10 things you should know before buying a Galaxy S III smartphone

By Debra Littlejohn Shinder

Takeaway: If you're thinking about buying a Galaxy S III, be forewarned. This phone offers some incredibly cool features — but you'll want to factor in a few gotchas.

When it was time to upgrade from my Galaxy Nexus (in part because my husband was anxious to get my hand-me-down), the choice seemed obvious. I liked the Nexus a lot, but there were a couple of things I didn't like about it. One biggie was the lack of a microSD card slot for expanding storage. I also longed for even more screen real estate than I got with the Nexus's 4.65 inch screen (which includes the onscreen buttons). Finally, the camera quality on the Nexus, although much better than many phones, wasn't up to what I had come to expect from my previous (HTC) Androids.

The Galaxy S III seemed to fulfill my wish list, and more. With a gorgeous 4.8 inch Super AMOLED screen (and the buttons beneath the display so they don't take up any of that space), microSD support, and a reportedly excellent camera, it was my dream come true. Or was it? I got my S III more than a week ago, and I've played with it enough to discover both some pleasant surprises and a few gotchas. If you're thinking about getting an S III, and especially if you're trading up from a Nexus, here are a few things you might want to know to help you make the decision.

The good

First, let's look at a few things you might not know about the S III that will come as pleasant surprises.

1: MicroSD on steroids

You probably know that the S III, unlike the Nexus, has a microSD slot so you can add storage space. What you might not know is that it isn't limited to the 32 GB maximum card capacity like most phones. Not only does it support microSD and SDHC, it also supports SDXC, which have a theoretical capacity of up to 2 TB. Transfer speed is also faster.

The Galaxy S III specs say it supports up to a 64 GB card, but it's unclear whether that's because that is currently the largest size available or there is a software limitation. In practical usage right now, you can add a whopping 64 GB of storage to the S III for around $55.

2: Motion controls

The Nintendo Wii popularized the concept of interacting with an interface via motion on a gaming device, and Microsoft's Kinect took it to the next level and expanded it from the game console to the PC. Now Samsung has brought motion control to the phone, in a big way.

There's a whole set of gestures you can use with the S III that you won't find on the Nexus or most other phones. You can double tap the top of the device to go to the beginning of a list. You can tilt the phone forward or back to zoom in or out of a picture or Web page. Simply by placing the phone to your ear, you can call the currently displayed contact. You can shake the phone to update (refresh a Web page, rescan for Wi-Fi devices, etc.). You can pan (move the phone left or right or up or down) to move around a large onscreen image. You can briefly pause a video or mute sound by placing your hand over the screen.

If you don't want your phone doing things because of the way you hold it, don't worry. You have to activate the motion feature in Settings before you can use these and other built-in gestures.

3: Pop-up Play

This was another pleasant surprise. It works like the picture-in-a-picture feature on TVs. A limitation of smartphone screens has been the inability to display more than one app at a time. With the tiny screens of the past, it just wasn't practical. With a screen this big, it starts to make sense. The Galaxy S III doesn't go as far as I'd like in this department (side-by-side display of any running apps would be awesome) but the Pop-up Play feature does let you play an HD video in a small window while you use another app (email, Web, etc.) on your phone.

4: Camera bonuses

I care about the camera quality in my smartphone, because I take a lot of impromptu photos. Sure, if I know I'm going to be taking pictures, I'll load up one of the high-end Nikon DSLRs — but often, I'm out and about with no intention of playing photographer and I want a phone cam that can give me a decent shot of that once-in-a-lifetime photo op.

The Nexus was a big step forward, with its quick shutter, but the pictures weren't always as sharp as I wanted. Part of that was "operator error" — it's hard to hold a little phone steady as you tap the onscreen button. That's why I prefer hardware buttons. Well, the S III doesn't have that, but it does have the next best thing. You can delay the shot after you tap, giving you time to steady the phone/camera, or you can use S Voice to take the picture (just say "cheese"), so you don't even have to tap at all.

There's more to it than stability, though. The S III provides an 8 MP camera in contrast to the Nexus's 5 MP, and noise levels are lower, too. Photos simply look better, especially those taken in low light. And videos are sharper and more fluid.

There are some interesting shooting modes. In addition to the (now fairly standard) smile detection and panorama, there's a "beauty" mode that automatically smoothes facial features, a "cartoon" mode (that I've not found very useful) and "buddy photo share" that will use facial recognition to match up people in your photos to the pictures of your contacts and automatically send people pictures of themselves. A nice bonus is that you can edit the shortcuts to make it more convenient to get to the controls you use often.

Another photo feature might not matter a lot to the average phone user, but for those of us who write about phones, or to a lesser extent IT pros who support phones and may need to remotely demonstrate to a user how to configure something, the ability to take screenshots of the phone's display is important.

Once upon a time, getting a screenshot on an Android device was surprisingly difficult. Some phones had to be rooted before you could install screen capture software. Some of us even resorted to taking pictures of the screen with a camera (which presented the challenge of dealing with the glare on the glass).

Samsung made it a lot easier with the Nexus: You could do it by pressing and holding the volume down button and the power button simultaneously. You had to do it just right, though, or you might end up turning the phone off. With the S III, taking a screenshot is as simple as swiping your palm across the screen. Amazing. If you want to illustrate how Android and its apps work, this is the phone for you.

5: Great phone

A problem with some smartphones is that they're heavier on the "smart" than on the "phone." That's okay if you want to use your device primarily as a miniature computer, but if you plan to talk on it a lot (or even a little), it's nice if it also functions as a better-than-average phoneo.

The S III does. Call quality is crystal clear, and you can customize it with personalized equalization settings. This feature actually tests your ears with different frequencies and tones, measuring how well each ear hears them, and creates an equalization curve for each ear.

But that's not all. The whole calling experience has been improved. Lots of phones let you set custom ringtones for different contacts, but that doesn't help if you have the ringer turned off. The S III lets you set customized vibrations for different contacts. How cool is that? You can also answer (or reject) a call by voice command, and you can set up a rejection list to automatically reject those numbers you never want to hear from.

If you leave the phone app to go back to the home screen to check mail, look up a contact, or whatever, the status bar turns green so you won't forget you're in a call. Can't hear the caller? There's an Extra Volume button on the screen during a call, that lets you increase it beyond the maximum you get from pressing the up/down volume hardware key. There's even a key to let you create a memo from within a call.

The not-so-good

These are some cool features, and there are more (such as the Siri-like S Voice application that goes way beyond Google's voice search) But the S III still isn't quite the perfect phone. Here are some of the not-so-good things I've encountered in making the transition from the Nexus.

6: Speaking of that microSD card

It's great to have the extra storage space of a massive 64 GB card, but what exactly did you want to do with that space? If you only wanted to put your pictures, videos, music, etc., on it, no problem. But if you thought you'd be installing apps on it, think again. The S III doesn't support moving apps to the external microSD card, as you could do with most previous Android phones.

It can be done — by rooting the phone and using a third-party app, such as links2sd or Directory Bind. But many folks don't want to root their phones because it voids the warranty. The 16 GB version of the S III has about 11 GB available on its internal storage disk (sd). That's probably enough app space for most people, but some are going to run out of room.

7: No USB mass storage mode

If you're upgrading from an older (pre-ICS) Android phone or you got your start with Windows Mobile, you're probably used to being able to plug your phone into a PC via USB and seeing it pop up in Windows Explorer as a hard drive. Unfortunately, the UMS (Universal Mass Storage) mode that enabled that isn't supported in the Galaxy S III.

Apparently, you're supposed to use the Samsug Kies app instead. That's going to make a lot of people unhappy; it requires installing software on your computer (like syncing an iPhone via iTunes or a Windows Phone 7 via Zune — ugh), and it's slow as molasses. Sure, it has an "easier" interface that those moving from an iPhone might like. But many Android users prefer power and more control over "simple."

The alternative to installing Kies is to use MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) or PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) mode. This has advantages (you can still use the phone while it's connected to the computer), but it's not as easy to use. If you're willing to root your phone, you can use an app like Easy UMS to enable USB Mass Storage. It would have been nice if the S III just supported both UMS and MTP/PTP.

8: S Voice tries hard, but…

Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri suffers from some of the same problems I've heard iPhone users complain about. It works fine for simple things (and I do love that ability to use voice to trip the camera shutter), but it gets easily confused if you ask it to do something complex. Making a call by voice takes me three times as long as doing it the old fashioned way, since you go through the "found more than one match" business. Trying to search the Web with it proved to be a bit of a pain. And it seems to get frustrated with you when you don't like its results and keep trying — it froze up on me a few times and I had to kill the process.

Voice recognition is getting better, but in my opinion it's not ready for prime time yet for most uses. I'm sure my Texas accent doesn't help. If you're getting the phone primarily for this voice feature, prepare to be disappointed (or maybe not, if you have a perfect Midwestern non-accent that it can understand).

9: Missing photo options

Even though there's a lot to love about the S III's camera, there are also some things I miss about my Nexus camera. Mostly, I miss the great editing tools that were built in. You could adjust the brightness and contrast, add a vignette, and achieve all sorts of additional effects right there in the camera.

With the S III, unless I'm just not finding it (in which case they should make it a lot more obvious), the only editing options are to crop and rotate. Sure, I can download a photo editing app, but that involves extra steps. I really liked the simple but comprehensive set of editing tools in the Nexus. This isn't a deal breaker, but it's something that's good to know when you're considering the switch.

10: Wi-Fi connectivity problem

Overall, despite the small complaints above, I was immediately impressed with my Galaxy S III and loved using it — except for one very big problem. It was blazing fast and reliable on 4G, but I soon noticed that Wi-Fi was just plain wacky. It would load a page quickly, and then the next page would take forever and/or time out completely. S Voice would give me "Network error. Try again." messages. The Facebook app would give me "Connection Lost" errors. Often.

My old Galaxy Nexus (now my husband's) sitting right beside it, connected to the same wireless network, had no such problems. I started researching and found out this is a fairly common problem with the S III. There is a fix that works for some, which involves going into service mode and turning off power saving in the Wi-Fi settings. It doesn't work for everybody, though, and if you discover the problem during the return period, I'd recommend taking the phone back to the carrier and telling them it has a defective Wi-Fi radio. Although a number of people are reporting this problem, it seems to be a small percentage, so your chances of getting another one with the problem are low. Still, the possibility that you'll encounter this is something to be aware of if you're thinking about getting an S III.

10 Outlook defaults you can customize to work the way YOU want

By Susan Harkins

Takeaway: By changing just a few settings, you can configure Outlook to match your needs and working style.

Perhaps no other Office app lends itself to customization as much as Outlook does. But with all that flexibility often comes confusion and frustration because users don't always know how to help themselves work more efficiently. Changing Outlook's out-of-the-box settings can help you reduce repetitive tasks and help you work a bit more efficiently via the interface. Here are some useful tweaks to make.

Note: This article covers 2007 and 2010; the instructions for 2007 will often be similar for Outlook 2003, but this article doesn't include specific instructions for 2003.

1: Opening folder

When you launch Outlook, it displays Outlook Today view or moves straight to a specified folder. Opening to your preferred folder can eliminate a few clicks and put you right where you want to start your session. To specify which folder Outlook selects when launching, do the following:

1. Click the File tab and choose Options (under Help). In Outlook 2007, choose Options from the Tools menu, click the Other tab, and skip to step 3.
2. Choose Advanced in the left pane.
3. In the Outlook Start And Exit section, click Browse. In Outlook 2007, click the Advanced Options button in the General section and click Browse.
4. In the resulting dialog, select the folder you want as the default. Figure A shows a secondary Inbox selected, but your view will be unique to your system.
5. Click OK. Figure B shows the new setting.
6. Click OK again.

Figure A

Select the folder you want Outlook to select when launched.

Figure B

Check the setting here.

The next time you launch Outlook, it will open to the window specified in step 4. Your default window can be your Inbox or the Calendar, Tasks, or Contacts window. If you create a custom Inbox, you can specify it (as shown in Figure A). The default window can be almost any Outlook folder.

2: Custom address book

If you save addresses in a custom address book, making Outlook default to that address book will allow you to access your contacts with just a few clicks. To make a custom address book the default, do the following:

1. On the Home tab, click Address Book in the Find group. In Outlook 2007, click the Address Book icon on the Standard toolbar or press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+B.
2. From the Tools menu, choose Options. The default setting is Start With Global Address List (GAL). If yours is different, someone has already changed it. If you're on Exchange, the GAL is usually members of your organization. This list won't contain the contacts you add yourself. Your contacts are personal to you and are in the Contacts list.
3. If you want Outlook to default to your contacts, click the Start With Contact Folders option. Or click Custom to make a custom address book the default and set the order of reference using the arrow icons to the right.
4. To set the actual default address book, select the appropriate book from the When Opening The Address Book, Show This Address List First drop-down (Figure C). In Outlook 2007, it's the When Sending Mail… option.
5. Click OK.

Figure C

You can control which address book Outlook uses as the default.

3: Message format

Most users know that they can send email in different formats:

• Plain Text uses text characters with no formatting, so it's compatible with all email clients.
• HTML applies HTML formatting. Most clients can handle HTML, but they don't always render the HTML coding by default.
• Rich Text allows simple text formatting that's specific to Outlook.

Mobile technologies are quickly displacing this setup, but for now, many users still prefer Plain Text because it's less trouble — many lists and Web clients don't allow anything else. You can set this default, as follows:

1. Click the File tab and choose Options under Help. In Outlook 2007, choose Options from the Tools menu, click the Mail Format tab, and skip to step 3.
2. Choose Mail in the left pane.
3. In the Compose Messages section, choose Plain Text from the Compose Messages In This Format drop-down, shown in Figure D.
4. Click OK.

Figure D

You can set the default message format.

You may want to let the default setting handle most of your messages, but you can easily change the default for individual messages. In the message window, click the Format Text tab and choose the appropriate format in the Format group.

4: Appointment interval

Calendar view defaults to 30-minute intervals. If you maintain a different schedule, you might want to change the default interval as follows:

1. Right-click the timebar in the day or one of the week views.
2. Choose one of the intervals shown in Figure E.

Figure E

This shortcut is the easiest way to reset the default interval.

5: Appointment reminder

Outlook reminds you 15 minutes before a scheduled appointment. If you often change the reminder time when you create appointments, change that default reminder to better suit the way you work, as follows:

1. Click the File tab and choose Options under Help. In Outlook 2007, choose Options from the Tools menu, click the Preferences tab (if necessary), and skip to step 3.
2. Choose Calendar in the left pane.
3. In the Calendar Options section, choose the appropriate reminder time from the Default Reminders drop-down, shown in Figure F.
4. Click OK.

Figure F

Don't work around the default — set a reminder time that best reflects your scheduling needs.

You're not limited to the listed times, either. For instance, if you want a three-minute reminder, enter "3 minutes."

6: Name order

When you click To in the message window to access the default address book, Outlook displays contact names in First Name, Last Name order. If you have a long list, you might prefer to see contacts alphabetized by last name first. To make this change, do the following:

1. Click the File tab. In Outlook 2007, choose Account Settings from the Tools menu and skip to step 3.
2. In the resulting window, choose Account Settings from the Account Settings drop-down.
3. Click the Address Books tab.
4. Choose the appropriate account (probably Outlook Address Book) and click Change (just above the list of accounts).
5. In the resulting dialog box, click the File As (Smith, John) option in the Show Names By option, shown in Figure G.
6. Click Close twice.
7. Exit Outlook and reopen it. Outlook won't recognize this change until you do.

Figure G

Display contacts by last name first.

7: Reading pane

The quickest way to see more message text in the Reading Pane is to display less data about the message in the header section. To reduce this section to a single line, do the following:

1. In the Mail window, click the View tab.
2. From the Change View drop-down, choose Single, as shown in Figure H.

Figure H

Reduce the header information to a single line to free up space in the Reading Pane.

Outlook 2007 users have a very different route:

1. With the Reading Pane open, choose Current View from the View menu. Then, choose Customize Current View.
2. Click the Other Settings button.
3. In the Other Options section, uncheck the Use Compact Layout option.
4. Check the Always Use Single-Line Layout option.
5. Click OK twice.

8: Work week

The default work week displays only five days — Monday through Friday. If you work a nontraditional week, you can change this default to display the days you need, as follows:

1. Click the File tab and choose Options under Help. In Outlook 2007, choose Options from the Tools menu, click Calendar Options in the Calendar section, and skip to step 3.
2. Choose Calendar in the left pane.
3. In the Work Time section, check the days you want to include in your work week. You can include only a few or all seven. Figure I shows a work week that includes Monday through Saturday.
4. From the First Day Of Week drop-down, choose the day that represents the first day of your work week.
5. Click OK.

Figure I

Your calendar will accommodate your work week schedule.

9: Download interval

Outlook downloads mail at regular intervals, but you can disable that feature or change the default interval. Do so as follows:

1. Click the Send/Receive tab. In Outlook 2007, choose Options from the Tools menu, click the Mail Setup tab, click Send/Receive in the Send/Receive section, and skip to step 3.
2. Click the Send/Receive Groups drop-down in the Send & Receive group and choose Define Send/Receive Groups.
3. Enter the interval in minutes to the right of the checked Schedule An Automatic Send/Receive Every option to change the interval. You can also uncheck the option to disable the feature and download your mail manually.
4. Click Close.

10: Months in To-Do

Many of us schedule events well beyond the current month, but the To-Do Bar displays only the current month. With just a few clicks you can display the current and future months, as follows:

1. Click the View tab. In Outlook 2007, Choose To-Do Bar from the View menu.
2. Choose Options from the To-Do Bar drop-down in the Layout group. In Outlook 2007, choose Options.
3. In the Show Date Navigator section, enter the number of months (up to 9) to display in the Number Of Month Rows option, as shown in Figure J. (Enter 0 to display no months.)
4. Click OK.

Figure J

Entering 3 will display the current and next two months in the To-Do bar.

10 things to keep in mind when improving processes

By Scott Lowe

Takeaway: Handled the right way, business process improvement can provide tremendous benefits to your organization. Here are 10 keys to success.

Many organizations want to harness the power of IT to improve existing processes or to solve vexing business problems. In this article, I will outline 10 items you should consider as you undertake business process improvement (BPI) projects in your own company.

1: Start at the top with executive support and good governance

Although organizations might begin a BPI initiative with the intent to correct a single issue, these initiatives can quickly take on a life of their own. Further, because change can be difficult for some, it is in the organization's best interests to ensure that BPI projects be chartered and blessed by its senior leadership. With this kind of visibility, there may still be angst, but the improvement group will have the authority it needs to make changes to the business.

2: Identify the problem(s)

When beginning a BPI project, don't just attack something that looks wrong. Carefully analyze the organization's current pain points — perhaps sales are down, customer satisfaction with support is poor, or costs to handle a certain function have skyrocketed — and then determine which problems deserve the most immediate attention.

3: Don't forget how processes interact — think global while acting local

While many processes stand alone, the chances are good that every process is a part of a bigger whole. As your team begins to consider the process at hand, don't lose sight of how that process integrates with everything else. Plan for it. Make sure that you're not making something else worse in an effort to solve a different problem. This may mean attacking multiple processes at once in some cases. As you plan for improvements, step back and from a high level, try to determine what will happen once proposed changes are made.

4: Look for immediate time savings

In one BPI project I led, in our very first meeting, we did a quick, high-level process mapping to ensure that we have all of the process stakeholders in the room. During that meeting, we discovered that one of the process owners was spending about two days per month creating reports for the next process owner in the chain and had been doing so for years. The catch? The reports were never used. The person received them and simply discarded them. Without a second thought, we nixed that step of the process before we made any other changes. So there was an immediate, tangible benefit resulting from the time we spent simply talking about the process.

This brings up a related point: You might not have to be too formal in your efforts. Sometimes, just a bit of communication can yield huge time savings.

5: Make sure the right people are involved

This is a step that I can't stress enough: Make sure you include everyone who has a stake in the process. If you don't, your efforts will fail. Those excluded will know they've been excluded and will resist any proposed changes. Further, your efforts won't be as complete as they otherwise could be.

Again, another related point: Just because someone is involved doesn't mean that that person will cooperate. I've been involved in BPI efforts with people who were less than cooperative, and it really affects the possible outcomes. In every organization, I believe that people have a responsibility for improving the workplace, which should be included in annual performance reviews. If someone is truly combative just to resist the change, it should be reflected there. That said, if people have valid points and you simply don't agree, don't punish them! The goal here is inclusiveness, not divisiveness.

6: Formally map processes under review

This is another step I consider essential. A visual representation of a process helps everyone understand exactly how the process operates, who operates it at particular points along the line, and where that process intersects with other processes and services.

Visio has great templates for process mapping, but there are also excellent stand-alone tools designed for just this purpose, which may be better for particularly complex or involved processes.

With the process map, it becomes easier to make decisions with everyone on the same page.

7: Spend time on what-if scenarios

Don't just come up with a new process and lock it in. Consider every what-if scenario you can think of to try to break the process. Just like software testing, the goal here is to identify weaknesses so that you can shore things up. The more time you spend testing processes, the better the outcome will be.

8: Figure out your measuring stick

If you can't measure it, you can't fix it. You must identify the metrics by which you will gauge BPI project success. The "pain" metric was probably determined when you figured out which processes to attack first, but the success metric should also be targeted. For example, are you trying to reduce customer on-hold time for support to two minutes or less? Whatever your metric is, define it and measure success against it.

9: Don't assume automation

When people hear "business process improvement," they often just assume that is code for "IT is going to automate the process." That's certainly not always the case, although IT systems will often play a large role in these efforts. It's just as likely that non-IT-focused efforts will play as big a role as — or a bigger role than — IT-based systems.

I include this step so that you don't limit yourself. Think outside the system!

10: Look for common chokepoints between disparate processes

As processes intersect, look for places where many processes tend to break down. This is related to "thinking global" and requires people who can look at the organization from a very high level while at the same time, deep-dive into its guts to see how it ticks.