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Aug
30thSport doesn’t care who you are, Everyone can take part!
Sport doesn’t care where you’re from, if you’re a man or a woman, tall, thin, big or short. Sport doesn’t care how you got here, how much money you make, what you believe in or not. It doesn’t care if you have two legs, one leg or wheels. Sport only cares that you’re here to take part and give your all to win. This exceptionally good, spine tingling advert comes to us courtesy of Samsung, proud sponsor of the just kicked-off 2012 London Paralympics. Needless to say, South Africa is looking to once again steal more than just a handful of medals from these games! :)
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Jun
11thSamsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830: How to Get Your Unique IMEI Number
An easy way to retrieve your unique phone serial number, otherwise known as your device’s IMEI number is to open the keypad as if you were going to dial someone, and type in *#06# As you hit that final hash character, a dialog containing your 15-digit IMEI number will pop-up onscreen, and as always, it is a good idea to note this down somewhere in a safe place for future reference. Nifty.
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Feb
3rdHow to Install a Standalone Android App on a Samsung Smartphone
Sometimes you need to install an Android App that isn’t available in the Android Marketplace onto you phone, maybe because the App doesn’t meet the Marketplace’s rules, or perhaps because you are in the process of developing a new App and need to test it on a physical device. Luckily Android have made it fairly easy to install an application on a device – all you need is the compiled .apk file, so if you have that, you should be set to go! I recently needed to install a custom App that Touchwork was in the process of developing onto a couple of devices for testing purposes. The devices I was handed were all from the Samsung Android smartphone and table range, including a Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S II, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab. To install the app, I first needed to connect each of the devices to the PC using the standard USB connector cable. Once USB storage/file sharing was enabled on the phone, I was able to drag and drop the .apk file into the root folder of the device via Windows Explorer. With the copy complete, the device was disconnected and using Samsung’s My Files file manager app, I could browse to the .apk file in the root folder of the SD card. Click on the .apk file and the install process will begin. Note that you will get a warning saying that your phone doesn’t allow the installation of non-market apps, [...]
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Jan
23rdHow to Take a Screenshot on a Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830
Usually on an Android smartphone you need to root and install a special app in order to be able to take a screenshot or screen capture if you will. Not so on a Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 running Android 2.2.1 Froyo, as pleasingly it comes with a built in screen capture functionality! To take a screenshot of your home screen or any other screen for that matter is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is press and hold the physical Back button on the phone, usually the button to the right of the big main button in the centre, i.e. the Home button, and while you are doing that, press the Home button just once. You will hear the camera snapping sound and if you release the buttons and browse through to your Gallery, you’ll see the screenshots under the ScreenCapture menu item. Handy if you like pictures to go along with your app reviews or phone tutorials! Just a note though, but sometimes applications pick up the Back button hold as a Back button press, meaning that the application keeps exiting or going back, making it impossible to take a screen capture of the screen that you need – to get around this, simply exit completely to the home screen, press and hold the back button, and then reopen the application whilst holding the back button down and browse through to the required screen. Then it is a simple matter of tapping the Home button to grab [...]
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Sep
30thSamsung Galaxy Ace S5830: How to Forward an SMSThe Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is a nice mid-range Android phone running 2.2 Froyo with Touchwiz 3.0 on top. I’ve had it for a couple of weeks now, and only just learned how to forward an SMS on to another person! (Ridiculous I know, but that’s what you get thanks to the unintuitive nature of touchscreen interfaces!) To forward a SMS on is actually quite easy. Enter any of the threaded SMS conversations that are sitting in your SMS inbox. Locate the message you want to forward to another user and touch and hold that particular message until the previously hidden contextual menu pops up. From there it is a simple matter of selecting the Forward Message option. And now you know! :)
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Sep
14thSamsung SyncMaster SA300 20″ LED Monitor
It’s been a good handful days in terms of purchases thanks to the return I received from the Tax Man, Mr. SARS, including a brand new baby car seat for Jessica (for a whopping R1,400!), a Preacher graphic novel for a ridiculous R5, and second hand copies of Dante’s Inferno and Red Dead Redemption for next to nothing. And taking into account the money made from my successful little trip to Cash Crusaders on Saturday and then deducting the R900 or so for my tooth extraction, the end result of it all was that I had a little bit of spare cash available to me which I decided to spend on myself for a change – so I went out in search for a new desktop monitor! Although I didn’t strictly need a new monitor, my 19″ Acer LCD is still going strong, the sudden loss of my laptop has deprived me of a standalone Windows machine, and seeing as my little Ubuntu server box is currently sitting quite underutilized at the moment, it would make for a perfect second desktop machine – and because I have such a huge desk space in the study, there’s no reason not to buy a second monitor instead of succumbing to the space saving KVM switches route! So during lunch on Tuesday I raced out to the mall, and quickly did a fair bit of shop-hopping to determine what monitors are available, in what sizes and what would actually fit my admittedly fairly [...]
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Jul
20thSamsung Galaxy Ace S5830: Quickly Add an App Shortcut to the Main ScreenThe Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is a nice mid-range Android phone running 2.2 Froyo with Touchwiz 3.0 on top. Although it isn’t quite intuitive, to quickly add a shortcut (or launcher) to that latest great app you just installed on your phone’s main screen (or desktop if you will) is pretty simple. Simply enter the menu list of all the apps, and when you find the one you want to add, simply press and hold on the app icon. This will instantly transfer you to the desktop screen, with a nice new shortcut already in place! And now you know!
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Jul
13thSamsung Galaxy Ace S5830: Remove an App Shortcut from the Main ScreenThe Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is a nice mid-range Android phone running 2.2 Froyo with Touchwiz 3.0 on top. Although it isn’t quite intuitive, to remove an app shortcut (or launcher) from your phone’s main screen (or desktop if you will) is pretty simple. Simply locate the app shortcut icon you wish to remove from your desktop screen and then press down on and hold the icon. As you hold down, a trash can bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. Simply drag the icon down onto the trash bar and release, resulting in the deletion of the shortcut. And now you know!
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Jul
6thSamsung Galaxy Ace S5830: View Your MAC AddressThe Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is a nice mid-range Android phone running 2.2 Froyo with Touchwiz 3.0 on top. Sometimes it is useful to know what your device’s MAC address is and to locate it on the phone isn’t always that intuitive. First, select the Settings application from the main menu and once loaded, select the Wireless and networks menu option. Once loaded, enter the Wi-Fi settings menu option. The trick now is to hit the menu button, which will bring up a new contextual menu with one of the options being Advanced. Click on Advanced and the new screen will finally read return your MAC address to you. And now you know.
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Jun
15thMy Introduction to Android: Galaxy Ace S5830
What, who, how?! I didn’t believe the SMS I received the other day from Vodacom, alerting me to the fact that I could now upgrade. “That’s impossible,” I exclaimed, “there is no way that I’ve had my delightful Samsung Star for two years already!” But a quick check in my records revealed the truth – it had been two years already and I was indeed due for an upgrade, nice, and after seeing an advert on TV for the new Samsung Galaxy Ace on a Vodacom contract, I sprung into action and did some Internet research – all of which led to a very quick realization that this was indeed the phone I wanted, my first ever Android “smartphone”, and most importantly, probably the shortest ever phone search in the history of me owning a mobile phone! :) Anyway, I placed a quick phone call to the Vodacom shop in the mall (Somerset Mall in case you were wondering) just to make sure they had some Galaxies in stock (they had 5) and half an hour later, I found myself seated in the Vodacom Shop waiting for assistant Wendy to fill in all the necessary forms before I handed over my upgrade administration fee and left the store, now a proud owner of a shiny black Samsung (I’m such a fanboy) Android midrange smartphone. And boy am I pleased with my upgrade (as is Chantelle who is quite jealous and now full of respite that she didn’t do the necessary [...]
