Solving technology problems, one at a time
A new problem that’s been plaguing my Mac these days is that the keyboard sometimes stops working, but only in the Finder. In all the other applications, it remains functional. I use a Wacom tablet,
Continue readingA few days ago, my iTunes started giving me messages like “iTunes could not sync contacts to the iPhone “My iPhone” because the iPhone disconnected.” It wasn’t syncing anything to the iPhone anymore.
After reading this forum thread I tried resetting the sync history in the iSync application preferences. This did not help and instead caused iSync reminder messages to come up every few minutes.
I also tried syncing the iPhone with all the “info” selections unchecked, and then finally replacing all info on the iPhone by checking “Replace with information from this computer” in the Info tab in iTunes. This last change seemed to work, but I realized later that something else had probably helped fix it:
I’d had a USB hard drive plugged into the same USB hub as my iPhone for the last few days, and when nothing else was working, I finally shut it down and unplugged it. So there was more power for the iPhone coming from the hub. It is a power issue.
Continue readingA friend’s iPhone stopped functioning correctly when making or receiving calls. When he would call, people on both ends could not hear each other, unless he hit the “Speaker” icon. I tried resetting all settings
Continue readingA while back, my iPhone stopped ringing while locked. It didn’t seem to matter what settings I used, it simply would not ring. Calls were being missed, so I finally decided to look into it.
Continue readingA few days ago, I noticed the iPhone started to lose power astonishingly fast. After checking out Apple’s page on conserving battery power I reset the phone to factory settings, shut off Push, and set
Continue readingElectronic keyboards like the Yamaha Motif or Korg M50 often have a “Split” feature, allowing different patches to be assigned to different sections. For example, the bottom 18 or 20 keys can be assigned to a bass patch, leaving the rest of the keys assigned to an electric piano sound. These splits allow not just the patch to change, but the pitches as well. For example the bottom keys can sound an octave lower than they ordinarily would.
Small keyboards often have buttons that shift the octave to the left or right on the fly, effectively increasing the number of keys without the weight.
There is another split type that is possible nowadays but apparently no manufacturer has done it yet. What if the patch or pitch range were assigned to each key in real time by which finger or which hand touched the key?
Continue readingIf you are having problems sending mail from the iPhone, try the following. Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars Under Accounts, click the account you are having trouble sending mail with. Scroll down to Outgoing Mail
Continue readingThere are many iPhone applications available, but so far, no one has come out with an official application that does video recording. To get that functionality, you must jailbreak the iPhone and install one of the unofficial video recorder apps, and some type of networking so you can transfer the video files back to your computer.
The main problem with jailbreaking the iphone is that it is no longer in a standard, supportable condition afterward, and so things may not work as expected. I found that my syncing setup was all messed up, and I was basically starting from square one in terms of settings. There are some things it still does not do well, like syncing to iPhoto. However, there are enough benefits to a jailbroken phone to try it out, and hopefully (haven’t tried it yet!) it can be restored if it no longer seems worth all the effort.
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I just noticed that iPhoto was no longer syncing new photos off the iPhone. As you can see in the image above, when the iPhone was plugged in, nothing shows in the import window, although there really are photos there!
From the number of pictures left on the phone this has probably been going on for about a week or so. I tried downloading them using Image Capture and it appeared to see them and looked like it was downloading them, but ever nothing arrived in the download folder.
Continue readingI just got my mind blown by “Shazam”, a new FREE application for the iPhone. Shazam uses the iPhones microphone to listen to songs or music happening anywhere in earshot. It will then tell you what song you are listening to.
Just click “Tag it” and point the mic end of the phone in the general direction of the sound. It twirls for a while, then reports back, usually extremely accurately what song you were listening to.
Shazam sending song info to the web for processing.
