Smart Phone Tips Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

How to visually monitor your house while you’re away from home

Posted on February 24, 2021

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Do you ever worry about vandals and burglars damaging or ransacking your home while you’re gone?

Unfortunately, in today’s world that is a very valid concern.

A good home security system is a great deterrent, but not every home needs a full-blown system like that.

Depending on your home’s size and layout, an inexpensive and strategically placed IP camera or two could be all you need keep a virtual “eye” on your house while you’re out of town using your smart phone, tablet or laptop computer.

IP cameras work by transmitting video and/or still images to your WiFi router, allowing you to monitor the area that’s in view of the camera from anywhere in the world via your mobile device. [Read more…]

Receive updates about your Amazon orders via text message

Posted on February 12, 2021

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

If you shop at Amazon you’re probably familiar with the emails they send letting their customers know when an order has shipped.

But did you know you can have them text you as well?

They will, and it’s very easy to set up.

Simply sign up for “Shipment Updates via Text” and Amazon will send you a standard SMS text message when your package has been shipped and you’ll receive another text when it has been delivered.

You will also receive a text message if a problem arises with your shipment (an unexpected delay for example). [Read more…]

How to safely clean your computer or mobile device

Posted on February 9, 2021

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know how often I stress the importance of keeping viruses and other forms of malware off of your computers and mobile devices.

Malware is the number one cause of sluggish system performance. Even worse, it can cause you to suffer monetary loss and identify theft as well.

But as you might imagine, it’s just as important to keep your devices “clean” in the physical sense – and that includes the inside of a desktop computer or laptop.

[Read more…]

Here’s a simple tip for faster typing on your smartphone

Posted on February 1, 2021

Do you do a lot of typing on your smartphone’s virtual keyboard?

If so you surely know how difficult it can be trying to tap the correct letters and select the proper punctuation marks.

One tip that can really save you a lot of time when typing on your phone is skipping the period at the end of a sentence and pressing the space bar twice instead.

Pressing the space bar twice saves time in the following ways: [Read more…]

Q&A: How do I copy the photos from my iPhone to a Windows PC?

Posted on February 1, 2021

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Kellie: I dropped my three year old iPhone 7 Plus and cracked the screen.

The phone still works but parts of the screen are unreadable.

I’ve never really been happy with this phone so I’m just going to replace it with an Android phone when I get paid next week.

My question is how can I copy the photos I’ve taken with the iPhone onto a Lenovo laptop that has Windows 10 on it?

[Read more…]