With people walking off cliffs and driving into electric poles while on their phone, its hard to remember that your iPhone is filled with life saving technology. Today Tech 2U is going over the top 5 ways your iPhone makes you safer.
Medical ID
Wearing a medical band is a great way to convey vital medical information if something were to happen. Your iPhone has this capability built in as well. The health app lets you access emergency information without entering a password. You can add emergency contacts and list any allergies or medications you have to better assist emergency personnel. All of your information can also be made available from the lock screen, check out https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203037 to find out more about the iPhone’s health app.
Google Maps
We all know the power and influence that Google Maps has on our daily lives, but most people don’t realize that the famed map application can also work offline. Pull up any area within the app and navigate to the “Download Offline Area” which will allow you to get directions even when you are out of service. This is perfect for out of country trips where data is expensive and gives you the peace of mind that you’ll always know how to get back to your lodging.
Location Tracking
Location tracking is an amazing feature that can prove to be invaluable. Your iPhone can do this natively by enabling the Find Friends app. It allows you to share your location with friends and family and gives you the option to share your location for an hour, through the end of the day, or indefinitely. Whether you are keeping tabs on the kids, or helping someone with directions, your iPhones location tracking is always there to help.
Personal Safety
If you have ever found yourself walking down a dark alley at night and wished you had a panic button to alert your friends, than BSafe is the app for you. BSafe gives you a variety of safety features at the click of the SOS button including:
- Emitting a siren
- Turning on your flashlight
- Instantly begin recording audio or video
- Friends get a text message alert along with your GPS coordinates, and even a live video stream
BSafe also has a “Follow Me” feature that makes walking home alone in a sketchy area a lot easier. You set a timer for when you should be home, and the app will trace your path. If you don’t check in by the time the timer goes off, your friends will get an alert with your information.
Safe Driving
Using your cellphone and driving has become an epidemic and leads to thousands of accidents every year. The LifeSaver app aims to help people unplug when they are driving by locking your phone from everything but incoming hands-free calls, and GPS navigation. It does this by measuring the speed your phone is traveling by GPS, and once it detects driving motion, the phone will lock. There is a passenger mode to allow you to use your phone when you are in someone elses car, and alerts can be sent to parents whenever there child enables passenger mode. Parents can also set rewards for safe driving over time. The app is free to use and more information can be found on there website http://lifesaver-app.com/.
App of the Week:
RunPee is a great little app that tells you the best times to run to the bathroom when you are at the movies. The app shows scenes where there is little action and unimportant dialog that is long enough to allow you to go to the bathroom without missing important scenes. The app is free on iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone.
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Video Transcription:
Interviewer: Stories of distracted smartphone users walking off cliffs, driving into electric poles has you thinking that your cellphone should be sporting a hazardous material sticker. Mike Wispy [SP] from Tech 2U is here to share the top five ways your iPhone can make you safer. How so my friend?
Mike: Okay, So, first feature I want to mention is the medical ID that it has. It’s a really cool feature on iPhone where you actually can put in your allergies, medications you’re taking, your next of kin, and anyone if you’re found, you know, unfortunately you might be unconscious found and your phone’s there, they’ll have to unlock it. And you know the problems with unlocking phones, Apple just not gonna help you with that.
Interviewer: Sure.
Mike: But this medical ID lets anyone get that vital information that could save your life and you can just do that without having to unlock the phone.
Interviewer: Okay. So, let’s say you’re lost and your signal isn’t all that good. How is another way your smartphone can help with that?
Mike: Well, we all know about Google Maps and map features on smart phones these days. But Google has a really cool tip with their Google Maps app and this isn’t just for an iPhone. This is for any any phone, any smart phone. It’s called offline maps and what it does, it lets you download. So you have to do this while you can still get good signal. It lets you download the map to your machine, to your actual smartphone. So if you go out into the mountains and you’re trekking for the day and you know you’re not gonna get signal, this will actually download the map for you. So, you can use it as you normally would if you had signal out in the mountains.
Interviewer: Okay. What does GPS, does that have any other safety features too?
Mike: Yeah, so GPS lends itself to a lot of good, cool, little features. Find your friends up, find friends up on smart phones sorry, on iPhones in particular, will let you set up location sharing with your friends. So you can go for your contact lists and select friends you want to tell where you are so… Okay you can do this for a pre-determined time as well. It doesn’t have to be permanent. So if you’re going out on a first date with someone you don’t really know, you can set up tracking with your best friend and they can keep an eye on where you are and if you don’t come back at a certain time, like say, “Oh where are they? Oh that’s where they are.”
Interviewer: That’s probably a wonderful feature for the ladies too especially if it’s the first or second date.
Mike: Yeah late at night it’s very good, yeah.
Interviewer: Let’s talk about distracted driving if we can. What’s…is there an app to help with that?
Mike: There is. There’s an app called LifeSaver app. That’s really cool. I like this because what it does is when it detects that you’re moving, it will shut off all functionality that would be dangerous if you’re driving. It will let you do have incoming calls that through hands free, and it will let GPS work, give you like audio notifications. That’s it. It’s not gonna let you do anything else and that’s not just… parents have installed that on their teenager’s phone, and when they’re going out driving so that new driver’s on using their phone while they’re driving.
But it does have, if you are a passenger in a car, it does have a mode for that. So you can say you’re a passenger. Good thing about that is it will alert the parent when that’s activated so if they’re misusing it, you can actually disable that completely.
Interviewee: Would you imagine the industry is going where you would not be able to use, it would be standard that you couldn’t use a phone for any reason if you’re driving? Can you see that that safety is going to be going in that direction?
Mike: I can see the updates of future operating systems will have that capability. There’ll have to be another device in the car or some kind of app that you will need to download to do it, I think for right now. But eventually, yes that’s possible. The technology does exist so it can detect if you’re driving and if it goes over a certain speed you’re most likely driving. So you can do that.
Interviewer: Have you ever taken phone calls when you’re driving or texted while driving? Anything that you want to admit to it, that’s fine.
Mike: No, of course not. No, never. I’m a model citizen.
Interviewee: You are, well that’s true. And we’re glad that you are. Do you have an app of the week?
Mike:I do have an app of the week and it’s called Runpee which…
Interviewee: You like saying that don’t you?
Mike: Runpee, it’s pretty cool right?
Interviewee: Okay, and how do you spell that?
Mike: R-U-N-P-E-E
Interviewer: Okay and it means what?
Mike: Okay, this is the cool thing, it searches…so if let’s say you’re going to the cinema and you want to watch sausage party right?
Interviewer: Excellent choice.
Mike: And you want to know when there’s a quiet three or five minutes that you can just nip out and have a pee. Maybe you’ve had too much of the soda.
Interviewer: Oh so it’s literally what I thought it was.
Mike: It literally is that, yeah. It will tell you a good three to five minute little slot to go out and then if you can pee…
Interviewer: So that you won’t miss anything in the movie?
Mike: Well that’s a good thing about it. It actually gives you a synopsis of what you’ve missed. Even it’s not going to be a lot of stuff like. It is going to be the quiet time.
Interviewer: What if it’s a really bad movie and it says, “You know you can leave any time during this movie and it won’t really matter?”
Mike: That would be very embarrassing. Also, I recommend if you know Marcus Sellen [SP] just ask him. Ask him a good time to go because he seems to know about…
Interviewer: Well, he’s running a sausage party right now so I don’t know that we can cut in on that fine deal, but I will mention it to him when he gets back. Mike Whispy…
Mike: [laughs] Thank you.
Interviewer: …always good to see you from Tech 2U. Okay.
