Welcome to my refreshed blog and a tip for your iPhone

In June I enjoyed a vacation in Florida [I live in California] and as is my habit, I took my camera because one of my interests is photography...especially of flowers. In my artwork I have used flower images frequently...I love their fluid lines and beautiful colors. This photo shows a white rose I shot in the Mable Ringling Rose Garden at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. Once home I uploaded the photos and got curious about doing something artistic with a few of the flower pics. I went into my Photoshop program with the white rose and did "stuff" to it and got this image. So cool! Today I made some fresh changes to the layout of this blog and put a portion of this art photo as the banner - I hope you like it. I used the same new layout for my art blog and used a portion of one of my mosaic works for that banner.

Another change I'm making for this blog is my writing schedule - I'm going from 2 to 3 times a week posting to once per week. Why? My primary business is as an artist and that is where the majority of my time is going. I have a few big art events to prep for plus it takes hours [weeks actually] to complete a mosaic piece. I'm also a part of a new startup business and that also requires Time. My interest in all things small business has not diminished but I will keep those writing episodes down to once per week. Next week I'll continue with my indepth look at an interesting study on customer service that I began last week. As for my art business, I just completed my newest mosaic piece, Tulip Tree Mandala Mosaic, and you can find it here.

As promised by the title of this post, I have a tip for your iPhone to pass along. When the 4.0 software became available I of course upgraded my phone and learned this a couple days ago: even when you think you're not using one of the apps, they could still be running in the background draining your battery. My business partner noticed that he was having to recharge his phone's battery way too often and checked it out and shared this tip with me which I'm passing to you.

This photo shows the bottom of an iPhone in normal screen mode. To find out which apps are running in the background, double click [click twice rapidly] the big "on" button at the bottom of the phone.

This is what you'll see next. A new "window" opens at the bottom and shows whatever apps are currently secretly still running in the background [draining power from your battery]. If no icons are there, nothing is running. So, what to do? Press on one of the icons until they turn "wiggly."

Here you can see that the icons now have that red circle "minus" symbol. To turn these apps off, simply touch the minus symbol. The icons will disappear.

Once the icons disappear you have this shadowy rectangle left. To clear it, simply press your main "on" button once and the screen returns to normal. I hope this helps. If I'm using various apps throughout my day such as calendar, maps, contacts, phone and messages, I check a couple times a day and turn them off so that I preserve my battery's charge.