The Latest on Cell Phone Signal Boosters, the Next Version of Windows 10 and the Backup of SMS/MMS Messages

Do you experience poor cell phone connections at home, work or while on the road? It can be frustrating if your cellphone signal is weak and you experience frequent cell phone call drops/failures. Fortunately, “Signal Boosters” are available that can improve the situation by amplifying the available cellphone signal in your vehicle, home or office. If you Google “cell phone signal boosters” the search results will include links to many relevant signal booster products, retailers, recommendations, etc. To help you get started, I picked a few links and you can access them by visiting www.tinyurl.com/y79pnfsc.

Release of Windows 10’s ‘Redstone 4’

The next major Window 10 release is known as “Redstone 4” (version 1803). If you are curious about what new changes and features are likely to show up in this upcoming release of Windows 10, I would point you to the pureinfotech.com’s website where I found an article titled “Windows 10 Redstone 4 (version 1803): All the new features and changes.” I found the article to be well organized, informative…and long. If you’re the type who likes to stay on top of things (so that you can be better prepared for when the new update formally arrives), here’s a link to the article… www.tinyurl.com/y9lybfp5

Lower Cost Cell Phone Services

I came across an article titled “The 8 Best Cheap Cell Phone Plans to Buy in 2018” at lifewire.com. If you’re interested in learning more about some lesser known alternative cell phone plans and options I think you’ll find this article to be quite helpful. Here’s a link to the article… http://tinyurl.com/y9wnt2db

Another (related) article that I came across at the lifewire.com site that I would encourage you to review is titled “What is an MVNO Cell Phone Carrier?” (Spoiler alert: MVNO = Mobile Virtual Network Operator). Here is a link to the article… www.tinyurl.com/y7kcvmj8

Schedule An Automated Phone Call…To Yourself!

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished that your phone would ring so you could excuse yourself to take the ringing call and escape? If you answered, “Yes” to the above situation you might want to visit the link below. The link will lead you to a web page at www.labnol.org that shows you how you can use the IFTTT (If This Then That) web service to arrange to receive a phone call at a time of your choosing… www.tinyurl.com/yb7f83sf

Hmmm. I don’t see why you couldn’t use the above solution to also act as a personal wake-up call or phone call reminder service as well.

Tools To Help You Fix Common Windows 10 Problems

Is your computer running Windows 10? Would you be interested in some troubleshooting tools that may be able to identify and fix some common problems and/or configuration frustrations that many Windows 10 users encounter? If so, you may want to browse through “13 Troubleshooting Tools to Fix Windows 10” which is the title of a useful article I came across at makeuseof.com. Some of the 13 tools are more advanced than others, but I’m confident that many of you will find something worth checking out in more detail. Here’s a link to the article… www.tinyurl.com/ybzdblve

SMS Backup and Restore (Android)

If you use an Android phone and have important information in your text messages (SMS and MMS messages) you should make sure to back things up so that you don’t lose that information. To help with this, I’ve identified an app. that should help you to get you messages backup up. The app. is called “SMS Backup & Restore” and you can learn more about this helpful app here… www.tinyurl.com/yddesgx3

WhatTheFont (iOS & Android)

If you do design work as part of your marketing efforts and find yourself in a situation where you see a typeface/font somewhere and you want to know what its name is, the free WhatTheFont app may be able to help. How it works is…1) With the app., take a photo of the text that has the font you want to be identified; 2) From within the app., crop the photo, leaving just a sample of some text; 3) Through the app., send/upload the cropped text to the WhatTheFont service…and with a little luck the service will return results in the form of a list of fonts that the service feels might be the correct font. If the automated font identification service doesn’t find a match, you can then choose to submit your uploaded and cropped sample text to a user’s forum. Sometimes forum participants get back to you with what they think your font is, and sometimes your inquiry goes unanswered. I’m not a designer, but I’ve used the service several times and have had both good and bad luck with both the automated font identification part of the service and the user forum/community part of the service. Here’s a link to the service on the web www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont. To get the mobile app. for the service visit… www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/mobile.

If you have comments, suggestions, tips, questions or just want to say “Hi,” you are invited to contact me at john@johnvrooman.com. I always enjoy hearing from you!

John Vrooman
John Vrooman keeps an eye out for cool new hardware, software, apps, gadgets; SaaS solutions; social media developments, trends as well as personal/SMB productivity and related solutions. He gathers information for his column from a diverse range of resources and he enjoys sharing his discoveries with others. He has been authoring this column since August 2000 and welcomes feedback from his readers.