Technology – Mediocre Mum

Print Your Photos

Polaroid Style Prints

I have nearly 1600 photos on my camera roll and have posted over 800 on Instagram. Like most of us, I never get around to printing photos on my phone, until I came across Printic. It’s an incredibly easy app to use allowing you to free your photos from your phone.

Printic App

Simply download the FREE app for free and then select the photos you want from either your camera roll or your Instagram account, you can also add text to your photos and as a child of the 80s I love the Polaroid feel to them. They come in a cute orange envelope.

Photo Printing by Printic

You can also order calendars and photobooks. The Photoboxes would make great gifts for Graduations, Weddings or momentous birthdays!

The prints work out to less that .30p each and they offer FREE international delivery.

Now is your chance to win one set of 10 Printics. Simply use the rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This competition is listed on Loquax, Prize Finder and Competition Hunter.

Panasonic HX-A100 Wearable Camera Review

My First Piece of Wearable Tech

As a blogger I jumped at the chance to review the Panasonic HX-A100 Wearable Camera. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a mini tripod for my Smartphone as I often need my hands free when cooking, crafting with my daughter or reviewing products. Hence why I was itching to get going with the head-cam.

I had a few challenges in the beginning which is mostly down to human error. The camera due to its size does not have a playback screen integrated into it. You can connect it via wifi to your iPhone, via the Panasonic Image Map, which then acts as the controller and play back screen. Upon setting it up, I accidentally changed the password in the Panasonic Image App and for the life of me couldn’t work it out. In the end, I had to reset the device.

How to start again

To reset the device or network settings, the call it initializing the device in the manual, turn on the device then simply hold down the power button and the wifi button simultaneously for approx 5 seconds. Once the wifi lamps turn on for a second and then off the unit has been reset and you can start again with the set up wizard.

Interference

There seems to be a lot of interference in our house and I was getting a screeching sound and an echo of my voice which was being recorded. To get around that I simply muted my phone. I don’t think it’s a fault of the device but the set up in our house.

Saving Videos to Phone

You will need a Micro SD card conforming to Class 6 or higher, I didn’t have one at hand but picked up a 16 gb one for less than a tenner on Amazon.

I also struggled a bit with getting the videos off the phone again this was down to me and not the unit. You can upload straight to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc but I prefer to download my videos for editing first.

To save the images and videos to your phone you need to access the “picture share” settings in the menu in the Panasonic App on your Smartphone. Then drag the options you want to one of the four blue edges. Now when you want to save one of you videos directly to the phone simply hold your finger on the video in playback mode then drag to the option you want. You will then find it in your camera roll.

Overall, I really like the Panasonic Wearable Camera because it’s light weight, comfortable to wear, frees up my hands, has good image quality and relatively easy to share your content, I can see myself using it a lot as a blogger.

Struggling to read messages on your phone?

I thought this was pure genius so I wanted to share it with you. I’m now in my 40s and a few months ago I started noticing that I was struggling to read text messages on my iPhone. I was having to progressively hold my phone farther and farther away until it came into focus.

Oh the joys of getting older!

However, I noticed a friend had rather large text on her phone the other night, so I had a little look in the settings and worked out what she had done.

These are instructions for an iPhone.

Go into Setting>General>Accessibility

The select Large Text and choose the font size you would like but don’t go to mad or anyone in a mile radius will be able to read your texts. I chose 20pt and it’s making the world of difference.

Hope this helps in some way.

I’ve cancelled my free subscription to Netflix

I’ve been waiting for ages for Netflix to come to the UK. My family uses it in Canada and its brilliant being able to stream videos with the touch of a button. So, when I heard an ad on the radio for it, I raced home and signed up even though having to register using my Facebook details annoyed me.

I was really thinking this was when my AppleTv as going to come into its own. For those of you who aren’t aware what it is it’s a small wireless device that allows me to stream content (music, videos, etc) from my PC to our TV, I love it, but getting content can be a bit of a struggle unless you’re willing to fork out £9.99 to buy films from iTunes.

The Netflix service is excellent in itself; it was easy to set up and when you compare the price of renting a single film from iTunes (£3.49) a subscription for £6 a month for unlimited films seemed like a bargain.

B-List Movies

But sadly, the content is very poor; I didn’t recognize many of the movies/TV programme nor was I inclined to watch many of them.

So, in the end I didn’t feel it was worth the monthly charge and cancelled it before I started accruing charges.

Fingers crossed the content improves and if it does I will be one of the first to sign up again.

Is Lovefilm any better?

In the meantime, Lovefilm is trying to compete and has launched their own streaming service, so I thought I’d try it out. It’s £4.99 a month and the content is much improved. However, I’m not able to stream to my TV.

I didn’t realise before I signed up that I wouldn’t be able to do this via my AppleTv. I’d cracked how to use Airplay to watch content via my iPad, but sadly the Lovefilm App prohibits you from doing this with Lovefilm films. The sound comes through but no movie. I would love to know why.

Come on guys sort it out!

I find the whole situation frustrating, I can see that the technology is available to offer a service that I want and am willing to pay for, but we have two companies that are offering services that are substandard.

I’d love your thoughts on this.

Iphone App – GPS Wakeup

Have you ever stayed after work in London for a few drinks and ended up falling asleep on the train and missing your stop? My husband has a couple of times in the last 6 months and ended up at the end of the line in Bedford, resulting in a very expensive taxi ride home at 4am.

I haven’t tried this app myself yet, but I absolutely love the idea of it. GPS Alarm (free from iTunes) lets you set an alarm based on your location and will go off when you get close. The only other solution is to stick a post it note on your forehead with your stop written on it, like this slightly inebriated woman did!