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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Access Your iPhone’s MAC Address

Access the MAC (Media Access Control) address of your iPhone in these simple steps:

  • Tap on Settings
  • Tap on General
  • Navigate to and tap on “About”
  • Scroll down to “Wi-Fi Address”
  • The characters next to Wi-Fi Address are your iPhone MAC address

There are a numerous amount of reasons why people need access to their iPhone’s MAC address. Some wireless routers — such as the Apple Time Capsule can filter based upon the MAC address; so only certain devices are allowed to join. MAC address filtering is popular around highly populated cities such as New York, because numerous people see your wireless network range.

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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Make Your Mac Talk to You

This week I have a quick and easy trick that will allow you to have your computer speak to you. The first step is opening your system preferences and selecting “Speech”. You should then select “Text to Speech” and after select “Speak selected text when the key is pressed”. Then up will pop a screen that asks you for a key combination and just select the key or keys that you would like for your combination. You can also browse through the many options available including different voices and voice speed. Now to actually get your computer to say what you want you just highlight with your cursor and use the key combination that you previously chose.System Preferences

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News

iPhone 3G + iOS 4 = ?

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Average Joe's Tips

How To: Order an iPhone 4!

Currently, you cannot walk into the Apple Store and ask to purchase an iPhone 4 and one will magically appear. Apple leaves you with two alternatives: buy throught the online store, or wait to reserve an iPhone 4 online and pick it up when the Apple store emails you. I have a few quick tips on how to purchase an iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 popularity has made it difficult to find, sounds like de ja vu with the iPad.

The Apple Store Online is a safe alternative, but it will take about 3 weeks according to the Apple Store Online. From my conversations with the Apple Retail Stores, they are saying that the reserving in store would be a shorter wait. Note, you do not need to walk in the Apple Retail Store to reserve you can call. One you received the email from Apple notifying you that your iPhone has arrived, you have 24 hours. Reserving means picking the device up in store within 24 hours of receiving the email.

Best buy stores are also an alternative to purchase the iPhone 4. But, from speaking with customers and employees, they do not have a time frame in which you would receive your device.

All in all, the choice on how you would like to reserve your device is up to you. Personally, I would choose an Apple Retail Store as they tend to have a higher priority on receiving the devices. If possible call multiple Apple Retail Stores in the area and reserve the iPhone 4 – it would help increase you chances on receiving the iPhone 4 sooner.

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Average Joe's Tips

Google Voice: Making AT&T More Bearable (and cheaper)

I’m going to speak for everyone and say that the worst feature of the iPhone is its exclusivity with AT&T’s overwhelmed, under-loved network. Unless you have the guts to jailbreak (and don’t mind cruising on the vintage Edge network) you’re stuck cursing AT&T, waiting for the day the Verizon/iPhone rumors come true.

Stop reading those rumor blogs (which have been on repeat since 2007) and start setting up your Google Voice number, which will allow you to shave some precious dollars off of your AT&T bill and introduce your iPhone to some next generation features.

Google Voice is free, and lets you create a new number (of your choice) and link it to your current mobile number. Calls, texting, and voicemail are all possible, linked to both numbers. This is all done Google style; call screening, in browser texting (on your PC), voicemail transcription, and contact-assignable custom voicemail greetings make you wonder why no wireless carriers have implemented these great online features.

Now to the money saving- you can actually cancel your texting plan (saving you ~$20/month), and effectively rely on Google Voice and your data/wifi connection; just make sure to give everyone your new number. Another plus – over wifi you can easily text, even without service. By default, Google forwards texts to  your old mobile number (you’d get charged for these) – but this is easily turned off, and you can access your inbox through the Google web App. While an official App Store app would be nice (Google doesn’t play those games), there are no real functionality limitations and it is amazingly fast for a webapp -probably the same speed as the native iPhone SMS app before the 4.0 update. There are no push notifications, but with the ability to email texts to a separate email address, this is not a problem. There is currently no MMS support, but there are many other (more efficient) options for sharing media.

Aside from eliminating your texting plan, Voice greatly enhances your texting and voicemail. Send and receive texts with your browser (using your keyboard!) – and your phone doesn’t have to leave your pocket. With the browser extension, texting becomes possible right on top of any web page. This makes it much more efficient, and much less distracting. While Apple’s visual voicemail is great, Voice takes it a step further, by transcribing and emailing voicemail right to your inbox. The transcriptions aren’t perfect, but they are easily decipherable, and are much more convenient than checking your voicemail traditionally. The audio is even embedded right into the email .

Google Voice is a pretty easy sell, saving you money on top of doing a lot more. When you create your number, make sure you think of a good word or two for your number to spell (you can search for a number by word) – that way you can tell everyone your number is 617-The-Dude (or something along those lines).