My wife has one of those annoying names with a “special” symbol in it (she’s got one of those weird “e’s” with an accent over it). It’s not her fault, I blame her parents, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have to deal with it.

“Option+e+e” on the computer is not an option on the iPhone’s keyboard.

If you’re new to the iPhone and its multi-function keyboard, you may not know that it is capable of generating far more characters than you see by default. Sure, hitting that “123″ button will give you some numbers and a couple punctuation symbols, and sure, from that screen hitting the little “#+=” button will give you even more characters, but did you know you can type all sorts of freaky characters with a simple trick? Here’s how: Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a lot of ugly friends, odds are your camera roll could use a little sprucing up. Luckily for you, there’s a way you can grab photos from the web and from e-mail messages and save them to your iPhone for later viewing, e-mailing, or for use as wallpaper replacements. Here’s how: Read the rest of this entry »

The iPhone’s auto-correct is pretty smart, but the one thing it has trouble with are contractions. This is because if you want to type a word like “we’ll”, the iPhone will think you meant to type “well” which is a perfectly legitimate word. Same thing with “we’re” and “were”, “it’s” and “its” and so on. But there’s a trick to fooling the auto correct into recognizing that you are typing a contraction instead of another recognizable word. Just repeat the last letter of the word. For Instance, type w-e-l-l-l instead of “well”, and autocorrect will suggest “we’ll”. Type w-e-r-e-e instead of were and you get “we’re”. Type i-t-s-s and you’ll get “it’s”.

Pretty cool, although unfortunately not entirely consistent. For example, typing h-e-l-l-l in an attempt to get “he’ll” gave me “hello”. Oh well, at least I know of two contractions that will no longer slow me down. If you have discovered any other similar typing tricks, let us know in the comments!

Thanks to faithful TICS reader James for the tip!

I pretty much listen to my iPhone’s music exclusively via the “Playlist” sorting option. However, occasionally I find myself feeling a bit more “random” and wanting to sample all my “Rock” or “Alternative” music, or perhaps listen to my favorite Podcasts. While you can access those options by hitting the “More” button along the bottom of the iPod application, that would take 2 button presses, and who has time for that?!?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your most commonly used “browse buttons” visible all the time? Well, you can! Here’s how: (Oh, and don’t judge me because of the Miley Cyrus video – I have a young daughter, I swear).

Step 1: Click “More” in the browse bar. Read the rest of this entry »

By default, the iPhone will auto capitalize the beginning of sentences for you as you type, but what if you are one of those annoying people who likes to write in all CAPITAL LETTERS? Odds are you’ve found that having to constantly hit the “shift” arrow before each letter has drastically slowed down your typing speed and your ability to send “loud” text messages and e-mails.

Well, luckily for you there IS a way to enable Caps Lock on the iPhone’s keyboard, and it’s pretty easy.

Step 1: Go into Settings> General> Keyboard and be sure that the “Enable Caps Lock” switch is set to “ON”. Read the rest of this entry »