Five ways to lower your smartphone data consumption

Five ways to lower your smartphone data consumption

Which apps and services are the worst offenders when it comes to chewing through your data plan?

Data usage on a smartphone.James Martin/CNET

In the early days of cell phones, it was all about the minutes -- voice minutes, that is, because people used their phones to call each other. (Weird, right?) You had to limit your conversations or suffer the horrors of overage charges.

Today, it's all about the data. Even if your plan is "unlimited," there's almost always an asterisk. After you burn through the first couple gigabytes, your high-speed connection throttles back to something closer to dial-up. (Talk about horrors!) And if you're with a pay-as-you-go service like Ting, unchecked data consumption could leave you in a higher-priced tier when the bill comes due.

Whatever your plan, it makes sense to conserve data. And what's the easiest way to do that? Connect to Wi-Fi wherever and whenever possible. Sure, it takes a few extra taps to connect to a network in, say, a coffee shop or airport lounge, and you make feel like it's not worth the hassle if you've got five 4G bars showing.

Depending on what you're planning to do with your phone, however, it may absolutely be worth it. Here are five of the biggest data hogs you want to avoid (or at least reduce) when there's no Wi-Fi available:

1. YouTube uploads

Just can't wait to share that epic video of your friend wiping out on his skateboard? Or your totally legit Bigfoot sighting? Upload at your own risk: Depending on settings and various other factors, each minute of HD video you shot can be as large as 200MB.

So if you upload just five 1-minute videos per month, that would eat a full gigabyte of your data allotment. Wait till there's Wi-Fi!

2. Video chats

Stop the Skyping! And the FaceTiming. And all the other video calling -- if you want to save data. Though the rate of consumption varies depending on the app you use and resolution of your chat, a Jetsons-style phone call can cost you up to 3MB per minute.

3. Online gaming

Don't worry, Trivia Crack addicts, turn-based games like this and Words With Friends aren't heavy data-users. However, real-time action games like Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5: Blackout are a different story, with some estimates pegging their data use at 1MB per minute of play.

4. Music streaming

It's so easy (and awesome) to plug into Pandora or Spotify when you're, say, riding the train home from work, you might not realize what it's doing to your data plan.

What it's doing is killing your cap. If a music service streams at a 320Kbps bit rate, that's 2.4MB of dataper minute, or a whopping 115MB per hour. Even if you tune in only a couple times per week, it's easy to rack up big data numbers. Fortunately, a lot of mobile apps let you downshift to a lower bit rate, a very advisable move if you must listen on the go.

Pandora, it's worth noting, never streams at more than 64Kbps on mobile devices, even if you're a Pandora One subscriber.

One other option: if your music service allows it (and most do nowadays), download your tunes (via Wi-Fi, of course) for offline listening.

5. Video streaming

If music streaming is bad, video trumps it by an order of magnitude. Awesome though it may be to binge on episodes of "Black Mirror" or trending YouTube vids when you're on the treadmill at the gym, streaming can swallow as much as 50MB per minute.

That's according to Netflix, which estimates 3GB per hour for HD video. Of course, those numbers can and will vary across different services (Hulu, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, etc.), but there's no question that video does the most damage to your data plan.

Fortunately, with a little advance planning, you can watch on the go without using any data at all. Consider a service like PlayLater, which allows you to "record" streaming video from the likes of Hulu and Netflix for offline viewing on mobile devices. Likewise, a smattering of YouTube apps let you save videos right to your phone so you can rewatch them later -- no connection required.

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Easily enlarge images on the Web without clicking

Easily enlarge images on the Web without clicking

​If you are an avid online shopper, or you just enjoy looking at photos on social media, you should try the Imagus Web browser add-on.

Imagus in action.Nicole Cozma/CNET

On social media, the larger version of an image is usually just a click away. However, if you're shopping on a site like Amazon, once you click it's easy to get distracted by other recommended products. It's similar to what happens if you read Wikipedia and get wrapped up in connected vaguely connected topics.

As an alternative to clicking each image, check out the Imagus for your Chrome or Firefox Web browser. You can easily see the enlarged version of each image without a single click.

Here are some examples where this extension is super-handy:

• Reddit
• Amazon
• Facebook
• Google Images
• Apartment searching

Ready to check it out? Here's how:

Grab a copy of Imagus for your Web browser of choice, Chrome or Firefox.

The extension has many options for how the image enlargement works and what to do with each image. For instance, you can ask it to preload the larger version of all images on a page, add the links to larger versions to your browser history, and decide where the large version is shown in relation to your cursor. There's also a large list of keyboard shortcuts to save photos, their captions, or even rotate images as you're viewing them.

A sample of the Imagus settings.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

To adjust the settings for the extension/add-on:

Chrome: Click the Settings button in the top right-hand corner > More Tools > Extensions > click the options link under Imagus.

Firefox: Click the Settings button in the top right-hand corner > Add-ons > click the Options button next to Imagus.

Make sure to save any changes you make before leaving the settings area.

Now you'll be able to see all of the full-size versions of images across the Web without loading a new page.

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How to set up Chrome Remote Desktop for iOS

How to set up Chrome Remote Desktop for iOS

Google has released an iOS app that makes it possible to access your Mac or PC from any iOS device with an Internet connection.

An iPhone 6 Plus controlling a MacBook Air using Chrome Remote Desktop.Jason Cipriani/CNET

Chrome Remote Desktop is hardly a new service from Google. It's been around for years, allowing users to access a Windows or Mac computer from another computer or an Android device. When it came to this Google service, iOS had been left out.

Then on Monday Google unceremoniously released the iOS Chrome Remote Desktop app into the App Store, making it super-easy to access your computer (or a family member's computer) from your mobile device wherever you have a connection.

Before we dive into setting up the iOS app -- or lack of required setup -- you'll need to make sure you have two things installed on the computer you plan on connecting to.

Chrome Remote Desktop app in the Chrome Web Store.Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

The first is, naturally, Chrome. Second, you'll need to install the desktop version of the Chrome Remote Desktop app from the Chrome Web Store.

Once you have those two items installed, launch the app on your desktop and follow the prompts to complete the setup process. A video walking you through it all can be found here. Trust me when I say, you need very little technical expertise to get it installed.

The most important aspect of setting up the service is to remember your PIN. You did write it down, didn't you? OK, good.

Chrome Remote Desktop on an iOS device.Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

Now that you have a PIN and the app is installed on your computer, download the iOS app from theApp Store here. After its installed on your device, sign into the same Google account you used in Chrome and your computer should show up in the list. Tapping on the computer name will launch a remote session, where you'll be prompted to enter your PIN. After successfully entering it, you'll gain complete control over your computer.

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How to find your Wi-Fi password in Windows 8.1

How to find your Wi-Fi password in Windows 8.1

Good news! Reverse password lookups are totally possible.

Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET

This happens to me often, especially when I'm visiting relatives' houses: My computer knows the Wi-Fi password from when I last connected to the network -- two years ago -- but I've completely forgotten it, though my mother is about 65 percent sure she wrote it down on a Post-it note seven months ago.

A forgotten Wi-Fi password isn't a problem for me and my omniscient laptop, but it is a problem for, say, my brother, who needs the password if he wants to jump on the network with his Japanese iPhone. My mom is hunting for the Post-it, but prospects are lookin' bleak.

Luckily, there's an easy way to reverse-lookup your Wi-Fi password on a computer that already technically knows it. Here's how to find saved network passwords in Windows 8.1:

Step 1: Make sure you're connected to your Wi-Fi network. If you're not connected, open the Charms bar by swiping in from the right side of the screen, or by moving your mouse into the upper right corner of the screen, and click Settings. Tap or click the network icon, find your network and click Connect.

Your PC should connect to your Wi-Fi network automatically, with the saved (but forgotten) password.

Step 2: From the desktop, open the Charms bar, click Settings and then open the Control Panel.

Step 3: Under Network and Internet, click View network status and tasks.

Step 4: Next to the word Connections, you should see a Wi-Fi icon and the name of your Wi-Fi network. Click your Wi-Fi network and a Wi-Fi Status window will pop up. Click Wireless Properties.

Step 5: A new window will pop up. Tap or click the Security tab and you will see your Network security key displayed as a series of black dots. Check the box next to Show characters and voila -- there's your Wi-Fi password!

Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET

Now you know your network password. Write it down -- or don't; you can always just look it up again.

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Five ways to lower your smartphone data consumption

Five ways to lower your smartphone data consumption

Which apps and services are the worst offenders when it comes to chewing through your data plan?

Data usage on a smartphone.James Martin/CNET

In the early days of cell phones, it was all about the minutes -- voice minutes, that is, because people used their phones to call each other. (Weird, right?) You had to limit your conversations or suffer the horrors of overage charges.

Today, it's all about the data. Even if your plan is "unlimited," there's almost always an asterisk. After you burn through the first couple gigabytes, your high-speed connection throttles back to something closer to dial-up. (Talk about horrors!) And if you're with a pay-as-you-go service like Ting, unchecked data consumption could leave you in a higher-priced tier when the bill comes due.

Whatever your plan, it makes sense to conserve data. And what's the easiest way to do that? Connect to Wi-Fi wherever and whenever possible. Sure, it takes a few extra taps to connect to a network in, say, a coffee shop or airport lounge, and you make feel like it's not worth the hassle if you've got five 4G bars showing.

Depending on what you're planning to do with your phone, however, it may absolutely be worth it. Here are five of the biggest data hogs you want to avoid (or at least reduce) when there's no Wi-Fi available:

1. YouTube uploads

Just can't wait to share that epic video of your friend wiping out on his skateboard? Or your totally legit Bigfoot sighting? Upload at your own risk: Depending on settings and various other factors, each minute of HD video you shot can be as large as 200MB.

So if you upload just five 1-minute videos per month, that would eat a full gigabyte of your data allotment. Wait till there's Wi-Fi!

2. Video chats

Stop the Skyping! And the FaceTiming. And all the other video calling -- if you want to save data. Though the rate of consumption varies depending on the app you use and resolution of your chat, a Jetsons-style phone call can cost you up to 3MB per minute.

3. Online gaming

Don't worry, Trivia Crack addicts, turn-based games like this and Words With Friends aren't heavy data-users. However, real-time action games like Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5: Blackout are a different story, with some estimates pegging their data use at 1MB per minute of play.

4. Music streaming

It's so easy (and awesome) to plug into Pandora or Spotify when you're, say, riding the train home from work, you might not realize what it's doing to your data plan.

What it's doing is killing your cap. If a music service streams at a 320Kbps bit rate, that's 2.4MB of dataper minute, or a whopping 115MB per hour. Even if you tune in only a couple times per week, it's easy to rack up big data numbers. Fortunately, a lot of mobile apps let you downshift to a lower bit rate, a very advisable move if you must listen on the go.

Pandora, it's worth noting, never streams at more than 64Kbps on mobile devices, even if you're a Pandora One subscriber.

One other option: if your music service allows it (and most do nowadays), download your tunes (via Wi-Fi, of course) for offline listening.

5. Video streaming

If music streaming is bad, video trumps it by an order of magnitude. Awesome though it may be to binge on episodes of "Black Mirror" or trending YouTube vids when you're on the treadmill at the gym, streaming can swallow as much as 50MB per minute.

That's according to Netflix, which estimates 3GB per hour for HD video. Of course, those numbers can and will vary across different services (Hulu, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, etc.), but there's no question that video does the most damage to your data plan.

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Turn your iOS burst photos into videos, animated GIFs

Turn your iOS burst photos into videos, animated GIFs

If you find yourself taking a lot of burst photos on your iOS device, Burstio is an app you're sure to find useful.

Burstio app iconJason Cipriani/CNET

My favorite kind of apps aren't entire platforms or services. Instead, they're much simpler apps that fill a hole in the feature set of an operating system. For example, Apple created a Burst Mode in its Camera app that takes photos in quick succession as long as you hold in the shutter button.

Once your burst is captured, Apple uses software to pick what it feels is the best shot out of the group and displays it for easy sharing. It's a feature I use often, but it's also one I've always felt was incomplete.

For me, it only made sense for Apple to provide a quick mechanism to turn a series of burst photos into an animated GIF, or a silent video (audio isn't captured when you're taking photos, naturally).

That's where Burstio comes in. This small app scans your Camera Roll for burst photo sets, and then allows you to export them as a video or GIF with just a few taps.

Burstio for iOS.Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

After installing the app, you only need to grant it permission to access your Photos. Once you've done that, you'll be presented with a list of the burst sets stored on your device. Tap on one, preview and trim the clip, then export it as an HD video or an animated GIF.

Additionally, you can adjust the playback speed or opt to have it replay on a loop.

Here's a GIF I created from a wedding I recently attended:

Who doesn't want to dance with a few dozen glowsticks?Jason Cipriani/CNET

Due to lighting and movement, the photos turned out pretty poor. I had planned on exporting all of the photos in the particular set and creating a GIF, but hadn't gotten around to it yet.

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What to do with the gifts you hate

What to do with the gifts you hate

Receive a gift this holiday season you can't stand? Not sure what to do with it? Here's some ideas to get the most out of the gifts you hate.

Jason Cipriani/CNET

Every year there's always one or two gifts that prompt you to ask yourself "what were they thinking?" You know it's something you'll never use, and you're left with the question of what to do with it. This year, don't let it sit in your closet collecting dust, and most certainly don't throw it away. Turn that unwanted gift into something you do want, be it cash, a gift card, or another item you'll actually use. Here's a few different ways you can deal with the gift you loathe.

Sell physical goods

Selling a gift is a great way to turn it into cash. Craigslist, eBay and Amazon are all great places to take into consideration when selling.

When selling on Craigslist, you'll want to make sure you make the item look great in the ad. You'll also want to be prepared to negotiate with potential buyers and make sure to keep your safety in mind. Ed Rhee did a fantastic job of walking you through the selling dos and don'ts of Craigslist.

Selling on eBay will allow your item to be seen by more people, which can lead to a high sale price. Then again, it's an auction site, and depending on when your item was listed, the length of the auction and numerous other variables, the final sale price may be lower than what you'd hoped for.

Before listing an item on eBay make sure to check the dollar amount that similar auctions have earned. This will help you in determining if it's going to be worth listing your item. You can find out how to check an value of an item on eBay in this post by Nicole Cozma.

Amazon is another option for you to sell your item. You can quickly sign up for a free individual seller's account and list your item in just a few minutes. The fee for selling on Amazon is determined by the item category for whatever it is you're selling. Keep in mind, shoppers come to Amazon looking for the lowest prices on the Internet, so if you're hoping for a high payday, you might want to look elsewhere.

Conversely, you can always trade-in an item on Amazon, receiving a gift card for the site in return. From my experience with trade-ins, you're going to give up 10 to 20 percent of a sale price on Craigslist, but you don't have the hassle. You simply submit the item, send it in and wait for your payday. For some, the ease of use is worth taking a hit on your bottom line.

One benefit to selling on Craigslist over eBay or Amazon is the lack of fees. Since you're doing the legwork when selling on Craigslist, you don't have to share your earnings. With eBay, you can expect to pay fees to both eBay and PayPal (should you use it to process payment).

Gift cards

What do you do with a gift card you won't use? You sell it! You can sell any gift card to a site like Card Pool to get a percentage of its face value. If you happened to receive a prepaid Visa card, you can always use a Square reader to pay yourself the balance.

Return it

One of the easiest ways to deal with an unwanted gift is to simply return it. Most retail locations will accept returns without a receipt, providing you with a store credit (read: a gift card). You can then take that gift card and purchase something at the same retail location or sell it.

It's a good idea to do your research before returning an item to a store. The first thing you'll need to know is where the item was purchased. The easiest way to determine this is to ask the gift giver. Or if you're afraid you'll offend someone, simply search the probable store's Web site. If you're unable to find it on the site, try calling the store to double-check. Sometimes items are available in a few stores and never added to the Web site.

Walmart's return policy for an item without a receipt is to issue a store credit. Target's policy only states that "returns without a receipt may be denied." Best Buy's policy clearly states you'll need to have some form of receipt in order to return an item. Most retailers will have a link to their return policy at the bottom of their Web site.

Donate it

Donating an unwanted gift is a feel-good way of getting rid of the gift. Not only do you free up space in your closet, but you also get to help someone else out. Depending on what the item is, you'll want to find a proper service or individual to donate it to. Dennis O'Reilly wrote a thorough piece on vetting charities to make sure your item is going to be used. It's easy to get caught up in the giving spirit and give your item(s) to a charity that isn't all that charitable.

Have some items perfect for the classroom? Call the local school district or library and ask if they accept donations. Receive a coat or blanket? Call your local shelters and/or churches -- they all accept donations.

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