Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Billie P.: I was included in a group text last night and I spent the next hour and a half listening to my iPhone beep almost constantly as the responses came in.
I wasn’t even interested in the subject they were discussing but the beeps kept coming anyway. It annoyed me so much I ended up turning my phone off.
Is there any way to block everyone’s responses to a group text on an iPhone 6s?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
The folks at Netflix recently changed the way they stream content to mobile devices over cellular data networks.
After spending considerable time testing various data rates, Netflix determined that a streaming rate of 600 Kbps per second provides the user with good video quality while consuming a smaller portion of your cellular plan’s monthly data allotment.
But what if Netflix’s interpretation of “good video quality” differs from yours?
Luckily, you can easily increase the video quality of the shows and movies you watch on your mobile device by increasing the streaming rate from Netflix’s new default rate of 600 Kbps per second. [Read more…]
Do you own an iPhone 6? If so, I have a warning for you: Think twice before you decide to have it repaired by an independent repair shop.
If your iPhone 6 is running iOS 9, having anyone besides Apple make a repair involving the Home button assembly will likely cause the phone to lock up and display an “Error 53”. And let me tell you, Error 53 is bad.
In short, Error 53 will “brick” your phone, and your only recourse will be to buy a new one. And no, you won’t be able to retrieve your photos or other important files from the phone’s flash memory. [Read more…]
Question from Amanda: My 7 year old son frequently uses my iPad to get on his school’s website, and every time he loads Safari it lists the sites I’ve been visiting on the “Frequently Visited Sites” page.
I’d really like to turn that off because I’d rather not have him seeing which websites I visit. Can you tell me how to prevent the “Frequently Visited Sites” from showing up?
Rick’s answer: Amanda, iOS 9 makes it very easy to prevent Safari from showing your frequently visited sites. Just follow the steps below: [Read more…]
Regular readers of this blog know I’m not a huge fan of password managers, but many folks seem to to love them. And that’s fine – to each his/her own as they say.
If you happen to use a password manager, there’s a good chance that you us LastPass, the most popular password manager out there by far.
If so, I strongly recommend that you enable two-factor authentication to prevent crooks and hackers from breaking in to your account and stealing all of your important passwords.
Follow the steps below to set up two-factor authentication on your LastPass account: [Read more…]