How to Use NFC Tags with Your iPhone

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. In this episode let me show you how you can use your iPhone with these NFC tags. There you can read more about it, join us and get exclusive content. So what's an NFC tag? Well they're these little stickers or they could be little cards or just about anything and it has a bit of electronics in it. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and it's technology that allows to use your iPhone with Apple Pay and other systems. But these little tags are the simplest form of this use.

How to Use NFC Tags with Your iPhone

You can actually use the Shortcuts app to react to when you bring your iPhone near one of these tags. There are also ways to put data on these tags so your iPhone or somebody else's iPhone automatically reacts to them. This is a strip of NFC tags I got on Amazon. I think they cost like $6 for ten. You can get them even cheaper if you buy more. There are tons of them. Just search for NFC tags. If you actually hold a flashlight up to the tag they become a little transparent and you can see the actual circuitry inside.

To use them all you need to do is bring it near your phone. This can be a sticker on the wall and you touch your phone to it. The very top part here. They only work within an inch and a half of the tag. Thus the end, the near, in Near Field Communication. So one way to use a NFC tag with your iPhone is to create a personal automation in the Shortcuts app. You can have that automatically run when you bring a tag next to your iPhone or your iPhone touching the tag. So let's go into the Shortcuts app and switch to Automations.

We can create a personal automation. Then is you go towards the bottom you'll see NFC is one of the options. We'll select that. Now the first thing we need to do is scan a tag. So I'm going to tap the Scan button there and it's going to say Ready to Scan. Now I'm going to bring this tag right up against the top of my iPhone here and once it recognizes it, it pops up a little Name This Tag. So I'm just going to do a Test Tag name and hit Okay. Then I hit the next button there at the top and now I can add Actions. So let's go and add a simple thing that just starts a Timer. So I'll go into the Clock app here and look at the actions for Clock.

I can say Start a Timer. Let's say 10 seconds just as a demonstration. But this could be something for 30 minutes. Say a tag you want to tap your iPhone to then take a nap or remind yourself in 30 minutes it's time for dinner. Something like that. So this could be my 30 minute timer tag that I can tap. Just keep it simple like that. I'll do Next and you can see it's setup for when Test Tag is detected. Do, Start Timer. Now I can turn on Ask Before Running. So let's make this an automatic automation here. I'll turn this off and now it should work automatically. In order for this to be active I have to hit Done to finish.

Now I can return to my Home screen and let's give it a try. In my test if the phone is asleep it doesn't work. It has to be woken up so you have to have some movement because the screen has to be on. But it doesn't need to be unlocked. It will work whether it's locked or unlocked. Let's test it out here. I'm going to touch the tag to the phone and you can see it gives me a notification there that something is running. So now it should be just 10 seconds before the alarm goes off.

There you can see the Timer went off and I have the Stop button and I can hear a sound as well. I can return to Shortcuts here and I can go into the Automation and change what it does without changing the tag. So I can go in here and I can add more things. I can make it do something different. I can have it get a playlist, for instance, and play it. I can have it send messages. I can do anything I could do in the Shortcuts app. I can have triggered here. I can also simply add Run Shortcuts. So I can have an existing Shortcut and have this Shortcut here simply run the existing Shortcut. So the existing one could also be linked to say a Siri command or a Home screen button and now I add this personal automation that will run it when I touch the tag.

Now one of the big advantages here is that these can run automatically. If you've been playing around with personal automations one of the disappointments is you can't set one triggered by a location or by a time to run automatically. They will ask you for permission. You still have to take that extra step to actually have it run. But with these tags it runs automatically because you're already taking an action by touching your phone to the tag. So you can do things like having one by the front door and you touch your iPhone to it and it turns off or on the lights in your house. You can have one in your car that when you touch it it starts playing your playlist. You can have one by your office door that when you leave it will text somebody that you're on your way. Now a second way to use NFC tags is to store data on the tag.

When you do that in a certain way it can trigger a phone to take a certain action. It doesn't have to be something that you programmed into your phone before. So it's your phone or anybody else's phone. For instance you could store a webpage URL on a NFC tag. If somebody touches their phone to it, if they have NFC on their phone, it will then prompt them whether or not they want to open up that page. There are other things you can do as well. You need to grab an app to do this. If you can search for NFC in the App Store you're going to come up with a ton of stuff. I grabbed this one because it's mostly free but I didn't really compare it against others so I don't know if it's the best. But it will work for the purposes of my demonstration.

So when I go into this tool here I can do a bunch of different things. I can Read a tag. I can Write to a tag. Let me write to a tag. Here I have to add record. So I can add various bits of data to the tag. Now tags have different amounts of memory. So if you're going to put a lot of stuff on a tag you may want to pay attention to what type of tag you buy. Whether it can store a lot of bytes. If you're going to do something simple it probably doesn't matter. Let's add a record and you can see all these different things that you can add to the tag.

You can add a piece to text. You can add an URL. You can add a link to a file, an email, contact, phone number. All sorts of things. These will all trigger different things on your phone. Let's do the simplest one and add an URL. Then I'm going to just put a simple URL in here. Then I'm going to tap the okay button at the top. So now I'm all ready to write to this. So I'm going to tap the Write button here and it's going to say Ready to Scan. I'm going to take the tag and put it up against it. Watch what happens when I touch the phone to this tag. It's going to come up with this little alert at the top and I can tap it and it will go to this webpage.

Now if I want to change what the tag does I'm going to have to change things. I'm going to have to go back and you can see there is Other and I can Erase the tag. Then once I've erased it I can write different things to the tag. In this app what you're going to write stays there. So I can actually program several different tags to it. There's also the ability here to add a WiFi network. You can give the authentication there. So in other words the password for the WiFi network. So what I plan to do is program one of these tags with my WiFi network for my house and put it right by the front door. The next time a guest comes over and wants the WiFi password all I've got to do is tell them, Touch your phone to this tag.

It will instantly set their phone up with my WiFi network. So there are a lot of different things that you can do with these tags. If I had a store or coffee shop I could see having one of these setup with an URL to signup for my newsletter and people could just touch their phone to it when they checkout and it takes them to that page and they can enter their email address. You could also use the email record there for customer feedback. So it automatically starts them up with an email sent to you with a certain subject. All they need to do is type the body text and hit Send.

You can also use the location tag there and they could tap the little alert that shows up and it takes them to a location on the map. So you can actually get a bunch of these and setup a fun scavenger hunt for your friends where they go from location to location looking for one of these and getting the next location from the tag. So there are a lot of fun things that you could do with NFC tags. Either setting up a shortcut to have one of these work for your phone specifically or setting up one that triggers an action on anybody's phone. Now I should note that you need a fairly recent iPhone to use NFC tags. They work on the iPhone 7, 8, 10, or 11 models. Programming them with things like URLs, locations, or WiFi passwords should also work for most recent android phones.

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How to Build a Daily Drawing Habit

Hello and welcome to Verbal to Visual. My name is Doug Neill and today I'd like to share some things that I've been doing lately to become more and more comfortable with drawing - a daily habit that I've worked into my morning routine that helps me to slowly build my visual vocabulary over time and also serves as a bit of a warm-up to get me in the mode of sketchnoting, of visual note-taking, that I stay in for my work day.

And that's the specific type of drawing that I'll be talking about here. Not so much the artistic side of drawing, but more drawing for the purpose of taking notes on something that you're learning, or maybe drawing out a presentation that you're going to give. So here's a pretty simple three-step process that you can use to get yourself set up for this type of daily drawing habit. A good starting point that I've found to be helpful is actually giving yourself a dedicated space to do this daily drawing.

How to Build a Daily Drawing Habit

When I first started working this bit of daily drawing into my morning routine, I decided to get a new, somewhat special notebook. I picked up this large one from the local bookstore and decided to make it my dedicated drawing warm-up journal. And the size was important for me. In this notebook each page is 9 inches by 12 inches, and the way I use this on a daily basis is by filling one of those pages every morning. I use a large black marker to do that. I don't do any pencil sketches first, so the drawings are by no means perfect, but I do like them. And that actually brings us to step two in this process.

You'll want to pick a source material to pull from while you do these drawings. So for me, I'm not imagining these images here. I've selected a couple of sources that I like to use, to have a visual reference to look at as I recreate those drawings. One of my go-to's in that realm is a website called The Noun Project. It's a large collection of icons of varying degrees of complexity. Sometimes I just scroll through the latest and pick ones that I like and draw those, other times I'll try to find a particular designer with a collection that I enjoy and I'll draw from those.

What I like about using that as the source material is that in many cases that simplistic style of icon - those are the types of images that I enjoy weaving into the visual notes that I take. So there's a decent amount of transferability in terms of the types of images that I'm practicing drawing. Another source of things to draw is an app called Wordraw. That app simply gives you a random word to draw and I often will use that, in combination with a Google image search of that word, to find the style of it that I'd like to draw.

And for me, I like the randomness of it, of not knowing what word is going to come next. That kind of keeps it interesting, but I still get to choose via that Google Image Search, sometimes adding the word icon or cartoon after it, I get to pick the style of that object that I'd like to recreate in my drawing. So The Noun Project and that app are my current go-to sources for the things that I draw. Another thing that I've done in the past is actually use the outside world as source material, going on a walk and just looking for singular objects that I can draw.

And in that case I might use a smaller, more portable notebook. And that gives me the opportunity to practice viewing an object, breaking that real object down into relatively simple lines, and recreating that in my sketchbook. Right now, though, I like incorporating this drawing habit into my office space here, and into my consistent morning routine. And that brings us to step three in this process. I think it's helpful to pick a spot within your day to put this drawing habit. For me it happens early in the morning, kind of right at the beginning of my work day because I use it as a warm-up of sorts, just to get me drawing sooner rather than later since that's a big part of the work that I do, doing a lot of sketchnoting throughout the day, and also teaching sketchnoting.

So consider where in your day you might like to place this habit. When you have all three of these things in place: a dedicated notebook or space where you do your drawing, a set of source material that you can pull from, and a dedicated spot within your day to do this drawing - having that in place just sets you up for success, to actually establish and maintain this habit from day to day and week to week. And I've found that it's a habit that kind of builds on itself, partially because it's fun to look back through this journal to see the drawings that I've done in the past, to remind myself that this is a skill that I'm okay at and can keep developing, and that kind of gives me motivation to keep filling a new page each day.

I've also found that this notebook has kind of turned into a resource of its own, a resource that I can use when I start sketchnoting with new materials. For example, I'm spending more and more time using the iPad and Apple Pencil combination of tools. I've got a course that I'm working on that looks specifically at digital sketchnoting. And to increase my comfort with this particular tool set, it's been nice to reference those sketchbook pages and recreate some of the icons that I particularly like, those that I might be most likely to use in a future note-taking session.

And I can imagine the next time that maybe I choose to do some large-scale sketchnoting up on the wall, I can also turn to that notebook to find some images that I might want to draw, just to get comfortable standing and drawing on the wall. So in addition to continuing to fill that notebook with new images each day, I also see opportunities to use it as a resource in other contexts. And with that I encourage you to establish your own daily drawing habit, especially if you're interested in sketchnoting but maybe not yet super comfortable with the idea of drawing.

This is a way for you to kind of establish a baseline level of comfort with the act of drawing, to slowly build that skill over time and also to kind of prep you for the sketchnoting you might do later in the day or maybe even immediately after doing this drawing habit. It can help you overcome that hurdle of discomfort with drawing, get that out of the way so that you can then just focus in on the thing that you're sketchnoting. I hope that the three steps that I outlined here help you build that daily drawing routine into your day.

And if you would like a PDF download of a recap of those steps and also the examples that I've shared, then come check us out on Patreon. I'm actually doing kind of a soft launch of a new Patreon account specifically for these videos that I make about sketchnoting that to me kind of fulfill a different role than the courses that I make at Verbal to Visual. I enjoy making these kind of stand-alone lessons that allow me to address specific topics that might not fit into a particular course. So the idea with this new Patreon is to provide some follow-up resources connected to each of these videos to make it a little bit easier for you to put into practice the specific thing that I share.

These videos will continue to be free, but if you want to tap into those extra resources and also just to support the further creation of these types of videos, Patreon feels like a good place to do that. So go check that out if you want to kind of get in on the ground floor. I think in a couple of videos I'll do a more detailed description and kind of launch of that, but if your interest is already piqued then do go check it out. Thank you so much for watching this video, good luck building your own daily drawing habit, and I'll see you again soon. Till next time.

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Best Apps for Youtubers | Every Youtuber should Use these Apps

Are you a Youtuber ? If yes then this article is very helpful and informative for you because in this article i am going to tell you best apps for youtubers. Yes i will mention high quality and most important apps for youtubers. Every Youtuber should use these high quality and important apps if you want to improve your channel.

You know that YouTube is largest video platform in world so everyone want his/her channel in this and also they are making channel but everyone is not successful in this because they don't not correct method. So i am going to tell you some most important apps for youtuber so anyone can use youtube and manage their channel in mobile.

Best Apps for Youtubers

There are so many apps for youtubers which are serving many types of services but i will include some apps that are really must important for every youtuber. So without spending any time lets start and know best apps for youtubers.

1. Adsense : You know that adsense is main source for earning through youtube so you need to install this app in your mobile if you are a youtuber.
2. Snapseed : This is an image maker app. You know importance of thumbnail in youtube. This app will help you to make impressive thumbnails for your videos.
3. Youtube Creator Studio : This is an official app of youtube. You can manage your channel with this app simply. If you will use this app then you can see everything about your channel.

Conclusion : So these are three most important apps for you if you are a youtuber. If you want some more best apps for youtubers then you can leave a comment in comment box. I will definitely add some more apps for youtubers because you know that there are so many apps for youtubers.

If this article is helpful for you then share this article with your friends and family members.

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What is Hotstar | Full details of Hotsatar App

Hello everyone , i am Sunil again with a new article and today i am going to tell you that what is hotstar. I think everyone know that what is hotstar app but in this article i want to tell you something new that you don't know about hotstar app.

What is HotStar

Hotstar App is an Indian Platform for all entertainment and all coverage from drama, movies and live channels of indian television. This app launched on 06 February 2015 by Star India group. And it is also owned by Star India. It is providing all coverage from indian television in 17 different languages. It is also available on web, android, iOS, FireTV and Apple TV platforms.

For your knowledge i want to tell you that hotstar is a Video on Demand site. it is available is 17 indian languages but i am listing only popular language that are Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujrati etc. Headquarter of Hotstar is situated in Mumbai , Maharastra.

Currently Hotstar is serving his services in India, United States of America and Canada. Owner of hotstar is Star India and 21st Century Fox. Most key people of this app is Ajith Mohan. Website of Hotstar is www.hotstar.com

The beta version of hotstar launched on january 2015 and then star india launched it publicly in february 2015. Now it achieving highest in all over world and its demands also coming from so many countries.

Conclusion :
So this is my informative article about Hotstar site. In this article i have cleared that what is hotstar app and features of Hotstar. If you have any problem regarding this article then you can leave a comment in comment box. I will definitely help you to solve your issue very soon.

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