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Save Time With Motion Gestures On The Samsung Galaxy S III

October 31, 2012 By jen Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but it always seems like I am trying to do 10 things at once. If you feel the same way, the motion gesture features on the Samsung Galaxy S III might be your new best friend. They are a great way to quickly do some of the most common things with your phone such as placing calls, opening the camera app open or muting a call quickly while your baby screams in the background.

You may not even know that these features exist on your Galaxy S3 because they need to enabled on your phone to get started. To do so, go into your phone settings application and look for the “motion settings.” Turn on “motion activation” at the top, and from there you’ll be able to turn on specific motion gesture features, while leaving the ones off your may not want to use.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Motion Gestures

Here’s a run-down of all of the motion gestures.

Direct call – call contact currently displayed on screen from call logs, contact details or message details by bringing the device up to your face.
Smart alert – Pick up your device to be notified about missed calls or messages.
Tap to top – double tap to go to the top of contact list, email list, and email messages.
Tilt to zoom – Tap and hold at two points, then tilt device bcd and forth to zoom in or out of screen.
Pan to move icon – Move device left or right while holding selected icon to reposition it to another page.
Pan to browse images – Pan to move left, right, up, and down an image when zoomed in.
Shake to update – Shake your device to scan for Bluetooth, Kies air devices, and more.
Turn over to mute/pause – Turn device over to mute incoming calls, message alerts, and alarms, and to pause media.
Palm swipe to capture – Capture screen by swiping it from right to left or vice versa with the slide of your hand.
Palm touch to mute/pause – Mute or pause sounds by covering screen with your hand while playing media with the screen on.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Motion Gestures

While not under the same menu, I also love being able to quickly open the camera app from the lock screen (especially when your trying to quickly capture one of those special moments from your kiddos). To enable, you’ll find the option in the settings app under “security,” and then “lock screen options.” Just enable “quick camera access” and you’ll be able to open the camera from the lock screen by tapping and holding and rotating the phone from a portrait to landscape orientation.

Verizon Wireless Ambassador

Better Than Just A Whistle While You Work

September 30, 2012 By jen Leave a Comment

As I stood in the garage staring at boxes upon boxes of stuff, I dreaded the long day of sorting, and *gasp* cleaning out the garage. For a pack rat like me, the imminent garage sale was both exciting ($$$) and terrifying (I don’t part with stuff easily). To allow me to work at my own speed, my husband volunteered to watch the girls, so I was left in peace and quiet to clean. Too quiet.

It didn’t take long to decide that the sound of birds and children playing down the street was not enough to keep me motivated. I needed to jam to some tunes while I worked. But we don’t own any portable music players – I know, I know.

Then it dawned on me – my Samsung Galaxy S III. I previously connected my Amazon Cloud account to the built-in music player, it was perfect.

So I propped my phone against a box and voila, tunage!

Samsung Galaxy Music Player

I know this isn’t anything new, people use their phones to play music all of the time. But it was new to me, until the Galaxy I had never played music on a phone. True story.

It worked like a charm, and I rocked out to my mix of Katy Perry, Glee, a bit of the ‘80s and more. I worked in that garage all day long, and when I was done – a giant pile for the garage sale. Success all around!

BTW – In case you are wondering, I made a killing at my garage sale!

Now I am motivated to buy some more tunes (I went through my short playlist rather quickly). What do you listen to while you work?

Verizon Wireless Ambassador

Wordless Wednesday ~ Priceless

September 12, 2012 By jen 18 Comments

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then always having a camera phone handy at the precise moment is priceless.

Instagram Baby

All of my precious moments were captured with my Samsung Galaxy SIII. I love that the camera on this phone is quick enough to snap these fleeting moments.

Verizon Wireless Ambassador

Technology That Keeps Us Safe: Wireless Emergency Alerts

August 31, 2012 By jen 2 Comments

Although Florida was spared a hit from Issac, we did get a lot of rain. And when there are rain bands stemming from a hurricane, there is bound to be some severe weather as well. While I am pretty calm in the face of severe weather (hello, I grew up in Florida), I do like to stay-up-to-date with weather updates. But keeping the weather channel on tends to make my four year old paranoid (especially in the wake of the tornado that touched down this summer at my parents’ house).

So instead of watching the weather, we hung out in the play room practicing writing her letters while it poured outside. From the other side of the house, I heard an unusual ringing. It sounded like an emergency alert ring, but I was sure the TV was off… I headed off to investigate.

The TV was off. Could that sound have come from my phone?

It sure did. My Samsung Galaxy S III sent me a text alert letting me know there was severe weather in my area. But this was no ordinary text message, the notification came with a special forced tone alert that overrode my volume setting. How smart is that?!

When I turned on my phone I found a message from the National Weather Service alerting me to a tornado warning in the area. I turned on the TV, and sure enough a tornado warning had just been issued. Now that’s the way technology should work!

The Samsung Galaxy S III is connected to the new Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS).

CMAS (also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) or Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN)) is a new public safety system that allows customers who own an enabled mobile device to receive geographically-targeted, text-like messages alerting them of imminent threats to safety in their area. The new technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested user areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services.CMAS enables government officials to target emergency alerts to specific geographic areas through cell towers (e.g. lower Manhattan), which pushes the information to dedicated receivers in CMAS-enabled mobile devices. Learn more about CMAS from the FTC.

Hip Hip Hooray For Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich

August 23, 2012 By jen 8 Comments

No, this post isn’t about food. It’s about tech. So if you came looking for desert move along, but if you want some sweet tech talk let me tell you why I love Ice Cream Sandwich.

As a long-time Android user, I eagerly awaited the arrival of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android’s latest operating system). I was so over the lag issues with Gingerbread (the last phone operating system), and my techy husband told me that Ice Cream Sandwich was expected to be faster with some of the features I liked in Honeycomb (on the Droid Xyboard). Of course it became available on my Droid right before my Galaxy arrived, but I didn’t have much time to play with it before switching over to my new phone. So not only did I get an awesome new phone with the Galaxy, but it came complete with the brand new operating system that I had been waiting for.

I am THRILLED to report that after using my new phone and Ice Cream Sandwich for a month it is everything I hoped it would be and more! Gone are the annoying delays due to lag time, the phone is zip-zip-zippy. Sure I know part of the reason is that the Galaxy phone is just plain awesome, but there is also a lot to be said about the processing of the new operating system too. (Of course I am not a techy, so I am not going to even try to go into all of the technical reasons the OS is faster, but it is.)

Of course, everything looks different too. For a girl who doesn’t like my tech to change, updates like this always take some getting used to. But now that I have become accustom to the new look, I really like it. It is a simpler look, with more clean lines.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich Samsung Galaxy

Other visual improvements include updated folder abilities and widget previews — both very nice.

In addition to speeding up Internet browsing, Ice Cream Sandwich includes some fun updates as well. For example, there’s no reason to memorize another password combo, the new lock screen includes facial recognition. My hubby had fun with this feature, locking me out of my phone by setting his face as the unlock key.

Going back to lag issues. One of the reasons I often have lag problems with my tech — including phone and laptop — is that I am a constant multitasker. At this moment I have… 38 tabs open in my browser on my computer and 13 on my phone. (Ouch, that’s almost embarrassing.) Keeping all of those things processing at once eats memory. With the new Ice Cream Sandwich task manager, closing one of my many open applications is as easy as a finger swipe. If only I could turn off some of the processes in my mind as easy.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich Task Manager Samsung Galaxy