Save your iPhone battery. Turn off as many Foursquare features as possible.

Foursquare Radar Settings 

RADAR features of that social geotagging platform started killing smartphones' batteries. Disable that stuff to gain several hours of battery life of active participation in social media while you're on the go.

Radar Notification update in 4sq from several weeks ago was built to make your check-in activity faster, easier and more productive, mainly in 2 ways:

1. Shortcut to checking in - in some cases, 1 or 2 taps would suffice
2. Instead of searching for places to check-in to, 4sq would ask if you want to check-in to a place that you are relatively close to

One might think, what a relief to those who:

• use Foursquare to locate cool places in the area or for 
• those who are totally new and want to get to know their new neighborhoods. 

Theoretically, it is. However, instead of making it faster, easier and more productive for me, considering significant battery life impact, I started learn to live without those fugazy time saving features.

It turns out that Foursquare actually shares a warning pop-up message as you enable those battery draining qualities. You most likely must have tapped right through the update process to enable to battery eating monster. It did save a couple of searches and taps, but it kept me tied to wall outlets - waiting for my phone to charge up again. Not the best use of anyone's time. Instead of strolling the city, my eyes where looking for cafe's where I could sneak in 10-15 minutes of battery charge while sipping my Caramel Macchiato.

Try disabling those new features of Foursquare and you'll see your phone will not have to be charged as frequently. I wonder how many other mobile apps turn into battery life suckers once 1 or 2 new features get enabled.

Coffee. Smartphone. Music. Easy.

Starbucks Mobile App - tap Messages

Remember times when all guns were pointed at Napster? Music industry was forced to undergo a seismic shift since those days and so did technology. But there were times in the past when technology disappointed with half-baked solutions that only geeks (like me) had patience to deal with. These days mobile technology really makes listening to quality new music cheaper, faster, easier and more productive than even before. Coffee lovers already now know how Starbucks mobile app is a great example of that.  

Apple's iTunes system provides a way to not only buy but also redeem gifts or retrieve content downloadable for free with coupons. To get a piece of free music like that, the most optimistic case scenario would call for the following routine:

1. Drive to one of Starbucks store locations in your area
2. Get the coupon (paper slip with a scratch-off) from a Starbucks Store
3. Connect to WiFi on your iPhone or any other iDevice
4. Open iTunes
5. Dig up a spot where you could redeem your coupon
6. Type in your cryptic coupon code
7. Type it in again because it's borderline impossible to get it right the first time
8. Wait for iTunes reaction. If you survived until this step, please continue to be patient
9. Wait for the download to start
10. Check when the download completes
11. Navigate your Purchased and/or Downloaded section of the music player on your iDevice

Oooph! 11 steps?! There's got to be a better way to see what our trusted brands have to suggest and offer to us. 

The answer to that cry is mobile technology, beautifully integrated and smoothly connected. As +Dirk Talamasca points out, you can do magic with the Starbucks mobile app, but I think...  

... this time technology really makes your life easier

1. Install a free Starbucks app
2. Open it and tap once on Messages
3. Tap once on Pick of the Week
4. Tap Download Now

That's it. As graphics below show, after about a minute, that song gets added to your playlist while you sip your grande Caramel Macchiato. No crashes. No syncing through a USB cable. No typing. No BS. Piece of everyday technology in your hand just:

• connected your coffee shop with your phone
• plugged your phone right into a music store
• provided a piece of latest and trending music to you
• seamlessly added a new song to your playlist
• saved you time, made your life faster, easier and more productive
• saved you money, and you didn't even have to switch to Geico

I bet +Courtney Engle Robertson or +Peg Fitzpatrick would agree when I say "How awesome is that!" That's what technology should be to people - a way to make our lives easier.

Starbucks Mobile App - Tap once on Pick of The Week

Starbucks Mobile App - Tap Download Now

Starbucks Mobile App - Just wait a quick minute

Starbucks Mobile App - Your music is downloading automatically

Starbucks Mobile App - Your music is already added to your playlist

Starbucks Mobile App - 1 minute from opening the app, new cool music is playing on your iDevice or an Android

The iTunes Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Clever mobile apps by CleverStep hidden behind iTunes issue

Quick error in Apple App Store got in a way of my search for a decent local sport mobile app, but I'm back on the right track again, with help of a friendly chat.

While digging up an ideal mobile app for local sports, I stumbled upon a mention about a modest yet brilliant project by a small startup called CleverStep. I rushed to App Store to find out more. To my surprise and pleasure at the same time, I already had one of their apps downloaded on one of my iPhones. The app is called Jamis Bikes and it is listed under Sports category. "It's getting warmer" - I thought to myself, before my mobile app detective train came to screeching halt, almost derailed.

'Almost' - because instead of being able to pull up details about that app, or downloading the other product of CleverStep's, I got slapped with an error message in iTunes when attempting to pull up my download/purchase history: "The iTunes Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." I gave it some time, tried again later: the same issue.

Apple communities had a couple of hints, but nothing rally eliminated that pop-up. On the other hand, it felt a little better knowing that I wasn't the only one facing the red exclamation icon. I gave the standard troubleshooting routine a try, at no avail. Number of other forum discussions list tricks like:

We could not complete your iTunes Store request.
The iTunes Store is temporarily unavailable.
Please try again later.

• iTunes updates and upgrades
• pointing fingers at specific versions of iTunes
• resetting cache in iTunes

Unfortunately, they didn't help either. Finally, someone just admitted that he contacted support and they "magically" took care of the issue. "Magical" - that was one of Steve Jobs's favorite adjectives while describing his systems. So I  trusted that suggestion; I tried that magical potion and it provided desired remedy rather quickly. He didn't say what he did, he just said I should be ok shortly. Yes, a chat with Apple Support rep, Leonard, put my local sport mobile app research train back in motion again. 

I've got 99 problems, but access to cool mobile apps ain't one of them!

"Can't connect to iTunes Store" toothache

As a jolly owner of iPad 2 I proudly say I use that device for a lot of things. It saves paper, time and is a tremendous shortcut to world of technology online. Recent update to iOS6 was supposed to make it even faster, easier, more productive and not ask me for my Apple ID every time I want to install stuff. Hmmm, I mean that's great, but did anybody ask for that feature? Wouldn't we prefer to be able to display Flash sites or be able to use Silverlight web applications. They're still here to stay, longer than the latest release of Apple's tablet.

Nonetheless, changes related to Apple ID came about, some devices got the Passbook, some didn't. Sometimes it helps, sometimes that Passbook app gets in a way. I must admit I wasted a good bit of time trying to implement a recommendation from an Apple Forum just to later find out, as Dillon suggests in his reply, that Passbook is not available for my iPad (http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/65991/where-is-passbook-for-the-ipad).

So experts  recommend that I work with Passbook to resolve my inability to update apps and buy music from iTunes, while that app is just nowhere to be found on my device. Well, are they experts really? Someone else out there has a wild thought of messing with DHCP setting of my WiFi connection. For those who really desire to geek themselves out, please feel free to read up about DHCP on TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781008(v=ws.10).aspx) - I would like to proceed to the bottom of solution to connectivity issues to iTunes.

Settings > Wi-Fi > (pick your network) > DHCP > Type 8.8.8.8 in DNS section.

As weird and unexplained it sounds, it worked. Why 8.8.8.8? What if 8 is my unlucky number? Why did the Quality Assurance team at Apple favored that silly DNS address over my actual DNS address given by my ISP (Internet Service Provider). I don't think we'll find out. The most important thing is that suggestions from a Level 0 newbie on Apple forum, Mrs Iris Terava solved a showstopper in an iPad 2 with iOS6 (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2474718?start=180&tstart=0).

Thank you Mrs Iris!

To me that's a massive oversight on Apple's end, or was it? What if we speculate a little bit for a moment ... what if iOS 6's pitfalls are just those subtle maneuvers of your dentist who is trying to improve the state of the inside of your mouth by poking at things and seeing how much pain you can actually take. If you moan, he'll say "sorry" and won't pull that move on you again or will increase the dosage of your pain killer. If you play a tough guy during the current visit and not even once signal discomfort, next time will he not numb your gums at all before he starts fixing a cavity? That's extreme and nasty - I know, but what if Apple is testing us to see how much abuse we are willing to take and still camp outside the fancy glass store in New York City to get that new iPhone 6 or 7 and how much more will we be willing to pay for lower and lower quality, less and less helpful apps with more and more imposed feature set/design as well as increased number of issues in public alpha releases.

Faster, easier and more productive with AirDisplay, wireless multi-monitor hookup

AirDisplay allows you to stretch your current monitor real estate.

"Whoopty dooo", one might say. "I already have a thick VGA cable along with a power cord and a USB cable hooked to the right of my laptop.

But imagine a situation where:

• you could skip those cables, and actually hold your external monitor in your hand
• you could stretch content from one computer onto another idle computer, a tablet or a smartphone
• you stretch your windows from your Mac onto your Windows machine physically independent piece of hardware
• control your PC or Mac from your tablet
• quickly test how your stuff looks like on a tablet, without going through provisioning processes through Apple or Android
• you easily deploy an additional monitor, on a fly, just tap an app on your tablet, no wires, no additional $$, just pure productivity

Enough about the imagining. That stuff is real. All you need is hookup to an app called AirDisplay. You have to pay for a decent version of that software, but if you give up your 2 frappuccinos tomorrow and the day after that, you'll love how well your money was spent. The time saved on NOT playing around with wires alone will make up for the minor expense.

It may not be as snappy as a wire connection, but if you just need that extra 10 inches to keep a spreadsheet open for lookup, or a mockup of something your designing on your main monitor, AirDisplay will not disapoint you.