Month: October 2008

Where is Cydia from?

Sébastien Page ∙ October 8, 2008

For those of you that are not familiar with jailbreaking, Cydia is an open-source distribution platform created by Jay "Saurik" Freeman that is now automatically installed on your iPhone with the DevTeam jailbreaks such as QuickPwn and PwnageTool. Cydia is pretty much the equivalent of the App Store and lets you download, install and update applications developed by independent developers.

But where does this name come from? Cydia? Erica Sadun, who happens to be my all-time favorite iPhone blogger (she used to be with TUAW until they start screwing their writers over and is now working over at Ars Technica) wrote a very interesting post today about the origins of Cydia.

Cydia pomonella is the scientific name for the coddling moth, which as Freeman writes "is what we often think of the as the stereotypical apple worm." He adds, "I felt the name was fitting." It's certainly easier to say than Rhagoletis, after Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot.

Freeman regularly gets e-mails from people asking how to say the name. He jokes that they write "'Please help me win this bet I have with my friend: is Cydia pronounced see-dee-uh or sigh-dee-uh.' It's always two incorrect choices." For the record, the correct pronunciation is sih-DEE-uh. Or it is at least for the moment. "I don't actually speak or study Latin, but I am a linguistics student." He adds that he's open to corrections from Latin experts.

Read the full post here.

How does the first Google Android phone compare to the iPhone?

Sébastien Page ∙ October 8, 2008

There was a pretty good article yesterday on the NY Times about how Android will compare to the iPhone. The writer, Tim Haddock, actually compares the first Google Android phone, the G1, to the iPhone. Here are some interesting points about the G1 worth looking at:

touchscreen - just like the iPhone, except it doesn't support multi-touch trackball flip-out Qwerty keyboard - business users will like that removable batteries - I'm jealous 3-megapixel camera - I'm even more jealous 25% thicker and nearly 20% heavier than the iPhone 3G - that's big! no headset jack! - how am I supposed to listen to music with that? You'll need a special headphone adapter to connect to its proprietary design. maximum memory slot of 8GB - haha. no sync capability with iTunes or even desktop computer at all! apps available via Android Market - much better than the highly restricted App Store.

The G1 launches on October 22 and will cover only 22 markets in the US, due to T-Mobile 3G poor 3G coverage. This is supposed to improve with time. For information, AT&T's 3G network covers more than 275 markets.

Although I am very excited about Google Android, I will not be rushing to buy the new G1. I will wait a few months (years?) until Android is available on other phones and offers more to me than these poor features.

You may read the full article here.

Nightmare Before Christmas theme

Sébastien Page ∙ October 8, 2008

Nothing less than 2766 files contained in this 13.9MB download. No wonder why it took over 5 minutes to download this Nightmare Before Christmas theme from Cydia. But what a great theme it is! I mean this iPhone theme has definitely been thought through and designed with the greatest care.

I downloaded and activated the theme in WinterBoard. My iPhone automatically resprung and when I tapped on the screen to "unlock" the iPhone, I was greeted with a "Well, well, well, look who's here". I haven't seen the movie but I'm pretty sure it's a line from it. Pretty cool, yet pretty scary when you don't expect it!

A few seconds after installing this theme, I received an email and instead of having the default new email sound, this theme added a music from the movie. At this point, I was still impressed by the quality of the theme and I decided to explore more of the sounds. I sent and received text messages, emails, new voicemails, and for every of these actions, a special music would play. That's nice but it gets very annoying in the long run. I mean, I really don't want to hear a 5 second music every time I send or receive a text message...

A cool feature of this theme is that when you open an application, it displays an image while the application is opening. Since firmware 2.1 is pretty laggy, it's nice to have an image instead of a blank page when trying to launch an application...

A couple hours after installing this theme, I had a quick look at my battery life.... Wow it was half way gone. These cool sounds are nice but they will sure kill you battery.

All in all, it's a great theme and like I said earlier, every little detail of it was perfectly done. Unfortunately, features like the musics playing every time you do something on the phone not only annoy me, but they also drain my battery. These are 2 deal breakers.

Using your iPhone to Record Programs to your DirecTV DVR

Guest Author ∙ October 7, 2008

I was looking at a TV Guide app in the store the other day and I thought it was pretty cool, but because I am a DirecTV customer, it is often difficult to find TV Guides that are not aligned with zip codes but with Satellite Regions.

I remembered that the DirecTV page posted a great guide. So I tried to navigate to there page with my iPhone. I could see the page, but it wasn't formatted for the iPhone so it was really difficult to navigate. After a little bit more research I did identify a DirecTV mobile phone page that seems to work well on the iPhone.

This web app doesn't let you browse the DirecTV Guide, but it does allow you to do something even cooler. You can use this site to search and setup your DirecTV DVR to record shows remotely. You can also sign up to see Pay Per View shows and set up series. If you have more than one DVR, it lets you pick which ones to use to record a show.

This is a really cool feature because if you are away from home and you hear about a show you want to record you can now use this page and your iPhone to set it up remotely.

If you have a DVR, just go to the DirecTV.com page and create an account. Then navigate to the mobile compatible page and login.

It has a very basic menu, but pretty much lets me do what i wanted. It has "Search For Shows", and a "Manual Record" feature. No guide, but search is pretty useful.

The Search for Shows feature lets you enter a search string. It display a list of matching shows. Pick one, and it gives you a description and the option to "Record Once", "Record the Series", or see more show times. I have multiple receiver, so when i pick "record", I get a list of receivers. Once i pick the receiver, i can give it a recording priority. Since I can't see the list of what is already set up, I can say "record if possible" or "Definitely Record this".

The Manual Record feature lets you pick a channel, date, time, duration to record just like recording on your old faithful VCR. This is usually only useful when the guide data is not accurate, but neat to have.

Also, I had high hopes for the login part, because the sign in form has a "Remember Me" checkbox, but it doesn't seem to work. Each time I go to the web page, I have to enter it from scratch.

Using Backgrounder to Speed up Categories

Guest Author ∙ Updated February 5, 2016

I love Categories and use it to organize my apps on my iPhone but it takes forever to load a folder, especially when it contains a lot of apps. Two recent application upgrades have really helped with this problem.

Backgrounder allows you to run processes in the background and the new version of Categories(2.2) takes advantage of this new functionality. By using the Background feature, you can set up folder by folder background loading. This makes it lightning fast to open folders. In normal iPhone mode, open the folder you want to speed up. Press and hold the menu button until you see the message, "Backgrounding Enabled". It will exit the folder but opening it again will be really fast. Press and hold the menu button again while the folder is opened to turn it off.

iPhone Humor Series

Guest Author ∙ October 7, 2008

I am going to start posting a different piece of iPhone humor each day to lighten things up.

This has been out there for a while, but it is one of my favorites. Although I warn you it is hard to think of your iPhone being the victim of such brutalization.

Finally a good TV guide application

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 27, 2019

I've been waiting for this since June 29, 2007; a good, useful, TV application for iPhone! It seems that i.TV [iTunes Link] made my wish come true, and even more...

Before i.TV (pronounce "i dot tv"), I used the mobile version of TVGuide.com and although it served its purpose, it was a very unpractical web app. Then came What's On, for which I had big hopes. My hopes just remained hopes as What's On wouldn't have some basic features such as setting channels as "Favorites".

All my past frustrations are now long gone thanks to i.TV. I downloaded this FREE app this morning from the App Store and instantly fell in love with it. According to the company's website:

i.TV is a TV and movie guide for the iPhone and iPod touch.

i.TV helps users discover entertainment options by providing up-to-date information on television shows and movies. Users also benefit from feedback and information provided by other i.TV users who utilize i.TV’s community-focused features. These features enable customers to write reviews and give star ratings to visual media. In addition to this, i.TV allows users to directly access entertainment such as television previews and movie trailers through their iPhone or iPod Touch.

Let's see how it works...

American Dad theme for iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ October 7, 2008

Yesterday I talked to you about the VisLiX theme that I had installed on my iPhone for a few hours only. Still in my quest for the perfect theme, I downloaded this morning the American Dad theme from Cydia, without having much hope for it but I just wanted to see what it would look like.

I am not a big fan of the show but I was curious to see how this American Dad theme would render on my iPhone. Turned out to be ok but one problem I had (again) with this theme is that the icons don't match the apps (see images below).

VistLiX theme

Sébastien Page ∙ October 6, 2008

There was a new theme available in Cydia this morning called VistLix. Wondering what VistLix means? Well, looking at the screenshot below, you might be able to find out by yourself. VistLiX is actually a mix of Vista, Linux and OS X. Clever, isn't it?

So I installed this theme this morning, and although it looks pretty cool with its 80 something icons, status bar, and wallpaper, I can't get used to it. It's just too overwhelming for me as I usually like my themes clean with very soft lines.

Another thing I don't like about this theme is that the icons are too confusing. I guess you can't tell from the screenshot below but I was lost in all these unfamiliar icons. The funny side of this theme was not enough to allow it to stay on my iPhone any longer so I had to say goodbye to it...

Have you tried this theme yet? If so, tell us what you think.

I helped create the iPhone page on AllTop.com

Sébastien Page ∙ October 6, 2008

Do you guys know AllTop.com? For information, A-list blogger Guy Kawasaki is backing up this company. But anyways, let's see how they describe themselves:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — “aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.

You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.”

Until last week, the iPhone section on AllTop was terrible so I decided to give them a little help. I got in touch with them and told them about the major iPhone sites out there. They listened to me and added about 15 websites to their selection, including iPhone Download Blog!

I am glad I was able to participate in the iPhone community's life.

How to replace the iPhone font

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

[digg-me]Clear, legible, and ordered, Helvetica was developed in 1957 at the Haas Foundry in Munchenstein, Switzerland. It gained immediate, worldwide acceptance among typographers and designer folk. Today it's everywhere. All over London and New York, on storefronts, street signs, subways, planes and trains, income tax forms, postboxes and BMWs, print and television ads, billboards, letterhead, everywhere. And there are no half-measures: designers either love it or hate it.

Helvetica is the default font on the iPhone and it kinda bores me so I chose to replace it with another font. I did some research online to find a way to replace the font on my iPhone and although I thought I would find many sites talking about it, I didn't...

However, I came across James is bored and found a way to replace Helvetica with a font called NeoTech. Note that this will not replace the font called Marker Felt, which is used for the iPhone's Note application (we'll get to this later).

How to replace the default iPhone font with NeoTech:

Download NeoTech Font iPhone 2.0 and extract it to your desktop Connect to the iPhone with iPhoneBrowser or WinSCP Navigate to the following folders on your iPhone and backup the following files, adding .bak at the end (this is just a precautionary measure, you don't ever wanna lose your original files) /System/Library/Fonts/Cache/Helvetica.ttf /System/Library/Fonts/Cache/HelveticaBold.ttf Copy the files you extracted in Step 1 in these same folders Restart your iPhone

This hack doesn't replace the ugly Marker Felt font used for iPhone Notes though. I did a lot of research and didn't find any trick to replace this font. Before the 2.0 firmware, this workaround used to work but it doesn't work on 2.0 or 2.1. There is also another workaround to get Arial for your Notes but it's just a workaround... meaning that it's not a real fix to your problem as you have to manually change the Notes settings every time you create a new note.

Please let me know if any of you guys know how to permanently replace the Notes font. Thanks.

Thank you to our readers

Sébastien Page ∙ October 6, 2008

What a nice surprise I had this morning when I checked my Google Analytics account and noticed that for the first time ever, we passed the bar of the 10,000 visits in one day. Within the last few week, iPhone Download Blog constantly grew at a pretty fast pace and that's thanks to you!

We usually average between 6,000 and 8,000 visits per day but yesterday was a all-time high with 10,100 visits. So on behalf of the iPhone Download Blog team, I want to thank you all for helping us grow. I'd also like to remind you that we are very open to discussion and that we're ready to cover any story you'd like to hear about.

We're also looking for new writers to come join the 3 of us. If you are passionate about the iPhone and would like to talk about it on a regular basis, please contact us.

Thanks again.

Sebastien