Tag: Icloud »

As though it weren't difficult enough to resist the siren call of Farming Simulator 16, now it's been updated with cloud saves - so you can jump between devices without missing any of that precious crop-harvesting time.

The iOS-exclusive adventure game Oceanhorn has gotten a sizable update this week.

The foremost addition is iCloud support, which was added due to player feedback. Thus, it is now possible to sync game data across multiple devices. Also, there is now new localizations and language support for Russian and Korean.

We had a look at the game late last year, and mostly liked it.

Oceanhorn is available on the App Store for $8.99.

iCloud, much like life, is a scary and often unknowable thing that doesn’t always work the way it should. But much like life, if you know the little things and tweaks, you can make it work much better for you. I think that’s how life works, anyway. At least that’s how iCloud’s settings works. Here’s a guide to the iCloud settings menu.

The iCloud settings are available in the Settings app, under the iCloud section when you scroll down. Here, you’ll see a bunch of different toggles and sections to browse.

Account allows you to control which account is currently logged in to iCloud across the device. As well, you can change the description of the account, modify your storage plan and payment information, and set up advanced email options.

The various switches for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari, Notes, and Passbook will toggle those features on or off for the iCloud account that’s currently logged in, for those who don’t want that info to sync. For certain features, a prompt will appear to have the current local data deleted or not.

The Photo Stream option will allow for uploading to Photo Streams and for Shared Photo Streams to be toggled as well.

Documents & Data will allow you to disable apps uploading data to iCloud, such as games that save to iCloud. You can also toggle Use Cellular Data to help save data fees when on the go. Find My iPhone’s toggle allows you to enable or disable finding your iOS device with the Find My iPhone service. Storage & Backup allows you to view how much storage you have left in your account. Change Storage Plan lets you pay for more storage. The iCloud Backup toggle allows you to enable or disable backing up to iCloud when plugged in. You can also force the backup by tapping Back Up Now.

The Manage Storage section lets you see which devices are being backed up to iCloud, and control what specifically gets backed up to iCloud and to delete the backup entirely. If you select the backup on the device you’re currently on, then toggles for each app’s backup will be shown, allowing you to disable backing up that app to iCloud. You can disabled syncing of Camera Roll photos and videos to iCloud to save storage space, for example. Or if an app uses a lot of local storage that you don’t necessarily need synced up, you can disable it. Scrolling to the bottom and tapping Delete Backup will allow you to delete that backup form iCloud, but you can’t restore from it in the future.

The Documents & Data section lets you see which apps are storing how much data in iCloud. Apps that just use key value data won’t be shown, but games that use save files to sync up between devices will be shown here, too. You can also delete any files as necessary.

Now you know how to properly use the iCloud settings menu, and knowing is half the battle.

Want to share your photos with your friends and family in an extremely easy way? There's a way to do it with Shared Photo Streams, to easily and automatically share photos with people. Start by using our guide to create a Shared Photo Stream. Once the Shared Photo Stream is created, tap on the blue arrow to enter the Edit Photo Stream screen. Now, it's possible to add a subscriber that can view the Photo Stream on Mac in iPhoto, on Windows with the iCloud Control Panel, or on their iOS device.

However, the easiest way to share photos is to create a public website from the Photo Stream. Turn the Public Website switch to on. Now, this creates a public website that will feature any photos that are in the Shared Photo Stream where users can see comments and download the photos for themselves. To share the link with someone else, tap the Share Link button. You can share the link through social networks, Mail, Messages, or by copying the link and pasting into the sharing method of your choice. Now, on the web view, the photos will be arranged by date, to see when a photo was uploaded.

To add a new photo into a Photo Stream, go to the photo in Camera Roll, tap on it, and then tap on the Share arrow. Tap on the Photo Stream icon, and you can add it to either an available Photo Stream or to a new one that can be created. When you add a photo, you can add a comment that will be displayed along with the photo in the web gallery. You can add multiple photos by tapping Edit to multi-select the photos, and sharing them as normal. Note that any comments added will be for all the selected photos.

To delete a photo from the Photo Stream, open up the Shared Photo Stream in Photos, and tap the Edit button. Select the photos to be deleted, and tap Delete. While this will prevent them from being viewable in the gallery any more, those with the link may have saved them separately. Remember: the things you share publicly never truly go away. These tips should make it easier to share photos straight from your iOS device in an easy-to-access web gallery. Thanks to this guide for inspiring these tips.

Got a slew of documents and other media across all those different cloud systems, like Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, and even email? Documents.me hopes to alleviate the stress of remembering which system the file you want is stored in by aggregating it all into one app, available for iOS devices as well as Mac and PC.

Documents.Me increases productivity by allowing users to search for a file or browse all of their files or file content from public or private clouds right from their mobile device. It also offers offline access to users’ files and folders as well as downloaded files. Additionally, Documents.Me employs strict security and control measures to keep personal and company documents safe. Documents.Me works on WIFI, 3G and 4G networks.

With Google disabling Exchange ActiveSync support for contacts, a recent guide discussed how to sync contacts up with CardDAV. Well, what if instead you just want to sync up with iCloud instead? Is there any way to do this? Yes! Contacts can be exported to what is known as a VCF file. This includes all basic details like phone numbers, email addresses, and even info like birthdays, so that it’s a relatively pain-free experience to import and export entire lists of contacts. The only major exceptions of data that doesn’t get transferred are contact photos and individual ringtone/vibration settings.

This all happens via your web browser. To export contacts, go to the Google Contacts page. Click the More button, and click Export. Most likely, you’ll want to select the My Contacts group to export, though if you have a specific group you’d like to export, select that, or all contacts. Under “Which export format?” choose vCard format. Save this file and keep note of its location.

Now go to iCloud.com. Log in, and go to Contacts. Click the gear icon in the lower left, and choose Import vCard. Open up the file you just saved from Google, and your contacts will be added to iCloud.

Note that while this specifically covers iCloud and Google Contacts, any service that can import or export VCF files should work. iCloud offers vCard exporting and Google offers vCard importing from the same menus if you want to go in reverse, say if you want to use your contacts on an Android device as well, or if you just want to use something less proprietary.

Now, on your iOS device, make sure that the device you are using has iCloud contacts enabled. Go to Settings → Mail, Contacts, and Calendars, and choose your iCloud account, and switch Contacts to on if necessary, though it is enabled by default. If you haven’t set that iCloud account up on the device, tap Add Account and then tap iCloud to set it up. On the main screen of Mail, Contacts, and Calendars, scroll down to the Contacts heading and tap Default Account. Set your iCloud account as default for new contacts to be added to this account by default.

Now go to the Contacts app. Tap Groups in the upper left corner, and you can customize which contact groups will be shown. Select only All iCloud (or whatever your iCloud account is named as) and un-select any other accounts, and your contacts list will only show your iCloud contacts. You can review them here as well, and when un-hidden, you can link cards to Google contacts or other contact groups as necessary.

Congratulations, you’ve now moved your contacts to iCloud. This process can be reversed – iCloud allows for contact exporting, and Google contact importing from VCF files, and the options are in the same menu locations at each service.

Popular password manager 1Password updated today to version 4.0.2, bringing iCloud and Dropbox support, a secure browser, and a Universal app. Purchase it for 50 percent off the normal price today, and install it on all your iOS devices to create and manage passwords, website browsing, and secure data.

Every day there are new passwords to remember. They are often forgotten. Using weak passwords or re-using them makes it easy to remember, but criminals love it when you do this. 1Password solves all these problems.

✓ Generate strong, unique passwords for every site
✓ Protect your data behind a single Master Password
✓ Secure with military grade 256-bit AES encryption
✓ Cryptographic operations use standard iOS libraries to ensure no security gaps or backdoors
✓ Auto-Lock keeps your data protected even if your device is lost or stolen

iTunes 11 hasn’t just brought huge changes to the way that apps sync, the backup process has changed as well.

Now it is possible to choose whether to have automatic backups continue to be done with iTunes, or to be synced up with iCloud. Go to the Devices page in the upper right corner, and click on your device. It should open up Summary. Now, you will see the Backups section. This will give you the choice to Automatically Back Up to iCloud or to This computer. Choosing iCloud will make the syncrhonization process in iTunes much quicker.

As well, the manual backup and restoration process has been improved in two ways. One, it is now front and center in the Backups section. Second, it’s now even more convenient, especially for power users. Third, it may actually work now.

The iTunes manual restore is recommended over restoring from an iCloud backup in a pinch for many reasons. The main one being it is faster, as it does not have to redownload apps to a device, it only has to reinstall them from the computer. It will also properly restore apps from multiple iTunes accounts without tripping the restore limit that comes with iCloud restores. If apps are downloaded from multiple iTunes accounts on to a device, then those apps can only be restored so many times in a 90 day time period, even if restoring from a backup made on a different iCloud account. This manual process through iTunes restores them without needing to input a password again.

The manual restore will work with switching devices as well, as all backups made with iTunes are available when choosing to restore. To switch a device all you need to do is connect it, explicitly back it up, then restore to the new device. This may be the easiest way to upgrade from one device to another, or switch from iPod to iPhone, with the convenience of iCloud available if a restore is necessary and a computer is unavailable, or if a device is lost and hasn’t been synced with iTunes recently. It’s very flexible, and a welcome addition to iTunes 11.

One of the features that Apple added into iOS 6 that is kind of hidden away is the new Shared Photo Stream functionality. What this allows you to do is to take photos from your photo library and share them with other people in an album that can be viewed and automatically updated on an iOS device or browsed on the web. Sounds nifty, right? Just one problem: how do you use it? Good question! Apple didn’t exactly put this functionality front and center in iOS 6, but it’s there and it works. Here’s how to start using Shared Photo Streams.

Go to Photos. Go to the album where the photos are stored, such as Camera Roll, though these can be from pretty much any album on the device. Now tap Edit in the upper right corner, and select the photos to be added to a Shared Photo Stream. Once this is done, tap Share, then Photo Stream. Then there’s the option to add them to an existing Photo Stream, or to a New Photo Stream. Tap this to call up a dialogue to where people can be selected to send the stream to, name the stream, and whether to make the stream public.

When photos are shared to other people, they can see the entirety of this Photo Stream. When adding addresses, the Contacts list will show those with an actual iCloud ID. Otherwise, these albums can be shared to other people who don’t have iCloud IDs, as they will receive a URL to view this Photo Stream on the web at iCloud.com. People can comment on these photos that are shared. As well, these photos don’t take up any iCloud storage space.

Now, visiting iCloud.com and logging in to your own iCloud account won’t actually show your Photo Stream or any shared albums, even ones that you’ve made public. There is a way to get the URL for easier sharing. On the Photo Stream page, tap Edit in the upper right corner, then tap Share Link. From here, it can be mailed, messaged, tweeted, Facebooked, or copied. The name of the album, new people can be invited, current subscribers can be modified (with their invite status visible), and the album can be set to private.

So, that’s how to use Shared Photo Streams. It’s a little buried, but easy to use. Have any creative uses for them? Let us know in the comments!

It’s that most magical time of year: the time before a new iPhone launches. This means that for many people, it’s time to sell that old phone to buy the new one. For those looking to ditch their phone, here’s three handy tips to make sure everything goes smoothly in transitioning to the iPhone 5.

Make Sure the Phone is Backed Up

There’s no real need to start fresh with any missing contacts or apps when using a new iPhone. Follow our handy guide to setting up backups via iCloud or iTunes. Then, when the new iPhone is purchased, simply restore to the backup of that phone. On iTunes, this is just as simple as selecting the device from the list when choosing what to restore from. For iCloud backups, make sure to log in to the same iCloud account when restoring on the new device. It may be a good idea to note which iCloud account is being used on your old iPhone. Remember as well that backups are cross-compatible, so even an iPod touch backup could be used to restore to the new iPhone

Make Sure the Phone is Erased.

No one wants to accidentally hand over a phone with all their contacts, saved payment information in apps, and their most embarassing photos to a stranger or even worse: a family member! Thankfully, erasing a device is easy. Just go to Settings -> General -> Reset and choose Erase All Content and Settings. This will erase all user data on the phone. Make sure it’s backed up first! This will leave it in a state where it will be possible to restore to a new device. If you’re selling it to someone you don’t know, you may want to set it up as a new device just so they can test the features out, while showing how to erase it so they can set it up themselves, possibly even from a backup they made!

Sell Securely

A website like Gazelle or a store like GameStop may make it easy to sell the phone quickly and securely, but this will not net as much as selling it directly to another person will. Selling via eBay or Craigslist is a good way to quickly sell the phone, but it comes with the inherent risk of dealing with strangers. Hold on to the original receipt if possible in order to ensure that you have proof that you purchased it in case someone tries to claim that the phone was stolen. Especially log your phone’s IMEI or ESN, a phone's unique identifying number, if possible, as it is what the carriers use to track stolen phones. Here's how to find this information on the iPhone itself. Having a log of this may help if a scammer tries to claim you sold them a stolen phone.

Good luck out there!

One of the better iCloud or Dropbox synced text editor, and the one that I use is on sale for $0.99 for the Universal version. It's a great app for keeping text documents synced over iCloud or Dropbox on the iPhone, iPad, and OS X desktop. Highly recommended.

This week's how to was inspired by a recent conversation I had with my family. My mom got an iPad, and she wanted to use it to keep in touch with the rest of her family, who all use iOS devices in some capacity. My dad set her up with a free texting app, but I wondered why not use iMessage? He didn't even know what that was. It seems as if casual users are not entirely aware of what iMessage is and what it can do.

iMessages are messages similar to SMS that are sent through the Messages app on iOS 5 and later. They can be sent over wifi or a user's data plan, instead of using up a messaging plan. iMessages can be sent to a person's email address that they have registered with iMessage. iPhone users can register their phone number to receive iMessages, and the app can send out both traditional SMS messages and iMessages. SMS messages are represented by green bubbles, iMessage are blue bubbles.

iMessage makes it easy to to send photos and videos to friends. Also, there's no character limit for iMessages, which is a blessing and a curse. iMessages carry across devices, so a conversation can be started on iPhone andreplied to on iPad and even on Macs with Mountain Lion. Messages can be sent while on wifi, if mobile data is unavailable on the iPhone.

To ensure iMessage is working, go to Settings, Messages, and ensure that it's turned on. From this menu, it's possible to enable different email addresses to receive iMessages at, and the default ID from which they will appear.

Don't know if someone is an iMessage user? Create a new message, start typing in their phone number or email address, and the device will look up to see if they're registered. Their name bubble will first be gray with a spinning circle. It turns blue if the user is registered, and red with an exclamation point if their email address is not registered.

A handy tip that many users don't know about is to resend an iMessage as an SMS. Just tap and hold on the message bubble until a dialog to "Resend as SMS" appears. This is handy if the person being messaged is out of data range, or uses an Android phone along with their iPad or iPod touch. If iMessage becomes too complicated to use, it can also be disabled by turning it off from the iMessage settings menu. However, it's worth leaving enabled for the benefits it provides.