Alternatives to MMS

A few years ago MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) was going to be the thing to really make the most of Camera Phones, the quickest and easiest way of sharing your photos with a friend or a family member. Sadly it seems like the lifespan of the MMS is almost over, the high cost of the service and size limitations have effectively killed it before it became the success it was expected to be. When Camera Phones first hit the market around the turn of the century few expected phones to advance to the point where they became small and powerful mobile computers (as Smart Phones now are), it's been the move to Smart Phones that has effectively killed the MMS.

Rather than writing a long obitury of the MMS I've instead decided to look at some of the most useful alternatives to actually using MMS, something I quickly did in an old article looking at the pros and cons of using e-mail instead of MMS. Whilst it is true that E-mail is still the prefered way for some, such as myself, it's certainly not the only way, in fact their is so many different ways that I'm not even going to be able to cover them all, just the most straight forward ones.

The most widely used "third option" (behind MMS and E-mail) are the new messenger apps, things such as Whatspp? and Ebuddy XMS which allow you to send pictures, messages and other forms of media over the internet for free. This is a service much like sending images over MSN for example. For this you only need to make sure you and your friend are both using the same messenger service and both online at the same time. Whilst some people may like this method (and some genuinely do use it an awful lot of the time) I've not been sold over to it personally due to fact that I've simply found Emailing to be quicker, though this is likely to change over the coming years as these services continue to improve.

Facebook has been an internet super-power for the past few years and now you can use the massive social networking sites to send pictures directly from your phone to someone on your friends list. To do this you need to use the Facebook "Messenger" app and select it as a "Share via" option (with an Android, I'm not exactly sure with other phones) when you've selected a picture, then slect a friend. This is a bit of a middle line between e-mail and the above messaging apps as this can be recieved on a PC or a Phone (or anywhere else where the recipient can access their Facebook).

You could as a fifth option (and by far the least attractive for some pictures) share them publicly via Social Networking sites like Twitter, Picasa or Google+. If the picture is something you do want to share with a wider viewing public this is a much better option than E-mailing it to a number of people. However on the flip, if the picture is something that you would only like one particular person to see you'd be rather silly to use this option.

As said at the start of this post, modern phones do have a host of other options to share pictures, though I'd say these are the main 5 to look at if you wish to share the picture with someone further a field than the Bluetooth range on your handset. Of course if you are close enough to use Bluetooth I'd reccomend using that instead as it's quicker and much easier than using things like Ebuddy XMS or Facebook.

How do I add a Yahoo e-mail account to a Samsung Galaxy S2?

 In the past we looked at adding a hotmail account to your Samsung Galaxy S2, now we look at adding a yahoo account so that you can sync up your phone with any yahoo e-mails you may be getting.


For this guide we've gone through the settings menu as opposed to using the "E-mail widget". For this you will need to open up the settings and the scroll down to "Accounts and Sync" which will look like the screen on the right. At this screen you need to select "Add account" from the bottom of the screen.

After clicking on add account you will see a screen like the screen shot to the left. From here you need to select the "Yahoo! Mail" option which should be near the top of the options. After clicking on "Yahoo! Mail" you should see
a login screen like this one on the right.

At the login screen you need to enter your full yahoo e-mail address and your password. For your yahoo e-mail address you can also use a "rocketmail" e-mail address as well as yahoo.co.uk and yahoo.com. After entering your login details untick the "Set as premium account" box and select "Next" from the bottom of the screen (you will need to scroll down).

After pressing next the phone should connect with the server and soon afterwards you should be logged and synced up.

Note-As well as setting up a yahoo mail account this way you can also set up your hotmail or msn account in a similar fashion (clicking on hotmail instead of yahoo). If you feel this is an easier method than going through the "e-mail" widget (there really isn't much difference).

How to add hotmail to your Samsung Galaxy S2

 So we all know about setting up out Samsung Galaxy S2 with Gmail to get out G-mail Emails sent to our phone and allowing us to swiftly and easy read them...though about about the "Email" application?
Well the Email widget you may have seen floating about on your handset is for other Email accounts such as Yahoo, Rocketmail or Hotmail. If you click on the widget you should see a screen like the one on your right. At this point you need to fill in your details in full then scroll down the page and click on "Next" (that is hidden in the screen shot thanks to the keyboard).

The phone will then connect with the server, if you've entered the details all correctly you should be asked to input a name and then you phone will appear to show a display like the one to the left as your phone synch's upto the e-mail account you've added.

With in a few a minutes your inbox should be synched to the previous few days and you'll have full access to your hotmail e-mails. Of course if you're not a fan of the way the phone sets it up (see screenshot below) you can instead choose to check your hotmail via an internet browser as you many do on a desktop.