	Everyone interacts with technology in their own way. The iPhone may be simple to use, but there are many hidden “easter eggs” that let the device do more than the marketing messages convey. Not only is the iPhone loaded with “silent” features, there are also unique ways to use it that can beneï¬t anyone—especially the busy medical professional. It’s with this in mind that MDNG collected the following 20 tips and tricks to help iPhone users get the most out of their device. This collection of tips includes ideas on how to save battery life, make best use of the browser, improve the typing experience, use the home screen tools, and use the iPhone as a tool in everyday life.

	One of the iPhone’s weaknesses is battery life. If used often for Internet-related activities, it can easily become drained before the end of your day. Here are a few things to consider if you need your device to last well past 5:00PM.

. If you rarely connect your iPhone to a Bluetooth headset, there’s no point in keeping the iPhone’s Bluetooth radio on. Same goes for Wi- Fi. If you’re not regularly surï¬ ng the Web via Wi-Fi, turn the Wi-Fi radio off.

. The iPhone can be set to retrieve e-mail as often as every 15 minutes. The more often it checks, the faster the battery drains. Set it to check manually so that it only pulls down e-mail when you want to see it. Also, sync only the e-mail accounts that are essential when on the road. More accounts lead to lower battery life. Don’t use push mail accounts at all.

. Using the 3G radio on the iPhone is a double-edged sword. It offers the best in wireless browsing and data speeds, but also dramatically decreases battery life. Find out if you’re covered by AT&T’s 3G network. If not, turn off that 3G radio! The iPhone also performs on AT&T’s 2G EDGE network, which is available everywhere. Same goes for GPS. Unless you really need to have access to concrete location data, that GPS radio is draining battery life.

. After the cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth radios, the iPhone’s display is what drains power the most. When set to the dimmest setting, the iPhone’s screen is still quite bright in dark rooms. Never have the screen brightness set more than halfway to save battery life.

	Perhaps the iPhone’s shining feature is its Web browser. Capable of rendering full HTML websites, it provides the best mobile Web experience available on a handset today. However, not everything about the browser is intuitive. Here are some browser tricks to improve the Web experience.

. Some Web pages are longer than others. If you’ve just reached the bottom of a really long Web page, rather than manually scrolling back to the top, simply double tap the top edge of the screen. It will automatically take you to the top.

. We often use the same Web tools over and over. If you use the same set of websites consistently, consider placing a bookmark link on the home page. Pressing it will take you straight to that site rather than to the Safari home page.

. The iPhone’s browser supports up to eight open Web pages at a time. Rather than navigating away from a page that you might want to go back to, press the button in the lower right corner of the browser window to open a second (or third, or fourth...) page.

. Did you see an interesting Web graphic or image embedded on a website that you’d like to look at later? Tap and hold on any image and it can be saved to the iPhone’s photo library.

	Everyone has an opinion about the accuracy or usefulness of typing on the iPhone’s glass screen. Whether you have two left thumbs or highly nimble digits, here are a few tips to make typing better.

. Just like with a BlackBerry, it is easy to type a period on the iPhone without actually typing it. When you come to the end of a sentence, simply double-tap the space bar. It will insert a period and a space.

. Need to type an «umlaut» or other non- standard character? Press and hold the associated letter to see a list of character options, including umlauts and other hashes. Same goes for punctuation and “.com”, “.net”, and “.org” when using the browser keyboard.

. That tiny on-screen keyboard too small for your thumbs? Use the bigger one. When entering text, rotate the iPhone 90 degrees onto its side. The iPhone will automatically bring up a wider version of the keyboard, which makes typing just a bit easier.

. It isn’t perfect, but the iPhone’s copy-and- paste feature lets you transport text from one app or message to another. Press and hold within a text ï¬ eld, use the on-screen tools to select the text you want to copy, and hit the “copy” button. When you’re ready to paste it somewhere else, press and hold within the text ï¬ eld and then touch “paste.”

	The iPhone has a potentially unlimited number of home screens on which to store apps, links, or other content for quick access. Be sure to use the home screen tools to maximize efï¬ ciency.

. The four main applications that are placed by Apple at the bottom of the iPhone’s screen (phone, browser, mail, and iPod) are NOT set in stone. Use the text messaging app more than the e-mail app? Replace it! Hardly ever make a phone call? Get rid of the phone! Those four apps can be moved to anywhere on the iPhone’s home screen.

. One of the best features of iTunes version 9 is that it provides a visual tool to help users organize their applications from iTunes on their computer rather than on the device itself.

. Have an application that appears to be locked up or frozen? Press and hold the home key for 6-10 seconds to force the application to quit and return to the home screen.

. The “Home” button (the only actual button on the front of the iPhone) does more than just take you home. Use the iPhone’s tools to set it up to open custom apps. For example, double-pressing the home key can be set to open the iPhone Search app, Phone Favorites, the Camera, or the iPod. Setting it to Phone Favorites is the fastest way to reach your most-used phone numbers.

	Following is a short list of unique and interesting ways to use the iPhone.

, Not Notes. See something that you need to remember for later? Don’t bother to jot it down as a note. Instead, use the iPhone’s camera to take a picture of it. Not only is it faster than typing, but it lets you capture more information.

t. If you need to save something you see on your iPhone (whether it be a website, e-mail, or image) be sure to take a screen shot. Press the home and power keys at the same time for about two seconds. The screen will ï¬‚ ash white, and an image of the iPhone’s desktop will be directly stored into the camera roll.

, Don’t Write. Despite all the tips offered above, sometimes typing can be a real pain. Download a dictation application (such as Dragon Dictation), and let the app do the typing for you. As long as you’re in a quiet environment, you can speak words, sentences, and paragraphs, automatically transfer the text to the clip pad, and paste it into any text ï¬ eld.

. The iPhone 3GS lets people use their voice to control some of the features. With Voice Control on, you can use commands to call saved contacts, dial phone numbers, and control the iPod music player.

	If you’re a rule breaker and don’t want to live by the strictures that Apple and its partner AT&T impose, you might consider hacking your iPhone. “Jailbreaking” is the hacker term used for unlocking the iPhone. The actual act of jailbreaking an iPhone is all-too-simple. There are a handful of programs that can be used, but the best are Sn0wbreeze and Yellowsn0w. The iPhone must be connected to a computer in order to be hacked. The process can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. The software clients mentioned are free downloads, and are easy enough that any person can use them. T

	he biggest beneï¬t of jailbreaking an iPhone is that it can then be used on wireless networks other than AT&T’s. In the US, the best bet is T-Mobile as an alternate to AT&T, but you’ll lose 3G functionality and visual voicemail entirely. The other beneï¬ t is that you’ll then be able to use applications that are not approved by Apple. The risks are that you’ll void the iPhone’s warranty. Apple will not repair or replace hacked iPhones that go kaput. You could also brick the iPhone, making it completely useless and unusable. If you’re willing to live with those risks, then have at it.

Eric Zeman is an editor and writer with more than 10 years of experience in the publishing industry. He writes about smartphones and other technologies on his MoBlog (Mobile Web Blog) at

Articles

Cover Story

Everyone interacts with technology in their own way. The iPhone may be simple to use, but there are many hidden "easter eggs" that let the device do more than the marketing messages convey. Not only is the iPhone loaded with "silent" features, there are also unique ways to use it that can beneï¬t anyone-especially the busy medical professional. It's with this in mind that MDNG collected the following 20 tips and tricks to help iPhone users get the most out of their device. This collection of tips includes ideas on how to save battery life, make best use of the browser, improve the typing experience, use the home screen tools, and use the iPhone as a tool in everyday life.


Getting the Most Out of Your iPhone

Editors’ picks for this month’s best websites, news, resources, and online information for physicians.

	Test your business cliché knowledge and visual thinking skills with this fun “find-it” game from XPLANE, an “information design consultancy that collaborates with companies to create understanding.” The clever, holidays-themed hidden-picture-type quiz includes 57 business clichés, from “bought the farm” to “win-win situation.” Kick back and kill some time, and even test your staff and colleagues to see who can finish first.

	Organized by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), this online collection showcases more than 1,500 rheumatology-related images. Conditions featured range from the relatively common (osteoarthritis, gout, lupus) to the exceedingly rare (multicentric reticulohistiocytosis, relapsing polychondritis). Descriptive information is included below each image, including an image analysis, disease state, body site, image type, and color mode. Become a member of the ACR and you’ll receive complimentary downloads; otherwise it’s $295 for an annual download subscription.

Popular Science Best of What’s New 2009: Health

	Upon seeing inventions like the Snuggie for the first time, everyone has a “Why didn’t I think of that?” moment. That’s how we felt when we read about TruFocals, the first pair of glasses to offer fully adjustable focus via a sliding mechanism that squeezes a silicon-based liquid inside of a flexible inner lens. Dang. Well, we can at least take solace in the fact that we could never have invented the Xhale HyGreen (a wireless sensor that tags staff who aren’t scrubbing properly), Purleve hygienic door handle (it  ever gets dirty), or any of the other products on this list.

	This posting to the Social Media Guide blog—which “provides helpful advice and tips on connecting you to others, through the use of social media and social networks”&mdash;answers many commonly asked questions about Twitter, all in one compact page. The handy resource covers commands, search parameters, terms, resources, and directories.

Side-by-Side Comparison of Major Healthcare Reform Proposals

	The Kaiser Family Foundation provides this interactive tool that shows side-by-side comparisons of “the leading comprehensive reform proposals across a number of key characteristics and plan components,” including “proposals for moving toward universal coverage that have been put forward by the President and Members of Congress.” Last updated on January 4, this site offers downloadable PDFs that compare the House-passed and Senate-passed bills, the three Congressional authorizing committee proposals, and a side-by-side comparison of all proposals and topics.

Electronic Preventive Services Selector (ePSS)

	Provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), this resource enables physicians to search and browse US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on their PDA or mobile device (including the iPhone). The ePSS helps clinicians to identify “the screening, counseling, and preventive medication services that are appropriate for their patients,” and can sort by specific patient characteristics, such as age, sex, and selected behavioral risk factors.

Live Blog from the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show

	Check out this archived blog, in which MDNG editorial board member Larry Chu, MD, covered CES live from Las Vegas, providing thorough commentary, answers to readers’ questions, and personal video, accompanied by related videos and tweets from those covering the event on Twitter.

Will Tablets, e-Readers, and Netbooks Bridge the Gap between Smartphones and Laptops?

	In this report, the AP’s Haven Daley, from CES in Las Vegas, explains how companies are aiming to bridge the gap between smartphones and laptops by offering new tablets, e-readers, and netbooks.

Texting Can Improve Medication Use, Chronic Disease Treatment

	Text messaging has gotten a bum rap lately, but for doctors treating patients with chronic diseases, text messaging can be an invaluable tool, according to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center pediatrician Delphine Robotham.

	Test your business cliché knowledge and visual thinking skills with this fun “find-it” game from XPLANE, an “information design consultancy that collaborates with companies to create understanding.” The clever, holidays-themed hidden-picture-type quiz includes 57 business clichés, from “bought the farm” to “win-win situation.” Kick back and kill some time, and even test your staff

	and colleagues to see who can finish first.

	‘Tis the season to be… stricken with the flu. If you’re not able to get seasonal or H1N1 flu vaccines in your office, help your patients find them using this helpful tool from—guess who&mdash;Google. Using the Google Maps platform, the service asks users to simply enter a location in order see the closest spots where they can get vaccinated. Each location is shown on the map, with a corresponding phone number and information on when the vaccines are provided. A link is also provided to the appropriate state’s department of public health for additional listings. What will Google think of next?

	Need to find some facts quickly? Go to Google Squared under Google Labs. Enter the topic for which you need facts and click “Square it.” Google Squared will automatically construct a table of facts about any category that you specify.

	At a conference and have some time to check out the host city? Find attractions near your hotel or the convention center by going to City Tours through Google Labs. Simply enter an address or city into the search field, click search, and tourist destinations will  ppear on a map of the city, complete with information and links to information on each destination.

A collection of news updates and top stories focused on one specific condition. A quick paragraph to catch up on the news from the past month.

Check-Up

Daniel Palestrant, MD, CEO and founder of Sermo (

), explains why Sermo cut ties with the AMA last year, reviews the current state of the largest online community for physicians, and reveals where he sees the site and healthcare social media headed in the near future. 

For our readers who don’t know about Sermo, what is it and how can doctors use it? 

Sermo is now the largest physician online community in the country, with well over 100,000 US physicians. Doctors log in to Sermo and are able to share information with one another, and in doing so, improve patient care and their ability to unite and face the challenges confronting not only the medical profession, but really the whole country in terms of healthcare reform.

Back in July 2009, the AMA said it was breaking ties with Sermo because “the value was not there to justify the investment of AMA members’ dues dollars.” Why do you feel the relationship ended?

Sermo had actually, in May, given the AMA notice that we had decided to end the relationship because of positions the AMA was taking in the healthcare reform debate. We felt that there were fundamental conï¬‚ icts that the AMA had in its business model, and they increasingly weren’t faithfully representing physicians. And as we saw the discrepancies grow between what the tens of thousands of physicians on Sermo were saying and what the AMA was saying, we felt that we could no longer in good conscience continue to have a public relationship with the AMA.

It’s been quite fascinating since then to see just how, frankly, fortuitous and depressing that decision [by the AMA] was; the AMA has been completely sidelined in this healthcare debate. It’s been clear that the AMA’s decisions were based more on the ï¬nancial incentives that it gets from the US government as opposed to truly advocating for physicians or patients.

What is your take on physicians’ discontent with the way they are represented by professional organizations like the AMA? Is the AMA not keeping up with the times?

I think that there’s been this general misconception about what the AMA really is. Today, the AMA has reached a point where it will not publicly talk about its membership base. The most optimistic estimates say that less than one in ï¬ ve US physicians are AMA members, but most people on the inside will tell you that there are less than 60-80,000 physicians who are actually paying AMA members.

The AMA’s revenue in 2008 was nearly $300 million, with just about $40 million coming from membership dues (

). A big chunk of the AMA’s revenue comes from its monopoly on billing codes, which is something that the government has granted them, meaning that the AMA gets a lot of money from insurance companies; and physicians as it turns out, are adamantly against those billing codes. So, to me it’s a fundamental conï¬‚ ict that you could have an organization that is ostensibly advocating for physicians but is getting the majority of its money from the insurance industry.

Is there anything the AMA can do to maintain its role as a primary advocacy group for physicians? 

The physician community has been very consistent on what it wanted to see in the healthcare reform process, and yet none of those things have been achieved. The reason why the AMA wasn’t able to achieve those things is because it has no leverage. The politicians know that the AMA doesn’t really represent the physicians, and all the politicians have to do is threaten the AMA with removing its CPT license. That would make the AMA’s revenue disappear, and there are thousands of people whose jobs depend on that special arrangement with the government. Because of that fundamental conï¬‚ ict, there’s no possible way the AMA can truly advocate for physicians.

The AMA came out and endorsed the House version of the bill within, I think, 36 hours of the bill coming out (

). In the 72 hours following that, more than 11,000 physicians logged in to Sermo and voted on whether they supported the House version of the bill, with more than 90% saying they did not. The AMA’s position was, “We’re doing these things because we think we need to have a seat at the table and we want to achieve our two primary goals,” which are malpractice tort reform and repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), neither of which the AMA has been able to achieve. In the current push for healthcare reform pretty much everyone got a deal—the insurance industry, the pharma industry&mdash;yet the AMA has managed to accomplish absolutely nothing for America’s physicians. We predicted this back in May when we made the decision to separate.

The AMA has decided to essentially give up on physicians, and you can see that it’s now making a pretty consistent effort to transform into a public health brand rather than a physician advocacy brand. There’s actually a growing movement among physicians to back a class-action lawsuit against the AMA for misrepresentation and for damages.

What does Sermo offer to physicians that the AMA does not? 

Sermo isn’t trying to be an advocacy organization. We are a for-proï¬ t company, but one of our unique attributes is our physician community, and because we authenticate credentials and make sure every member is in fact a licensed US physician, we can very effectively create a medium for doctors to come and share and vocalize their opinions. And that can create some very powerful indicators about where healthcare is going in this country and how physicians perceive these trends. That forum for physicians predicted some very interesting things 6-9 months ago, at the beginning of the healthcare debate, and now, as the debate is moving to its next step, we’re seeing some very interesting patterns start to appear out of the physician community.

Can you harness the energy of this community and channel it toward something productive that effects change rather than just comments on it? 

Over the summer, the Sermo community drafted a statement of key healthcare reform principles called the Physician Appeal (

), which was signed by about 11,500 physicians and delivered to members of Congress. A number of congressional teams quoted Sermo physician positions during the congressional debate.

That being said, the ï¬rst step here is communica- tion. There’s been such a stranglehold on the public voice of the physician, and physicians have had such a difï¬cult time connecting with one another. I think it would be a mistake to underestimate just how important it is for physicians to have a place online where they can interact. And we’re seeing a real groundswell of that phenomenon on Sermo.

Have you seen any backlash against Sermo and the positions you advocate?

The funny thing about backlash is you typically don’t see it. But if I want to measure a backlash based on the growth of the community or the activity level of the physicians, those have all increased quite dramatically, so it would seem that our primary constituency, the physician community, has been very supportive of these positions.

How do you respond to criticisms that Sermo is just data mining for its pharmaceutical sponsors? 

Data mining and market research are certainly an important part of our business model. We have an infrastructure, we have people, and we need to pay the bills. When we do the data mining, it’s always transparent; if you go to our website, we describe in great detail how our business model works. What we’ve found is that so long as it’s understood that we don’t violate the physician’s conï¬ dentiality or privacy in any way, the physicians are quite comfortable with our business model. Sermo has had this same business model for nearly three years, and now we’re seeing variations of this being adopted by Twitter, Google, and a number of other social media companies.

What is your vision for taking Sermo to the next level?

 I think, as a start-up company, our ï¬rst goal—and one we’re very excited about&mdash;is proï¬tability. We’ve made some great progress in becoming a proï¬ table and self-sustaining company, and that’s been a huge accomplishment and something we’re very proud of. I think people can expect to see Sermo continuing to reï¬ ne our products; this year, we’ll be launching an entirely new platform. As that platform goes live, we’ll be exploring some new features for physicians. We know there’s a huge demand for connecting doctors and patients, so we’ll be looking to explore some of those areas.

), a lot of the things talked about there have been exported from the Sermo physician community to the general public, with everything anonymous, so you can see survey results and physician comments. Perhaps the most interesting trend we’re seeing is that more physicians are taking steps to opt out of the third-party payer system altogether and migrate to cash practices. This is something we started detecting about a year ago, and now we’re seeing it really explode, and the healthcare reform effort seems to have been the catalyst. In December, the Mayo Clinic—which I’ll point out is an institution that the current administration has held up as a paragon of cost-effective healthcare delivery&mdash;made an announcement that it was going to stop accepting Medicare payments. That was a very interesting development that had been predicted in the Sermo community almost a year ago.

About a year and a half ago, Sermo was approached by Sanoï¬-aventis and we started working on something called the Practice Management Exchange (

). Sanoï¬ will go live with its iPractice (

) in the next few months, and that will include CME courses that teach physicians how to switch over to a cash practice. We have found that the demand among physicians looking at alternative business models has been nothing short of explosive. Cornell did a survey that showed US doctors ofï¬ ces spend $31 billion a year (or 7% of their income) just trying to get paid by the insurance companies (

). It’s no wonder physicians are saying that this current business model just isn’t sustainable anymore. That $31 billion overhead is largely due to the CPT codes, and that gets us right back to the AMA. The more complex those CPT codes are, the more money the AMA makes, the better off the insurance companies are, and the worse off the physicians are.

Daniel Palestrant, MD, CEO and founder of Sermo, explains why Sermo cut ties with the AMA last year, reviews the current state of the largest online community for physicians, and reveals where he sees the site and healthcare social media headed in the near future. 

January 2010

Getting the Most Out of Your iPhone

Check-Up

Sermo Flexes its Muscles