The Gallery : Colour : St Pancras Station

I've had a long term love affair with St Pancras Station and this staircase to the underground has always felt like a doorway to an exciting new world.

For The Gallery. 

Do stop by the Linky and loose yourself in this weeks celebration of colour.

Comments and views are appreciated... as always!

How to make your iPhone battery last all day!

Yesterday I was in London at the British Mummy Bloggers Christmas lunch. I'd planned to go straight back home afterwards but sometimes plans change. An amazing opportunity presented itself to me and off I went to join a truly inspirational group of women at TEDxLondon to share the success of our Blogladesh campaign with them.

One problem..... 

I wasn't planning to be out all day / night - so I didn't have my iPhone charger with me. It riles me that I put up with the fact that my battery doesn't last all day. It's like I've been totally and utterly brainwashed by the God of Apple and I'm taken back about eighteen years to mobile phones of old. But this isn't 1992, it's 2010 and your phone battery should last all day. FACT.

So there I was - unable to tweet or text from this amazing event. My phone had been as dead as a Do Do for hours. But on the train on the way home I chanced upon a gentleman with an iphone charger (I'd seriously been asking everyone I spoke to all evening). He gave me my life line but also shared the best tip I've ever heard on how to make your battery last as long as possible. I've had an iPhone since launch - yet I'd never heard this - I guess that's one of the side effects of a product that comes without a user guide....

So here it is.....

Did you know that unless you manually close the apps on your phone they remain open and so draining your battery?

When I say close the app - I don't mean hitting the home button because that doesn't actually close the app. You'll know what I mean when you try it.

Dur... it all makes perfect sense now... this is why my phone pings, dings and vibrates with Facebook messages, ebay notifications and tweets all night long.

Try this and you'll totally get it too...

1. Double click the home button and it brings up a scrolling list of all the apps you have open on your phone.

2. Press one till it jiggles and you'll see a red minus icon appears. 

3. Click it to close the app down.

Don't worry - you aren't deleting. Just closing down. 

Every single app on my phone was open. This is just a few of them...Angry Birds, email, camera, Smack Talk, Twitter, Facebook, Tube Map, Super Yum Yum, Bejewelled, Camera Bag, hipstamatic, eBay, google and the Cat in the Hat. No wonder my battery life was having a hard time...

Today - my battery lasted till 10pm and I'm so happy I could squeal.

Small things.....

Smack Talk - simply the Best iPhone App ever!

Back from my day out at bubble. It was really good to meet up with my fellow Tweeters. We had an avid discussion over lunch that was strangely fluid.

You do get strangely used to speaking in 140 characters or less.

I had planned to post on all the lovely things that I had seen at the show today - but I got completely side tracked by something that has made me chuckle more than I have for a long time.

FunnyGirl, is funny by nature - hence her tag.

For Father's Day, her lucky dad had a new iPhone, FunnyGirl and I bought it to cheer ourselves up after that dreadful train journey we took a couple of weeks ago and we had to hand it straight over as we are both rubbish at keeping secrets.

So by the time Father's Day arrived, hubby had quite naturally amassed an impressive arsenal of games and apps.

What I encountered though has me laughing at the thought of it.

I came into my bedroom - arms full of stuff to put away and there was FunnyGirl lying on my bed having a full on conversation with the said iPhone. Well when I say she was talking to the phone - she was really conversing with a guinea pig.

Ok, you may say - but is that funny? Well yes, when what you say is repeated back to you faster, squeekier, with perfect lip sink and coming from a cute furry guinea gig!

Every time the guinea pig spoke she was laughing so hard that it had us all laughing too. If the guinea pig isn't for you there is a very cute kitten, a puppy and a manic Chihuahua that frankly is not quite right.

If you have an iPhone and you have children - you have to get this app. It's only 59p from iTunes and it works in every language. It will have you and the kids and everyone else howling for hours.

It is called Smack Talk - available from iTunes or you can get more info from the developers site.

When you have tried it and are hooked you may want to join his Twitter group!

Enjoy!