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Question from Carl: Hi Rick. I hope you can help me with something that’s driving me nuts because I can’t figure it out.
My wife and I both use Chrome as the default browser on our phones. It used to have a really handy feature where we could search for a word on a web page just by tapping on it.
Now something has happened and that doesn’t work anymore. Do you know if there’s anything we can try to get it to work again? We really miss it!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Update: This is is no longer available.
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Your Android phone has a wonderful power-saving feature called “Doze”, and it’s really pretty amazing.
In a nutshell, Doze puts your phone into a deep sleep when it’s idle, preventing non-critical apps from transferring data in the background during the times when your phone isn’t being used.
Don’t worry, your phone will still ring when someone calls you and you’ll still receive incoming text messages, but pretty much everything else is placed in a holding pattern. And that helps your phone’s battery lost a lot longer than it would otherwise. [Read more…]
Mobile security firm Zimperium zLabs has discovered a flaw in Android that potentially leaves up to 1 billion Android phones susceptible to being hacked simply by receiving a malicious text message.
And guess what? You don’t even have to open the message in order for a hacker to gain access to your phone!
Dubbed “Stagefright”, this super-bug is being referred to in the security industry as the largest potential security threat in history. [Read more…]
I wrote a post a while back that explains how to use a great service called Where’s My Cell Phone to ring your lost phone so you can track it down by the ringing sound when you don’t have another phone to call it with.
That service works quite well, but for it to be useful you have to know the general location where you lost the phone (i.e. somewhere inside your home or office). It won’t do you much good if your phone was stolen or lost in a distant place and you have no clue where to go to look for it.
Luckily, if you have an Android phone you can now use the Google search box to determine your phone’s location (within a few meters) and then make it ring so you can find its exact location. [Read more…]
When used with a quality mapping app such as Google Maps, your smart phone’s GPS radio is a powerful device that can help you get where you’re going better than any traditional map ever could.
But it comes with one significant downside: it tends to deplete your phone’s battery charge in a hurry.
GeoLog is a very handy free app that works with your Android phone’s GPS radio to limit its use to when you actually need it. [Read more…]