Need tips for using your Amazon Alexa? Join Lucy on all about Lady A on the second Thursday of the month for simple tricks to get the most out of your a lady device, listen on the Unmute Presents podcast feed. See you there. Oh yeah, did I mention you can also check out unmute show for all past episodes? And to get more information about what we've got going on.
Hi everyone. Recently I wanted to send a couple special people some cards. And, you know, it's difficult card shopping because they never say what you want them to and they're really expensive. You know, four or $5 for a card could actually get me part of a gift. And I guess I could go to the dollar store here in the US and get an inexpensive card, but then I've got to write my own message on it. And anyway, it's a real hassle. So a couple years ago, I subscribed to the Bluemountain.com gift greeting card service. And they also have gift cards, too, by the way, you can attach a gift card to a greeting card, which is a really handy dandy way of sending a gift when you're also sending an electronic cardinal. So I think I pay $39 a year, and at the price of cards, maybe that'll buy me about, you know, six or seven cards and I can personalize them myself. So today I'm going to share with you a couple of ways to do this. The app is very accessible. They do have a lot of video cards. There is a video playing and a picture, and if you turn on subtitles, you get the description of the, of the images, and then there is the verse on the card. And so they also have a lot of musical cards, a lot of mashups. I didn't want the podcast to be taken down, so I didn't give you any versions of that, but those are really cool. And then they also have create your own cards, and that process doesn't seem to be very accessible. So I generally start out with a verse that I like. And so I was looking for a card for my very, very, very best friend of so many years, and I found this really awesome card, but at the end it said Happy Mother's Day and always or something. And I'm like, no, she's not my mother. She's my best friend. She's like a sister to me. So what I did was I modified the message, and I'll show you that in a little bit. But first, I want to show you how you can tell what the picture is on the front. And I didn't realize it said Happy Mother's Day on the front of the card and neither will she because she doesn't see as well. And so I'm pretty safe. But what I wanted to share with you is when you click on a card that you would like on the bluemountain.com website and you go to click on the personalize it button, there will be a graphic on the card. And so what I've got here is I've got jaws right here is going.
To say blue Mountain logo. Visit traffic.
That's the Blue Mountain logo.
Product image traffic.
There's the product image. And so that is going to be the image on the front of the card. So I'm going to launch picture smarteen and which is insert space, picture smart and I'm going to press enter. And what you're going to hear about is the cutest picture ever. But unfortunately it says happy Mother's Day. But I know she'll forgive me for that because the picture is just too cute. So here we go.
Picture smart is in progress. The image features three adorable orange kittens with blue eyes sitting together inside a large white teacup on the matching saucer. The background is a soft blue color. On the right side of the image, there is text in a cursive font that reads happiness on Mother's Day and always the overall scene this cute here for me, making it a suitable greeting card for Mother's Day.
Okay, so given that's the case, we know that we can do picture smart with jaws and find out that that actually said Mother's Day on it. And maybe I wouldn't have chosen it. But one option is that I did modify the text of the card because the last line said Happy Mother's Day and always. And so I'm going to demonstrate for you a few features of the app before I go and suggest that you have a little play with it. But I'll be right back with my iPhone. So here we are on the iPhone, and I have searched for friends, and the card that I've chosen is a.
Friend is a friend is a card.
And then if I swipe right, play.
Button, button, chart, play.
Okay. It mentions the word chart. That's not really useful. This is a video card verse. And when I swipe right again, you'll hear the card verse.
A friend is a hand when you need it, a smile when you're sad, a lift when you're weary a song when you're glad a help when you falter, a word when you're blue a hope for the dreams that are special to you. And this brings all the thanks that a card can extend to you just for being that kind of friend. Happiness on Mother's day and always.
Okay, so there's the verse and then I'm gonna swipe right again.
Personalize and send button.
And I'm going to double tap that.
Personalize and play button, button play.
And here we have our play button again. So I'm going to go near the bottom of the screen.
Tap set pre text field.
Okay, there's the text field. And when I double tap this text.
Field, text field is editing insertion point at start.
So here's the chance for me to paste in the message that I copied to the clipboard.
Miss outwards, edit scan text paste. A friend is a hand when you need it, a smile when you're sad.
Okay, so that is the verse. And then I'm going to go to the last line.
Happiness on Mother's day and always.
Okay, I was at the bottom. So now I'm going to select just that line.
Text selection by going to text selection.
And then I have it on lines already as the increment that I'm going to select by. So I'm going to swipe right.
Happiness on Mother's day and always selected.
And now I'm going to go to.
Edit and cut that edit, paste, coat. Happiness on Mother's day and always coat.
Okay, so now that is gone.
Send or share button send or share a friend is how would you like to send your e card?
Okay, so here is an option.
How would you like to send your e card double tapped on that email star there's email text share okay, star digital gift cards are only available via email.
Okay, so in order to send a gift card, I would need to actually send it by email.
Ship text email star recipients so now here name text field is the name.
Of the person I'm sending it to.
Email address Text field her email address delete button button send a mail address book icon bdn select from address book button. You could do that from cook your name Chris Cook delivery date September 28, 2000 send a mail calendar icon BDN delivery can be scheduled up to a year in advance. Want to add a gift? Select a digital gift and it will be sent electronically along with your e card. Digital gift card add gift and send button send ecard button preview button so.
There is a preview button under here, but I, when I go to double tap on it, it is actually not accessible. So what we're just going to do is make sure that the text box says exactly what I want it to say. So this is a great way to send e cards and write exactly what you want to write as well as sending a gift. And if you are curious about what the graphic is on the front of the card, you can be on your computer and use the picture smart to determine the graphic before you send it. You do have to go to personalize in order to do that because the graphic won't show up on the front of the card unless you do. Hope this has been helpful as the gift giving and card sending season comes into full swing pretty soon.
As you know, iOS 18 has been released for the iPhone and there's a ton of new features, so I thought we would take some time and go over them. Obviously there's way too many to talk about all in one shot. One of the features I really wanted to talk about is control center. Because it has been completely redone from the ground up. You can totally customize it. There's tons of things you can do in there. So first, let's talk about how you access the control center using voiceover. You want to make sure that the voiceover cursor is on any item in the status bar. The status bar is any of those things all the way up at the very top. Like for example, the time. Let's just go with that. Make sure your vice voiceover cursor is on the time. And once that is there, you do a three finger swipe up from the bottom and that will open up control center. Once you're in control center, you're going to see all these different things. A lot of it is really familiar to you. You know, you'll see Bluetooth, Wi Fi, airplane mode, all of those things. But now the huge thing about control center is it's totally customizable. So you can do all kinds of things. You can add stuff, you can take stuff away, you can remove stuff, you can do all of the things. But if you want to just see what it looks like from the stock view. Once you're in control center, you do a three finger swipe up and it will take you to the next page and you'll see there like the play mode. If you're playing any audio or anything like that, it's going to show you right there. If you do another three finger swipe up, it's going to take you to the next page, which is going to show you all of the different things that are connected, not connected, Bluetooth, wifi. You can turn those on and off from there. There's a bunch of different things there, and over time we're going to go through all of these different things and we'll show you how to customize it and change things around, move things around. So this will be a little bit of an ongoing series, but one thing that I wanted to talk about today, which is a new feature in iOS 18 and control center, is, if you can believe it, they actually have another power button. So the power button is located all the way up on the top right corner. And how you access this is you can put your finger all the way up on the top left side and do swipe to the right until you hear the power button. And then what you want to do is do a single double click and hold, and then that's going to pop up a power button in front of you there that you can do a single finger double click on. And that will either shut off the phone or restart the phone, which is crazy. There are so many different ways to turn off or restart the phone now. So again, you have this power button all the way up on the top right corner. And to utilize that button, you make sure the voiceover cursor is on there and you do a single finger double click and hold, and then the off or restart button will pop up right in front of you. You do a single finger double click on that and then boom, your phone will either shut off or restart. And don't forget there's a couple of other ways you can do this. Also, you can always invoke Siri and ask her to restart my device and it will do that. Or you can also go into the settings and go into general, go all the way down to the bottom and go to shut down. And that will also shut down your phone. And then of course if you do any one of the shutdown modes, then if you want to turn your phone back on, you just hold the power button on the right vertical side of your phone and your phone then will power back up again. I would highly recommend if you do shut your phone all the way off, maybe wait a few seconds just to let it sit and kind of do its thing and then reboot it. So don't do it right away. Sometimes that solves tons of problems and you'd be surprised. Things that get resolved when you actually restart your phone or shut it down, wait a couple seconds or maybe a minute or so and then restart it again. So anyway, that is restarting your phone with multiple power buttons.
So one of the frustrations that came with iOS 17 was the fact that Siri could be interrupted while it's giving a response simply by you talking in iOS 18. And frankly this might be available in 17, but I don't recall seeing it. You can actually disable that from happening so you don't have this as a frustrating factor. Now I've customized my home screen and put apps in the random places, but that came with me taking my settings off of my home screen. So what I'm going to do is tap safari safari and then I'm going to flick to the left once search.
Page one of one adjustable and if.
I double tap on the search page one of one adjustable search page one of v keyboard pops up and I type in settings.
D s e top t top search result settings 51 items found we will.
Locate settings with one finger and tap.
On the screen with another settings button.
Settings this now brings us to the settings screen and I want to locate.
General button accessibility button accessibility directly past general, we'll double tap on that accessibility.
Heading and then I'm going to use three fingers to flick up because the setting in the accessibility settings option is towards the bottom that we're looking for.
Rows nine to 27 of 33 there's.
A lot of accessibility settings in there. Let's tap towards the middle of the screen.
Live captions button that is not what.
We'Re looking for, so I'm gonna that is not what we're looking for, so I'm gonna scroll my finger down.
Personal voice vocal short accessories keyboards and Apple TV AirPods rows 18 to 33 of 33 accessibility Short assistive app general headed AirPods guided access Siri button Siri.
Button and it's located under the general heading. We're going to double tap on Siri.
Type to Siri, switch button off and.
Type to Siri is currently off. However, we can locate an option in this screen.
Prefer silent responses select pre first Siri will use Ondev listen for Siri or hey Siri when your iPhone is facing down or covered, always listen for Siri listen for Siri require siri for interruptions switch button off and this is the.
Checkbox that we're looking for. If you flick to the right you'll.
Hear when this is on you have to say Siri or hey Siri to interrupt a Siri response, which means that.
If we flick to the left require.
Siri for interruptions switch button off right.
Now with it off. When Siri is providing a response, we can simply interrupt by asking the next question, which as benefits. But it also has some complications. So if we turn this on off.
When this is requires siri for interruptions. Switch button off off.
And I had to tap it a couple of times for it to switch to on. But now when Siri is talking to me you have to say siri or hey Siri in order to interrupt it and this should prevent siri from cutting itself off.