Speak Text

Your iPhone or iPad can read to you. Enabling the Speak option makes it possible for your iOS device to read aloud any selectable text. Launch the Settings app, tap on General, and then choose Accessibility. Scroll down to Speak Selection, and tap to turn it on.

Now, go into any app where you can highlight text. Your options include Mail, Safari, Notes, and many others. Select some text, and you’ll see a new option appear in the contextual menu (you may have to tap the right arrow to view more options). Tap the Speak command, and your iOS device will start reading the text aloud.

Enable Emoji Keyboard

Perhaps you’ve seen these iconographic symbols in emails, iMessages, and tweets, and wondered how the heck people managed to type them. Maybe you’ve mistakenly assumed that you need to purchase a third-party app to gain access to those special symbols.

You don't: Apple treats those symbols, called Emoji, as an international keyboard. Launch Settings, and tapGeneral, International, Keyboards. Then tap Add New Keyboard and find Emoji. Now open an app where you can type some text.

Next to the spacebar, you’ll see a little globe icon. Tap it to switch between your regular keyboard and the Emoji one, which contains many tabs full of different characters. Tap on those characters to insert them wherever you’d like. (If you have many international keyboards, tap and hold the globe to bring up a menu of all your options.)

Spoken Emoji. For real fun, type in a bunch of Emoji symbols, select them all, and then tap the Speak button. You’ll hear the often-entertaining names of each symbol read in sequence.

Bugs & Fixes: PDF's fail to open by Ted Landau

Recently, I tried something that had always worked before. This time, it didn’t.

Using Safari, I clicked a link to a PDF file. After the PDF opened in a browser window, I selected the Save As... command from Safari’s File menu. So far, so good. Next, I double-clicked the saved file sitting on my Mac’s desktop. Normally, this opens the file in Preview. This time, however, I was greeted with

the following error:

A similar message appeared if I tried to open the file in Adobe Reader, rather than in Preview. I next tried saving the file from Firefox

instead of Safari. It made no difference.

Returning to Safari, I selected the Print command. From the Print dialog, I selected to save the file as a PDF. This too failed to save a viable copy.

I finally discovered a route to success. If I clicked my trackpad when the pointer was over a PDF page in Safari, a toolbar overlay appeared. One icon in the toolbar was a floppy disk (really!). Clicking this icon saved a copy of the file that (at last!) opened in Preview with no errors.

The problem was not restricted to a particular PDF file saved from the web. It happened with any one I now attempted to save. PDFs that did not originate from a web page continued to open just fine.

I wasn’t certain why the problem had first popped up when it did, nor why one particular method of saving worked while other similar ones did not. However, I was fairly certain as to the culprit: I suspected the Adobe .plugin files used for PDF viewing. Two such files resided in my /Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder: AdobePDFViewer.plugin andAdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin. If I removed this pair from the this folder, Safari reverted to its built-in (not Adobe-based) method of viewing PDF files. After I did this, problems with saving PDFs from Safari vanished.

To be clear, removing these plug-ins did not eradicate problems with previously saved files. It just prevented symptoms going forward.

My next step was to check if there was a more recent version of these plug-in files that fixed this problem. At first, the answer appeared to be no. As I knew these files get installed as part of Adobe Reader, I launched the app and selected Check for Updates. It said I was already using the latest version (10.1.5).

Not ready to give up, I also checked Adobe’s website. Contradicting the Reader app, the site listed a newer (11.0.01) version as available. After I updated to this newer version, the PDF saving bug was gone!

Unfortunately, the update introduced a new bug. Now, when I select to save a PDF file from Safari, I have to save twice. At the second instance, I am asked if I want to replace the file I just created a moment before. While a minor irritation, it’s been enough to get me thinking that I would be better off giving up on Adobe’s plug-ins altogether.

Normally, I wouldn’t devote a column to a bug that is resolved merely by updating software. However, I suspected that many users would not realize that the Adobe plug-ins were the culprit. Even if they did, they might not realize that these files originate with Adobe Reader. Even then, they would likely be stopped by Reader’s erroneous update message. Not to worry. If you have this bug, you now know what to do

Now You Can Take Your iPad Where You Used to Take Your Newspaper

Do you take your iPad everywhere? Even the bathroom? You have to have your reading material right? The Pedestal Stand will make it convenient for you to bring your iPad into the bathroom with you.

The Pedestal Stand for iPad from CTA Digital was specially designed so that you can use your tablet with you are on the throne. It is made of chrome, with a heavy base to make sure it stays still and has a 10-inch bendable gooseneck stand to keep your iPad in place.

Never be without your iPad again. Oh and it also holds your toilet paper.

Source Ubergizmo

Tablets and E-Readers Easier on Eyes for Older Individuals

MASHABLE.COM 14 Hours Ago
Reading on Tablets Easier for Older Eyes
by Leslie Meredith

People young and old prefer reading paper books to tablets and e-readers, but older individuals could find themselves reading faster and with less effort on a tablet. The news came from a small study released this week in PLOS ONE from researchers at the historic epicenter of the printed word — Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Among 360 readers ages 21 to 34, no difference in reading speed or brain effort was detected between reading via a book, a Kindle e-reader and an iPad. But big differences were recorded among 21 users ages 60 to 77 when they read the same text on paper instead of the devices. In fact, using an iPad improved speed and reduced effort compared to paper and e-readers. Researchers measured eye movements and brain activity from EEG readings to determine ease of reading.

Traditional ereaders were no help: Reading a short page of text on a Kindle took the older group about 28 seconds, the longest of the three. Switching to the printed book shaved 1.5 seconds off the time. But reading on an iPad took just 24 seconds, that's 2.5 seconds faster than reading on paper. While that may not represent a big timesaver when skimming news headlines, it could save hours reading "War and Peace."

The researchers concluded that the iPad's backlighting, which was adjusted to the brightest setting, made the difference. All tablets use backlighting, while e-readers use what's called an E Ink display that provides less contrast than a brighter tablet (although it allows people to read in bright sunlight).

But despite the physical findings, older adults and their younger counterparts said they got more pleasure reading from a paper book. The researchers said this was evidence of a cultural bias against digital books rather than a cognitive phenomenon.

It seems that for older individuals, at least, tradition trumps ease of use.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Gavin St. Ours

This article originally published at TechNewsDaily here

Limited Time -- Box Cloud Storage

25GB of Free Cloud Storage Is Your Deal of the Day
Kif Leswing
Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage when you sign up. iCloud offers 5GB. While there are plenty of reasons to prefer those services, the storage space they offer is way less than what you can get with Box today. Usually Box only gives you 5GB of storage for free, but if you sign up with a new email address, Box will give you 25GB of cloud storage for life (or until the end of the Box enterprise.)

Box has run offers like this in the past, notably giving users 50GB of free storage if you signed up with an iOS or an Android device. But those promotions are over and they require you to own a specific gadget. The beauty of today's promotion is that anyone with a web browser and email address can get it. It's only for new signups, so if you've already got an account, you'll have to make a new one. Still — free's a damn good price for a large storage locker up in the clouds. [Box.net]


Box has run offers like this in the past, notably giving users 50GB of free storage if you signed up with an iOS or an Android device. But those promotions are over and they require you to own a specific gadget. The beauty of today's promotion is that anyone with a web browser and email address can get it. It's only for new signups, so if you've already got an account, you'll have to make a new one. Still — free's a damn good price for a large storage locker up in the clouds. [Box.net]

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