I recently needed to wipe and start fresh with an old iPhone 5 to use as a WiFi-only device (essentially like an iPod Touch) but it did not have a SIM card in it anymore and would not let me finish the initial setup without one. This article provides a few suggestions for getting around…
One of the keys to enabling a smart home is to track who is home and when they come and go, also known as presence detection. Home Assistant has a few built-in methods for doing this. For now, I’m not looking for fine-grained tracking i.e. detecting the exact moment someone enters or leaves the house.…
Like many tech-savvy thirty-somethings my household has acquired quite a few Wi-Fi-connected devices over the past few years: Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi scale Wireless printer Smart thermostat Apple TV/Roku Smart HDTV Wi-Fi baby monitor Wi-Fi security cameras Smart phones, tablets, computers etc. Our network had gradually become highly populated with devices, and I didn’t even notice. When I upgraded our router…
Ever since smartphones started adding video recording capabilities, I’ve seen a lot more videos recorded in “portrait” mode. This happens when you record a video while holding your phone upright instead of sideways. Depending on the phone, the video recording app you used, and how you are playing it back, the video may end up…
So I just discovered this handy tip and thought I’d pass it along. iPhone will auto-dial conference codes for you if the number is written in a particular format in the location or description fields of a calendar event. The phone number and conference code will be colored to show they are a telephone hyperlink.…
Update (2013-06-16): A while ago I signed up for iTunes Match, and I have found it to be a great solution for viewing my iTunes library on multiple PCs, whether they are on my home network or not (I have my entire library available on my MacBook at work as well as my PCs at…
I’m a huge Mass Effect fan, and I was excited to learn that the final installment in the Mass Effect trilogy was going to include a meta-game system that would influence the outcome of the game. I’ve always thought it would be cool to be able to somehow interact with a game even when I wasn’t actually…
I’ve never been an early adopter of cell phones; I don’t want to be a beta-tester and I really can’t afford to get the latest and greatest phone every few months. It took me a long time to make the decision to get my first Android smartphone, and I spent several months considering my latest…
I recently built a PC for a friend of mine using some old parts I had lying around along with a few new components. She’s had an older Mac notebook running OS X v10.4 for a few years, but it’s just too slow and too old to run a lot of newer software or games,…