Category: Average Joe’s Tips

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Average Joe's Tips

Part One Traveling with the iPad: Apps

On my recent trip to Europe I decided to ditch my laptop and take my shiny iPad to save room in my carry-on bag. This inspired me to make a new series of traveling with an iPad whether it is international or domestic. In part one of traveling with your iPad I am going to show you some essential apps and other things to bring. With more to come.

Here are my top ten business traveling apps: Pages, Keynote, Dropbox (or Mobile Me iDisk), Evernote, American Airlines (or your airline), XE Currency, The World Weather, Flight Tracker, BBC News, and CNN News. Most of these apps are free, but some like Pages and Flight Tracker cost money. If you don’t want to spend money you can always find apps similar to these at the App Store for example Plain Text and Flight Status – Free. Some apps for when you travel around for vacation that pass the time and help out are: Twitter, Friendly for Facebook, Yelp, travel guide apps (depending on where you go), Adobe Ideas, TED, ABC Player (only in U.S.), any game (I would recommend a game that has a long duration so maybe one from Gameloft), a magazine app of your choosing (some of them are free, but you still have to buy the magazine; for the ones that cost money they come with the most current magazine, some examples of magazines are Wired, Fortune, or GQ), and the iBooks app. Apps like TED and Magazine apps need the Internet, but you can download them, so you can use them when you don’t have Internet.

You might also be thinking that I am wrong and you shouldn’t use this for business travel. Just as evidence that will support my idea of traveling with the iPad I wrote this whole article from my iPad and for those of you who don’t want to bring it because it is hard to type on. Buy an external keyboard for your iPad it will solve the problem and you can find one at www.zagg.com for about a hundred dollars.

Clearly, the iPad is a convenient solution for travel if you don’t want to bring computer thanks to apps like Pages and Keynote that transform it into your computer away from home.

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

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Average Joe's Tips

How To: Make Your Login Speed Faster

Does your computer take forever to load up? Well I have two easy tips that will make you login into your Mac faster. The first way is to make sure that you do not have any applications open automatically at login. You can check this by going into “System Preferences,” then go to accounts, and click on the “Login Items” button. To stop your apps from opening at login you have to select each one and click the minus button on the bottom. Note that just clicking the box on the side does not stop it from opening at login, but it hides it at login, and that does not affect the speed of login. Another way to make your Mac’s login speed faster is to make sure that you do not have any servers, external hardrives, or memory sticks connected to you computer because it will have to load those at login. It’s as easy as that to make your login speed faster.

Let us know how this worked for you.

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Average Joe's Tips

How To: Make Your Desktop Background Into a Screensaver

Do you want an awesome background on your computer? Well I will show you how to make your desktop background into a lively moving screensaver with a few easy steps. The first step to this process is to open up System Preferences, go into “Desktop and Screensaver,” and then into the “Screensaver” portion. From there select which screensaver you would like to have as your background. After that open up Terminal. Then copy and paste the following code in /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background and press “enter.” After that your background should come up as the screensaver you choose. If you want to have a different screensaver you need to open a new Terminal window select the new screensaver in System Prefrences and press “Enter” again in terminal. Note that the screensaver will only stay up as long as the Terminal app is open.

Let us know how this worked for you.

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Average Joe's Tips

How To: Customize Your Mac Login Screen

Are you the kind of person who likes to customize every inch of your computer, but can’t find out how to customize your login screen? Well I found an application called Ravissant. It allows you to easily customize your login screen with your own personal pictures and texts. After you download the application and open it all you have todo is customize it to your standards. Todo that you click what you want to customize on the top menu bar where you can choose from logos to backgrounds. To put in you own personal texts just click on “OS Text” or “Welcome Text” and an area will be boxed to where your writing will go. Now for your background and logo you select which one you want to change and just drag a picture to the boxed area. This is fun and very easy todo.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know.

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Average Joe's Tips

Mac Security: Lock Your Screen When You are Away

Do you leave your Mac attended to get coffee or quickly talk to someone across the room. Instead of leaving access to your Mac when you are away, let’s enforce security from the spies around the office.

Keychain Access

One of the best ways to accomplish this is through Keychain Access (Applications>Utilities). Once Keychain Access is open, go into the preferences and check the box for “Show status in Menu Bar” a unlocked lock should appear in your Menu Bar. This will let you lock the screen easily from the Menu Bar.

System Preferences


Requiring a password after being awaken from the Screen Saver or sleep. This can be done in System Preferences (Applications). Once System Preferences has been launched, click on the “Security” pane. Then check the “Require Password after sleep or screen saver begins,” this will create a prompt requiring a password after being awaken.

Expose and Spaces

Though the Menu Bar lock may be helpful, triggering the prompt can be done by simply putting your mouse on any corner of the screen. Launch System Preferences, then click on the Expose and Spaces pane. In “Active Screen Corners” select from a drop down “Start Screen Saver”, the Screen Saver will begin once your mouse touches the corner, but make sure to wait a second.

Now your Mac should me a little more secure! Let us know how it works for you!