Taking your smartphone overseas

While we all love our smartphones and can’t bear to go anywhere without them, even the savviest cellular customer has a little apprehension about planning an overseas trip. We’ve all had those vacations where we have congratulated ourselves for staying within budget only to find that our cell phone bills were hundreds of dollars more than we expected. With international calling rates, costly data charges, and unexpected roaming fees, it’s easy to think that taking a phone abroad is far more trouble than it’s worth.

Thankfully, times are changing. Phone manufacturers and wireless carriers recognize the difficulties associated with cell phone use overseas and have made enormous strides in trying to simplify the process and help control the costs. However, despite the improvements, traveling overseas with your phone can still be a costly experience. Here are some tips on how to make it a little more affordable:

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Getting to Know Facebook Graph Search

By Tracey Dowdy

Way back in January, Facebook started to roll out Graph Search, a clever way to filter through your friends’ posts to find specific content. It’s still in beta phase and hasn’t been rolled out to everyone as yet, allowing the development team time to work out the kinks in the system.

Graph Search is built on semantic search. In other words, the algorithms used not only search what you type, but they interpret your request by context and search for what they think you mean. Sometimes semantic search is accurate and provides enlightening results, other times not so much. Think of when you search using Google. When I recently typed “Why” in the search box, Google guessed the rest of my question would be “…is the sky blue”, “…am I so tired”, “…did the pope resign”, and “…do cats purr.” Clearly Google doesn’t know me as well as it thinks, since I’m not really a weary, contemplative Catholic who is interested in cats, but based on previous queries, Google made some assumptions.

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7 Cool Features On the New BlackBerry Q10

By Paul O’Reilly

The BlackBerry Q10 just became available on Verizon Wireless’s 4G LTE network, bringing smiles to the faces of all those BlackBerry fans that longed for the Z10 but couldn’t live without the beloved BlackBerry keyboard.

But although the Q10 looks and feels like a traditional BlackBerry device (albeit with a bigger screen), don’t be fooled. It’s packed with enough state-of-the-art applications and eye-opening tricks that even die-hard iPhone and Android users will sit up and take notice. Here are a few of my favorite features:

• Type and Go
  If you want to initiate an action or search for anything, there’s no need to scroll through multiple screens or look for the browser icon. Just start typing and the Q10 will find what you’re looking for. Want to send an e-mail? Just type ‘email’ and the name of the person you want to send to and the Q10 will automatically open a new e-mail addressed to that person. Type ‘FB’ to reach Facebook, ‘TW’ to open Twitter, or just start typing your search term and the Q10 will do the rest.

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Hashtags Come to Facebook

Facebook yesterday introduced the searchable hashtag, a feature that has long been a staple of other social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. By clicking on a hashtag, Facebook users will be able to see what other people are saying about the hashtagged event or topic.

In a Newsroom post explaining the introduction of hashtags, Facebook cited the likes, comments and posts that regularly accompany major TV events like the Oscars or the Super Bowl, and how there was a need to organize all that social media chatter in one place. What Facebook didn’t mention is that a large percentage of that chatter now takes place on Twitter precisely because the Twitter hashtag allows users to track a chosen topic more efficiently.

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Top 10 Etiquette Tips for Smartphone Users

By Stacey Ross

For many smartphone users, their devices have become an extension of their person, keeping them just a finger's reach away and on and off the grid all day, habitually texting, chatting, posting, etc. without a second's thought. Sometimes they appear to be tuned-in experts at multi-tasking, but other times oblivious to others who are annoyed by their lack of courtesy!

It is a matter of fact that many feel naked without the resource that we now take for granted, but how often do we contemplate how our habits affect others? Rules of etiquette for cell phone users have evolved just as much as the technology behind them, but some folks just need to catch up with the times!

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