Saturday, October 18, 2014

How to resolve "inactive" imessage on mac - Solution

Apple now enables phone calls and text messages through your mac or imac if it is connected through the same wifi network and logged in to the same icloud account.

When I downloaded yosemite for my imac I wanted to test these continuity features. But I was out of luck as I was stuck with an issue which had made my imessage inactive on my mac. imessage meanwhile perfectly on my iphone.

I tried everything from removing the keychain passwords, to restarting the computer numerous number of times after disabling the account etc. I ended up spending a couple of hours googling and trying to look for articles and videos on how to make this work and I thought its worth sharing with you.

My imessage looked something like this: As you can see it shows inactive on the left side panel.


Before starting this process check the timezone set for your router. It should match the time on your mac. I am not sure if this causes an issue but there were some users who wrote that this resolved the problem.

So here is the simple resolution for the same.

1. Open messages (which is inactive).
2. From the top menu go to messages -> preferences
3. Click on the accounts tab
Now your screen would look something like this:
4. Now click on the Details button.
5. This will ask you for your icloud username and password. Enter it.

6. If you have successfully logged in, You would see this screen.
7. Here most likely your Location would be set to empty or none. Select United States from the drop down or your country. My country was not in the drop down so I just selected United States and clicked Save.

8. Logout from messages app.

9. Quit the messages app.

10. Reopen messages.

Your imessage on the mac should now be active. Test it by sending a message to a friend who has an iphone with imessage active or yourself.

After this I was also able to setup my facetime to call my grocery store through my mac.

Let me know if this helped.

Thanks. Good luck.


Saturday, September 29, 2012

How to access google maps on iOS6

Hi guys,
The iphone 5 and iOS6 has released and people have mixed feelings. One place where most iOS6 users are upset is the Apple maps application.

The maps lack quality, detail , neatness and precision. The locations are yet to be updated and looking back at google maps it certainly feels that we have moved 3 steps backward with maps after upgrading ourselves to iOS6.
The Apple maps currently are powered by Tom Tom and Tom Tom is trying to improve itself from probably orders from Apple. Well which is good but Im sure that will not take anywhere less than 3 to 4 months.

All said and done, I love a couple of google products and one of them is their maps. After upgrading to iOS6 I desperately searched for having google maps on my iphone and to some extent got it. Ok so here is how you can get it.

Go to safari and go to http://maps.google.com

Once the page loads, in the bottom a message appears asking of you want to make this as a bookmark. If this message does not appear for you, click on the options on the bottom of the screen (The icon with the arrow) and a dialog box would appear asking what do you want to do with the page, tap on "Add to Home Screen". The bookmark would be created on your spring board (home screen) and when you select it, google maps open on your safari browser which is almost as good as having it in the app. Well, definitely better than using Apple maps.

Once you have done this you will be able to see the bookmark for google maps like this (image below) on your spring board.





Tapping on it will take you to the browser with a sweet Google maps you have always wanted. 

Most of the features that you have been using in the iOS5 google maps are here. Search, directions, Locate yourself. The only thing I didnt find was drop pin feature but I think I can live without it. 

An additional feature which you will be access here (which was not available in iOS5 google maps) "My places". You can browse and see all your saved places here too. You would need to sign in to google for this. 

P.S you will not be able to access google maps in other applications like foursquare or facebook. The other applications will still use Apple maps as default.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Connect iOS Device to Wireless(wi-fi) Printer

Im sure lot of iphone and ipad users must have tried printing wirelessly but have failed even after having a wireless printer at their workplace or at home.

Apple has kept its print capabilities only possible with the Airprint Printers.

Im sure they are costly so there are other solutions to get this done if you have other wireless printers.

One brilliant option I found out was Fingerprint

Finger print sits on you PC or a MAC and lets you print images, documents and webpages remotely to your wireless printer.

Here is how you can get it done:

Hardware requirements:

  1. An iOS device (Obviously)
  2. A wireless (wi-fi) printer 
  3. A PC or a MAC.
All you need to do is download and install Fingerprint on your MAC or a PC.

Once you are done installing, open the finger print app on you computer and you will be able to see the list of wireless printers connected to the same wi-fi network. Well, you dont have to do anything if you want to keep the default settings but if you need to change some settings like the default paper size, colour etc.. they can be changed from here. 

So the final step, the print step.

Select an the photo or the document you would like to print on your iphone and select print. 



The print dialog will appear and you will be able to select the printer from the list. Select the printer to which you want to print the document and alas.... You should see your printer beep and print the document/image you printed. (Please see image above)

This would definitely save some money buying a new Airprint printer but this comes with a cost itself. It costs 20$ which is still lesser than the cost of getting a new printer. 

But the best part about this is that you just need to install it on one computer on the wifi network and it will work for all the iOS devices in that wi-fi network. I have installed it on my computer and there are around 70 people in my office who can see the list of printers on their iOS devices which is a pretty neat feature of this software and which makes it very cost effective too. 

Monday, May 30, 2011

Latest Music Videos not available on you tube on iphone safari? VEVO is here ...

If you are disappointed with the you tube on iphone safari for not been able to find latest music videos so was I, but not anymore when I got to know of this app VEVO on the app store.

Its a neat app with latest releases and the top 12 trending songs, interviews and much more.

So if you are disappointed with the youtube search trying to fetch the original music video on youtube, you should stop and download VEVO from app store which is free and enjoy watching songs in high definition (HD) there.

Whatsapp on iphone with wifi giving problems?

Many applications have got a big break through in the smartphone stores. One of them which is one of my favorite is whatsapp.

I have fallen in love with whatsapp as I use to see my blackberry friends bragging about their black berry messengers (BBM) to chat with their friends, share photos and videos and audio notes while I used my iphone struggling with nimbuzz, ebuddy and other heavy apps to chat with friends.

When I first bought it there were only 3 users in my contact list but now I have 51 and counting.

Since the app is new I was expecting some glitches and yes there are some small ones.

One of them is the issue when connecting through wifi on iphone and ipod touch. It works fine on Blackberry and nokia phones. Most of the time it worked fine but there were times when it tried to connect to whatsapp servers and would go on trying to connect for hours until somehow it catches the connection. Googled it and found the solution in a corner even though I am not sure what the real problem could be.

Enough said, Follow the steps and whatsapp would would work like charm:
  • Go to Setting -> wi-fi ->
  • Touch the blue button along-side your wi-fi connection.
  • Select DHCP.
  • Type in the DNS: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
That should solve the problem.

Let me know if you face issues.

For those of you who don't know, whatsapp is a social networking app by which you can chat with your friends, share pictures, videos and audios with them in seconds. Whatsapp finds your friends for you by searching the phonebook contacts. So if a friend using whatsapp is in your phone book, he is in your whatsapp contacts and you can start chatting with him/her. The best part is that your friend could have any smart phone, be it Blackberry, Nokia, iphone or an android.
There are many more advantages which you would get to know when you use it.