Virtual Mind

Have you ever felt your iPhone vibrate but had to dig it out of your pocket to see whether it was vibrating due to a phone call, a text or an email?  Did you know that you can change the pattern of your iPhone’s vibrate function?

From your home screen:

• Select Settings
• Select Sounds
• Select the type of event (i.e. Ringtone, Text Tone, New Voicemail, etc.)
• Select Vibrate
• Now choose the pattern that you like the best for that event

In order to sample the vibrate tones as you select each one, ensure your phone is in vibrate mode.

You can pick from several standard patterns, you can create your own or you can choose to not have the device vibrate.  By selecting very different vibrate pattens, you can now better identify what kind of event is being received by your iPhone.  Please note, this only applies to the iPhone and not the iPad at the time this article was written.

I noticed several months ago that when using my iPhone and iPad that the default search engine in Safari had changed from Google to Yahoo.  I gave Yahoo a shot but eventually decided that I wanted to move back to Google.  From iOS you have the option of Google, Yahoo or Bing.  If you want to modify the default search engine for an iOS device, such as, an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch it is very easy.

From your home screen:

• Select Settings
• Select Safari
• Select Search Engine
• Now choose from Google, Yahoo or Bing

One you have picked your favorite engine then return to Safari and give it a try.

iOS certainly contains a lot of great features but that also means that to get to some of these features, it requires quite a few menus and clicks.  With the so/so battery life of the iPhone, I like to disable features such as Wifi and Bluetooth when I know that I won’t need them for extended periods of time.  For those of you that want a quick way to do this, try adding a shortcut to your home screen.  In iOS 5, Safari gives you the ability to save a shortcut directly to your home screen.  This feature can be used for iOS settings as well.  I have been been doing this for my Bluetooth and Wifi settings for several weeks now.

Checkout this website for details on how to do this.  For me, I used the “old method” which is towards the bottom of the screen and does not require introducing a new profile to your phone.

Any other creative ideas around shortcuts?