Blog Category: Tips n Tricks

NFC Tag Ideas: When at Home Part 2: Working Around the House
Now that you are home, you don’t expect to just lie down and do nothing. We have to maintain the house and perform our household chores. If you think that your Smartphone and NFC are useless in this situation, think again.
NFC tasks are not all about profiles. NFC tags can help you quickly perform some tasks with your smartphone as you work around the house. Let’s talk about a few situations in today’s NFC Tag Ideas. I will list out places where you can put a tag as well as the suggested tasks you can automate.
At the Fridge
The fridge is where we keep one of the home’s most valuable resources – food. We always check if we have enough food, condiments and cold cuts. Back when phones weren’t so smart, we used...

NFC Tag Ideas: When at Home Part 1: The Home Profile
We’ve covered stuff that we could do while on the go. Certainly, people believe that shortcuts such as these are best when you don’t have the pleasure of time, which is mostly the case when going somewhere or when in a place with too many people.
Still, shortcuts are also perfect for the home. There are plenty of things you can have your NFC tags do for you as soon as you arrive. Today I will detail a list of actions you can automate with NFC as soon as you get home and why.
The “At Home” Profile
This tag would be perfectly positioned near the doorway so that you can tag it as soon as you reach home. There are very few households that can afford an NFC capable device that doesn’t...

NFC Tag Ideas: While on the Go Part 2 – Public Transit and Walking
Last time, we talked about ideas while on your car. Now today, we are still on the go. What if we are commuting to work, or maybe off to visit a friend’s house? What can NFC do to help us then?

Today, I would like to share some NFC Tag ideas revolving around the premise that you are on a public transit course, or quite possibly, simply walking to your destination.
 
Transit Mode
Let’s start with the wireless radios again. It would be in your best interest to turn off your Wi-Fi connection since you are less likely to pass by open Wi-Fi networks while on transit. If you are the type to travel with a Bluetooth headset, then set the tag to turn on your Bluetooth as well.
Since you...

NFC Tag Ideas: While on the Go Part 1: When in the Car
Often times, we find ourselves fumbling and looking for ideas of what to do with our NFC tags. You read that it is a great rising technology, and there are so many things you can do with it to streamline some of the tasks we undertake during our day.

Today, we want to talk about NFC Tag ideas and NFC Tag combinations which could be useful for whenever you are on the go. It doesn’t matter if you are commuting or driving your own car, surely there is something NFC can help you do.
Car Profile Ideas [Navigation]
Since today’s smartphones usually come with an app or two for navigation, it would be a nice idea to keep a tag that works around that if you are using such services on...

NFC Tag Series: Programming an NFC Tag Part 5- Launching Apps and App actions

We have seen how NFC Tags allow us to toggle and change the settings of our phone. We can make tags that switch radios on and off. We also learned how to create tags that change a bunch of settings and even add an alarm in just one tap.
Our objective today is learn about making tags that allow you to launch applications on the fly as well as perform some app based actions. With NFC, you don’t need to fumble around your home screen and app drawer to launch an app you need to use for that specific location or moment. All you need is to tap it to your programmed tag.
Launching the Kindle App
One thing we use our portable devices for is reading e-books. People read e-books...

NFC Tag Series: Programming an NFC Tag Part 4 – Multiple Actions

NFC tags, as you may have learned from our previous articles, are very versatile. They can be programmed to do so many things with just one tap.
Of course, going by the things I have taught you so far, you might have thought that you could do it faster by just tapping on the Wi-Fi toggle or the Bluetooth toggle of your phone. That may be the case if you are using only one action, but what about making a whole list of actions in one tap?
You see, the real strength of NFC lies on the ability to make shortcuts. It can be used to quickly perform a single task or the ability to launch a whole range of tasks in one tap.
Today, we will provide an example and a tutorial...

On the most extreme of cases, your phone is so messed up that it is no longer possible to fix using all of the other methods combined. In this issue of Troubleshooting Tips, we will talk about the most extreme methods of debugging your Android device.
Take note that the methods described here are only done if all else fails, and is not recommended if there are other methods you have not yet tried. Some of these procedures could potentially brick your device if not properly done.
Something to take note of all the methods described here is that you better make sure you keep the battery at least 70% up. For good measure, keep it at 100%. All of these methods leave your phone unable to charge and operate for a while, which could spell even more disaster than they fix if interrupted.
Factory Reset (Reformat)
This...

Last time, we learned about the most basic moves when trying to troubleshoot a program. Those steps are pretty basic, and many of us had to use at least one or two of those steps in dealing with the PCs of the past.
Since our smartphones are now every bit as powerful and complex as a PC, there are similarities to errors and even fixes. Now, we will talk about some of the more advanced troubleshooting techniques that you may or may not have used back when then.
These are mostly specific to Android devices, and are usually done to try and fix errors in a deeper level.
Clearing the cache of a faulty app
Some users find that clearing the cache of an app pretty much stops some of the slow load times and repeated crashes that they might experience while using an...

Android has always been a platform that has been constantly attacked for its instability. Some people can be so blinded by magical words spoken by highly charismatic characters that they don’t see that the issues they keep throwing at Android are found on everything else.

Certainly, no software is not without bugs. Even the most extensively tested and most stable software seems to have at least a bug or two when they are released.
There are bugs that are caused by poor code of the software itself, yet there are those that are caused by errors in the handling of the operating system. Android is not perfect, but we can at least do something to make it as close to perfect as possible.
Squashing bugs on Android is not very hard. Most of these procedures have taken root from desktop PCs and other hardware...

Facebook just had a very neat overhaul recently, finally moving the app code back to the native Android code. That means that everything is based on the operating system rules and code, and not a universal HTML5 code. For the end user, this means that things will finally load faster for the most part.
For a long time, Facebook has been an app shell that mirrors the exact HTML 5 code that is used on their mobile site. This was done so that they don’t have to update two products when something new comes out. Only one set of code is pushed to update all their apps and mobile site. Unfortunately, since the product constantly draws upon the mobile site while trying to emulate it with app based gestures and controls, everything became severely crippled.
Now that it has been fixed, our...