Tips

Need some last-minute shopping ideas this holiday season? Apple's got your back. iBooks can now be used to send digital books as gifts, in the same way music and apps can be gifted. Once received, the books can be read with the iBooks app on an iOS device or OS X Mavericks.

The new gifting functionality comes just in time for the holidays. To send a book using an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, open the iBooks app and find the title you wish to send as a gift. Tap the share button in the upper right corner, then tap Gift from the pop-up menu options. Fill out the recipient's information, select a delivery date, and tap Next to continue.

One of the more simple but useful features Apple included in iOS 7 is the ability to see a time stamp for every text message sent or received. Previously you had to guess when someone sent you a message because Apple did not include a time stamp for each individual text. This was incredibly annoying for various and obvious reasons, but now it is incredibly easy to see what time someone contacted you thanks to Apple's latest OS.

You can check the time stamp of all your text messages by simply swiping right to left on the text conversation displayed on your screen. This motion will slide the text over and reveal an individual time stamp for each message. Yes it is that simple! Just swipe left to see the time stamp of any text message.

Notifications are an important part of the iOS experience, but they can also be extremely annoying when you're doing something else on your iPhone (especially when you're playing games). This is why Apple has added the ability to easily dismiss them in iOS 7.

You can get rid of pesky Notifications by simply swiping up on the message you want to dismiss on your Home screen. This allows you to quickly clear your display of any Notifications instead of waiting for them to disapear automatically. All dismissed texts, emails and so on will still be stored in your Notifications Center, which you can access by swiping down from the top of your display.

Google Chromebooks can now detect iOS devices and automatically import all images and video to Google+ thanks to the newly installed Google+ Photos app. While this makes it easier for iOS users to upload images and video to their Chromebooks, it is also annoying because sometimes you don't want your files to be automatically shared on social media sites.

Luckily you can disable this feature by locating the Google+ Photos app in the Apps tab located at the bottom of your Chromebook's display. You can then navigate to the Google+ Photos Settings by clicking the gear icon in the top hand right corner. Just remove the check next to "Automatically import photos when I plug in a camera or memory card," and this will stop your Chromebook from detecting your iOS device and trying to import your photos to Google+.

Even though the addition of the front-facing camera on most smartphones has eliminated the "selfie arm," there is another way to snap the perfect self portrait using your iPhone's headphones.

To take a picture using your headphones, just aim your phone and push the + button on the your Apple earbuds remote while the camera app is open. You can also use the play/pause button in the middle of the remote to start and stop recording video when in video mode. Of course your headphones will need to be plugged into your device for this trick to work.