Settings

Not Yet Getting OTA Update Notification: android

Many people get Nexus devices for the fact that, these are the devices which get latest android updates first. But these updates doesn’t reach to every Nexus device at the same time. Maybe Google rolls it out based on user location.

But sometimes your neighbor gets the update but not you 🙁

In such cases, need not worry, just follow these simple steps and get updates to your device with in few minutes:

Go to your phone settings -> apps

Here slide the options – Downloaded -Running – All

Under All, search for ‘Google Services Framework‘, click on it:

Here click on Clear data and Clear cache buttons.

Now Force stop the application by clicking on Force stop button at the top.

Restart the phone.

Once the phone is ON, check for the update notification. If it still doesn’t appear, follow the above procedure at least twice – by switching your phone to airplane mode.

Example:

I could (OTA – Over The Air)update my Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 to KitKat 4.4.3 using above mentioned method and I was successful in 2 attempts – took me around 2 minutes.

Related Read: Best Flip Cover / Case For Nexus 5

Hide Your ‘Last Seen’, Photo and Status: WhatsApp

Whatsapp had become stalking tool for many people. Simply add someones number into your phone contact and get to know their ‘last seen’ date/time, their status update and their profile photo(hmm this one is important!)

WhatsApp for iOS had this option to hide ‘last seen’ date/time, but android version lacked it for some unknown reason.

Privacy On WhatsApp: android
Now WhatsApp users on android can set these privacy settings for ‘Last Seen’, ‘Profile Photo’ and ‘Status’. You can individually set all these to ‘Everyone’, ‘My Contacts’ only and ‘Nobody’ except me!

Download New WhatsApp: Since the latest version of WhatsApp for android isn’t yet available on Google Play Store, you can download it directly from WhatsApp website.
(It’s 13.65 MB in size)

Phone Settings: Go to your android phone’s settings -> Security -> and check ‘Unknown sources’.

Install New WhatsApp: Now click on the downloaded .apk file and install it.

WhatsApp Settings: Go to ‘settings’ -> Account -> Privacy -> Who can see my personal info

Do not forget to set back your security option on your phone after installing new WhatsApp apk file. Go to your phone settings -> Security -> and UNCHECK ‘Unknown sources’.

Looks like a good move as soon as Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 Billion.

How-to enable in-stream ads: YouTube

Were you earning good income from YouTube’s Instream ad options ?

But now, pre-roll ads, Mid-roll ads and post-roll ads options are missing from your account ?

Not really..

You can enable these ads only for videos with atleast 10 min of content.

Once you upload the video and the video is processed, goto Video Manager and click on the edit link beside your video.
Next, goto Monetization tab and then select pre-roll, Mid-roll and post-roll ads.

youtube-instream-ads-preroll-midroll-postroll

Another good news is, we need not enable Monetization individually for all the videos. Now you can set default setting, which will be pre-selected for all your future uploads.

To set your video’s default options goto: your youtube default settings

Is your a/c used to SPAM Twitter?

Have you ever noticed a Tweet from your Twitter account, which you did not tweet!

When people come across such situation they straight away think that their account has been hacked. But its not the case always.

There are many services built around Twitter and most of them use Twitter API for log in or authentication purpose. While using such services, be careful while you share your Twitter ID and Password. Read the policy properly. Recently I saw a service which required my Twitter ID and Password, to let me use their service. With curiosity I read their policy page. There they had clearly mentioned that, they will periodically use our Twitter account to Tweet about their service, for promotional purpose!

After reading this policy, I started searching for the policy page of “Instantly Increase your Twitter Followers” kind of services. And found that many of them had the same policy. After reading this policy, I started noticing those automated, promotional tweets from some peoples or tweeples account. Most of them never know that their Twitter account is being used by others.

If the service you are using is intentionally evil, then they will not let you remove yourself from that service. In such case, use your Twitter account settings > Connections tab page to disallow any of these services from using your account. And change your password, for more security.

The above image is just an example and it doesn’t showcase any fraud or scam companies that are trying to misuse your Twitter a/c.
Of course, not all services that use Twitter API for authentication are bad. Most of these services respect users privacy, but some services are misusing this facility. So do not hesitate to kick them off, from accessing your account.

Even worst cases, have you shared your Twitter username and password with any service, which do not use Twitter API for authentication? If yes, then first change your password without fail and never give your username and password again.

Twitter allows only trusted parties to use their API, but still no system is 100% perfect, so no exception to Twitter.

Problem with Orkut Chat: its Solution

Can not chat with some friends in Orkut ?

Orkut Chat feature has been rolled-out to almost all the Orkut accounts. And many people are facing some annoying problem with it. i.e., they are able to chat with some friends and are not able to chat with some other friends, even though both of then have enabled and are available for chat!

This is due to the permission set in your Orkut account settings.

Solution:
Goto “Settings ” and click on “Chat” tab. Now click on the group of friends that you want to chat with and block the friends with whom you don’t want to chat. You can individually select, with whom you want/don’t want to chat with, by clicking on the small arrow symbol(which is highlighted in the above image).
After selecting/deselecting the friends to chat/not to chat with, click on save button.

Battery problem with your Phone? Try this before purchasing new one

Battery problems are common with mobile phones these days. As the cost of the phone goes down the quality of some of the key components reduce significantly[Most of the times!]. Their one year warranty will be of great use most of the time!

Ok, today on our Sunday Mobile tips we have a simple but yet sometime a great money saving tip for you.
If your mobile phone starts showing battery weak suddenly and if it keeps popping the same message each time, even after hours of charging, then you must read this article till end 🙂
Mobile_Phone_Battery
Most of the time this is due to a software problem. Mainly the 3rd party software you use on your phone. And you believe it or not, some times the call dropping and other problems also start due to overloading of your phone memory.
As a quick solution for these kind of problem, just restore your phone to “factory settings”, and your phone will start working normally.

While this is not a case most of the time, but its better to check before going and purchasing a brand new, branded battery, which will cost you a lot.
Hope this tip helps atleast some of you. Please share your tips, tricks or any other things that you have experienced with your phone.

Resetting HTC touch 3452 and 3450

Coming straight to the point, here are some simple steps to reset HTC 3452 and 3450 phones.

Procedure:
1. Click on “Start” menu, in the Today screen.
2. Click on Settings.
3. Now you can see 3 tabs on the screen -> “Personal“, “System“, “Connections“.
4. Click on “System” tab.
5. Here you can see many icons like About, Backlight,Clock&Alarms,External GPS, Clear Storage etc.
6. Click on “Clear Storage” icon.
7. Now it will ask for your confirmation. Here is the exact message that is showing on my device right now:

Clear Storage:
Clear storage will make all of your data lost, and reset all settings to manufacturer default.
Do you want to proceed?
Please enter the following word “1234” and press YES button.

8. If you are sure and want to reset the settings, go ahead and enter 1234 and the phone will reset and restart by itself.
9. When the phone restarts, it will ask for the time zone, time, date etc.

Another simple way to reset the phone is..

There is a small reset button inside a small hole(as shown in the above figure, with pink circle), beside the charger point. Use your stylus and press it gently, to soft-reset your device. Device will restart and ask for time zone, time, date etc. And the phone will be restored to manufacturer default settings.

After each reset it will automatically customize the device, so there is really no need to worry about the settings after restoring the mobile. Its a user friendly phone.

All the data would be lost..so be careful.
If you know some more tips, please feel free to share it will us in the comment section below.

Change the font face of the text in adsense ad units

Adsense ads have worked great when we blend the ads according to the look and feel of our website.
Examples:-
1. Change the background colour of the ad unit to the background colour of your blog.
2. Use the font colour of the text in the ad similar to that on your blog.
3. Change the colour of the links in the ad to match the colour of the links on your blog.

These simple tweaks will optimize the ad zone.

Now to add to this blending and optimization, Adsense team has released yet another cool feature to our control. i.e., Changing the font face of the ad unit.

In HTML and XHTML, a font face or font family is the typeface that is applied to some text.
Ex:-
<font face="times, serif">Sample text.</font>

Adsense publishers are now allowed to choose between Arial, Times, and Verdana font faces. Please note that while font options will appear in every account, they’ll currently only be applied to ad units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters. Latin-based languages include:

* Croatian
* Czech
* Danish
* Dutch
* English (U.S. and U.K.)
* Finnish
* French
* German
* Hungarian
* Indonesian
* Italian
* Norwegian
* Polish
* Portuguese
* Romanian
* Slovak
* Spanish
* Swedish
* Turkish
So if your blog/website is written in some other language(other than listed above) then custom font face will not work and the default[‘Standard AdSense font family’] font face is shown on such sites[Ex:- Ads on pages mainly in Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Russian, among others, will not be shown in custom fonts].

You can use this feature to your advantage in two ways:
1. If you’d like to quickly change the font settings for every ad unit generated from your account, visit the ‘Ad Display Preference‘ section of your Account Settings page to select a new account-wide font face. This will affect all units you’ve created in the past.
font-face-adsense

2. You can also change the font of individual ad unit while creating new ad units.

If you want to change the font face of already existing ad units, goto AdSense Setup tab –> Manage Ads now click on the “Edit Ad settings” of the corresponding ad, that you want to edit. You can find a section called “Font“, which is ment to change the font face of that ad unit.
font-face-adsense

If you apply “Arial” font globally to all your adsense ads, then also you can over write it(for individual ad units) by changing the settings in “Manage Ads” –> “Edit Ad settings” of individual ad units and you can show “Verdana” fonts for a particular ad unit. Other ads will still be showing Arial font, except the one you changed to “Verdana”.

From many days we have been seeing Adsense team testing different font face on our blogs. So Arial, Times, and Verdana font faces have worked well so far in the testing, so adsense team have decided to allow its publishers to select between these font faces.

So when will they give the control over font size ? Hope that would be an ultimate thing to optimize the ad unit.
Actually this feature was/is available to Adsense premium publishers from long time, its good to see adsense rolling many good features to all its publishers. These small features will surely help make more money to all publishers….and Google too!