android programming

applications| how-tos| phones| the cloud Are you a stickler for keeping your receipts? If so, there’s a new feature in Google Drive for Android that’s right up your alley.Just point and shoot, and the Google Drive app will convert the image of your receipt into a PDF, and then upload the file directly to your cloud-based, accessible-from-anywhere Google Drive...

Martin writes: Since converting from Microsoft to Apple, all my contacts have been duplicated—sometimes up to five times!Some information is coming from Outlook Contacts but I can’t find the source and iCloud seems to be procreating without any help. Please help me to eradicate these multiple contacts and regain my sanity.Hi Martin! Sounds like there was a little confusion while your address book...

Want to turn that photo you just shot on your iPhone into your Facebook profile picture? Sure thing—and yes, you can do it directly from the Facebook mobile app.Read on for more gotta-try features in the rapidly evolving Facebook for iPhone app, from how to filter your news feed to an easy way to save snapshots posted by your friends.Tap an option to see just the most recent news feed updates,...

One of our guiding beliefs here at New Milford High School is that our students will find purpose and meaning in their respective learning experiences.  Over the years we have added a series of new courses (19 in just two years), re-written the curriculum of existing courses, made available online courses as part of the VHS Collaborative, and developed numerous authentic learning experiences...

Need a little help figuring out your new iMac or MacBook? You’ve come to the right place. Check out our updated survival guide for the basics on Mac OS X, including details on the latest “Mountain Lion” features, illustrated guides for updating and backing up your Mac, must-know tips, and more.The basicsWhat is Mac OS X?It’s the software that powers all the day-to-day features on your iMac or MacBook....

Found a link on your iPhone or iPad to a long, enticing web article that you don’t have time to read right now? Or maybe you do have time, but not the cellular signal.Well, there’s a better way to save web links for later than, say, simply pasting them into your iPhone’s (or iPad’s) Notes app.The trick: using Apple’s “Reading List” feature, which saves links from Mail, Safari, and other iPhone apps...

Over the course of this school year, I have been fortunate enough to share ideas on technology integration with Judy Wilson, my children’s principal at P.S. 3 in Staten Island, NY.  Many of these conversations focused on my own son’s use of technology as a catalyst for creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking developed by playing Minecraft and using iMovie to storyboard and create his...

Who needs phone favorites when you can just add a one-touch shortcut for your most important contacts, friends, and loved ones to your Android phone’s home screen?Add a contact shortcut to your Android phone’s home screen for one-touch access to phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, and more.Good question—and indeed, the ability to pin a contact directly to your home screen is such a no-brainer...

One of the most intimidating new Office features has to be the so-called “ribbon”—the thick stripe of settings and commands that sits at the top of every Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint window.Sure, the ribbon comes in handy when you’re tweaking fonts in Word or tinkering with cell formulas in Excel.But when it’s finally time to get creative, the ribbon tends to turn into an unwelcome (and...

An invite to a can’t-miss event just landed in your inbox, and you want to mark it in your iPhone’s calendar before you forget—and while you’re at it, you’d like to add the sender’s name to your address book. Well, good news: you’re just a few taps away from saving the date in your iPhone’s (or iPad’s) Calendar app, or from creating a new entry in your Contacts app—all directly from the original...

This year’s Holocaust Study Tour took place from April 1 through 14.  I am proud to say that this unparalleled learning experience, under the direction of Colleen Tambuscio, has taken place for the last twelve years at NMHS.  Students that participate in this experience travel to Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic as they learn firsthand about one of the most traumatic events in human...

Nicole writes: In your article about changing a default program you say, “The first step is to right-click a PDF on your desktop.” But how do I right-click by tapping the trackpad of my MacBook Pro?Hi Nicole! Yep, it’s a little weird that Mac users are constantly being asked to right-click (or “secondary” click) when their trackpads don’t have actual right-click buttons.Never fear, though: there...

Ever find yourself swiping back and forth on your Android display just to read a sentence in a Gmail message? Annoying, right?That’s because Gmail for Android zooms in a bit on some email messages—mainly those with large images, banners, or other graphics—so they’re easier to read.The only problem with the zoomed messages, though, is that the actual text tends to spill off the side of the screen,...

So, you thought you turned off the notifications for an iPhone or iPad app, but it’s still bugging you with unwanted banners, beeps and badges. What gives?Well, just because you switched an app’s “Alert style” setting to “none” doesn’t mean you’ve turned off all of its alerts.There are, in fact, a few more notification settings that need tweaking—and if you don’t, expect more messages on your...

The following is a guest post by Juliana Meehan.As I sat with my stack of 100+ personal narratives waiting for grading, the enormity of the task threatened to swamp whatever energy I had.  After thirteen years of teaching high school and middle school language arts, the idea of having to mark those papers with notations like “run-on” and “fragment” ad nauseam drove me to seek a different solution....

No matter how carefully you’ve checked your Facebook privacy settings, it can still be an eye-opener to see how your timeline looks to everyone else on Facebook—friends and strangers alike. Facebook’s “View As” feature not only lets you see how the world sees your timeline, it can also show you how your timeline looks through the eyes of a specific friend. It’s a handy way to see, for example,...

Thanks to the Kindle’s handy “Whispersync” feature, you can start reading a book on, say, your Kindle Fire, then pick up right where you left off on another Kindle-friendly device, like an Android phone or iPhone.But if you try to re-read a Kindle book that you finished a year ago, your various Kindle devices will want to jump to the very last page you read—meaning, most likely, the end of the...

Cross-posted at SmartBlog on Education.Around this time last year I received what I thought was an odd request. Juliana Meehan, a teacher from a neighboring district, contacted me and asked if I would agree to mentor her as part of her training to become an administrator as part of the NJ EXCEL program.  Now at this time my plate was extremely full and, as a result, I was very reluctant to take...