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News

How To: Turn your iPad into an external monitor for your Mac

Many iPad owners don’t realize that you can use the iPad as an external monitor for your Mac or Windows PC. For $4.99, you can purchase iDisplay from the App Store. What is iDisplay? iDisplay is basically an app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. You have to install iDisplay Desktop for free on your Mac or Windows PC if you want to use the iDisplay app on your iOS device for use with your Mac or Windows PC. There are also certain requirements you should be aware of before you decide to use iDisplay.

As written on iDisplay’s website:

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later. Intel-based Mac, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or later or Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (all versions, except Starter). Non-Intel Macs and Macs running OS X in 64-bit mode are not supported.

To setup your iPad as an external monitor for your Mac, you must first go to the App Store and purchase the app iDisplay for $4.99. You must also go on your Mac and go to Shape Services to download the iDisplay Desktop for Mac OS for free. Install the iDisplay Desktop software and restart your computer. Now that you have both iDisplay and iDisplay Desktop, you can click iDisplay Desktop to get it running. The iDisplay Desktop application will not pop up, but will show up on the top right menu bar to show that it is running. Now you can run the iDisplay app on your iPad and an alert will pop up on your Mac display that will say that an “Unknown device is attempting to connect to “iDisplay” on this computer.” You can “Allow always”, “Deny”, or “Allow”.  After you either click “Allow” or “Allow always”, the iPad now acts as an external display.

You can now drag windows onto your iPad. The iPad display may be delayed depending on your internet connection speed. You can take advantage of the iPad as an external display for simple things such as IM, Twitter, and weather. It will really keep your Mac monitor less cluttered. The external monitor is great for when you do multiple things and you are running low on space.

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Categories
News

New Notifications for iOS 5

At the Worldwide Developers Conference, which takes place in San Francisco on June 6-10, Apple is expected to show off a new version of iOS and Mac OS X.

As written on TechCrunch:

“The other big news for iOS5 – and yes, I’ve completely buried the lede here, thanks for reading! – two things: completely revamped notifications and widgets.”

It appears that the new version of iOS will have new notifications and widgets. There are many times when you’re using your iOS device and you get a notification, but if you get a more recent one, it will replace it. There is no way to keep track of all the notifications that popped up. There is no storage of past notifications. If Apple can fix this problem, it will mean a great deal to those that receive dozens of notifications a day. Widgets are also important because with widgets, you can put them on your iOS device’s home and unlock screens. You can use the widgets to take advantage of certain things without even having to launch apps. The downside to widgets is that they may clutter the interface.

Feel free to leave comments and suggestions.

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Average Joe's Tips

The Basics and More: Address Book

cielo420 corrina kopf nudeUse:

The primary function of Address Book is to allow you to organize contacts by email, phone number, AIM, and more. It also allows you to organize your contacts to sync with your other Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Basics:

The first thing to do is add contacts. To do this you click on the ”+” in the middle section and fill out the information about the contact. If you want to edit a contact that you previously made, just select the contact you want to edit and press “Edit.” To organize contacts further you are given the option to make groups such as Friends or Coworkers. To do this click the “+” in the first column. You are also given the option for how you would like to view your contacts from columns to just a single contact, this is where you can type in the name to find the contact you want. I prefer to use columns just because it is easier to see all my contacts. To delete contacts select the desired contact and press delete, a screen will pop up saying “Cancel” or “Delete,” if you want to delete it press “Delete,” but if you don’t press “Cancel.” For the times when syncing with your iPod and iPad go wrong and you end up with duplicates, all that you have to do is go to the top menu bar and select cards, after go to “Look for Duplicates.”

Advanced:

Some more advanced options range from syncing accounts, designing a custom template, and taking images from Facebook and using them on your contacts. First, is syncing accounts, which is very similar to syncing iCal. To do this go to Address Book’s Preferences and select “Accounts.” Then depending on what account you have choose from MobileMe, Yahoo!, or Google. Select “Agree” and then type in your account and password. To sync your contacts to your account click on the arrows in a circle symbol on the top of your Menu Bar. This is great if you have multiple computers and can sync so they are the same. Next to customize your contact templates, stay in Preferences and go to Template, which should be on the Top Menu of Address Book’s Preferences. From there you can add or remove cell phone numbers and emails. You can mess around with it and customize it to your likings. Now for my favorite, using Facebook photos for Contacts. To easily do this take your iPod Touch or iPhone and go to the Facebook application. Select the “Friends” section and click on the button at the top right (arrow coming out of the box) button. From there select “Sync Contacts.” Then turn “Syncing” on and “Replace Photos” if you want to take out current photos and replace them with the Facebook photos.

Overview:

Clearly, the Address Book is simple, but effective. It also includes cool things like getting Facebook photos on your contacts and syncing your contacts from computer to computer. Not to mention it comes free on your Mac!

 

Stay connected at my new twitter handle to stay updated 24/7 @TRMGaveragejoes and @realmacgenius What do you think? Let us know in the comment section.

Categories
News

iPhone is better than Android for Business

Based on Intermedia, a Microsoft Exchange hosting provider, iPhone is better than Android for Business. Intermedia manages about 320,000 premium hosted Exchange email accounts. According to the number of ActiveSync-based smartphones its customers activated, 61% choose the iPhone, 17% choose Android, and 22% choose other. Even though Android market share and popularity is climbing and beating iPhone, business professionals still prefer iPhone. When it comes to tablet customers, 99.8% pick Apple over Samsung and Motorola.

When it comes to comparing the number of ActiveSync devices activated in April, the Apple iPhone is still in the lead with a whopping 64% share. Android’s share is increasing to 33%.

Out of the tablets activated in April, about 100% were iPads. A small fraction of the tablets activated in April were Samsung Galaxy and Motorola Zoom. It appears that the iPad is the leading tablet and it seems that the number of iPads being activated per month has increased.

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Categories
Opinion

Chrome Better Than Safari

When I first heard about Google Chrome a while back all I would hear is that it was better. I would ask people why and they would just say that it was better. So I decided to switch over from Safari to Chrome and I was pleasantly surprised. It was better, faster, cooler, and easier to use. So to help you I am going to convert you from a Safari user to a Chrome user by giving you my top four reasons to why you should switch.

Speed

Speed that was the first thing that I noticed with Chrome was that it opened faster than Safari. Not just that, but websites would load faster too from using the Google DNS servers. Also you can have the same amount of tabs open and have it load faster with Chrome than Safari. If you try Chrome you will see what I mean.

Syncing Bookmarks

For those of you who have a work computer and a home computer this is a great tool to use. It allows you to sync your bookmarks from one computer to another. So instead of having to manually copy your bookmarks from one computer to the other you can just sync your computer. You do this by going to Preferences, then to Personal Stuff, click on Set Up Sync, and login to your Google Account.

Customization

This was a very nice addition by Chrome, which is partly what set it apart from Safari. Chrome will allow you to choose from themes created by artists or generic themes that Google made. To do this you must go into Preferences, then to Personal Stuff, and go to the bottom where it says Get Themes. Having themes might not have any practical reasons, but being able to customize Chrome is just nice to have because you can customize it to your own style.

One Search Bar

For all of you people out there using Safari you might think that you like having a Google Search Bar and a Web Address Bar, but trust me once you get use to having one search bar you will never want to go back. It is great because it is a two in one search bar. For example you can type in “the real mac genius” on Chrome and it will search it in Google for you or you can type in “therealmacgenius.com” and it will bring you to our website. I can assure you after a week that you will be hooked on this.

Switching Over

Switching over is a breeze with Chrome because you can transfer your bookmarks from Safari to Chrome by clicking on Chrome and scrolling down to Import Bookmarks and Settings. Then to make everything else similar to your old Safari all you would have to do is go into Preferences under Chrome and switch things like what you want your main search engine to be or your homepage. Its obvious that Chrome is better because of its speed, syncing bookmarks, customization, and sweet search bar. Plus if you use it and don’t like it you can just delete it.

Stay connected at my new twitter handle to stay updated 24/7 @TRMGaveragejoes and @realmacgenius

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section.