iPhone

Steve's wife has a standalone voicemail service that would page her Blackberry whenever she'd get a new message. Now that she's switched to an iPhone, that doesn't work anymore.

Leo recommends using Google Voice. She can port her number to it, and Google Voice will send her a text and transcript of the message. The chatroom also says there's an AT&T app on the iPhone called VM Viewer that can do this too.

Tom is thinking of switching to Android after having the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 isn't thrilling him, and he's thinking of the Samsung Galaxy SIII or the Droid Maxx.

Steve wants to know why TechTV didn't make it in a gadget obsessed society, especially the Screen Savers. G4 has decided to abandon technology programming altogether and is going for eyeballs with what they call "GQ programming." The reason is economics. A cable channel like TechTV lost $100 million a year. Leo is doing the same thing eight years later, he has a larger (but more narrow) audience, and is profitable because his costs are lower.

There are a couple conundrums here. One is, how did the text message get from his iPhone to his Windows PC in the first place? Second, how did it get in his clipboard so he wound up pasting it on his desktop? Someone may be pulling a prank on Joe. Nothing to worry about, just a strange happenstance.

Leo says that would be a great option. There are some apps that could offer that, but Apple doesn't give third party access to the text message system. There are security issues in allowing third party access to text messaging, which is why Apple doesn't do that. Ray could jailbreak his iPhone to do that, but Leo doesn't recommend jailbreaking.

T Mobile offers something similar, but they don't carry the iPhone (yet). Android does have this, though. So if he's not married to the iPhone, he could switch to an Android phone.

Paul has an OBI 110 VOiP box and wants to use the OBI app on his iPhone to make phone calls instead of getting an international voice or data plan. Leo says this will still use data, unless he's on Wi-Fi, then it would be free to do.