that opening the store was delayed by at least an hour. Apple had advertised that the store would open at 7 a.m. and at 7.15 a.m. people began crying “Open the door!” and “Liars!” The conflict was significant enough to attract the attention of police; it temporarily cordoned off the shop. The company has become a victim of its own success...

Therefore Apple has decided to postpone the retail availability of its iPhone 4S at the stores in Beijing and Shanghai. People can get the device through Apple’s Web site or buy at China Unicom and other authorized resellers.

An Apple spokesman told: “The demand for iPhone 4S has been incredible, and our stores in China have already sold out. Unfortunately, we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being.”

Apple’s Invisible, Though Obvious Presence At CES

Although Apple, famous for blowing off CES each year, doesn’t exhibit at the event this time,  the show was far from free of its impact. The company has demonstrated that its attentiveness on a few well designed devices with a great user involvement and securely integrated ecosystem is a winning track! With this said; it seems that most corporations that belong to the same industry have just given up completely and begun a game of follow the leader!

The most explicit example of this was a slide displayed by Acer when showing off its new cloud service for photos.  The slide looked so similar to the Photo Stream slide from Apple’s iOS 5 announcement that it was absolute comical situation... The same offering with the same visualizations – so what’s the news?

Then there was the hyping of Samsung’s new Series 9 laptop, a very attractive and very compact sample of the engineering response to the Apple’s MacBook Air, with the emphasized features of “connectivity” and “user experience” – in which Apple undoubtedly outrivals…

On the other hand, Android head Matias Duarte announced a ‘style guide ‘for Android app developers, aiming to help them with “typography, color palettes, and other stylistic advice” extremely similarly to Human Interface Guidelines of Apple, guiding on how apps for iOS and OS X should easily work. 

The influence and leadership of Apple was obvious all over the show as the corporations from Nokia, to Samsung, Microsoft and even Intel, as it passed in the smartphone argument with a reference design and Lenovo collaboration... It definitely seems that all the companies try to live up to Apple standards, and do not even try to hide this...

Make your iPhone Case on Your Own

Now you can protect your iPhone with a nice case. The most important thing is that you can design it yourself! The case works with the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4.

At Consumer Electronic Show, attendees were able to build their iPhone cases using interlocking pieces. There was a little workshop station set up for people to build their cases on the spot. From canisters filled with different colored parts, people could pick and build the case for their dream colors. 

People, who were not able to attend the event, should not envy because they can create their dream cases outside Las Vegas. As the video below depicts, that is very simple, just like sliding the pieces together. You need four modular pieces to build your case, though it comes with six ones. That means you can re-design it as often as you wish. Be sure the four-parted case lets you access to all of your phone’s port. You can get parties of the case for $35.

Music Unlimited on Your iPhone

A cloud-based streaming music service will be available for Apple’s various devices. Expected date of releasing the free application is summer. At CES representatives said that the catalog of Music Unlimited already includes 15 million songs.

As the matter of the fact the Music Unlimited is Sony’s music service, we can assume that the company is ready to offer its vast content ecosystem to devices outside of its own. President of Sony Network Entertainment believes that cloud-based services are in an early stage of competition and Sony is getting its skin in the game. At Consumer Electronic Show he said: "You can be a Sony customer, but that doesn't mean every product you own comes from Sony. We have an opportunity to reach these customers, and show them the benefit of being a Sony customer." The president also noted that Music Unlimited has more than a million active subscribes, however the figure includes premium and trial members. 

Availability on Music Unlimited is increasing. It has accessibility in 13 countries around the world.

Relationship between Apple and T-Mobile

As the American carriers have begun selling Apple’s hit device, T-Mobile has been left out of the “game.” At the Consumer Electronics Show CEO of the company admitted today that the lack of the iPhones has hurt its ability to retain subscribes, particularly high-value-contract ones.

Last October, when the iPhone 4S  came to some carriers, expressing interest to Apple, T-Mobile posted a blog, saying it was Apple’s decision that they “still don’t have the iPhone.”

Chief technology officer of T-Mobile Neville Ray believes that the iPhone never made it to T-Mobile because of the unique band of spectrum (AWS), which it uses for its wireless network. That would have required extra work to ensure the iPhone ran correctly on the network. But the next chipset that Apple is going to use will overcome the hurdle. He claims that he has seen the roadmap of chipsets that Apple plans to use and it has that capability. Ray said: "The next chipset will support AWS; the challenge that existed in the past will go away." Though Apple can ignore that capability and not strike a deal with T-Mobile.

No matter T-Mobile get the iPhone or no, it is widely believed that the next version of the  Apple phone will run on LTE (Long Term Evolution) which is where the other major carriers are headed.

Availability On iPhone 4S Will Widen

After ten days of releasing iPhone 4S , 22 countries have been added to the list  of the countries where pre-orders were available for the phone. However demand on the phone continues even today because it is not available worldwide yet. As for now Apple has announced that in January-13 the phone will be making its way to China and other countries. As the matter of the fact the smartphone will be launched before the Chinese New Year (January 23rd), Chinese people will not have to think too much about presents for lovely people.

The phone will be sold through the Apple Online Store, Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. Pricing is not announced in local currencies, although it is listed as $199, $299 and $399, depends on flash memory unit - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models. Consider iPhone 3GS is free! A two year contract is required to obtain the phones from participating carriers .

The phone will be available in other countries as well. These countries are: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.

But China is the key market among those countries because the  addressable market in China for potential smartphone users, which includes iOS and Android, is 122 million! Besides, China is the second largest market  for application store downloads. Other important things connecting to the issue is Apple’s payment policy  in China and the company’s store in Shanghai . 

Availability on Apple’s products increases day by day…

Blog Files

As my inbox can well attest this morning, the web server that hosted most of my blog files is gone. I moved all the blog files over to Github, but forgot to post about the new repository.

Unfortunately, I just don't have time to go back and update all the old links, but every bit of code that I've posted that's now missing, can be found at GitHub.

Old code repository at GitHub.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Data Hungry iPhone 4S

Could you imagine that the iPhone 4S demands twice as much data as iPhone 4 and three times as much as iPhone 3G? A study, released in Jan-6 by U.K.-based telecom network technology firm Arieso, looked at data usage across a variety smartphones and connected devices. It claims that iPhone 4S users are the hungriest data consumers in iPhone family. 

The Arieso study, “Recent Smartphone Trends & the Extreme Data User” reveals a trend that each new device is more data hungry than the last. According to it, one thing is obvious - capacity issues plaguing mobile operators around the world will worsen in 2012.

The most significant change in users behavior has been catalyzed after introduction of the iPhone 4S. Its users download 2.76 times as much data as users of the iPhone 3G!

Author of the study Dr. Michael Flanagan commented: “The introduction of increasingly sophisticated devices, coupled with growing consumer demand, is creating unrelenting pressure on mobile networks. The capacity crunch is still a very real threat for mobile operators, and it looks set to only get harder in 2012 the mobile industry needs new investment and new approaches to boost network performance and manage the customer experience”.

Are you a little bit surprised/frustrated to know iPhone 4S consumes more than other models?

5 hidden tricks of iPhone you should know!

iOS has tons of hidden features that are not obvious at first glance. Things are layered in iPhones and you need some guide to know more about your phone. The tips below are not for them who are in touch with iOS, however the post will surely help newbies. If you do not think this is for you, you will probably know someone who the tips are for.

Meet the application switcher. If you have had an application open recently, instead of heading back to the home screen, you can re-open it with double tapping the home button! You can see your most recently opened applications on the first page or even view your application history with scrolling to the right.

Close the broken applications. Sometimes applications break and you need to reset your device to unfreeze them but that is a tiring action to do, is not it? Here is the solution. Go to the home screen, double tap the home button, find the icon for the application you need to close and hold your finger on it for a few seconds. After this, re-launch the application from the home screen and it will work freshly.

Application switcher again. The application switcher is a great detail of the phone, although it is hided. With its help you can switch, close, slice, dice applications. On your iPhone it also gives you an opportunity to lock your screen orientation and even control (pause/play/go back/skip) tracks in whatever application is currently playing music. 

To find it, double tap the home button and swipe to the right from the first page.

Find your notifications. Did you know that you can jump to any application that needs your attention? iOS keeps a list of your recent notifications. Just swipe down from the top of the display and bring down the notification drawer. There you will find your unread texts, messages that your applications have queued up and other configurable widgets like weather, stocks, etc. However you can adjust what shows up in this drawer in Settings > Notifications.

Access the camera quickly. We have all been in a situation when we missed the chance of taking a photo in unrepeatable moments. While we get the phone out of pocket, unlock it, go to the home screen, launch the camera application and wait for the camera to boot up, the moment is gone. That is why we need quick access to the camera.

From the lock screen double tap the home button and choose a camera icon, appeared besides the unlock bar. Consider you do not even need to unlock the phone!

And the last trick for today – that is the bonus trick for you. Click here  and find a surprise for you!