iPhone: Tired of overtyping names when IOS doesn't capitalise "peter" as "Peter"?

Takes names like Peter, Mark, Jack and John. They are also nouns so IOS won't expect to capitalise them even if they are names in the Contacts.

Simple solution is to create keyboard shortcuts for all of them.

Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts

Add a shortcut for John:

Now when you type the word "john" it will capitalise it for you to "John". Here are a few starting suggestions...

"I never knew you could do that!" for iPhone

General

• Tap top of display (where time is displayed) to go to top of page or top of long list
• Access single character from other keyboard by hold down on "123" and slide to desired character. After typing it flips back to original keyboard
• Keyboard shortcuts for common phrases or typos in Settings.. General.. Keyboard.. Shortcuts. Great for changing "peter" the verb to "Peter" the name automatically, and autocompleting long email addresses, or pasting complete paragraphs of text.
• Shake to undo typing or dictation
• Quick access music from lock screen by pressing home button twice
• Reader button in Safari to give large readable version of web page and option to email whole page
• "Do not disturb" option to silence phone at night—allows favourites to break through
• Reminders can be location-aware, say where you want to be reminded as well as when

Camera

• Camera exposure and focus by tap on screen
• Second shutter release with volume controls
• Headset shutter release with its volume controls
• Switch from photo browse to camera by pressing volume keys
• Quick access camera from lock screen by sliding camera icon
• Change panoramic photo rotate direction with double tap

Emails

• Swipe to delete emails
• Quick access to draft emails by holding down on 'new message' button
• Separate signatures for email accounts
• Make email text larger in Accessibility preference

Phone and SMS

• Reply to phonecall with SMS by tapping white phone icon on incoming call, and choosing quick response SMS
• Two taps on 'off' button to divert call to voicemail, one to just silence the ringer while you exit room to take the call.
• "Send as SMS" option in Messages allows to send either as iMessage or regular SMS
• SMS text too small? Make SMS text larger in Accessibility preference

Add your tips in the comments...

TimeMachine disk out of space? Sort it with Carbon Copy Cloner

If your Time Machine drive is running out of space and you want to keep a nice long backup trail, you can migrate the data from a smaller disk to a larger one with Carbon Copy Cloner using the "block copy" method. It works a treat, and allows to you to keep a nice long backup history instead of older backups being removed due to lack of space. The process takes a good while as in my case I was cloning over 400Gb to the new drive.

Can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my Time Machine backup?

For important, albeit technical reasons, Carbon Copy Cloner will avoid backing up a Time Machine backup set in a file-level copy. It is possible, however, to clone a Time Machine volume with CCC using a block-level copy:

1. Enable the "Block copy" button in CCC's preferences: choose "Preferences..." from the Carbon Copy Cloner menu and check the box to "Indicate when a block-level clone is possible"
2. Choose your source and destination volumes in CCC's main window
3. Click the "Block copy" button to require a block-level copy
4. Click the Clone button

Carbon Copy Cloner has saved the day for me in many situations and is very well worth the $25.

http://www.bombich.com/index.html

Am I seeing things? Floppy disk? Windows 8 password reset options...

I forgot my password for Windows 8. So I click Reset Password. And this comes up:

Fair enough. But see what happens when I click Next:

Errm. Insert a floppy disk. You gotta be joking! Is MS taking us back to 80's technology to reset our password? and how many computers that can run Windows 8 actually have a floppy disk drive? Apple stopped using them in 1998—15 years ago. And I'll bet they feature in very few Windows PCs these days either…

The email address won't let me in either:

Now what? I can't get in… 

Use "shortcuts" to fix typos and paste in awkward text...

Some suggested shortcuts...

On the iPhone and iPad, there is a shortcut feature which means that instead of typing "See my website for details" I can type "smw" and it will expand to the full text.

Or instead of typing out a long complicated email address "guy.hemmings@essexmacsupport.co.uk", I can give it an abbreviation like "ghex".

Adding a shortcut

Go to the Settings App > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts. you'll see one already there "omw" for "On my way". To add a shortcut, press the [+] in the shortcuts window, type the phrase in full (or paste it in from elsewhere) and then enter the shortcut for it. Press Save.

The shortcut feature can be used to replace proper names that are also nouns or verbs e.g. when you type "peter" it can correct to "Peter" (you can always backspace over an incorrect usage of the word).

iPhone tip #2: read enlarged version of webpages

   When you see the 'Reader' icon in the menubar on iPhone or iPad, tap it to get a beautifully-formatted enlarged version of the webpage you are viewing, with no distracting adverts. Once viewing it in Reader mode, you have a lot of options including increasing or reducing the font size and sending the whole article by email.

iPhone tip #1: go straight to the top!

On the iPhone, where you are viewing a lot of data (say in Contacts) or at the end of a long webpage in Safari, tap the time display at the top of the screen to rapidly scroll right to the top of the page.