The ingredients we need:

1. PC or Mac
2. iPhone 4S or iPad 2
3. Apple TV.
4. The Air Display app.

The Air Display app allows you to output part of your PC or Mac desktop (through WiFi) to your iPhone or iPad for use as a second monitor, like so:

By using the Air Play Mirroring function on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, we can then send this signal out via AirPlay through an Apple TV and out to an HDTV, which will be our second monitor.

First, download Air Display from the App Store. Follow the instructions in the app to get it up and running through your iPhone or iPad.

Then we want to enable Airplay mirroring. Double-click the Home button on your iPhone or iPad, and flick right through the apps until you see this screen:

Click click the Air Play icon on the right-hand side as seen above, and you’ll get this option:

As pictured above, select Apple TV Mirroring, and voilà! Your HDTV with an Apple TV plugged up to it is now a second display. You can even touch your iPhone or iPad and it will move the cursor on your desktop.

Note: Apple has recently announced OSX Mountain Lion, which will have a feature built directly into the operating system that allows you to hit a button and send your desktop to an HDTV over Airplay:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#airplay

Amazon.com has some great deals, but they are usually from multiple sellers – shipping can add up fast.

The answer? The secret is to search only the supply of the best seller on Amazon, then sort their products from low price to high price. That way, you can add multiple inexpensive products to your shopping cart and pay the same flat shipping price.

That seller is Swanson Health Products.

Go to this link, and you’ll see a search box for Swanson Health Products Only:

Type in what you’re looking for. Then, go to the right-side of the screen and select the “Sort-By” drop-down box to “Price: Low to High,” like this:

As you can see, products that might usually cost $30 and up are only a couple of bucks. Keep returning to this link to search. Add multiple products, and you pay one price for shipping since it’s all coming from Swanson.

I usually end up paying (for all my supplements) what other companies try to charge for just ONE supplement.

Let me know how it goes!

First: If you use Gmail, do not use this screen to add your account:

Instead, follow the instructions here to get Google Sync up and running:

http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/

That will keep all your contacts on Gmail synced with your iPhone. So if you lose your phone all your contacts will be sitting in Gmail. It syncs in real time automatically over the air. So if you meet someone and put their contact info in your phone, it will all get saved on Gmail.

You could alternatively create an iCloud account for your mail and use Apple’s @me.com address, which duplicates the Google Sync features. But as of the writing of this post they’re not quite there yet as far as e-mail features compared to Gmail. Yep, the guys who make Android phones still lead the way in email. Sorry Apple, you know I love you. 

If you are using iOS 5+, configure iMessages by going to Settings>Messages. Turn on iMessage, and select “receive at” to include your phone number and e-mail address. Do the same if you are using an iPad. If you’re on a Mac, get iMessages beta. This will allow you to continue text conversations from your phone on your iPad and Mac. It all syncs up.

Also on iOS 5+ is Photostream, which can be enabled by going to Settings>Photos>Photostream. This sends any new pictures you take to iCloud automatically. If you enable Photostream on your iPad / Apple TV / iPhoto on your Mac / your PC’s Pictures folder, new photos will show up automatically – no sync required.

Another iOS 5 and iCloud feature is Reading List. This is great. Let’s say you’re on your computer reading an article, but you’d rather read it later on your iPhone. Just click the “+” button in your browser bar on Safari and select “Reading List” from the drop-down menu. Later, you can click the bookmarks button in Safari on your iPhone and continue reading the article.

Now, onto the apps:

AT&T Mark The Spot - Send a report to AT&T whenever you drop a call / can’t get data access / have low coverage. Help improve their network through data. Verizon and Sprint users, let me know if there’s an app for your provider.

myAT&T – Pay your bill and check your usage of minutes / data / txt on AT&T.

My Verizon Mobile - Pay your bill and check your usage of minutes / data / txt on Verizon.

Sprint Mobile Zone - Pay your bill and check your usage of minutes / data / txt on Sprint.

Facebook – This also has a sync feature, so if a lot of your friends keep their phone numbers on Facebook, it will automatically put their info in your phone for you.

Find my Friends and Find My iPhone – Get locations of friends and meet up. If you lose your iPhone, find its location on a map and send messages to it. Or, just send an audio alert to find it if it’s lost in the couch cushions.

Pandora radio – just type in a song or artist and it will make a custom radio station for you. Awesome for working out or on long road trips. Requires a good data connection, however.

Spotify – Pretty much any song / artist / album you can think of is available instantly here. Streams through data or WiFi, costs $9.99 per month. There is a feature involving playing songs when you’re off your data connection, but it’s quite confusing to me. Let me know if you figure that one out.

Remote – this is completely awesome. So let’s say you have quite a collection of songs on iTunes on your laptop. You’re having a get-together on the weekend and you’ve got your laptop playing some tunes through your stereo. With remote, you can control what songs are playing next, their volume, etc. Your iPhone will connect through your WiFi network and go to your computer, telling it what songs you want to hear. Even more amazing, if any friends are over that have iPhones, they can connect to your WiFi and request songs (like a jukebox!) If you use an Apple TV, this app can be used to control it as well.

Square - Swipe and accept credit cards from your iPhone. For FREE. No, seriously. You sign up with them, they ship you a free cardreader. It plugs into your iPhone via the headphone jack. They make their money by taking 2 percent per transaction. Great if you’re selling stuff at a garage sale or on Craigslist. No dealing with cash, and the money goes straight to your bank account.

Field Agent – This app pays you directly to your Paypal account for doing jobs around town. Let’s say a soup company wants to see how the local grocery store set up their recent promo. Since the iPhone has GPS and a camera, you will get a message saying that work is available in your area. Go to the grocery store and take a picture of the soup display. It will be uploaded to the soup company. Funds will be sent to your Paypal account when the job is complete.

Netflix – Watch streaming movies on Netflix. Awesome if you’re unable to get away from work on your lunch break.

Evernote – Very awesome service for remembering stuff. From taking pictures of where you parked, to sending in audio notes – Evernote will save this stuff on their servers AND makes all data searchable (via text.) You can also access the images/notes from any PC or Mac. Instead of saving paper, I just take a picture of the receipt and send it to Evernote. Then trash the paper.

Angry Birds – This game is so addictive it has ruined lives. Nuff said. Free (ad-supported) version here.

Flixster – While your friends are fiddling with their computers trying to get movie tickets for Friday night, you can look up the closest theaters and buy tickets in a flat 30 seconds. Also has full previews of movies and stuff.

Bank of America – If you use Bank of America, their app is awesome. If you use Chase, they have an app where you can TAKE A FREAKING PICTURE OF A CHECK AND HAVE IT DEPOSITED TO YOUR ACCOUNT. For real, no trip to the bank. Amazing.

Cat Piano – Annoy the hell out of your cat.

360 Panorama – Take amazing panoramic photos. I have heard that as an alternative to this app, TourWrist is a great panorama / virtual tourism app that may work a bit more flawlessly – but I need to play with it a bit more.

Waze – A GPS app that uses social features to route you around traffic. Completely free. If you get an iPhone mount for your car, it will replace your current GPS. Has current maps / data /etc, and it learns as it goes. Your routes will becoming faster and more efficient.

Twitter – Very awesome if you can get friends on the bandwagon. Otherwise, use it to stalk celebrities.

Pro HDR – My buddy showed me a sunset photo he took in Denver (on an iPhone 3GS) that looked like it was taken with a pro camera, then Photoshopped. It was this app.

Instagram – Fun toy-style photo app.

Cards – Take a photo with your phone, and in a few clicks send letterpress cards to a physical mailing address. Apple includes the cost of postage.

ALSO! Don’t forget the headphones that came with your phone have a mic built in, so you have a hands-free device built in. If you’re listening to music it will lower the volume when someone calls and bring the volume back up when you hang up the call. Also, clicking the middle of it twice will fast-forward to the next song. Clicking it once will stop / start the music, and the top and bottom buttons turn the volume up or down.

The Klein Bottle

Available at http://www.kleinbottle.com/

PCs throughout the world are linked together to create a supercomputer. Each individual PC performs calculations and reports the completed data back to the server. This results in a massive amount of data being parsed to solve large problems – like human diseases, climate change, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

If you’ve ever used BitTorrent – it is similar in the way it uses distributed bandwidth on P2P networks – every computer contributes just a bit to the overall data.

While your computer is sitting unused at work or at home, it can be utilized to crunch numbers. With Stanford University’s Folding@home program, you can even have it running on your Playstation 3.

Here are some download links to get you started – these are available for multiple platforms:

Curing diseases: Stanford is researching protein folding with distributed computing. When proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well-known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. If you have a Playstation 3, open the program called Life With Playstation. There you can pull up Folding@Home.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Berkeley’s BOINC program uses Windows, Mac, and Linux to “to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research.” You can even choose from a variety of projects to devote your idle machine time to.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Discovering Extraterrestrial Life: SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) seeks to find evidence of extraterrestrial life by intercepting interstellar communication. SETI was popularized in the movie Contact with Jodi Foster. It looks like they are now utilizing BOINC as well to process their data:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

If anyone has additional recommendations on other distributed computing sites, please let me know in the comments!

The easiest way to start is with Code Academy and Stanford’s Programming Methodology Class via iTunes University.

After the Getting Started with Programming section is complete at Code Academy, head on over to W3Schools and do some introductory Javascript tutorials. If you find the tutorials difficult, there’s a link to the HTML and CSS sections there, which will be helpful.

You can then continue the Javascript tutorials over at Code Academy with a little more under your belt.

You need not enroll in expensive college coursework. At the pace technology moves, the printed page and class curriculum really can’t keep up. Just be diligent; be curious. That’s all there is to it.