From The Tips Box: iTunes Radio, Quicker Restores, Savings Tips

From The Tips Box: iTunes Radio, Quicker Restores, Savings Tips

Readers offer their best tips for creating desktop shortcuts for iTunes radio stations, remember what apps you have installed on your phone, and putting aside a little extra money.

Every day we receive stacks of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using our [contact text=”contact form”].

Create a Desktop Shortcut for an iTunes Radio Station

Scott shares a method for making a desktop shortcut for an iTunes radio station:

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t make it easy to save radio stations outside the iTunes interface. But, you can do it. After a little tinkering around, I found this way to make a desktop shortcut to a radio station (it opens iTunes and goes directly to the station). I assume it would work on Mac, too. I just can’t test it.

  1. Open iTunes and locate (or create) the radio station.
  2. Click the Share button and then click Copy Link. The resulting link will be something like: https://itunes.apple.com/us/station/flight-of-the-conchords-radio/idst.12471941
  3. Create a new shortcut by right-clicking on the Windows desktop (or in a folder), and then clicking New > Shortcut.
  4. In the Create Shortcut window that opens, paste the link you copied from iTunes.
  5. In the link, replace https with itmss and add the following to the end of the link: ?cmd=AddStation
  6. Save the new shortcut. The link should end up looking something like this:

itmss://itunes.apple.com/us/station/flight-of-the-conchords-radio/idst.12471941?cmd=AddStation

You can also use this shortcut to create a tile on the Windows 8 Start Menu or a bookmark in some web browsers. Some don’t understand what to do with the itmss protocol, however. You’ll just have to play with it.

Take Screenshots of Installed Apps for Quicker Restores

Alex shares a tip for remembering which apps are actually installed on your iPhone:

My buddy came up with a simple way to save some time. His iPhone kept freezing up and he resorted to a backup, but it turned out the backup was corrupted. So, restoring to factory settings were his next option.

He had a bunch of apps downloaded in iTunes but not all those apps were installed on his phone. It would be a real hassle to figure out which ones he still had on his phone and which ones he had taken off. Before hitting the proverbial big red button, he just took screenshots of each of his home screens and folders and then emailed the pics to himself as a record of what was actually installed.

I imagine this would work for just about any platform.

Charge Yourself a Fee for Playing Games

LegendAssassin shares a clever way to put aside a little extra money:

I pay to play my favourite games. $1 for each round of Killer Instinct, $3 for League of Legends, and $5 for Dota 2. It has limited my playing time but also when I do have the urge to pay I put the money into a saving account that I cannot touch without my parents giving me the password.

Even if your parents aren’t in control of your savings accounts, this is a really clever way to save a bit of extra money. Pay yourself for whatever flavour your indulgences come in.

Photo by KrAzY KorY.


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