technology

Although the COVID-19 pandemic was almost under-control in Germany, some new cases have resurfaced in the last few days, indicating the chances of a new lockdown order. Whatever the conditions, the majority of schools are opting for virtual and remote learning. This shift in the learning trend is posing unique challenges to both students and their parents. The back to school shopping season is completely different from what it used to be in a pre-corona world. Instead of spending money on new clothes, shoes, and school supplies, parents are now investing in advanced technology and faster internet plans (Special offer in here). That being the case, tech brands such as Huawei is now starting sales on their websites to promote contact-free shopping and distance learning. 

What is back to school special offer at HONOR?

HONOR back to school is the sale launched by Huawei on its various products with discounts, codes, and coupons to help everyone navigate the new learning trends. Everyone residing in Germany can avail of these offers on their selected products in their HIHonor store until September 6, 2020. Simply go to their website, select the desired products, register, apply the coupons and vouchers, and then hit the purchase button. Voila! your new gadgets will be at your doorstep in 1-2 business days.

They also have a wheel of fortune where you can try your luck to win more discounts and coupons.

Laptops Discounts at the Back to School Offer in Here

 With the sudden work from home order as well as an online school, it was difficult for parents to adjust to someone else using their laptops and find time to finish their work. But thankfully, the summer break gave everyone time to prepare and adapt to this changing world. Moreover, you can buy them at much fewer rates than usual at the Huawei website due to their recent sale. For Example, their Honor Magic Book 14 is now available with a 100 Euros cash back on the purchase. Likewise, the offer also applies to Honor Magic Book 15 having 15.6 inches full view display and 24 hours battery life.

Back to School Offer in Here on the Smartphones

Smartphones are a necessity of this decade since everything is shifting to the online world. Now they have taken the place of a dictionary, diary, telephone, TV, computer, and calendar, etc. Apart from the discounted price these Huawei smartphones come with a free mobile accessory packed with it.

• HONOR 9A— 5000mAH battery smartphone in a phantom blue color is now at a discount of 90 Euros and comes with either an HONOR router 3 or HONOR Bluetooth earphones
• HONOR 9X Pro— 256 GB storage and 48MP camera this smartphone is ideal for your young and upcoming video blogger or influencer.

Other Products in the Flash Sale

Some other products that you can get your hands on during this sale are;

• HONOR Magic Watch 2 (black) — The ultimate fitness tracker with oxygen monitor and 7 days battery life is now down to 129 Euros from 279 Euros.
• HONOR Magic Watch 2 (rose gold) — With the 170 Euros reduction, this beautiful and stylish smartwatch also comes with either a router, Bluetooth earphones, and an HONOR easy-fit
• HONOR Magic Earbuds — Available in white and egg blue color, these earbuds are now for 99 Euros instead of their original price i.e. 179 Euros with a battery life that can last up to 3 hours of music or 2.5 hours of calls.

Who doesn’t love comfort? Developers across the globe always seek better ways to improve user experiences, and there is no better way to do this than through the Huawei account kit.

For those who don’t know what an account kit is, it’s simply used by developers to create fast, easy, and simple login functions to 3^rd party users.

There are so many apps in app stores right now, and people have lots of apps on their phones, each fighting for the right of way. You have to go through the whole process of setting up- creating a unique password, entering an email address, going through various registration steps, waiting for approval, etc.

All these steps can be time-consuming and rigorous. So, to avoid all these, the Mobile Service Unit for Huawei uses a unique Huawei ID that’s created on the mobile phone to reduce time spent on registration and login processes. Once the Huawei account kit is integrated, it becomes a simple and fast process.

Why do you need an account kit?

Account kits are important for various reasons:

1. One-click login process: Once you integrate the Huawei account kit, all you need is the Huawei ID and you’ve logged into your app. You don’t have to bother about setting passwords or entering email addresses.

If you log into an app on another phone, you don’t worry about secondary authorization.

2. Easy QR Code login: It allows users to log in from their tablets, phones, PCs, and other devices via QR code. This is why you won’t need secondary authorization.
3. Easy SMS verification: The Huawei account kit allows you to instantly insert verification codes from SMS messages. You don’t have to cram it, write it somewhere, or even still, authorize SMS read permission.

Now that you have a basic idea of what account kits do, let’s look at some terminologies to help you understand it better.

Terminologies relating to the Huawei Account Kit

1. Authentication: This is the process whereby the user confirms his/her identity to the application
2. Authorization: allows apps to have access to resources or not

Under authorization, we have: ID Token Support, App management, authorization cancellation, code support, etc.

1. Authorization code: This is a code that contains an app secret mainly used for one-time authorizations on the server
2. ID token: This ID contains information. There is usually the signature of the last logged-in user before the verification process
3. Access token: This grants the user access to resources at any time
4. JWT: This is the standard that makes sure that each client request via authorization is safe. It’s JSON-based.
5. aud: This is called target audience. The app ID is kept here.
6. Application secret: This key allows the HMS platform to recognize requests and responses from the app, and differentiate it from others. It is otherwise known as the public key encryption technique.

It ensures that the application comes from the right owner and that the owner knows the secret key.

With Apple’s newest software updates right around the corner, it might be time to start thinking about turning your existing iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac into quick cash for a shiny new upgrade.

Your aging Apple gadgets could be worth a small fortune — and Cult of Mac wants to buy them! We typically pay more than other trade-in services, and we won’t leave you waiting forever for your money.

We’ve teamed up with the fine folks at MyPhones Unlimited to ensure our readers get the money they deserve when trading in their old devices. We typically pay more than the likes of Apple, Amazon, Gazelle, and others — and we’re fast!

We won’t fob you off with store credit or gift cards like some services, and we won’t waste your time like some of the buyers you’ll encounter on eBay and Craigslist. We’ll even buy back broken devices in need of repair.

Cult of Mac makes trading-in easy

Here’s how it works when you sell your old devices to Cult of Mac:

• You visit our buyback page and get a quote for your old device.
• We send you a box and return label so that you can ship your device to us for free.
• When your device arrives with us, we’ll issue a check that you’ll receive in around a week.

Not only is it quick and easy to sell your stuff to Cult of Mac, but we promise that nothing goes to landfill. So, what are you waiting for?

iOS 14 finally brings the ability to change your CarPlay wallpaper so that you don’t have to look at a blank background. Here’s how you can change yours in a few simple steps.

CarPlay ships with a number of helpful new features in iOS 14, including the ability to find parking and EV charging in Apple Maps, the same redesigned Siri interface found on other devices, and more.

Sadly, Apple won’t let you set one of your own pictures as your CarPlay wallpaper, but it does provide a number of nice designs you can pick from. They’re similar to the new iPhone wallpapers in iOS 14.

Change your CarPlay wallpaper in iOS 14

To set a new one, follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app in CarPlay.
2. Tap Wallpaper.
3. Choose one of the five images available.
4. Confirm by tapping the Set button.

CarPlay wallpapers, like those on iPhone, have both light and dark mode options, and they will change automatically depending on the setting you have applied.

Want a cleaner look? Solid colors (black and white) are also still available as wallpaper options.

iOS 14 is now available to all iPhone users (with compatible devices) as a public beta. Check out our guide on how to get it before its official release this fall.

Did you know that you can watch any video in a floating window on your iPad? Of course you did. But did you also know that you can change the size of the window, and even dock it to the side of your screen? Maybe not! Today we’re going to check out how to use picture-in-picture on the iPad.

Enable picture-in-picture

The iPad’s picture-in-picture mode is one of its several multitasking features. These include split-view, slide-over, and all the neat multitasking gestures that let you quickly switch between apps. You can find the setting for all of them in the Settings app, under General > Multitasking & Dock.

Note: You’ll need a powerful enough iPad to do this. That includes the iPad Air, and anything more recent, and the iPad Mini 2.

How to start picture-in-picture

Once a movie is playing, you can easily send to it to picture-in-picture. There are a few methods, all of which should be triggered while the video is playing:

• Tap the picture-in-picture icon in the video player.
• Press the home button while a movie is playing.
• Use the iOS 12 swipe-up gesture to leave the video app.
• Press Command-H (Hide) to return to the home screen.
• Use any multitasking gesture to switch to another app.

In all of these cases, the playing movie will switch to a picture-in-picture (PiP) window, and float over the whatever else you’re doing on the iPad. It even floats over the top of split-view and slide-over windows.

PiP and YouTube

YouTube videos behave slightly differently. If you’re watching the video on the YouTube site, and it’s in the usual small window surrounded by suggestions, comments, links, etc., then the above-mentioned PiP triggers won’t work. The video stops playing as soon as you close Safari.

However, if you view the video in YouTube’s own full-screen viewer, or you use our clever bookmarklets to force YouTube to play in the native iOS full-screen video player, then it will behave like a normal video player.

Resize and dock the floating video window

Once your video is playing in a floating window, you can move it around just by swiping with a finger. To resize the window, pinch to zoom. And if you want to dock the window, swipe it over to either side of the screen, and it will turn into a docked tab, like this:

Audio will keep playing, but the video is stowed out of the way until you swipe it back into existence.

And that’s it for PiP on the iPad I like it quite a lot. It’s especially good on the big 13-inch iPad Pro, where the PiP panel is actually big enough to watch. I use it when viewing YouTube tutorials, or when I’m watching a product video and writing an article about it. It’s totally worth checking out.

Kids on YouTube are like rats at a food dispenser. Tap, tap, tap, next video please. But unlike the rats, which get “rewarded” with an electric shock or worse, kids just end up surfing the Up Next links until they end up seeing a rat getting shocked, or worse. A more pompous writer would point out here that it’s a parent’s job to monitor their child’s YouTube activity, but actual parents know this isn’t particularly realistic. So how do you stop your kids watching the wrong thing? Let’s see:

YouTube restrictions

YouTube places age restrictions of some videos. While uploaders can rate their own videos, that doesn’t always happen. For you and I, these restrictions make no difference. You can watch anything you like. But if your kids are going to be left alone while mummy prepares her afternoon Old Fashioned, then these restrictions are a great help.

Video content can be flagged for the following:

• Vulgar language.
• Violence and disturbing imagery.
• Nudity and sexually suggestive content.
• Portrayal of harmful or dangerous activities.

I’m not why nudity is on this list. After all, everyone — even kids — has a body that they can view at any time.

How to enable YouTube’s restricted mode in Safari

YouTube’s restrictions work on a per-browser basis. To enable them, make sure you’re signed into your YouTube account follow along with the instructions:

1. Click your user icon at the top right of the YouTube site.
2. Click on Restricted Mode:Off at the bottom of the resulting list. Restricted mode will be enabled.

The trouble is, restricted mode can be disabled just as easily, which means that your kids will do it while you’re having your little post-martini nap. To lock restricted mode, you need to visit the same menu again. This time, the last item on the list is Restricted Mode: On. Click this, and then click the switch to Lock Restricted Mode on this Browser. Enter your YouTube or Google password when prompted.

That’s it. You’re done. Anyone using your browser will be unable to view restricted content. But what if your kids get all smart about things while you’re laying comatose on the sofa, and they switch to a new private browser tab? By design, this will load YouTube without logging in.

No problem. YouTube won’t let you view restricted content if you’re not signed in. Search results are unrestricted, but clicking on them prompts for a sign-in.

How to disable YouTube’s restricted mode in Safari

To disable YouTube’s restricted mode, just follow the same procedure as above. Click the switch again to unlock restrictions, and enter your YouTube or Google password. Pro tip: after ensabling restrictions, you may also want to disable Safari’s password auto-fill, or your kids will have no problem circumventing the restrictions.

How to enable YouTube’s restricted mode in Mobile Safari

The best way to control your kids’ usage of YouTube on iOS may be to grab the YouTube Kids app, which allows you to control what they view. While the browser restrictions do work on Safari for iPhone and iPad, it’s hard to lock them. YouTube’s own instructions on the subject say that you can lock restricted mode, just like on the desktop, but I can’t find a setting for this anywhere.

YouTube Kids app

Instead, you can enable the iPad and iPhone’s own parental controls to disable YouTube in the browser, and use YouTube Kids. This not only lets you restrict what kids watch, but also lets you easily check what they have been watching, as well as other neat features like a timer that will limit how long they can watch for.

Price: Free

Download: YouTube Kids from the App Store (iOS)

So you see, it’s easy to block adult content from YouTube on both your Mac, as well as on iOS. This is great news, because it means that you can now enjoy that second martini, guilt-free.

Your iPhone isn’t slacking off when it sits in your pocket. No, it’s industriously counting your every step, ready to tell you the total so you can celebrate by buying cake if you hit your daily goal. The good news is that the iPhone pedometer comes built-in, and requires no third-party apps to do its stuff. The even better news is that there’s a free app — Pedometer++ — that makes it even better.

Setting up the iPhone’s pedometer

First, you have to enable Motion Tracking, so that your iPhone will actually record the data from the M10 (or earlier) motion co-processor chip that counts your steps. This is done in Settings>Privacy>Motion & Fitness — just visit that page and toggle Fitness Tracking on. Now your iPhone will count your steps.

Next up, you should visit the Health app. Here we’ll tell the iPhone how tall you are so that it can better estimate your stride length, and then we’ll add the step count to the Health app’s dashboard.

Above is the Health app’s Today view. First, we’ll add some personal data. Tap Health Data at bottom left, then tap Body Measurements. Then tap Weight, tap the + button, and add your height. After this is done you can go ahead and add your weight if you like. Both of these categories track changes over time, but unless you’re a child, or are so old that you’re starting to shrink, then the height measurement won’t need much maintenance.

Add steps to the Today view

To add the step count to this view, tap the Health Data button at bottom left. Then tap Activity, scroll down until you find Steps, and tap that. Then toggle the Add to Favorites switch. Now you can view your step count easily. Well, fairly easily — there’s a better way to keep a track of your step count:

Pedometer++, the iPhone’s best step-counting app

Pedometer++ is a free app that counts your steps. It uses the data provided by the built-in pedometer, and presents it as a chart, or — and this is the one you want — as a widget on your Today view (also accessible via 3-D Touch on compatible iPhones). Stick the widget on your Today screen, and your step count is just a swipe away from your home screen. Pedometer++ also lets you set a goal (the default is a daily 10,000 steps), and gives you a confetti shower when you achieve it. If you double the goal, you get a special prize.

The other advantage of Pedometer++ is that it obviates all the tedious setup detailed above. Just download it, launch it, and give the app permission to access your Motion data, and you’re good to go.

If you keep the iPhone in your pocket the whole time, and you’re the kind of OCD nerd who loves to count things, you’re going to love the iPhone pedometer function. I switched mine on the day I got an iPhone with a Motion Coprocessor, and it’s been running ever since. I can’t say that it has motivated me to do more walking, but on the days I reach 15km (just shy of ten miles), I use the step-count as an excuse to let me buy a pound of baklava.