First of all I want to say thank you to everyone who replied to my last email, where I mentioned the occasional problems we’d had with people ringing us getting a message saying the number had not been recognised. I hadn’t expected such a big response – thank you!
It’s hard to tell, as most people had got through fine anyway, but as far as I know, we haven’t had any more problems in the last few days – fingers crossed…
What do you use your smartphone for?
The other day I was looking at a piece of research about what people actually use their smartphones for. Now, it was only a smallish survey (2000 or so people) and I don’t know how well conducted it was, but the results were interesting.
Care to guess what people use their smartphones for most?
It’s not making or receiving phone calls – that’s down at number 11 (ahead of “as a paperweight”, though…)
The top spot is for text messages. 2nd is Email – so if you’re reading this email on your phone, you’re probably not alone!
Checking Facebook is number 3, which I can really understand — if you’re using Facebook to stay up to date with your friends and family, it’s great to be able to check it wherever you are rather than going back to your PC.
Using the camera is number 4. I’m not too surprised: cameras on smartphones have improved massively over the last few years and are often better than a lot of stand alone digital cameras now – and they’re more convenient to carry around and you can share the photo with friends straight away if you want to.
Various types of web browsing – reading news, checking the weather and things like online shopping and banking fill out the list.
Oh, and watching videos on YouTube is in at number 10. I’d have thought the screen on a phone is a bit small to want to make a habit of it, but I suppose it works perfectly well – and some screens are quite big for a phone nowadays.
Interesting stuff… and it made me wonder what everyone will be using phones for in another 5 or 10 years.
A very quick PC tip
I know not everyone will find this tip useful but for people who do, it could save a lot of time.
For years you’ve been able to do a “screen shot” of something on your PC or laptop. That’s where the computer takes a picture of what you see on the screen – then you can email it to people, print it out or do whatever you want with it. You might use it if you’re trying to describe a problem you’re having to someone and it’s easier if they can see what it looks like.
(And I use it when I’m writing books about PCs.)
But it’s been a bit of a fiddle. Well, there’s a shortcut that makes it easy.
Hold down shift and the windows key and tap S. It brings up the “snipping tool” in one go. Then you click at one corner of the bit of the screen you want, hold the button down and drag to the opposite corner and let go. Bingo – your computer has taken a copy of that chunk of the screen so you can paste it into a document, email or whatever. Click with your left mouse button where you want it to go and then right click and choose “paste” and it should appear.
As I say, most people probably won’t want it but if you do ever want to take screen shots, it does make it quicker and easier.