Month: May 2011

Problems uploading pictures to Twitter / Instagram / Facebook (Vodafone)

I regularly use Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram etc to upload pictures to the Internet and share them with my friends and family.
Since having an iPhone 4 on Vodafone, I’ve noticed problems uploading images via various apps. These problems occur regardless of whether I use FaceBook, yfrog, twitpic or other image upload services. I know that this has nothing to do with my user credentials because I;ve always been able to upload via Wifi connections.

I concluded that I must have a problem with Vodafone.

Firstly I assumed that this might be something to do with account restrictions preventing me from accessing certain websites. I called Vodafone and had account restrictions lifted, so I could access any website. This didn’t work.

Then I phoned Vodafone support and said that I was having these problems. The lady I spoke to said that she had an iPhone (on a different network) and that she had the same problem, so it must be something to do with Apple.

I wasn’t convinced by this, so I started to trawl the internet to see if I could find the correct network settings for Vodafone-connected iPhones. I found a few websites and by trial an error I managed to find some settings that worked for me.

The old settings were
APN: wap.vodafone.co.uk
Username: wap
Password: ***

OLD Vodafone APN Settings

The new settings (which work for my Vodafone UK handset) are:
APN: internet
Username: web
Password: web

NEW Vodafone APN SettingsNEW Vodafone APN Settings

 

I left the MMS settings the same, because I’ve never had problems with those settings.
I hope that this is useful to you.

Using multiple Skype accounts simultaneously

I recently started a new job and I was given a “company Skype account”. Whilst this was useful, I didn’t want to lose my own Skype account and I thought that it would be useful to keep them both. Then I started to wonder if it’s possible to be logged into both accounts at the same time. I had read about doing this by forwarding calls from one account to the other, but I wanted to try and use both at once.

I followed a few sets of instructions that I found on the Internet, but none seemed to work well, so after a little trial and error, I came up with this solution.
(Tested on two separate Windows 7, 64-bit PCs). 

  1. Find your Skype executable and copy the path to the .exe file.
    In my case this was “C:Program Files (x86)SkypePhoneSkype.exe”
  2. Create a new shortcut on your desktop by right-clicking the desktop and choosing New -> Shortcut.
    Paste in the path to your Skype executable.
    Screenshot - creating Skype Shortcut
  3. After clicking “Next” you’re prompted to give your shortcut a sensible name.
    I chose Skype (1)

  4. Repeat the above process but instead of using the path… 
    “C:Program Files (x86)SkypePhoneSkype.exe” 

    Use…
    “C:Program Files (x86)SkypePhoneSkype.exe” /secondary

  5. Give this second shortcut an appropriate name and you’re done.
    I chose Skype (2)
  6. Both executables then work independently of one another, the only thing that you need to do when opening Skype using the second shortcut is choose the account that you want to login with from the dropdown.
    Example of second instance of Skype

I hope that you find this tip useful.