Screenshotting

A quick roundup of how to screenshot on various devices.

  • iOS: Power button and Home button – image goes to your Camera Roll album.
  • Android (4.0 and up): Power button and Volume Down button – image goes to the Screenshot album of the Gallery app.
  • Mac: CmdShift4, then drag the crosshairs that appear to section of a rectangular area of your screen – image goes to your desktop.
  • Windows: CtrlAltPrint Screen to grab the active window, or Print Screen to grab the whole desktop – image goes to your clipboard, so open a graphics program, or Word, or mail, or … and paste it in.

Printing from iThings at Home

I have long been driven mad by wanting to print an article, or an email, or whatever from my iPhone or iPad at home, but our trusty printers (that I have no interest in replacing) aren’t AirPlay-enabled. Instead, I’ve resorted to emailing myself details of the thing that needs printing, then cranking up the ol’ Windows laptop, waiting, waiting, waiting some more, logging in, waiting some more for networks to be associated with, waiting some more… you get the idea… and eventually, printing the thing.

Yesterday evening, I decided “No more!”, and embarrassingly enough, in under 10 minutes with an expenditure of around €15, we were set up with a delightful working solution and no messing about with mystic configuration settings.

Printopia from ecamm downloads in minutes, installs in seconds, is configured in seconds, and worked first time. We downloaded the free 7 day trial first, managed to print random pages/emails/whatever from a few different devices, so immediately took the plunge and invested in the full version.

Printopia shares out the printers configured for the Mac it’s installed on to be detected as AirPlay print options by iThings on the same network. You can also configure apps such as iPhoto or Evernote, or services like Dropbox as “print” options to print/archive content there.

It’s Mac only, and if the Mac it’s installed on has fallen asleep, you’ll need to prod it awake before you can print. Our Mac wakes in seconds from hibernate, with a tap on the keyboard, or opening the Remote app, or pinging it, compared with the seemingly-infinite ramp-up time for my Windows laptop.

I’m thrilled with the solution and think it’s worth every penny – would heartily recommend it to anyone with non-AirPlay printers and a Mac that’s always or almost always on their network.

Hearst Magazines Summer Sale for iThings

I love Newsstand on iThings, mainly on the iPad, though content is surprisingly accessible on the iPhone too. I love that I can decide over breakfast that I’d like to read a magazine, then download one without leaving the house; I love that I can access some obscure titles without placing a special order with my newsagent; I love that the magazines cost less than they do in the newsagent’s (there’s a shocking markup on magazines here in Ireland); I love that I don’t wind up with stacks of paper creating clutter and needing to be recycled, and that even if I’ve deleted an issue I can download it again for free any time; I love that I can bring a stack of magazines with me in my pocket when I leave the house; I love that I can zoom in on content if it’s not clear enough at standard size. There’s a lot to love.

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