MONITOR YOUR DATA USAGE EFFICIENTLY ON YOUR ANDROID DEVICES.

If I say that almost every active youth and business men have access to the internet either via their “smart phone” or tablet I wouldn’t have over exaggerated. It is well known fact that the iPAD and Blackberry device manage data better than Androids, unfortunately android devices are the most popular and easily affordable as different vendors offer them at competitive prices in Africa and some other continents like Asia.

A lot of us in Nigeria use android and we constantly complain about data usage never enough for the things we need to do. In fact many people switch off their data just to better manage their bundle consumption, but the effect of that is, you will miss your notifications at the right time. If you really look at it closely most of us only use very few apps on our phone, meanwhile almost all apps on the android device are data hungry (even the useless ones which are pre-installed on the phone).

To cut the long story short, there are two apps among many on the Google Play Store I personally use.

These 2 apps below  were design to help you manage your data usage efficiently.

1. DROIDWALL : This requires a rooted phone, but most people don’t like tampering with their phone software because of warranty or they just don’t have time for such stress. So I will talk more on the one for normal non-rooted android phones OR tablets.

2. MOBIWOL: This is the best in its class as of now in my own opinion. With Mobiwol installed on your phone or tablets, you can allow or restrict any app, even the android system itself from accessing the internet. This means that even if you have credit in your phone and your Data is ON your credit will not suddenly go missing in the wild, not knowing which app actually used it and for what.

Okay, let’s get to it….

Just follow the link at the bottom of the page to Download MOBIWOL (recommended) and follow the STEPS below to fully set it up.

STEPS

1. Download and Install MOBIWOL from GooglePlay.

2. Open the application and Swipe right to turn it on

3. Next, click on firewall rules > options > mobile > choose block all mobiles.

4. If you got it up to step 3 correctly you will discover that no apps on your phone or tablet can connect to the internet even though your data is ON. Test it to be sure.

5. Now to enable any app access to the net, let say you want only BBM, Whatsapp and Your browser access, just go to firewall rules in step 3 and search for BBM and other app you want to give access, then click on the grayed out network symbol next to the WIFI symbol to make it active. That’s all. The app can now have access to the internet.

6. Do same for allowing and restricting the access for other apps. With this set up, no useless or pre-installed apps will have access to your money (yes, your MB is your money) downloading content from the internet to your device you most likely will never use or need.

Hmmmm….. I know the network forks will frown at my post now but hey! It’s our hard earn money, lets know how it’s used.

I hope you find this informative and productive? If you do, then leave your comments, questions and suggestions below.

Remember no knowledge is a waste… so keep learning.

Click here to download MOBIWOL

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USB ON THE GO: HOW MUCH OF IT DO YOU KNOW OR USE?

You don’t need to imagine using your phone to access your flash drive and type an email faster with an external keyboard attached to your phone, you can actually do it and it’s not as if it just started today, it’s been around for years. Most people either don’t utilize it well or don’t even know about it.

This is a feature that has been around for a very long time and most people still don’t use it or know its full potentials. Even OEMs don’t talk much about it, but it’s a nice feature that if you explore very well could save you a lot of stress, time, energy and maybe money.

A lot of people are aware of this feature in their phones, but don’t fully understand it or perhaps don’t really see why they should use it. The USB On The Go (OTG) is simply a feature available on your phone and tablets that allows you to read and write file to and from your flash, external HD, mouse and external keyboard. Its available on most Smartphones today including (Nokia Symbian, almost all Androids ( from low end to high end, including Tecnos). I haven’t seen it on iPads and iPhones yet.

Check out the image to see what it looks like. If you need a complete suite then grab a USB keyboard for ₦700 or $4.7 and a USB mouse for ₦200 or $1.2 with a flash drive of your choice size. See attached image to give you an idea of what am talking about.

I still don’t get why OEMs won’t add the extra cord to their phones, making you pay extra for it.

Note: the phone in the pic is a Sony Xperia U ST25i ( a low end android phone with no support for external SD card like all nexus devices)

There are many scenario where this will be useful and I use it lot with an external keyboard when my laptop battery goes out and I need to quickly type a mail or post. Sometimes, I have very important files I don’t want to leave on my laptop or phone, I just want it on my external drive to access them on the go. Don’t forget My previous write up about redundancy backup…so don’t put all your files only in one place.

That means I can have all my movies in a 320gb external hd, connect it to my phone and watch till my battery runs down. This means unlimited storage for your limited phone.

With this you don’t have to contemplate on which files to delete to free up space, you just need to connect your flash drive and move the file on the go.

You can check out this website to learn more http://www.androidcentral.com/android-advanced-USB-otg-
nexus-4

In summary you can basically;

• Use a mouse with your phone (COULD BE HELPFUL TO PHABLETS OWNERS)

• USE A FULL SIZE KEYBOARD ( YOU CAN ACTUALLY CONNECT A FULL SIZE KEYBOARD TO YOUR PHONE AND TYPE WITH IT) check out this link for galaxy owners (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAVVmPc3QFo)

• READ A flash drive: you can improved the support by reading (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1209567)

• Use it as a external backup device

•Depending on the power of your device you can charge a lesser phone with a more powerful phone. For example Nokia N8 or galaxy Note II can charge your Smaller Nokia or other low end phone through the port.

• You can get wired or wireless gamepads for your device. The wired is always cheaper.

• Access and transfer data faster between two phones just like the third image.

• Record your video and take your pictures directly ( don’t worry about reducing the size of image quality because of limited space) transfer to your pc. Just set the path to reflect your external disk

• Attached a USB hub and connect more than one USB drives. That is you can use a mouse and a keyboard while transferring a large files to your flash. All these can be done with that your phone (interesting right? Try it).

Well, have said enough, you can Google for more. Mine is to bring you the info and make you aware of few cool things you can do to get more value for your money.

If your already know about it and have been using it, good, but if you didn’t know, well now you do.

Lastly, try to test this with an external dvd player or some certain USB Modem like the New hauwei E355. Just explore your imagination (the greatest asset God gave to Mankind). it wont hurt. Just see if your phone is powerful enough to play a movie directly from an external dvd.(You Might be surprise). Remember to download and install Bsplayer if you are on android( I use it to play .vob files: dvd format).

That’s all about it.

Share if you enjoy reading it and don’t forget to add your own tweaks and tricks to the list

You can never go wrong with the right information…..so keep learning.

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BROWSE PRIVATELY WITH YOUR PHONE OR PC LEAVING NO TRACE

I don’t need to start stating reasons why you may want to browse privately as there are apparently many reasons. It’s easier for anybody to open your phone or pc browser and view your history tab to see what you’ve been up to. You may be doing your personal works online, like filling out forms or researching your personal interests and you don’t want anybody to know or see it even when you forget to clear the history before exiting the browser. Basically it makes sense to enable private browsing anytime you intend to keep your browsing history confidential. In private browsing, no browser history, search history, download history, web form history, password, cookies or temporary internet files will be kept. However anything you bookmarked or save while browsing will remain.

In actual fact, private browsing only prevents your browser from saving your browsing history. This means that anyone else who uses your computer or phone will not be able to see your online activity except the person is standing at your back while browsing. 

It’s available for Internet explorer, Firefox (Phone and PC), Chrome (Phone and PC) and Safari (Mac Computers). 

It’s simple; just follow the steps below;

Internet Explorer:  click tool >  Choose Inprivate browsing  or use the keyboard shortcut (ctrl+shift+p)

Chrome PC: click menu button > choose new incognito window and start browsing privately. For phone chrome browser just click option > new incognito tab.

Firefox PC: click the Firefox button  and select start Private browsing.

For phone, just click options > New private tab.

Safari: click safari > select private browsing.

That’s just it for private browsing. Once you’re in that mode you are secure and free to do all secret things (you know what I mean, Don’t you?)

Leave your comment below…..

Remember no knowledge is a waste….so keep learning.

NEVER AGAIN FORGET THE DETAILED STEPS YOU TOOK TO RESOLVE THAT PC PROBLEM

I can never forget how to resolve any serious issue I had previously resolved with my pc.  So many times we are face with tough pc issues and we seek for help either from our friends or IT colleagues.  If you could record step by step how he resolved it, you don’t need to call him the next time you are face with same issue. If you already know what am talking about, then good, but for those who don’t know you can actually do a lots of things with this nice add-on feature present with windows OS. The way it works is to create a screen shot of every click made by the mouse, that means at every click you make (I mean every click) a screen shot is taken silently behind the scene, even if you are just clicking on the desktop.

The screen shot are created in zip format, so you can export it, save it or send it by email to anyone.

This is basically one method used to create most screen shot tutorial you see online.

It’s called problem step recorder in windows, but you can use it for as long as your imagination can reach.

To enable this feature just click the windows key on your keyboard (windows 7) or windows + C and click search (windows 8) and type “psr”, then click on step recorder. That’s it. You can start to record and pause when you like. You can add comment to each click so your friend or you can remember what happened at that instant. 

You can always go to the settings menu and tweak it to either take screen shot or not. Taken screen shot takes more space, so sometimes you may not necessarily need to enable it.

These are some few scenarios where you may want to use it; for example

You want to show a friend in another location how to solve a particular problem step by step

You want to create a personal tutorial on anything PC related

You want to take a snap shot of your desktop or screen without using any special software

You want to know places an unauthorized user accessed in your pc while you are away. The trick is to  Just hide it when you start it.

I leave you to imagine other possible ways of exploring it…..

Remember imagination is a powerful  tool…..learn to use it.

RECORD YOUR LOCAL RADIO FM FROM YOUR PHONE ( SELECTED PHONES ONLY)

How many of your favorite radio program have you missed just because you were on a tight schedule. Most people have this service available to them but probably don’t use it. The first question anyone would probably ask me is why would I want to record FM? Well, you really don’t have to if you don’t want to.

Let me just give one scenario where you may need it; for example I love listening to the cool songs played on cool FM very early in the Morning and I want to have some collections of that music in that order in which it is played as one file on my phone.

Normally, am expected to go to cool FM radio station office and request for their music collection played that day or I could just at the click of a  button present in my own phone at my own convenience record all the songs as my heart desires. That’s interesting, don’t you think? That’s just one scene where may need it.

Well, you can basically record anything playing and the quality is crystal clear. You are only limited by the size of your SD card and battery capacity. That means if you are lucky to have the new 1 TB MMC card, you can record any show for 24 hours/7 days and listen to it over and over again. 

Record news if you are on a busy schedule and later listen to it.

Alright, enough said. How can you do this? Everything I have been saying so far is actually just a feature present in your phone, you just didn’t know or probably didn’t really see why you should use it.  If you have an android phone like Samsung S2, S3, S4, NOTE 1, 2, 3  and some other selected xperia phones you can use it. INFACT ANY SAMSUNG DEVICE WITH INBUILT FM and CAN BE UPGRADED TO JELLYBEAN WILL HAVE THIS FEATURE. I have tested it on many android phone BEFORE POSTING (the higher ones though) and the truth is not all brands of phones can do it, but if you have a better way of doing it on other devices kindly share with us. For old Nokia Symbian you can get this app @ovi store http://store.ovi.com/content/262564 (i haven’t tested it though, but some people claimed it works).

If you have the compatible phone, just open your Fm and click the red button at the top right corner of the app or use options, record Fm, then  select your saved location to start recording. It’s as simple as that and there are other ways of doing it but this gives the best and clear quality of recording. Just like the saying goes there is nothing as good as follow come. This isn’t piracy by the way.

You can ask your questions and also contributes because I love to learn and wouldn’t mind learning other confirmed way of doing this.

Remember knowledge is power….so keep learning.

BACK UP YOURSELF TODAY

Many a time we lose our phones, tabs or pads or laptop and the first thing that comes to our mind is the files and important document we have saved and then we are like  “Oh no! My whole life is gone”.

I know for a fact that everybody knows that backup exist and understand how it works but many people still don’t use it because they see it as too much trouble. I will advise you to stftart cultivating the habit of backing up your important contacts, messages and documents, because there are some certain files you just can’t get back when you lose them.

You may not know the importance until you actually lose that precious computing device you store your files with. There are various ways by which you can backup your files. If you an Oracle Savvy or a database person, you will know about a process termed mirroring or redundancy….by that I mean backing the same file or set of files in different locations. With that you never have to worry about losing your files when you lose your device. Below are some of the various ways you can explore to backup your files.

1. Dropbox: http://www.dropbox.com  you can use the Android, Nokia Lumia and Iphone drop box app. Download it from GooglePlay, Windows App Store and iTunes respectively.  Set it up to sync your contact and messages as you add and receive them. Once you set it up you don’t have to worry about anything. With this you can backup anything on your phone and laptop. You can set the frequency of the backup too. As a free user you have 2GB space. That’s more than enough to backup all your contacts and messages for a lifetime if you don’t want to go premium to use backup other heavy file type. At http://www.box.com you can also get the same service. Remember the mirroring I talked about. 

2. For those with Nokia Lumia you can make do with Skydrive on your phone. If you have the Symbian device you can backup all your document including contact and messages by going to file and choosing backup and save it to an external drive like your memory card and restore it back any time. Always remember to save it onto an external drive.

3. The android fans have lots of ways to Backup, I will suggest Google drive in addition to dropbox.

4. Itunes is always a portable companion for the i-all guys, just sync your contact and messages with i-cloud and you are safe.

5. If you are in Nigeria you can make use of the following network provided backup service. On the MTN Network, you can the MTN Backup SIM directly from your non GPRS phone. It cost #100 for the first backup and #50 for subsequent sync. This charges applies when doing it directly from your handset as online backup is free. You can only backup 200 contacts using this method but if you want to backup up to more than 200 contacts to a maximum of 5000 then you can go to http://www.mtnonline.com/mtnbackup and signup for the service.  For ETISALAT steps go to http://www.etisalat.com.ng/easybackup.php and download their app @ http://easybackup.etisalat.com.ng/m or send SUB to 48900. For AIRTEL go to  http://mybackup.airtel.com/airtelafwap and type in type in your number,  a link will be sent to you to download the backup app. For AIRTEL you can also send “MYBACKUP to 522” to get the link.

Then of course the old way; saving your files to various flash drives, external hard drives and disk

The point isn’t if one method is better than the other. Honestly whether you use the method suggested above or you have a better way of backing up….the point is learn to back up your important files so that when disaster strikes, or your computing device of choice experience sudden death or get stolen, you will be glad you did. By the way, this is actually the whole idea behind the growing cloud computing technology you see today.

Your contributions, comment and feedbacks are highly welcome.

Remember the right information is key….so keep learning.

LEARN STEP BY STEP HOW TO USE MICROSOFT APPLICATIONS(WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, ACCESS, PUBLISHER, PAGEMAKER, CORELDRAW ETC) FROM YOUR PHONE

GCF Learning: are you tired of having to go for training on simple things you could have done yourself? Well, GCF Learning is actually a group of developers that design easy to understand tutorials on popular software and apps like MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Access, CorelDraw etc…..you can got to google play and search for GCF and you will get all their apps. It's available also ITunes and Nokia

The good part is they come with step by step screen shoot and some short videos for quick understanding, so if you are the type tired of reading prose, you also get a hands on video to play with and the BEST part is its free to download…..so enjoy learning…

Remember knowledge is power…..so keep learning.