We live in the digital age and our kids are growing up smack in the middle of it. What does this mean for us adults? That our kids constantly want to use play on our phones. This can be all fine and dandy until things get changed around and inevitably apps get deleted. The Windows phone has this nifty feature called Kid’s Corner. What exactly is Kid’s Corner? It’s pure awesome that’s what it is.  

“Create a child–friendly space within your phone using Kid’s Corner. They can access only the apps, music and videos you permit.”-Verizon Wireless

Think of it like a computer within a computer, or a better example might be if you have more then one user account on your computer. It’s a separate screen within your phone that you can pick and choose which apps you want your child to be able to access.

You ask what is so special about that? Don’t other phone’s offer something like that?  Well that is a yes and no answer. The iPhone allows you to set restrictions on the phone but in my experience it’s more of a hassle to deal with then anything and not worth doing because by setting the restrictions I am then limited by the restrictions unless I go back in and change all of the settings again. Back to the Windows phone. Setup on kids corner is really easy and again, you get to pick and choose what you want on Kid’s Corner that your kid’s can have access too. Here are step by step instructions on how to set up kids corner on you phone.

• From your home screen scroll all the way down to the bottom and click the little arrow

•  Select settings

• Scroll down until you see Kid’s Corner, select it

•  Simply turn it from Off to On

•  From there your settings screen will pop up.

• Click any of the options Games, Music, Videos or Apps and it will bring up a new window with all available items on your phone from that genre for you to pick and choose which you would like on Kid’s Corner.

The great thing about Kid’s Corner mode is that the kids cannot enter the regular side of the phone. The only way to get back to the regular home screen is to press the power button on the top of the phone. It then goes into standby mode and when you go to use your phone the next time it will bring up the home screen. To access kids corner from standby mode press the power button and then swipe your fingers from the right of the screen to the left.

I do want to point out one possible downside to Kid’s Corner is having a password on your phone. I always assign passwords out of habit and not wanting certain little one’s deleting items on my phone. By having a password enabled on your phone you cannot access Kid’s Corner without entering it. At times that may be a downside but on the other side of that it ensures no one will be getting into your phone, either your side or the kids side.

Today I want to talk about how to take screen shot on the HTC Windows 8x phone. It’s one of the first things I learn how to do when I get a new phone and I usually figure it out pretty easily, but it took me up until ohhh five minutes ago to finally do it. I assumed it was like most phones and that you had to press the power button and the start/home screen button. I kept pressing those buttons but I would get one of two results.
1. The phone would go into standby mode
2. It would go into voice recognition mode
Neither of which was what I wanted to do…insert frustration here. I was about to give up on the whole thing but decided to send out a tweet asking if anyone knew how. I figured if the twitter-verse doesn’t know then it’s probably not meant to be. Verizon Wireless support got back to me almost immediately.

You know the saying that sometimes it just takes another set of eyes for you to see things? Well in this case it rang true. As soon as I tried it after reading Verizons tweet the strangest thing happened…it worked! Don’t you love how that happens? Despite my frustration I am just happy I finally was able to get a screenshot.

So here’s what you do.

• Press the power button. That’s the push button on the top right of the phone. 

• At the same time, literally the same exact second,  press the start touch button. The start touch button is the middle button on the bottom of the phone. The one that with the windows icon.

Until you get the hang of it it may be a trial and error/frustrating experience. Or you may be lucky and not have the struggles that I had attempting to do this. But once you get the hang of it it will be a lot easier.