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The iPhone 6S aggravates missing photo archive features in iCloud

By Blog, News

Apple recently announced the latest iPhone model, the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S+. I have closely followed the news, not only because I have written about Apple for years, but also because I am preparing a new book, titled iPhone 6 & 6S In 30 Minutes which covers all iPhone 6 models running iOS 9.

A lot of the media attention around the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus has concerned the powerful new cameras, the ability to shoot 4K video, and Live Photos. These look like amazing features, but as others have pointed out, they come with a high price: They will quickly use up the iPhone’s storage (particularly the 16GB model). I will take this observation a step further: The powerful iPhone 6S camera aggravates a huge design flaw in Apple’s iCloud service — the inability to archive photos and videos on iCloud Photo Library.

iphone6s icloud photo library archive photos backupLet me explain. If you have activated iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S, All Photos will show thumbnails of all digital photos and videos created on the iPhone that have not been deleted. It also includes thumbnails of photos from any other device connected to the same iCloud account and synced to iCloud Photo Library.

When you delete a photo or video taken on your iPhone, it is also removed from iCloud Photo Library. It is not archived. This is true even if you have a paid iCloud account with tons of online storage. This is a major problem for anyone who takes lots of photos and videos, and then needs to delete them from the phone to make room for more — once you delete them from the phone, they are gone for good!

Apple support forums are filled with iPhone owners who want to clear some space on their phones, but still save copies of the photos and videos (see Can I use iCloud to store photos I want to delete from my iPhone 5s?). There is no solution on the forums, and when I contacted Apple support the only suggestion they had was to optimize storage on the iPhone, as described on this page:

If you turn on Optimize (device) Storage, iCloud Photo Library will automatically manage the size of your library on your device, so you can make the most of your device’s storage and access more photos than ever. All of your original, full-resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud while device-size versions are kept on your device. You can download the original photos and videos over Wi-Fi or cellular when you need them. If you turn on Download Originals, iCloud Photo Library will keep your original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud and on your device. Download Originals is the default setting for iOS devices with the free 5 GB storage plan and for all Mac devices.

Optimize Storage is an iCloud band-aid that doesn’t scale. This option takes all of the high-resolution photos and videos — even the ones you created just last week — and places them on iCloud’s servers. It leads to other problems. Namely, if you tap a thumbnail to download a high-resolution photo or video from iCloud onto your iPhone, the photo or video may take a long time to load -— or may not load at all — depending on the speed of your Wi-Fi or carrier connection. I found this out the hard way when trying to show a two-minute HD video of a recent vacation experience on my iPhone 6 to visiting family members over a standard home Wi-Fi setup. It was taking too long to load, so I was forced to abandon the attempt.

What if you don’t use iCloud Photo Library, and opt for plain-jane iCloud photo storage? In this case, you will revert to the old Camera Roll view, which consists of photos and videos created by the iPhone’s camera and still stored on the device. Eventually they will have to be deleted and/or manually backed up to a desktop computer.

As you can imagine, things will only get worse for owners of the iPhone 6S and 6S+, who will be taking higher-resolution photos and videos. Until Apple’s iCloud group figures out a solution to the problem for all iPhone owners, the best alternative is Dropbox’s Camera Uploads feature, which automatically uploads and backs up all photos and videos taken on your smartphone to a dedicated folder on the user’s Dropbox account. Even if you delete a photo or video on the iPhone, you will still have a copy on Dropbox as long as a Dropbox sync has taken place and there is enough space on the account (free accounts have a limited amount of storage). I have covered this in the latest edition of Dropbox In 30 Minutes for anyone who is interested. Google Drive recently began offering a similar feature, but I have not tried it yet. It boggles the mind why Apple has yet to introduce such a feature for iCloud — Dropbox Camera Uploads was introduced in 2011, so it’s not like it’s a new concept.

Have you had the same photo and video backup problem using iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S? How have you dealt with the problem?

How to type other languages in Google Docs

By Blog

I received an email from India asking about support for other languages in Google Docs. He was a reader of my book Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes, and he had two questions: 1. How characters from Hindi, Chinese, or other languages can be typed into Google Docs, and 2) whether foreign text can be saved in Google Docs.

How to type other languages in Google Docs

There are several ways to save text from non-Latin character sets in Google Docs. The method I usually use is through the operating system. Windows and Mac PCs let users change the input language so people can use their keyboards (or trackpad) to enter Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, etc., into any program on their screen. However, if you don’t have this feature set up or are unable to activate it (for instance, because you are using someone else’s computer) you can use language support that’s built into Google Docs. Here’s how:

  1. Open Google Docs and create a new document (or open up an existing one)
  2. Go to File > Language and select the language you want to start typing in. For instance, to choose the traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan, I would select 中文(台灣)(literally: “Chinese, Taiwan”)
  3. The input tool will appear on the right side of your toolbar (it may be hard to see, but on my browser, it was to the right of the “clear formatting” button, as in the screenshot below).
  4. Click on the tiny triangle next to the language symbol to choose your input method, which might be phonetic, romanization, or some other keyboard method.
  5. As you enter characters, Google Docs automatically saves them.
  6. Once you are finished, close out of the document or use File > Language to switch back to English.

Example of how to type other languages in Google Docs

In the example below, I used the Google Docs input tool to select pinyin, a romanization method for Chinese characters. As I type pinyin on the English keyboard, choices for the possible characters show up below the cursor with numbers to make a choice (Mandarin has many homonyms, so the numbers are used to pick the right characters). I can type the number or use my mouse to make my choice, and they are entered into the document. In the example below, I have typed “Hello I am American” above some English text. The input tool drop-down is also visible:

Google Docs Language input - Chinese example - How to type other languages in Google Docs

How to type other languages in Google Docs

Note that this method works for me because I am familiar with pinyin. However, some languages require special keyboards or keyboard labels. If you are working with a standard Western-style keyboard, or don’t know the Romanization system supported by Google Docs, you may have a tough time expressing yourself in the other language.

How to renew a Blogger custom domain through Google Apps

By Blog

Blogger, the blogging service offered by Google, used to have a really neat feature: The ability to reserve and pay for a custom domain through the Blogger interface to replace the default blogspot.com domain that Google provides. For reasons that are not clear, Google removed this feature in 2013. It’s still possible to get a custom domain, but users have to do it on their own through registrars such as GoDaddy or eNom and then point the domain to Google’s Blogger servers (if anyone is interested in setting up a simple business website using this method, consider Google Blogger For Small Businesses In 30 Minutes).

When Google turned off custom domains registration in Blogger, however, they didn’t think through an important process: How existing customers could renew their custom domains. Because customers never dealt directly with the registrars when they set up the domains, the renewal process is supposed to take place through Google Apps. This is a big problem, because many users never registered their Google Apps account or were never assigned an email address associated with their accounts. So, when the renewal email is sent to the backup email address, it’s not clear how to get into the Google Apps account to update billing information or perform other important functions. Fortunately, I found a partial solution for some users, which I will share below.

First, here’s what the renewal email looks like:

How to renew a Blogger custom domain through Google Apps

While my Dropbox guide is currently associated with a new URL, the old Blogger-based book website still gets a fair amount of traffic so I definitely wanted to renew the domain to prevent it from expiring. I clicked the button in the email, but was brought through a hellish runaround. I knew the default email address for the Blogger domains is bloggeradmin@domain.com, but no password combination worked to access it, and the only account recovery method the help screens said I could use involved changing the c name record at the registrar (eNom) so Google could verify that I owned the domain. But this was impossible, because I never dealt directly with eNom — all of the administration took place through the Blogger interface, and Google Wallet/Google Checkout.

Eventually, by following another set of help links, I was able to fill out a Google Apps help form that let me tell Google Apps what the problem was. Here’s what I wrote:

Subject: Unable to get into my Google Apps account which I registered as a Blogger custom domain

I received a warning via email (via my backup email address) that my domain will not be renewed. It is impossible using normal methods for me to get into the Google Apps domain management panel for the Dropbox In 30 Minutes domain. I used my backup email address, the bloggeradmin@ email address, and every password I could remember but nothing works. I am also unable to use the c name method because Google/Blogger custom domains do not allow me to log into the registrar’s management panel (enom).

Please help.

The help form said I would need to wait for up to 7 days, but I received a reply in about 1 hour. Here’s what it said:

Thank you for your message. I understand you have no access to your account Admin interface to renew your domain registration. I will be more than happy to help you with that.

Please note that at this time, all Google customers for any product are being moved to a new Billing system. In order to comply with its requirements, they need to manage their account through a Google Apps Admin console. You must have received an email message with this information. However, if you haven’t or didn’t go through the information to get access to it, you can use the following link to reset the password and gain access https://admin.google.com/xxxxxx/ForgotAdminAccountInfo (where xxxxxx is the name of the domain in question).

The reset link should be coming to this Gmail. Once you login, it will take you through setting up Billing to enable the auto renew option for your domain registration.

Sure enough, I was able to send a new password to my backup gmail account (thank goodness I had set that up) and get into the domain control panel to update the billing information. Mission accomplished!

Now, I know there are lots of other people with similar problems, but I don’t want to guarantee this method. For instance, if you never set up a backup email recovery account or waited too long to take care of the problem, you may be out of luck. But if any other readers try this method and it works, please share your story (and tips) below!