Posted by: glasskeys | 03/14/2013

Viable replacement apps for Google Reader on iPad and Android tablets.

Google Reader - No Mas.

Google Reader – No Mas.

Today is the day we found out Google Reader will be no more. For those interested in finding a good app replacement to use on their iPad or Android tablet, I recommend Flipboard for the iPad, and the Pulse News reader for Android tablets.

Incidentally, the Pulse News reader is also available for Nook tablets, previously covered on Glasskeys.com here.

Disclaimer: I am not associated or employed by any company producing software reviewed on this site.

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Posted in Android Tablet Applications, Android Tablets, iPad, iPad Applications | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Posted by: glasskeys | 03/12/2013

Building Apps for Win 8 tablets and mobiles.

Building_win_8_apps_for_tablets_and_mobiles_01

I recently ran across this video tutorial series called Building Apps for Both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 from Microsoft on the Channel 9 website.

Download links are available for each of the videos in the series, in both WMV and MP4 formats which means you could watch the tutorial on your iPad if you so desire.

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Posted in Windows Tablet Tips, Windows Tablets | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: glasskeys | 02/24/2013

How to stop erratic screen dimming on Surface Pro tablets.

 
 
 
 
  Settings.   Control Panel.   Power Options.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Tap the “Choose when to turn off display” link.   Change advanced power settings.   Display – “adaptive brightness” settings.  
 
     
     
      Click Apply and close setting windows.      
 

(To view a larger image with a more detailed description tap or click a thumbnail.)

Although the Windows 8 platform is a great platform for tablet and touch screen devices, there remain some areas that Microsoft could improve upon. One of these areas is the feature known as Adaptive Brightness. The intended goal of adaptive brightness is to automatically adjust screen brightness settings to match ambient light levels. In plain English this means: “If it is bright outside, make the screen brighter. If in a dark room, dim the screen a bit.”

Sounds good…in theory. In reality, this “feature” is as adaptive as the extinct dodo or sabre-tooth tiger. Dimming the screen at random intervals (usually whilst watching video or engaged in productive pursuits), makes this Windows 8 feature as welcome as Clippy was to users of Office ’97.

The least frustrating solution I have found to fix adaptive brightness, is to turn it off entirely.

To do this on your Windows 8 tablet, navigate to Control Panel, then Power Options. Tap the “Choose when to turn off display” link, then the “Change advanced power settings” link. In the Power Options window, scroll down and expand the Display section – buried inside this is the Enable adaptive brightness setting group. For each option in this group, select the off value in each drop-down.

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Posted by: glasskeys | 02/15/2013

How to enable function keys by default on the Thinkpad S230u

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Recently I purchased the Lenovo S230u “Ultrabook” which is a Windows 8 laptop/tablet device. The screen can swivel and fold over, literally transforming itself into a Surface tablet. In my case make that Surface Pro – as I replaced the EOM “tweaked” version of Windows 8 with a fresh 64 bit install of Windows 8 Pro.

Whilst gleefully using my device I discovered that I really didn’t want have to press the red Fn key every bloody time I need to use one of the function keys (F1-F12), which is the default out-of-the-box behaviour.

Messing about in the Thinkpad Setup (BIOS) menu, I discovered the answer to the problem. Oddly enough the hardest problem I encountered was figuring out how to access this menu in the first place. It turns out shutting down the machine and turning it back on will not present an opportunity, the only reliable way I found after reboot to see the “To interrupt normal startup, press Enter” caption was to restart.

After you click restart, and the machine starts to reboot, keep your finger poised over the Enter key, because you will only have a window of 1 or 2 seconds before the caption disappears. Once the Thinkpad Setup menu appears, navigate to the Config menu and set the Change to “F1-F12 keys” value to Legacy.

Finally because the setting doesn’t take effect until after you save you will need to press Fn F10 one last time to save and exit.

Happy keyboarding!

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Posted by: glasskeys | 02/07/2013

Free Windows 8 programming book.

Microsoft Press Blog

Microsoft Press Blog

For those interested in developing apps for Surface Pro tabs or Windows 8, you may be interested in a free eBook from Microsoft Press on the topic.

Click here to open the Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript book page with downloads available in PDF, EPUB, or MOBI formats.

Disclaimer: I am not associated or employed by any company producing software or books reviewed on this site.

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Posted by: glasskeys | 01/18/2013

Another iPhone bug.

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Whilst using my iPhone recently, I discovered a display bug that occurs only when the Cellular Data option has been turned off under Network Settings in the Settings application. The minor display error can be reliably duplicated by navigating to General, Usage, then rapidly opening the Cellular Usage menu before the Storage section has time to display application storage data.

Upon returning to the Usage screen and waiting until the application storage data loads, scrolling causes the iCloud storage section text to duplicate and the Battery Usage caption to merge inside of the disabled iCloud Manage Storage text.

Although I have disabled all of the cell data options from my iPads (due to the greedy data plan fees of AT&T), I am curious if any iPad users out there who still use cell data can duplicate these steps to determine if this is an issue on the iPad. With both cell data and Wi-Fi turned off it won’t cost a pence.

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Posted by: glasskeys | 01/15/2013

Upgrading an Acer Iconia W500 from Win 8 RC to full Windows 8 – Part 2 of 2.

 
 
 
 
  Starting Install.   Enter PC name.   Select wireless connection.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Enter wireless password.   Use Express Settings.   Sign in.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Enter account details.   Optional security info.   Installing apps.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Usage illustration.   Getting ready…   Installing apps.  
 
     
     
      Windows 8!      

(To view a larger image with a more detailed description tap or click a thumbnail.)

At the end of the first part of this series, installation of the Windows 8 upgrade on a Acer W500 Iconia Tab had just began. This part of this series covers the installation options chosen and how to properly clean up remnants of the last Windows image after installation is done.

Most of the installation options are fairly straightforward, as most of the effort is used to do the following:
          1. Establish a wireless connection.
          2. Create machine name.
          3. Create and sign-in with a Windows Live account.

This entire process is shown in detail in the screen shots above, but the most important step is freeing precious space after installation is finished.

Read More…

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Posted in Windows Tablet Tutorials, Windows Tablets | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: glasskeys | 01/13/2013

Upgrading an Acer Iconia W500 from Win 8 RC to full Windows 8 – Part 1 of 2.

 
 
 
 
  Win Release Preview – tap Desktop.   Swipe right edge.   Tap Settings.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Tap Control Panel.   Add Features to Windows 8.   Download Upgrade Assistant.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Tap Next to review details.   Close window.   Create media.  
 
 
 
 
 
  Install to USB drive.   Open Setup.exe   Installing Windows 8.  
 

(To view a larger image with a more detailed description tap or click a thumbnail.)

Love it or not, the newest version of Microsoft’s flagship OS – Windows 8 represents an entirely new direction and focus for the software giant. Because of the tablet and touch screen interface revolution, Microsoft realises that it must adapt or die as many of it’s competitors in the industry have had to do over the decades. Redmond may not have the same mojo it had in the past, but it is still a formidable company with vast resources and knows that it must work hard to remain relevant in a world of shrinking PC sales. The new Windows 8 interface formerly known as Metro, is an acknowledgement by the company that the PC will not be “king of the mountain” forever.

Released gratis to the public by way of freely downloadable Consumer and Release Previews, these pre-release Windows 8 versions gave many IT professionals, developers, and enthusiasts the opportunity to become familiar with the new OS. Many chose to install these on PC hardware, and a smaller percentage chose to install on tablets running Windows 7. Being a tablet fanatic, I did both and installed on a run-of-the-mill desktop machine and on an Acer W500 Iconia Tab.

My key discovery was that Windows 8 requires a massive amount of free space to install. If you choose to upgrade your own Windows tab, I highly recommend you clean your drive as much as humanly possible before attempting the install. 15GB of free space is about the minimum amount of free space you can have and still install Win 8.

If you use Internet Explorer either on your Windows 7 or “upgraded” Windows 8 RC tablet, cleaning the temporary internet files helps greatly, as well as uninstalling unneeded apps, and moving the contents from your Documents folder to temporary storage. If you use Chrome as I did, removing the Google folder (found in C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local), will mostly likely free massive amounts of space as it did on my tablet.

Upon clearing a minimum of 15GB of storage space on your tablet, ensure you have a blank USB stick with at least 3 GB of free space and follow the screenshots above to upgrade to Windows 8. NOTE: If you are attempting an upgrade from Windows 7 instead of Windows 8 Release Preview, use this link to download the Upgrade Assistant.

Part two of this series will cover the installation and steps performed immediately thereafter.

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Posted by: glasskeys | 05/18/2012

A hiatus…

After taking some personal time the last couple of months, I am once again recharged and will be posting some more tablet goodies in the very near future — including information on the Microsoft Metro interface, among other findings made these recent weeks.

Stay tuned and thanks again for reading.

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Posted by: glasskeys | 03/28/2012

Erratic looping behaviour using Safari whilst viewing Google+ on an iPad with iOS 5.1.

I encountered the following erratic looping behaviour viewing Google+ in “desktop view” with Safari on a wifi-only iPad 2 running iOS 5.1. The only other application running was Settings. A screenshot with the iOS version settings can be viewed here.

Although the looping can be halted using the previous page button, I am curious if anyone else has ran into this odd behaviour using Google+ (or any other page) on their iPads fully updated to iOS 5.1 whilst using Safari.

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