Month: August 2009

Your iPhone is Spying on You

Sébastien Page ∙ August 18, 2009

I just read an interesting article by the Dev Team showing that some applications available in the App Store are spying on you, tracking your personal data and reporting this information "home".

The apps in question are applications using Pinch Media, a mobile analytics company that aims at helping developers figure out how their users interact with their apps (ie. how long they spend on the app every day, is it accessed over 3G or wifi, etc...). Apparently, apps that use Pinch Media are doing much more than reporting your interactions with the app and go as far as tracking the following information:

iPhone's unique ID iPhone Model OS Version Application version (in this case, camera zoom 1.x) If the application is cracked/pirated If your iPhone is jailbroken Time & date you start the application Time & date you close the application Your current latitude & longitude Your gender (if Facebook enabled) Your birth month (if Facebook enabled) Your birth year (if Facebook enabled)

Pinch Media says the company is no spyware as it requires YOUR approval to track the data, but as the Dev Team explains:

Being an approved app, it must first ask you for permission to use your location. If you tap “Don’t Allow”, it will ask you again in about a minute, the next time its ad changes. So you either stop using this app (because it pesters you so much about the location question), or you finally submit and tap “OK”. From that point on, your location and path info (your actual physical path through your area each time you launch the app) belongs to Pinch Media, Inc. We think that’s a Pinch too much.

I don't know how concerned you are about your privacy and I assume most people wouldn't care about that. Although the data being recorded is anonymous, I am not necessarily excited about a company that doesn't disclose what type of data is collected, and more importantly, how this data is used.

What do you think?

TomTom for iPhone Now Available in the App Store

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

After making its debuts in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, the TomTom iPhone app is finally available for download in the App Store.

TomTom for iPhone doesn't come for cheap though... Priced at $99, this fully featured turn-by-turn GPS system is more expensive than some dedicated GPS units. At least TomTom doesn't require you to get a $10/month subscription fee like AT&T NAvigator.

There is still no word about the TomTom Car Adapter Kit but I suppose it will be available soon.

I haven't tried the TomTom app myself yet and I'm still wondering if it's really worth it compared to the $35 competitor CoPilot Live. I guess I will wait for a while and read more reviews to figure out what seems to be the best GPS out there.

Download Links:

TomTom US & Canada - $99.99 TomTom Western Europe - $139.99 TomTom Australia - $79.99 TomTom New Zealand - $94.99

If you've already tried the TomTom for iPhone application, please leave a comment below and tell us what you think.

Give A Matte Twist to Your iPhone UI

Sébastien Page ∙ August 15, 2009

WinterBoard is one of my favorite jailbreak apps because it allows me to customize my iPhone and make it "stand out" from the crowd. One of the latest tweaks I found to push the customization a little further is to have a full custom UI.

There is a great-looking UI tweak available in Cydia called Matte UI Graphite.

Here are a few screenshots of what the new UI looks like. Changes are very subtle, yet very elegant...

How to Fix Cydia Crashes

Sébastien Page ∙ August 14, 2009

A lot of people who recently jailbroke their iPhones are having issues with Cydia crashing when launching it. There is a quick and dirty fix for that and it requires to either SSH into your iPhone or use iPhoneBrowser and delete a few files.

Apparently the problem is caused by some corrupted repositories that make Cydia crash within the first few seconds of loading it.

To fix this, simply navigate to /var/lib/apt/lists and delete all the files in this folder except for the folder called "partial".

Then reboot your iPhone and launch Cydia. It should load without crashing.

QuickScroll Helps You Scroll Very Quickly

Sébastien Page ∙ August 13, 2009

QuickScroll is a new application available in Cydia that lets you scroll through documents and web pages very quickly.

Have you ever opened a long web page or PDF document on your iPhone looking for some information you know is way down the page?

Without QuickScroll, you have to keep scrolling down forever. Fortunately, with QuickScroll, it's just going to take you 3 taps and a couple seconds.

Once you have installed QuickScroll, simply tap 3 times anywhere on the page and a dialog will show up. Drag the green box up and down to quickly go wherever you want on the page.

If you're browsing a PDF document, tap 3 times and a dialog will appear. If you know what page you want to go to, enter it and it will take you there immediately.

I think QuickScroll is another must-have application utility that should be available on the iPhone by default.

Give it a try. You will love it.

AttachmentSaver Saves Your Email Attachments to Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 29, 2009

AttachmentSaver is a new application that adds an extension which allows you to save your email attachments on your iPhone. This feature should be available by default but for some obscure reasons, Apple hasn't deemed it necessary...

AttachmentSaver gives you the ability to download attachments of all types, whether supported by the Mail.app or not, and save them into a folder on your iPhone disk.

Files are downloaded to ~/Library/Downloads (/private/var/mobile/Library/Attachments) and it's recommended to install iFile to access the attachments you download.

This app is available from the Cydia Store for $1.99.

Weekly iPhone Wrapup: New iPhone Feature, Vonage, Jailbreaking, iPromoCode

Sébastien Page ∙ August 9, 2009

That was a very quiet week for the blog. I am out of town for the next 3 weeks so I'll do my best to post once in a while but you shouldn't expect great quality articles...

New iPhone Feature Spotted

It’s a little detail but I don’t think it ever was documented. On 2.x, whenever you were connecting your iPhone to a free Internet access requiring you to agree to some TOS, you first had to open Safari and agree to the TOS from there. Now you can do that directly from inside the app that needs Internet access.

Set Up Vonage On Your iPhone

There is a way to get Vonage right on your iPhone and I'm showing you exactly how to do that.

8.43% of iPhones Are Jailbroken. Are You One of Them?

According to the report, 8.43% of iPhones are jailbroken. This number seems to have gone up since the previous week when it was only 8%.

Get iPhone Apps Promo Codes With iPromoCode

iPromoCode is a new application available in Cydia that lets you find promo codes for iPhone applications. I really like the concept of this app but unfortunately, it is very poorly implemented…

iPromoCode Hooks You Up With Free iPhone Apps

Sébastien Page ∙ August 8, 2009

iPromoCode is a new application available in Cydia that lets you find promo codes for iPhone applications. I really like the concept of this app but unfortunately, it is very poorly implemented... After launching the app, you basically have 2 options available: Refresh, and Redeem App.

"Refresh" simply refreshes the screen to display a promo code for a random app, and I think that's the first weakness of iPromoCode. Rather than refreshing and displaying a random app, it would be much better if you could browse all promo codes available.

The second downside of this app is that you don't know what you get. It tells you the name of the application for which you can have promo codes but you don't have any other information about this app (no description, no screenshot, nothing, nada, zip).

The second option available to you is to redeem the app directly from your iPhone. Once again, that is poorly implemented and just didn't work when I tried iPromoCode.

iPromoCode has a lot of potential to be a very cool application, but it's not there yet.

Are You One of the 8.43%?

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated October 9, 2018

I just read an interesting post on JAIB about a Pinch Media report on the percentage of jailbroken iPhones. According to the report, 8.43% of iPhones are jailbroken. This number seems to have gone up since the previous week when it was only 8%.

I don't think these numbers are really surprising. Even though Apple really doesn't want us to, it is giving us more and more reasons to jailbreak and finally get access to applications or features that are not allowed in the App Store.

I am really proud to say that within the last few weeks, I have directly or indirectly helped hundreds of people jailbreak their iPhones.

Check out this page for more information on how to jailbreak.

Undocumented Feature Spotted in iPhone OS 3.0

Sébastien Page ∙ August 6, 2009

One thing that makes me like an airport right away is free wifi. Although 3G speed is great on the iPhone, I still think it doesn't compare to wifi.

As my fiancée and I were flying out of San Diego yesterday, I used my iPhone to go online to tweet, read the news and do some last minute emailing.

I know that San Diego's airport has free wifi but I kinda forgot about it. I took my iPhone and launched the mail.app, which immediately returned the following screen asking me to agree to the TOS.

It's a little detail but I don't think it ever was documented. On 2.x, whenever you were connecting your iPhone to a free Internet access requiring you to agree to some TOS, you first had to open Safari and agree to the TOS from there.

Now you can do that directly from inside the app that needs Internet access.

As I said above, it's a detail but it just makes life a little easier.

How to Get Vonage on Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

I originally signed up with Vonage because it was inexpensive and it gave me unlimited calls to France (and other countries) where all my friends and family still are. As my fiance and I are planning our one-year trip around the globe, I started looking into getting Vonage on my iPhone so I can make calls from my iPhone, either over 3G or wifi, using my Vonage plan.

There are many reports showing that Vonage is currently working on an iPhone app but it's probably not going to happen anytime soon. By digging a little more, I found an article that shows you how to set up Vonage on your iphone by using your Vonage line as a SIP line.

First, you have to find out your Vonage SIP credentials. To do so, open your internet browser from your house and point it to:

https://im-config.vonagenetworks.net/config?&login=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&type=1003

Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD by your Vonage account username and password.

This is going to open a page with a bunch of information. The information we need is at the top of the page. You are looking for something like that:

[SIP 2.0] ProxyUserName=iphoner ProxyUserPassword=Y0ur1Ph0ne5ux ProxyDomain=a.vonim.com ProxyPort=10000

Next step is downloading an SIP client for your iPhone. I recommend using Fring as it can be downloaded for free from the App Store. If your iPhone is jailbroken, you can also download SIPhone from Cydia.

Launch Fring then sign up or login with your existing account. Go to More > Add-ons > SIP > Other.

Fill out the required fields as follow:

User ID = ProxyUserName Password = ProxyUserPassword Proxy = a.vonim.com:10000

Save these settings. You can now place a call from your iPhone using your Vonage account, assuming you have wifi connectivity. If your iPhone is jailbroken, download VoIPover3G from Cydia and you will also be able to use Vonage from your iPhone over 3G.

It works great but for some reason, I can't have it place international calls. Every time I try to call France, it gives me an error message. It's still pretty awesome that you can use your Vonage account to place calls for free over wifi and 3G.

That's a pretty sweet hack, eh! What do you think?

Sorry About That

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

I wanted to apologize to all of you guys for the ups and downs on the site today.

Most of you won't notice anything but if you've spent a few minutes on the blog and tried to browse various pages today, you probably saw the "Internal Server Error" message.

There are 2 reasons for this. For one, my host is crap. For two, I am working with an amazing developer on a BIG project for the site. Those of you who follow me on Twitter might already have seen some of it although it hasn't been officially announced.

I have been super busy all day working with this dev to make things happen, which is why there won't be any new article on the blog today.

On top of that, I have been notified by my ex-girlfriend that she's going to put her cat "the Nos" to sleep. I'm going to go to the vet with her soon. Nos was my favorite cat ever and I am sure he will go to Cats Heaven ;)

I felt like sharing this info with you because I think it's very important.

Stay tuned!