Friday Tips for iPhone Users – Wi-Fi and YouTube

Do you keep receiving emails from friends and family that take you to YouTube and Vimeo videos of babies trying to use a magazine as an iPad or of cats making scrambled eggs? They may make you giggle, but little do your friends and family know that they may be asking you to spend big chunks of your data plan. Here are a few tips to decrease your cost without decreasing your giggles.

Use Wi-Fi at home and wherever you can

Avoid using your data plan for web-surfing and video-streaming if you have Wi-Fi available at home or work or at a café or hotel or someone else’s house. It’s a no-brainer. You can adjust your settings to look for Wi-Fi first before using your service plan. If you don’t know how to adjust your settings to use Wi-Fi instead of your data plan, you can read this from eHow or view this video from HelpNuggets. For secured Wi-Fi networks, be sure to get the password (at your home it is the same password you use for your computer to use Wi-Fi; at work you can get it from your network administrator; at a café or hotel, ask the staff). If those don't help you, find a teenager to help or visit the Genius Bar at an Apple store.

YouTube eats data plan and battery charge

Dataplan: If you are being charged for going over your data plan limits, video-streaming could be the culprit. Try to restrict your YouTube or other live video-stream viewing to times when you have Wi-Fi access (see Wi-Fi entry above).  If Wi-Fi isn’t always available, find out whether you can download the desired video to iTunes and watch it from your device instead of video-streaming it live. That’ll save you money in the long run.

Battery: Since video-streaming via YouTube or other services drains your battery faster than internet surfing or phone and text chatting, it’s great to have one of those ‘fast-charger’ devices around. But, if you don’t have one, a regular old charger will do. And, don't forget to keep an eye on the little battery icon that shows what's left of your battery life so it doesn’t run down before you get to the end of your favorite Gilligan’s Island episode. (Read about some chargers here or here or here.)

After you view this silly kid video or this silly kid video or this silly cat video over and over and over, you can take a screenshot of the quickly draining battery icon and then dunk it using SoDunked! because you'll always have enough battery left for SoDunked!