August 2007 Archives

Have you been dying to get custom ringtones on your iPhone, but ya don't want to mess with any terminal software or anything else? Well today, Ambrosia Software released iToner, a Macintosh app that allows you to drag and drop your custom ringtones into it and then in two shakes of a lambs tail, it syncs it with your iPhone!

Another item from Eric Sadun. This time she documented how she got ringtones into the iPhone without having to jailbreak it. [link]

Erica Sadun over at TUAW posted footage of Nate True's Dock Package that allows iPhone hackers to display more than 16 applications at once by creating a scrolling left to right listing of the application icons.

iFuntastic v.3 is now available!

Nokia iPhone? Yep. The best part is the quote from Anssi Vanjoki -- Nokia's Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia who  said, "If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride." [via Engadget]

 Check this out!

Craig Hockenberry writes an article at A List Apart for designing web content for the iPhone. It's a good article and a must read for those just starting to make websites that style nicely for the iPhone.

The patent appears to take a page from Jobs' keynote speech in January, pointing out the inherent need for a flexible touchscreen interface. Since the keys and screen on traditional cell phones are fixed in place, the interface can rarely change to accommodate new features; developers often have to add physical buttons or overload existing buttons with special features, the patent explains. In return, users often can't change the interface themselves to fit their own expectations, typically forcing them to memorize obscure commands.

Apple's solution would rely heavily -- but not necessarily -- on a touchscreen interface virtually identical to that of the iPhone. By dragging an on-screen icon with a finger or stylus, users could either move icons to a static tray on the screen, replacing an earlier icon, or shift them around in their existing sections. In that latter case, neighboring icons could move aside gracefully to reorder the interface on the fly and make it clear where an icon will land when the user lifts their pointing device.

Last night, as we were checking out the new version of Installer.app, we stumbled upon two new packages.

One of them was an iRC client called BitchX. We haven't iRC'd for years so we decided to install it and try it out... just to see how far along they were on the development of the application. Needless to say, we were very impressed with what we found. BitchX is a really nice iRC client for the iPhone that actually works! We were in #iphone for just a bit. We're pretty sure that diehard iRC folks will love this app, but we couldn't get into typing all those "/" commands on the keyboard.

Then we also found a very early beta of an AIM client. We installed and tried it out but unfortunately for us, it didn't work at all. We've read and seen reports elsewhere that show the client working. While we could log in, we couldn't bring up a buddylist and thats where the fun ended. Hopefully the developer makes progress and we can give it another spin in a few days.

All of this application goodness can be found by installing the Installer.app on your iPhone. C'mon... it's easy! You can read about it here.

Jailbreaking is the term folks are using to describe an iPhone thats been hacked to allow third-party native apps like Lights Out to run on the iPhone.

In the past (oh about a month ago!) jailbreaking meant you had to use the terminal and do a bunch of different things to hack the iPhone. This spawned a variety of different applications that did the same thing easier, but not quite as easy as the common iPhone user would have liked.

Finally theres an application called Installer that makes jailbreaking the iPhone easy to do. The folks at nullriver have designed an application that actually installs itself without needing to know an command line or terminal geek speak at all. After the Installer.app jailbreaks your iPhone and installs itself, it allows you to see a whole world of applications that are out and about in iPhone hacker / developer land!

We've played with the installer over the last week and must admit that it's the best thing to happen to the iPhone yet. So what exactly does the Installer.app do? Quite simply, the installer is very much like a software update on a mac with a twist. Not only will the installer app check for updates to it's own software, but it will look for updates to anything else the Installer.app has installed as well. The Installer.app constantly checks various sources for new iPhone "packages". The packages are applications that can be installed at anytime on your iPhone. Most of the packages are still in beta / developmental stages but it gives you a chance to play with the apps and see what developers are doing.

So what happens after you've installed an application and decide you no longer want it on your iPhone? Simple, just select uninstall and the Installer.app will take care of removing the application for you. It really is the easiest thing!

Currently the Installer shows a list of Development packages such as Perl, Python and Ruby, a few games like a nintendo emulator and iPhoneDoom. Theres also a bunch of network utilites like DNS Tools and you can even compile an Apache web server on your iPhone!

The nullriver team is constantly updating the Installer.app software and the packages are always registered and checked for updates each time Installer.app is launched.

Download the Installer.app here.

This past week there were numerous reports of folks hacking the iPhone and successfully unlocking it for use on other providers like Tmobile. Once the first news story broke, there have been so much news and information on unlocking the iPhone that it became a bit hard to digest it all. 
We're gonna give you the rundown... right here.. info after the break!

So we've been out for a while, but we're back! As you can see we've redesigned a bit and have a few more things to change around and fix up before we're fully operational... but that doesn't mean we can't bring you some news updates and rumors right? 

Yeah, you read that right folks... It's not a webapp made for iPhone, but rather a real, Native iPhone application!

The folks at Delicious Monster have conjured up an addictive game called Lights Out. The objective is to switch all of the lights out. Tapping a light toggles it, along with the four adjacent lights. Once you switch all of the lights out, you'll advance to the next level!

The app was created by Lucas Newman and Adam Betts and requires some hacking in order to get it installed but it's well worth the effort. Perhaps if more apps like this one start coming out, Apple will take notice and start opening up the iPhone.

Download Lights Out here.

iFuntastic v2.5 is now released with a full filebrowser so you can hack away at your iphone with a easy to use interface. Bug fixes include carrier logo naming and m4p ringtones can now be added.

Some fun features:
Check out the 'Browser' page:
You can edit and replace any graphic on the phone!
You can replace any system sound!
You can color your SMS balloons!

So now you can play Nintendo games on your iPhone... if you've hacked your iPhone that is. Get the hacker NES stuff here.

Erica Sadun over at TUAW has been hard at work hacking together "real" apps for the iPhone... even without an iPhone SDK. Just sheer brute force and determination and she's already created a voice recording app!

(mt) Media Temple (where iPhoneNewsBlog.com is hosted) now has full access control via iPhone!
From press email:
(mt) Media Temple is proud to introduce the world's first iPhone web hosting control panel. Buy a domain, reboot your server, add emails, pay your bill, get support and more - all from your iPhone, only at (mt).

We haven't tried it yet but the interface looks awesome! Learn more about Media Temple and the iPhone interface Account Center here.

A new hack developed by some iPhone hacking forum members claims to have finally achieved "full unlock" for the iPhone. If it's true, this means the iPhone can be used by just about anyone in Europe. The hack is said to allow all of the basic functions of the iPhone cellular features including receiving calls, SMS messages, and EDGE data services. Visual Voicemail is not supported as it needs the protocols from AT&T in order to work.

Unlocking the iPhone to achieve "full unlock" is not for the faint at heart. You'll need a number of specific hardware and software. So these aren't necessarily things you can pick up at Radio Shack. A SIM reader/writer, a V1 SIM, a "SilverCard" smartcard (whatever that is) and you'll have to install Jailbreak.

We'll look deeper into this today.

Another iPhone lawsuit has been filed. This time a small Florida based firm is suing Apple Inc. (AAPL) saying that the on screen touch keyboard infringes on their patent.

From AppleInsider:
The 7-year-old filing describes a "method of providing a user interface for receiving information from a user using a user immutable graphical keyboard linked to an input area, [...] invoking the graphical keyboard on a touch screen display to receive input from a user, and [...] maintaining the graphical keyboard on the touch screen display such that the user cannot move, resize, remove, or close the graphical keyboard through the user interface while the input area remains and requires input."

Apple (AAPL) today released iPhone Update 1.0.1. Open up iTunes and attempt to sync your iPhone to get the update started. I'm on a business trip so I haven't had a chance to update my iPhone just yet, but maybe you could post here and let us know it's been working for you if you've done the update.

Read about the security patches the iPhone Update 1.0.1 brings here in this Apple Tech note.

So far, from what we gather, there aren't any apparent updates in this release. It seems to be merely a security patch for various vulnerabilities.