Ask NerdGirl: Grammar, People! Clear out my SMS, Bad Reception, Voice Activated Navigation, Sharing with Facebook, and Make the Icons Go Away!
by n3rdg1rl
Jul 14, 2010 4:39 PM –
Now, I’m not trying to upset anyone, but I must take the time to say something today:
When you email or message n3rdg1rl, please remember that it’s not a text message. I spend a lot of my time just cleaning up messages so I can post them and they’re easily understood. I know I have many readers who’s first language isn’t English, and I love that you know it enough to send me messages. This isn’t directed toward you! Please just remember that “I” is capital. There are periods at the end of sentences and capital letters at the beginning. I don’t expect emails to be perfect, but you doing basic spellcheck and punctuation will save me an hour a day! This will also speed up the process me answering your questions.
Also, I get dozens of emails a day. Please be patient and I will get to your question. Emailing me the same question four or five times in a row does not make me work faster. It actually slows me down.
Back to smiles and happy things! On to the questions!
I recently picked up the HTC Droid Incredible and I love it. The Sense feature seems to store all my SMS with my contacts which seems to be slowing my phone down considerably. Is there an easy way to erase all my SMS messages and to keep this from happening again?
SMS messages are arranged on the phone by who sent them and who they were sent to. It’s not creating a duplicate just for your contact list. You may be running into a storage issue. If you have a ton of SMS messages, it could be filling up your phone and causing it to run slower. Try an app called Delete old messages. This will automatically delete messages older than a specific date to free up space. If there’s certain messages you want to keep you can move them to your SD card or email them using TxtArchive SMS Backup.
My reception seems to be far worse than my previous Blackberry with the same provider. Is this a known issue? I have spent several hours on the phone with Verizon with no fix so far.
HTC Droid Frustrated
Based on what phone you have, your signal can be better or worse. It’s all dependant on the phones built-in antenna. In my house, for instance, I get great reception everywhere except in my own room where I get maybe one bar. Another person in my house gets no reception outside in the back, but good reception everywhere in the house. I would keep telling Verizon and staying on them about it. Of course, any reason for yelling at Verizon at this point makes me happy.
Hi NG,
Love the column…
I have a Motorola Droid, and I love using Google Maps for it’s GPS and navigation, but is there a way I can use voice commands to set point A and B? Obviously, the less I need to look at the screen the better, but each time I try to set my destination as “Kevin’s house” or say something like “Navigate to Kevin” it comes up with a Google search of random businesses called “Kevin” (or something altogether different) instead of making the connection and finding my contacts’ addresses. Any workarounds (or suggestions for an entirely separate app)?
Thanks,
Shawn (Colorado, USA)
Silly keywords! To get the navigation app to actually navigate you MUST start with “Navigate to…”. It works well with Google Navigator so I would switch to that instead of Google Maps. As long as a contact has their address in their information it will look at matches there first.
I have been trying to find an app for my Droid that will let me share what I am listening to on my music player, not the actual file, but just the title/album/artist… so far, no luck. It sucks going to Amazon every time to find the CD, press the Facebook share button, log in, and so forth.
Any ideas?
As far as sharing to Facebook, it isn’t built in to a music player at the moment. There are a few for Twitter. I’m taking this as there will be an app that shares with Facebook soon!
How do I get the applications off the front of the phone (HTC EVO)? I thought I was trying to delete and it just kept adding applications.
First you long press the icon that you want to remove. Hold it until you see the screen change and the bottom will say “Remove”.
Drag the icon over the word “Remove” and it’s gone!
~n3rdg1rl