If you have an iPhone, and there’s no volume when making calls, but speakers seem to be playing music clearly, you’re not alone. This issue occurs when you plugin earphones that are not made by Apple themselves, and can be resolved by a brute force method that we will detail below.

So, what’s the actual no-call-volume issue? Music on your iPhone plays fine, and the microphone works fine too. But the problem occurs when you pick calls – you’ll be unable to hear the person at the other end completely. Sometimes, you can use a headphone or activate speaker mode to hear the other person talk, but if you hold the phone normally, you really can’t hear the person speak.

So how does one resolve this issue? You could do a soft reset, but that doesn’t always work. You’ll lose some of your configurations when you do a soft reset, and hence, there’s a better way to make call volumes go up.

First, get your official Apple earphones ready. If you don’t have one, borrow them. Do not use earphones or headphones manufactured by a third party manufacturer.

Play music in your iPhone and plug the earphone in. Then, randomly pull out the earphone at sporadic intervals for 4-5 times. Try making a test call to see if you can hear the audio in full volume. If it works, you’re good to go.

Otherwise, lock your phone and without the music player running, plug in and out the earphone for about 10 times. Make a test call and everything should work fine.

In case the above method doesn’t resolve zero call volume in your iPhone, try doing a soft reset from Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings. You might lose some of your customizations, but your iPhone settings will be fine, mostly.

Disclaimer: Try the method above at your own risk. This workaround has been tested in iPhone 4S with iOS 6, but could work in iPhone 5 or iPhone 3GS with the same iOS version or iOS 5.

Post from: Killer Tech Tips

No Call Volume in iPhone, But Speakers Play Music Fine

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Instagram recently updated their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and it caused quite a backlash. While the changes seemed to indicate that Instagram reserves the right to sell your photos or show them in advertisements, it wasn’t really true as Verge clarified. Users revolted, and Instagram quickly reverted the changes and reinstated the old terms of service – which, ironically grants actual rights for anyone to use your pictures by modifying them.

If you’re concerned, you have these options: you can delete your Instagram account right away, use a third party service to download your pictures before deleting them or migrate your photos to another service.

When that’s done, you can check out the alternatives mentioned at the end of the post so that you can still have fun filtering photos.

Why?

Nilay Patel’s clarification (linked above) is worth a read if you’re contemplating to delete your Instagram account right away. After a thorough analysis of the new legal terms, he clearly concludes that Instagram’s first update to the terms of service actually is less powerful than the old one – the new language allowed Instagram to only display place your photos near related content. Now, here’s the language in question that has since then been reverted:

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

They didn’t really mean that they’ll sell your photos without compensation, they just meant your photos could be placed alongside other photos – let’s say there’s a page for a restaurant and Instagram could choose to display photos you have taken in that restaurant. That’s it – no modification like adding logos to your photos can be done because the language mentions only display.

Okay, that’s how it looked like before the reinstatement. After the big fat undoing that Instagram did, they’ve gone back to the old terms of service which allows them to sell advertising “on, about, or in conjunction with” photos – which means they could actually use photos in ads and modify them as they like. It seemed like the users won by causing them to retract the terms, but in reality, it’s Instagram that’s winning.

You might argue that every other web startup out there has pretty much the same terms of service, wired in a legal quagmire of incomprehensible terms. Yes, but if you’re a little in concerned that Instagram is just pretending to play good, then it’s time to move on. Here are your choices:

Download Your Instagram Photos

Our friends over at Guiding Tech have covered Instaport.me that lets you download all your Instagram photos as a compressed zip file to your local hard disk. Once you go to Instaport.me, all you have to do is click the big orange ‘Sign in with Instagram’ button and grant access to your account.

You’ll be taken back to the same page again, and from the available options, you can choose ‘Download .zip file’ and then ‘Start export’ to begin the download.

If you click ‘Advanced Options’ before exporting your photos, you could upload only your last 10 photos, photos between specific dates or photos with a specific tag. This way, your archive becomes much smaller because you’re downloading only those photos that matter to you!

You can extract the zip archive after the download is complete and you’ll find all your favourite photos there!

There are similar tools that do pretty much the same thing – there’s a desktop app that lets you download your Instagram photos in one ago, among other things. Here’s a link to a previous post that discusses such utilities.

Backup your Instagram Photos To Dropbox

There used to be a tool to send your Instagram photos to Dropbox – Instadrop. Unfortunately, it is not working anymore and you cannot really transfer all your old Instagram photos to Dropbox folders instantly anymore. However, if you’re not really sure about deleting your account, but would still like to post photos AND have them backed up elsewhere, IFTTT shows the way out.

Go to IFTTT.com, sign up or login with your existing ID. Now, go to this page and activate your Instagram account. Also, go to this page and activate your Dropbox channel.

Voila! You can now add this recipe that makes the sync from Instagram to Dropbox possible in one go.

Scroll down. After customizing options on how your Instagram photos should be saved to your Dropbox account, you can hit the bold ‘Use Recipe’ button. Pretty much it – all your future uploads will get synced to Dropbox.

Here’s a bonus tip: you can go to the Instagram app settings and turn on the setting that saves your photos to your local phone library. You can either choose to save the originals, or only the filtered photos.

Delete Your Instagram Account

Instagram makes it ridiculously easy to delete your account. It’s not possible from the mobile app at the time of writing, but you can do it from the web. Just go to Instagram.com and click on ‘Your Account’ in the footer.

Make sure that the ‘Edit Profile’ tab is open in the page that appears next.

Click “I’d like to delete my account” from the end of the page.

From the next page, choose to tell Instagram why you’re deleting your account, type in your password and then click ‘Permanently deactivate my account’.

Once done, your photos, likes and friendships cannot be recovered again.

Alternative apps

If you quit using Instagram but still want to get more of the filtering goodness, there are a good number of apps to choose from – both paid and free.

There’s Snapseed, which was recently acquired by Google. It puts a lot of editing tools at your disposal besides just having filters and effects. There’s also a photo auto-correct feature that’s notable. The app is free and is available for download for both iOS and Android. Or you could try Pixlr-o-matic.

Camera+ is probably the best replacement out there for iOS, and comes with a ton of effects – that are arguably more lovely than Instagram’s. It comes at a price though, but at $2, it offers filters, borders, sharing, cropping and everything else you can think of. Download for iOS (it’s selling for a lower price today).

What did you do with your Instagram account? Tell us in the comments!

Post from: Killer Tech Tips

What You Can Do With Your Instagram Account

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‘Show Desktop’ was a nice and useful feature in Windows 8. In essence, it was a button on the right extreme of the taskbar that allowed you to quickly get a peek at your desktop. Clicking on the button minimizes all the windows, allowing you to get quick access to icons or widgets on the desktop.

A lot of people might wonder if the Show Desktop feature has been removed in Windows 8, particularly since the taskbar area that housed the button is bare and empty. Don’t worry though – the Show Desktop feature is hidden in Windows 8. To enable it, right click on the taskbar, choose Properties and check ‘Use Peek to preview the desktop when you move your mouse to the Show Desktop button at the end of the taskbar’.

All you need to do is put your cursor on the right most corner in the taskbar. The button is hidden, but it’s in the same position as it was in Windows 7 – right next to the time displayed in the system tray. Right clicking on the bare area next to the time displayed brings up two options: ‘Peek at Desktop’ and ‘Show Desktop’.

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Here’s a bonus tip: if you’re not a fan of the Windows 8 charms bar, you could quickly shut down your computer by right clicking the Show Desktop button. Just install this standalone application from here. Although it was meant for bringing the Show Desktop feature to Windows XP, it just works perfectly with Windows 8 and adds a host of accessible features, as you can see from the screenshot below:

With the Show Desktop tool installed, you can do the following:

• change the button width
• change the button opacity
• change how windows are minimized – toggle desktop or actually minimize windows
• enable a fading effect during peek
• add a delay before desktop peek

By applying the last option, you can choose to start the utility when Windows starts so you don’t lose the bonus features it brings when. In addition, there is an ‘exclusion’ feature that helps you pick applications that should not be made invisible when you use the peek option.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can also quickly get access to shutdown/restart options when you right click on the icon after you install this utility.

What other features are you missing in Windows 8? Tell us in the comments. This is the second in our series of Windows 8 posts. The first one was on using Soluto to skip the Metro/Modern Start Screen altogether when you login.

Post from: Killer Tech Tips

Get Show Desktop in Windows 8

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Soluto is a super-awesome troubleshooting application that we’re big fans of, and when it started out, it just helped chop down your computer’s boot time. Over time, Soluto has evolved into something bigger and better, allowing you to do a lot more than just speed up your computer.

Here are some useful tips that every Soluto user should know:

Soluto for Windows 8 and Tablets

Soluto’s Modern app for Windows 8 can be downloaded from the Windows Store. Although the interface is not as extensive as the desktop application, it does let you monitor your computer’s hardware or install new applications by issuing a request quickly.

You can also monitor other PCs’ statuses from inside the Metro app, like you can from the web dashboard. Of course, the new app is tablet friendly. On the desktop, you can right click when you’re using the application to see additional options pertaining to the view you’re currently on.

Use Soluto To Ditch The Start Screen in Windows 8

If you are using Soluto from Windows 8, this tip is for you. Not everyone is a fan of the newly introduced Metro Start screen with tile-like apps. The Start Screen loads every time you login which could be pretty annoying.

Soluto lets you skip the Start screen altogether and get to the Classic Desktop quickly. Launch Soluto, click on ‘View My PC’ from the system tray menu, and in the web page that opens, choose ‘Switch to Classic Desktop’. After a restart, the Metro screen will not load again.

When you activate this option, Soluto also adds a Start menu to the desktop that you can further customize by right clicking and choosing ‘Settings’ – there are three styles for the Start menu that you can choose from, as you can see below.

Monitor hardware temperature remotely

Many people associate Soluto with a software troubleshooter, but there’s more to it than just that. While detailing several pieces of information about your computer’s peripherals under the Hardware section – like the health of your laptop’s battery and hard drive – Soluto also lists a bunch of details that aren’t conspicuous.

For instance, you could click on the small arrow next to the CPU to get an idea of the temperature. Soluto also reports the motherboard’s temperature. There’s more: you can even issue a defragmentation command remotely and the process will take place when the system is idle.

Change browser homepage and search provider in a jiffy

Soluto lets you disable or remove unwanted browser addons that slow down your internet browsing experience. The ‘Internet’ section in the Soluto dashboard lists three categories that the addons fall into: safe to disable, possible to disable, and disabled addons and toolbars.

Two more useful settings go almost unnoticed: Soluto also allows you to customize the homepage URL in your browser as well. If you believe a malicious program has reset the default URL in your browser, you can change it to a blank page, or another custom URL – this is very useful when you’re monitoring someone’s computer remotely via Soluto.

Besides that, you can also change the default search engine, and sometimes even the default browser as well. See the screenshot above for reference.

If you’ve got more Soluto tips, do tell us in the comments below.

Post from: Killer Tech Tips

4 Little Known, Handy Soluto Features

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Windows 8 comes with a new tile based interface dubbed Start screen. The Start screen is loaded every time you login, and you can go back to the classic desktop by hitting Win+D or by clicking on the Desktop tile in the Start screen.

There is no inbuilt way to disable the start screen and launch the Classic Desktop directly, but if you’ve been using Soluto on Windows 7 and upgraded to Windows 8, there’s an easy way to do it.

First, right click on the Soluto icon in the system tray. If it’s not open yet, just type Soluto when you’re in the Metro Start screen and hit Enter when you see it in the listing to launch the application.

Hit ‘View My PC’ from the options available in the Soluto menu.

The browser will open, with details about your PC listed on Soluto.com, like below:

Scroll down to the section below big blue header with the Soluto avatar, and you’d see something these lines:

“[Your Name]’s PC currently starts with the Windows 8 Start Screen”

Towards the right of that message, find a big blue button that says ‘Switch to Classic Desktop’

Wait for a while and do a system restart. Login next time, and voila – Windows would boot directly into the Classic Desktop instead of the Metro Start screen. In addition, you’d also see a Start Menu that pretty much emulates most of the features you’d expect. The search is decent and quick, too!

If you decide to change the functionality and would like Windows to start with Metro, you can always hit ‘View My PC’ from the system tray menu again and choose ‘Switch to Start Screen’ anytime.

Post from: Killer Tech Tips

Skip Metro Start Screen in Windows 8 with Soluto

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It’s 2012, all right. Some of us still save web pages locally, and this tip might help if you’re a Google Chrome user. Opening up the saved web page from your local computer will load it with its local address in the address bar. You might be wondering what the actual HTTP URL of the web page is, and thankfully Chrome beautifully saves along with the source code.

Just right click on the page and click ‘View Page Source’ or open the HTML file using Notepad or another text editor. In one of the first two lines, you can find the actual URL of the web page prefixed by the text ‘saved from url’, as you can see in the screenshot above.

Of course, you can Google a block of text from the web page to figure out the URL, but it’s always good to know a neat trick! Thanks Varun!

Post from: Killer Tech Tips

Quick Tip: Find the URL of the page you saved locally

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1. 7 Google Chrome Productivity Tips

You probably read the New York Times piece on US President Obama ordering a slew of cyber attacks against Iran and also the coverage around a new computer worm by the name Flame.

Flame (also known as the Skywiper or Flamer worm) has been out in the wild for an estimated three years. Flamer is made of a number of modules, totalling up to 20 MB in code size. This is five times larger than the typical size of these malware programs.

Flamer collects everything from text, screenshots to voice input data and transmits them in a compressed form to its creators. While Kaspersky has found out that the Flame has affected systems predominantly in the Middle East, you might  want to check your computer for the worm and remove it if it does exist.

Thankfully, BitDefender has released a Flame removal tool for both 32 bit and 64 bit computers that detects if your system is infected by the Flamer worm. Download the Flame removal tool from here and run it.

You’ll see a window like the one in the screenshot below open, and you can hit ‘Start Scan’ to make BitDefender check for a Flame infection in your computer.

If the Flamer worm wasn’t detected, the scan will stop without a warning!

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Remove Flame Worm Right Away!

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If you use Google Transliterate to frequently type in multiple languages, read on. Google Transliterate IME, the desktop version of Google Transliterate, allows you to switch between different languages while typing on your computer.

Every time you want to switch between languages, you have to pause typing and then use your mouse to change the language from the option near the system tray. This could get pretty tiring for the keyboard fanatics among us.

Google Transliterate comes with a poorly publicised keyboard shortcut combination. The next time you want to switch between languages, just hit Shift and Alt together.  You don’t even have to pause typing. This saves only a few seconds, but keeps you less frustrated in the long run.

Hat tip: Suraj Bhooshan

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Quick Tip: Google Transliterate Keyboard Shortcut

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Regular readers would know that we’re big fans of Rapportive, a Gmail add-on that displays a sidebar widget linking to social profiles of contacts when you hover over their email addresses. Rapportive is far more feature-rich and advanced when compared to its official counter part, the Gmail People Widget.

You could do a lot more with Rapportive than just viewing contact information. Here are five little-known ways to to use Rapportive:

1. Use Rapportive to verify email addresses

As previously mentioned, you can use Rapportive to verify email addresses. If you’re guessing someone’s email address, just type it in the ‘To’ field and wait till Rapportive fills the sidebar with links to social profiles of that person. If Rapportive just loads a grey avatar, the email address probably doesn’t exist.

2. Use Raplets to add additional features

Raplets enable third party tools to integrate with Rapportive. Raplets can provide more information about the person you’re emailing. For instance, there’s a Raplet that adds a direct link to the CrunchBase profile of the person you’re shooting an email to. There’s another Raplet that displays the Kred score for profiles that appear in the sidebar.

Take a look at some featured Raplets here.

3. Make use of contact notes

Contact notes is probably Rapportive’s most underused feature. You might already be using Gmail Contacts to the same, but you’ll have to load Gmail contacts to see the notes every time. You can do the same thing in Rapportive as well.

Just jot down whatever you want to remember about a contact using the notes box that appears in the bottom of the Rapportive widget and hit ‘Save’ and they will be visible every time the contact’s profile loads in Gmail’s sidebar.

If your laptop is connected to a projector, you probably don’t want your contact notes to be visible to everyone. Rapportive doesn’t give you a hide button though. You can instead restore your Gmail window and move it to the right, so that the widget goes out of display area, as suggested by a Rapportive employee here.

4. Remember: Gmail People Widget is already integrated with Rapportive

If you thought you’re missing something by replacing Gmail’s People Widget with Rapportive, think again. Rapportive already works in tandem with the Gmail People Widget to display recent conversations and shared Google Docs files in the sidebar. You can even quickly call a number via Google Voice from the sidebar.

5. Use Rapportive with Mailplane

If you use Mailplane on your Mac to access Gmail, you can use Rapportive there as well. This page says you can turn Rapportive on from Mailplane’s preferences dialog. Just go to Preferences > Accounts > Plugins and check ‘Load Rapportive Gmail Plugin’. Voilà!

That’s about it. Got more tips that you think every Rapportive user should know? Use the comments section below to share your tips! (Thanks Shrihari from the Mailplane screenshot!)

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5 Ways To Make The Best Out Of Rapportive

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If you’re having a hard time trying to format your USB pen drive, keep reading. Sometimes when you try to format your USB pen drive, you might get an error message saying ‘Windows was unable to complete the format’. Most of us assume that our pen drives are no longer usable and ditch them.

One cannot narrow down to specific reasons why this error message appears. But, your pen drive is still usable 90% of the time despite this error message. All you have to do is install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and try formatting your removable drive again.

Go here and download HPUSBDisk.exe. Run the executable, and you’ll see a window like the one below, popping up:

Choose the USB drive that you want to format from the list that appears on top of the window and then choose the filesystem for the format (FAT/NTFS). Give the pen drive an optional label and choose ‘Quick Format’ if necessary.

Click ‘Start’ and hit ‘Yes’ in the confirmation dialog that appears next.

When the formatting is complete, HP USB Disk Storage tool will return a message with details about the drive and file allocation units, like below:

You can now continue using your pen drive. The next time Windows issues an unable to format error, use this tool again to erase data from your USB stick. Hat tip: Shrikanth!

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Windows was unable to complete the format

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