Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Southwest Airlines Now Has Mobile Boarding Passes

For all of you Southwest Airlines travelers, mobile boarding passes are now available at US Airports (not for AirTran at this time). Traveling on Southwest is taking another step forward in making travel on their planes more efficient for all of us.


To be honest, many other airlines have been doing this for quite some time and I, for one, have been waiting for Southwest to catch up and they have done it!

It's really pretty easy. No need to print boarding passes in advance at home, hotel or at the airport--just use your smart phone. There are 3 methods to get your Southwest Airlines Boarding Pass on your smart phone.
Image Credit: Southwest Airlines

  • View your boarding pass on your smart phone's web browser and save a picture of it to your Camera Roll or Gallery. Tap the orange "Save Image to Photos" button and then show this photo when going through Security and then Boarding.
  • When you check in online, you can choose to have a mobile-optimized e-mail that contains your boarding pass. Just open the e-mail from your smart phone and you're in.
  • Like the e-mail, choose the receive a Text Message when checking in online. From the text message, tap the link to show your boarding pass.
I love how easy it is to read these boarding passes.

It's all about being more efficient and reduce anxiety when traveling folks. Never worry about looking for that boarding pass in your purse, pocket, carry-on, etc. It's simply in your smart phone.

Get the Southwest Airlines app for Android or iPhone.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

5 Handy Apps in One - Agent Do Not Disturb and More


Agent - Do Not Disturb and More for Android smart phones is a collection of 5 very useful apps. It's invisible and just runs in the background taking up very little resource or power.

 


Many of us want our phones to be tools to make us more efficient and effective and search for apps that take us in this direction. It even has large text for my poor vision. Here's what you get.
 


 
Battery: An app that helps you save battery usage along the way and then takes more drastic action when the battery is close to dying.

Sleep: Have times of the day, typically night time, where your phone won't ring or sound off those pesky notifications. Sleep then allows you to select any of your contacts where interruptions ARE allowed. Now that's effective.

Parking: Let your smart phone remember the precise GPS location in that very large parking lot-Shopping Mall, amusement park, etc.

Meeting: Silence your phone during meetings based on your calendar appointments. You won't have to remember to do anything here.  If there's a meeting on your calendar, your phone won't ring. What's really nice is that you can choose your particular calendar to us for blocking. For instance, you may have a Family Calendar and a Work Calendar. The Work Calendar will stop calls while your Family Calendar will allow calls or choose the reverse.

Drive: Texting and emailing while driving is just plain unsafe. However, you can have your phone automatically respond back stating you are driving and will return the text later or let the phone read the text message to you.
 



You can even see a screen that shows how it has helped during the day.

 
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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Make Paper Airplanes!

Try something fun from your younger years...make a paper airplane!

Take a peek here at some great old fashioned paper airplanes or some fancy types to bring back some childhood memories. Grab a child or grand child, some notebook paper (printer paper these days) and check out these links from some really terrific artists in the paper airplane field. I've included some You Tube videos too.


So grab that tablet or pull up a few chairs in front of your PC and take a journey and fold some airplanes.

Take a look at Kyong Lee's "Amazing Paper Airplanes". A very cool Eurofighter is on the front page and looks challenging. Kyong has simple to complex designs so start where you like.


Give 10PaperAirplanes.com a try so see what is available. "The Arrow" is the one I remember making all the time.

Paperaeroplanes.com is someone from outside the US as A4 paper is used but I just love the idea of using colored paper for the different planes. Very creative.


Here's a very nice 6 minute video on paper airplanes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12UJvz0f-8k



Go to the Fun Paper Airplanes site where you can download FREE templates for some nice and familiar airplanes.

And for you origami lovers, here is Origami-Instructions.com

Tell me what you think and share your experience with this timeless exercise in creativity and fun.

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Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Save Images from Safari on your iPad or iPhone

If you like that terrific sunset picture in Safari and want it to look at later, go ahead and save it directly to your iPad or iPhone.


The iPad is a terrific medium for viewing photos and the web is full of them. Go ahead and save that great photo to your Camera Roll for later. Here's how.

  1. Hold your finger on that photo or image
  2. Tap Save Image

Now that beautiful photo is on your iPad or iPhone.

Other interesting uses for this feature:
  • Saving pictures for your Christmas or Birthday list
  • Save pictures of  plants you'll want to use in your next project
  • Share photos of furniture seen in ads or home living magazines

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