TapTips is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while, and now it’s finally time to do it ladies and gentlemen, so grab your iPhones and get ready for the first installment of TapTips!

Are you texts messages boring?  Wanna spice them up a bit?  Wanna use funny little faces, like the ones above, and other cool symbols to help you get your message across to people you’re messaging?  Of course you do!  Plus, it can be a real time-saver sometimes.  Instead of typing out “I love you” to your special schmoopie-woopie-honeybun, just send an Emoji of a smiley blowing a kiss, or one that’s been blinded by your one-and-only-true-everlasting-love!  If this sounds like something you’d like to be able to do, follow the easy instructions below to activate Emoji on your iPhone…  (Oh yeah, by the way, this will generally only work when messaging another iPhone.  Some websites support Emoji, and some other smartphones do too, but the only 100% sure thing is that it will work in iPhone-to-iPhone messaging.  This also works on the iPad, if you have one of those also.)  Here we go!

Step 1

Tap on the Settings app on your main Home screen.

Step 2

Now tap on the General section on the Settings screen.

Step 3

Now you’re in the General section.  Scroll down the page a bit, and tap on Keyboard.

Step 4

Now tap on International Keyboards at the bottom of the screen.

Step 5

Now tap on Add New Keyboard.

Step 6

You’re now on the Add New Keyboard screen.  Scroll down a bit, and then tap on Emoji.

Step 7

After tapping on Emoji in Step 6, your iPhone (or iPad) is going to automatically go back to the Keyboards screen, where you will now see Emoji, along with any other keyboards you have activated (English is activated by default here in the U.S.)

Step 8

Have fun!!  Now, whenever you use your keyboard, there will always be a small globe icon in the bottom left corner of the keyboard, and that’s where all of your nifty new Emoji live!  Just tap on that globe and send smileys to your heart’s content.     Also, take note of the different categories of Emoji that are along the very bottom of the screen.  The category between the globe and the smiley face that looks like a clock:  That’s where your most used Emoji will be, so they’re easy to get to.  One other thing:  Notice the small grey dots just above all those smiley faces?  That shows you what page you’re on inside the category you’ve selected.  Just swipe left or right between pages.

Ok, that’s it, you’re ready to go!  Thanks for reading, I hope I taught you something fun, and check back often, as there will be more TapTips coming soon!

Here are some more examples of Emoji that you will now have available: 

This is a really cool interactive infographic that shows you the lifetime of the internet up until now.  You can click on pretty much everything on the page and it will give you more detailed info.  If you consider yourself a Nerd or a Geek, you need to click on this link (you can also click on the picture above).  If you don’t click on it, your Geek Cred card will be revoked immediately.  Enjoy!!  

FYI:  If you’re using Internet Explorer 8 or earlier, this page will not work in your browser.  I don’t know about IE9, I didn’t have the opportunity to test it.  For that matter, if you’re using any version Internet Explorer, do yourself a favor and check out Firefox, Google Chrome, or even Apple’s own Safari.  I’m not bashing Microsoft, but IE is known for not complying with web standards, which means you, my dear reader, could be using a browser that is both unsafe and could be causing you to miss out on cool things on the web that IE just won’t work with.  Give one, or all, of those other browsers a try….I think you’ll like what you see.  Oh yeah, and your webpages will probably load faster when using something other than IE too.  That’s a nice plus.     FYI:  The Evolution Of The Web infographic doesn’t seem to play nicely with mobile bowsers.

http://evolutionofweb.appspot.com/

Do you need one of these? Only you know the answer. Look deep inside yourself, young grasshopper...

This post is in response to an editorial post Engadget ran recently — well, this is more of an Editorial of my own.  I’m not really “responding” because the original author makes some good points that I do not disagree with.  No matter, tablets are a hot item and a hot topic, and have been for a couple of years now, so I feel I must throw my two cents out there.

I had an iPad until just last week, and I absolutely loved it.  It was great for playing games.  There were some console-quality first-person-shooter titles available, and some pretty intense driving games as well.  These are my main types of games I like to play and the iPad was great for that.  I also used it a lot for checking my RSS feeds and sharing interesting articles.  It worked great for that too.  I also got to where I was using it to read a lot of books, which I never thought I would use it for, but it was great for that too.  So for consuming media, it was fantastic.

I was occasionally bothered by the fact that I couldn’t create things very easily.  There are a lot of apps available that let you create in many different ways (many of the music apps for instance were really nice and very usable for creating), but on the whole, tablets are not meant to be used for in-depth creation.  Both the tech media and the companies creating these tablets have led consumers to believe that tablets can do anything a laptop can.  And they just can’t.  I have a friend who is a graphic designer and he uses his iPad to quickly sketch ideas when he’s face-to-face with a client, but the real creation happens once he gets back to his dektop or laptop.

People need to consider what they are truly going to use it for.  If they don’t have a laptop and they want to consume media on the go, on a larger platform than their smartphone, and they also can’t afford the particular laptop they might want at the time, then tablets could be the way to go.  But if you’re planning on using a tablet as a complete laptop replacement, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Tablets/slates are fun.  They can be really useful too.  But as I always suggest to anybody making any sort of purchase at all, “do your homework.”  It’s a personal decision and each person will use tablets differently.

Now that I’ve sold my iPad, I do miss it, especially since I don’t have a laptop.  Lying in bed catching up on RSS feeds and reading my digital books before I go to sleep just isn’t the same on a smartphone screen.  Maybe I’ll get another one when the 3rd gen iPad comes out, maybe I won’t.  I do freelance video production and WordPress site creation, so for those purposes, a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro might be best instead of a tablet.  The point is, there is a place for tablet devices, but it’s up to each person to decide what that place is.

Barolo di Argenta from Adam Berhiet on Vimeo.