How to Air Print to ANY printer from your iPod, iPad or iPhone

Apple has introduced a ‘print’ button onto iPads, iPhones and iPods to allow you to print directly to a printer from your iOS device. Unfortunately  you need a special AirPrint enabled printer. Thankfully there is a free application called ‘AirPrint Activator’ that allows you to print to any printer, here’s where to get it and how to use it.

AIRPRINT

On your iPhone at the bottom of some apps is a ‘share’ button. If you click this button you get a menu of different ways to share the content, one of these options is ‘print’ as shown below.

Share Button

Print Button

When you press the ‘Print’ button you will be given an option to choose a printer, but unless you have a special AirPrint printer’ you will see no printers here at all.  (I have a Canon IR5000, a Canon inkjet, a Xerox and a HP and none of them are AirPrint!)

If you don't have an AirPrint printer there will be no printer here to select

AIRPRINT ON NON-AIRPRINT PRINTERS

If you want your non-airprint printer to appear then you can download the following free application called ‘AirPrint Activator’ from netputing.

Click here to go to the netting page to find the latest  AirPrint Activator.

Click here to download version 2  directly.

This will download a little application called ‘AirPrint Activator’. You may need to click on the ‘downloads’ button in Safari to find it.

Click on the 'Show Downloads' button to find it.

Now run airPrint Activator by  double clicking the AirPrint Activator application. You should get a window that looks like the one below. Press the slider to ‘Turn On’ AirPrint.

In order for a printer to appear in AirPrint Activator you need to give people permission to print to it by sharing it. To do this go to System Preferences (Under the Apple Menu on the top left of your screen) and then Click on ‘Print & Scan’.

To find printer sharing click on 'Print & Scan'

In printer sharing preferences you need to select your printer on the left and then click the ‘Share this Printer’ box.

The final step - turn on Printer Sharing

The Printer should now appear in your iPad or iPhone printing menu!

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iPhone Error 21 and Solution

iPhones can give you many errors. And, if you are downgrading your iPhone then you might have encountered Error 21. So, do you get this Error 21 frequently?

If yes, then the problem is, instead of landing in Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode you are ending up in Recovery mode.

Now, if you can get back to DFU mode that will solve your problem. Once the iPhone is in (DFU) mode, you can follow the following process to downgrade your iPhone.

Procedure

When the iPhone is in DFU mode, this mode will bypass the operating system that is currently installed. This process aids in downgrading or upgrading your Operating System in iPhone. Remember, DFU mode is different from the usual Recovery mode.

The difference between the two modes can be spotted below:

Here, you can see there is no backlight and the screen is blank and black. This indicates that the phone is in DFU mode.

In the figure below, you can see a cable connecting to iTunes icon on the screen. This indicates that the screen is in Recovery Mode.

If there is something on the screen, then that means you are not in the DFU mode.

You have a process that can load the iPhone in DFU mode. Check out that process here:

• First, you need to plug in your iPhone to your Computer.
• Now, turn your phone off.
• Now, for the span of 10 seconds precisely, hold the Power and Home buttons together.
• Now, continue holding the home button and release the power button.
• This has to be done until you hear a beep sound from your Computer
• Now you should see a blank screen sans any display. This indicates that you are in DFU mode.
• Now your restore should work accurately.

If you are having trouble with the 10 seconds time frame, then try adjusting the time to fewer seconds as per your requirement.

So, next time if you have trouble with Error 21, then try restoring the iPhone with this process.

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How to connect your iPhone or iPod to your home stereo.

To connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod to your home stereo you just need a 3.5mm to RCA cable like this cable here. The RCA cable plugs into the rear of your stereo and the 3.5mm plugs into your iPhone headphone jack.

When plugging into the back of the Stereo Amplifier, you can use almost whatever inout you want: CD-INPUT, TAPE-IN, TV-IN, DVD-IN or the AUX-IN,  but do not use the PHONO-IN as it is designed specifically for a record player and won’t sound as good.

For the best results set your iPhone volume to about half. If it’s too quiet you may get noise and hiss. If it’s too loud you may get some distortion.

You can have the USB charger plugged into the iPod at the same time.

If you want you can use an Apple iPod dock, and leave the audio and charger cable plugged into the dock permanently. The dock has a line out so that it doesn’t matter what volume the iPod is set to, and it will also charge your iPod, and has a remote control.

If you are buying a new Stereo, Pioneer and others are now including AIRPLAY into some of their amplifiers. The amplifiers have a Wi-Fi receiver built in which means you can play from your iOS device over your Wi-Fi (Airport) network directly to your Stereo with no loss of quality. You don’t need to connect any cables.

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iPhone Backup Takes Forever

You might have encountered these tedious backups, which take ages and this is caused due to error that occurs while you update the apps from App store directly on the iPhone rather than installing it on iTunes.  This backup time usually depends on the number of apps you have installed. Moreover, you would not even be aware of the fact that your iPhone is struggling hard during the backup.

So, what do you do when you come across such issues?  Here is a quick fix that can end your backup issues forever.  This will remove the complete data and make your iPhone, a clean slate. So, you will start afresh. Nevertheless, this process could consume much time depending on the number of applications installed.

Procedure

Let us now check the process of putting your iPhone backup right on track:

• First go to iTunes and select the Edit option. Here chose the preferences. Now choose the Syncing option and select “remove all the previous backups”.  You also need to select “Disable automatic syncing for all iPhones”.
  • Now if you are a Mac user, locate the following path: Users/YOURACCOUNT/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
  • And if you are a Windows user, locate the following path: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
• Now that you can see a Folder by name, “Backup”, delete all the files in it.
• Now plug in your iPhone, and in the applications tab, deselect “Sync Apps”.
• Now you can see a message asking that “whether you want to remove the Apps in your iPhone”. Just select Yes and this will remove all the apps on your iPhone.  This procedure will also take the backup and recreate all the files that you have removed earlier.
• This completes your sync process so, now remove any leftover apps, by holding and touching the icon until it wiggles.
• Now, in order to delete the apps, select X. This will delete any remaining apps on the iPhone. Now, sync once again.
• Now disconnect the iPhone and restart it and let it boot up.
• Now connect your iPhone back and start adding the apps one after the other.
• Now select the option “Selected applications” and “Sync applications”. Uncheck all the apps at this stage.
• Now you have to do the backup process one after the other. For this select one App and click on Sync. Make sure your sync is complete and after this, click on “Back up”. This will complete your backup.
• Now repeat the above step for every app you need and make sure keep the earlier apps checked. Do not forget to take backup for every sync. Initial backup can take long time but successive backups don’t consume much time.
• Upon finishing the backups, go to Edit and then select preference and there, select Syncing.  Here you will have to enable the option “Automatic syncing for iPhones”.

So, you are done with the backup and now you have found a solution to fix long backups.

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iPhone Error 3194 and Solution

If you have been using iOS 4 on iPhone and if you have downgraded iOS4 to 3.1.3 then you might have encountered this Error 3194. This error is associated with firmware.

This error occurs when you have an unsigned firmware. This is because, Apple now signs the firmware and if your firmware has no authenticity then you are bound to get this error. However, getting back on the signed firmware might not solve this error.

So, how do you fix this error?

Solution to Error 3194

In order to fix the Error 3194 and enable the users to downgrade iOS 4 to 3.1.3, you need to follow the steps discussed below.

It is important to note that this solution is applicable to all the operating systems and any version you are using.

Now quickly follow these steps:

• First, you have to quit iTunes.
• In  Mac OS X, search out for host file: /etc/hosts
• If you are using Windows OS,then locate c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
• Now using the administrator privileges open the host files.
• Now, at the bottom of the host file, you have to add the following line:

• 74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com

• Once you have done this, connect your iPhone to your computer or laptop.
• Plus, now launch the iTunes.
• Now put your iPhone in the Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode.
• In order to put the phone in DFU mode, first turn off the phone.
• Now hold the Home and Power button simultaneously for exactly 10 seconds.
• The computer should give you a beep sound and the screen would turn black and blank.
• Now you are in the DFU mode.
• Now use the normal Restore option in iTunes.
• After your upgrade is finished, you will have to remove “74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com” from your host files.
• This will update the iTunes properly.
• This is the IP address of signing server to associate with apple.com

This process is applicable to iPad and iPod as well.

So, now that you have learnt this process, you can be free from Error 3194.

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Google Docs For Apple iPhone – Alternative For An App : iPhone Tip

The best way to manage google docs in apple iPhone is not by getting any paid app from apple store rather you can make it by few clicks.

I will explain you how to do it step by step …

Step 1: Open the safari browser in your apple iPhone and open google docs. You will be directed to google online app which is compatible for the mobile. Log in with your gmail account and If you already created any docs, then the docs will appear like the image below.

Step 2 : Now see at the bottom of the page you will see a button in the icon set options below where you can find an option which is like an arrow mark directing towards the right side. Click on that button. Then you can see the options like in the image below and then click the option “add to home screen“.

Step 3 : Now you are almost done after the step 2, you will get the box to enter a name and then you can give the name of your choice to identify your google docs in your iPhone screen.

Finally this is how the google docs will appear as an icon in your iPhone screen…

From my experience I felt that this is the best way to deal with the google docs for iPhone… If you find it useful too then comment below…

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