family | At Home with Tech

June 3, 2018

How Does Waze Work without a Cellular Connection?

We all know that navigation apps on your smartphone need to be online to function in your car. Or do they? Even with no bars, Waze can still get you where you’re going. Here’s how…

Yes, I must report that I’m still using my portable Garmin GPS in my Toyota RAV4. It’s admittedly difficult to defend my ongoing allegiance to this expensive older tech. My Garmin simply can’t compete with the more flexible user experience of navigation apps on smartphones.

But the good news is I’ve recently taken a big step forward… These days, I’ve been using Waze on my iPhone. All of the real-time traffic and hazard updates provide a nifty virtual view a few miles up the road. That’s hard to beat.

My Garmin Vs. My Waze
I shouldn’t admit this, but I often have both my Garmin and Waze operating simultaneously to see if they agree on the fastest way to go. And more often than not… they don’t. But that’s another story…

One advantage that I thought my Garmin Drive 50LMT still had over smartphone apps was its almost bullet-proof ability to maintain its GPS connection vs my iPhone’s uncertain cellular data tether while driving through dead zones. Navigation apps can’t survive that kind of hiccup, right?

But on a recent vacation road trip, I experienced what seemed to be impossible…
Waze was working without a cellular connection!

Offline iPhone GPS
My family and I were driving through some backroads in New Hampshire, and I looked at my iPhone, which was mounted to my dash via my Bunker Ring. I realized that while Waze had indeed lost all cellular connectivity, it still appeared to be functioning normally. As we drove, it continued to correctly display our location and the distance to our next turn. But it had no signal!

How was that possible?!

The Little-Known GPS Chip
After doing a little research after we got home, I realized that my iPhone was able to pull off this trick by using its built-in GPS radio. Yes, my iPhone has its own GPS functionality as do other smartphones! Its GPS chip operates independently of cellular data, and that’s why Waze was still able to see in the digital dark.

Sure, my Waze app was hobbled without its connection through AT&T. It couldn’t provide crowd-sourced traffic and hazard updates or recalculate my route. But Waze wasn’t entirely down for the count either.

I imagine at some point, Waze would have needed to connect back to its servers to download more map data, but for the fifteen minutes or so that I was driving offline, Waze was able to keep up with the twisty road ahead!

Impressive… most impressive.

Your Smartphone is at Home with GPS
There are actually lots of folks out there taking advantage of their smartphone’s GPS chip in places where cell coverage is nonexistent. They’re using apps designed to download maps ahead of time, before the trip begins.
(Waze can’t do this.)

But for me, I’m just exceptionally pleased knowing that Waze can survive for a while in a data-free zone using my iPhone’s GPS radio.

And if that can’t reverse my irrational allegiance to my Garmin Drive, I’m not sure what else will!

May 27, 2018

4 Ways to Handle the Mess of Taking Too Many Pictures

Irony is everywhere… especially when it comes to taking pictures. If you’re having a hard time managing and sharing all of your disorganized digital photos, you’re not alone. I’ve got a few tips to help you get back on track…

Now that summertime has unofficially begun, I’d like to share a little warning… Don’t fall for what I call the “Quadrotriticale Paradox.”

Remember that “Star Trek” episode titled “The Trouble with Tribbles” where those cute furballs found their way into a poisoned storage bin of quadrotriticale? All of the tribbles had a big feast, but many ended up starving after eating the poisoned grain.

What does this have to do with all of those summer photos you’re going to be taking…? If you’re snapping hundreds of pictures, your family and friends may still feel like they’re starving to receive a few images that show what you’ve been up to.

What’s the Plan?
We all want to share our best summer moments, but the “Quadrotriticale Paradox” can get in the way. The truth is the more pictures your take, the lower the odds you’ll actually find the time to go through, organize and share your top photos.

Short of taking fewer pictures…
The best way to reverse the effects of the paradox is have a good plan on how to unlock and release your photographic treasures.

Here are four ways that help me get the job done…

#1
Rate Your Photos to Find the Gems
There is no magic bullet. You have to review each photo.
(I prefer using the larger real estate of a computer screen vs. a smartphone or tablet.)
Use the 1-5 numbering system.
(Both Adobe Lightroom and Apple’s Photos allow you to do this.)

Here are my rating rules-

Total failure. Give it an immediate appointment with the trash bin.
Really bad photo. Trash it unless it’s the only shot of something special.
Just okay. Decide whether to trash it another time.
Good photo, but there’s a better version of it
The better version or simply a great picture

Then, organize your photo album to display in descending order based on the rating numbers.

Give your 2’s another look and see if any of them should be a 3.

Then move the 1’s and 2’s into the trash, and DELETE!
Your worst photos are now gone forever.
Now it’s time to focus on the pictures you want to show off.
And those are your 5’s.

#2
Share Your Photos Quickly
I know I’ve said it before, but it’s always worth repeating…

Your family photos have an expiration date! Nobody is really interested in last month’s photo. Last week is already yesterday’s news. Yesterday’s pics are okay, but today’s photos are even better.

So, you don’t have a lot of time before your amazing photos are old news.

If you want to tweak your best pics before sharing, that’s fine, but don’t let that delay your process. You can always take the time to crop and adjust the colors and brightness when building your archival photo albums.

#3
One is Better than None
Sometimes, when time is really working against you, you’ve won’t have the luxury of evaluating and rating your photos.

Instead, just ask yourself this question…
“Which one or two pictures tell the story?”

You’ll need to rely on your instincts here, because remember… you won’t have the time to go back through all of your photos.

If you start practicing this technique regularly, you’ll begin to recognize ‘the shot’ when you take it.

Then, you’ll be able to quickly find it again and share it with your world.

#4
Don’t Fall Behind!
After the firestorm of immediacy subsides, you may return to your more organized process.

But there’s never really more time to handle yesterday’s photos, because tomorrow’s are just around the corner.

And if you fall behind and develop a backlog of pictures to review… you may never get to them.

You’ll find yourself sitting on thousands of photos from months and years past that nobody else ever had the chance to enjoy.

It’s Time to Deal with the Mess
The reality is we’re all faced with the likelihood of having to manage thousands more pictures in the years to come.

The Quadrotriticale Paradox is a beast that needs to be kept under control.
Or else.

Now go tame your photographic jungle and hunt down your best pictures to share. And if you come across a wild tribble or discover a way to stretch the fabric of time, please let me know!

May 13, 2018

How to Play a Long Audio File from an Email on Your iPhone

If your audio file abruptly stops playing when your iPhone or iPad goes black, it might be time to find a home for that file. Let me explain…

Sending large attachments through email isn’t such a big deal these days. Sure, there are still limits, but emailing a 20MB audio file isn’t a crazy idea. So, when you receive one, the intuitive response is to simply tap on the file icon and listen. And that often works just fine.
(Thank you, Apple.)

But eventually, there’s a problem with the tap-and-listen approach using Apple’s native Mail app…

If the audio file runs longer than the auto-lock setting when your iPhone goes black… the file will suddenly stop playing.

And then, when you wake your iPhone to keep the file going, the file doesn’t remember where it left off. So you’ve got to manually scrub through to get to the right place to keep going.

How elegant is that?

Mrs. At Home with Tech
Someone I know (let’s just call her ‘Mrs. At Home with Tech’) created a clever workaround by simply setting her iPhone’s screen to never turn off.

And while that did the trick, and her audio file played through without a hitch, ‘Mr. At Home with Tech’ thought there had to be a better solution…

Beating ‘Tap and Go’
Of course, ‘better’ is usually a relative term. If you’re clocking speed to solution, I’ve not found a better method than my wife’s tap-and-go approach. But that trick also requires that you remember to turn off your iPhone’s screen when the audio file finishes.

Otherwise, it will shine bright throughout the night, possibly *freaking out your partner when he/she wakes the next morning bathed in an eerie iPhone glow.
*Entirely theoretical scenario… This did not happen to me. Well…

I expect that an AI-driven iPhone future isn’t that far off when your device independently pops on and off to perform certain tasks it deems appropriate. And humans will eventually get used to that just the same as all the 24/7 buzzing and pinging from our chattering smartphones.

For now though, I prefer that all the iPhones in my home at least have the appearance of following human preferences and offer the semblance of sleeping along with their human overlords/companions/pets (just future-proofing this sentence).

Save It!
For uninterrupted access and continuous playback, a more effective first step is to save the file before playing it. That way, it will continue running, even when your iPhone’s screen goes dark.

But there’s still a hiccup here… I’ve not found a way to simply save the file to my iPhone or easily move it into the iTunes ecosystem.

The solution is to move the file to a third-party app. That will do the trick!

Dropbox to the Rescue
There are many apps that can handle this need, but I’m a big fan of Dropbox.
So, here’s how you do it with Dropbox…

Tap on the audio file’s icon.
A QuickTime player window will open to begin playing the file.
On the bottom left, tap on the share icon (little square with an upward arrow).
Find your Dropbox icon.
Click on “Copy to Dropbox.”
The Dropbox app will open up.
Then, save your file to the Drobox folder of your choice.

That’s it.

5 Taps is better than 1
It takes 4 taps… maybe 5, if you move the file into a particular Dropbox folder.

That math can’t beat my wife’s ‘tap-and-go’ approach, but now that the audio file actually lives somewhere outside your Mail app, you’ll have more control of the file and be able to listen to it regardless of your iPhone’s screen status.

Still, not a perfect solution, but it gets the job done.
(If you have a better idea, please let me know!)

Category: family

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: