Month: April 2012

Speak your “now playing” song with ‘MediaSpeak’

If you do a lot of running or jogging, then you probably find your iPhone in your pocket while you listen to your favorite motivational music.

Unless you have a meticulously designed playlist, chances are you'll run into a song or an artist that you don't immediately recognize. Instead of pulling your phone out of your pocket mid stride, wouldn't it be nice if your iPhone could tell you all about the song itself?

With MediaSpeak, now it can. Check out our video demonstration or the details...

Facebook iPad app updated for Retina display

It took them a while but Facebook has finally updated their iPad application with Retina display graphics. The update also brings a few new features as well as minor bug fixes.

Considering how big Facebook is, I find it slightly disappointed they take so long to release such a simple update. Anyway, we have listed the full change log below for those of you interested...

‘UsefulIcons’ goes live on Cydia

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChOMb2HlTwk[/tube]

UsefulIcons — a jailbreak tweak that we previewed last week — has gone live on Cydia.

The tweak adds a bevy of quick app icon shortcuts to your Home screen to control and toggle everything from WiFi to location services, respring, lock your device, and much more.

In all there are a dozen dynamic icons added to your Home screen courtesy of UsefulIcons. It can be had from Cydia's ModMyi repo for $0.99. Let us know what you think about it if you give it a go.

How to closely monitor your iPhone’s data with ‘Data Usage Monitor’

Data Usage Monitor is a cellular data monitoring tool available for $1.99 on Cydia's BigBoss repo. It's a tweak that has the ability to monitor and take specific actions once your cellular data reaches a user defined threshold.

On paper it looks to be a great tweak that could save you money from data overages, but as you'll see from our video walkthrough, it has a few opportunities for improvement before we'd deem it worthy of purchase...

Customize your Lock screen’s date with ‘LockDate’

Interested in customizing the look of your Lock screen's date display? Then look no further than LockDate — a tweak exclusively devoted to customizing the date reading on your iPhone's Lock screen.

With LockDate you can alter the date's font, color, style, and much more. There is also a provision to incorporate alternate calendar types and switch to them by swiping on the date with your finger.

LockDate certainly isn't a tweak that will find an audience with everyone one, but there's sure to be someone who is interested in this niche...

‘Transparency’ will make your app icons invisible

Transparency is one of those tweaks that allows you to do all sorts of things with respect to the look of your Home screen app icons. As its name suggests, the primary purpose is to make your icons transparent, or in many cases outright invisible.

Once installed, you'll receive a new settings panel in the Settings app that allows you to customize your app icons in a very granular way. Take a look at our video walkthrough for the detailed evidence...

PodControl: control your Music app from the Home screen

Controlling your Music app from the Springboard has been done before by the jailbreak community, but I guess the developer of PodControl felt they needed to put their own spin on the formula.

PodControl is a simple jailbreak tweak that places three buttons on your Home screen. The buttons consist of Next, Play/Pause, and Previous, and they perform just as one would expect.

Take a look inside for our video of PodControl in motion...

iPad 3 tops Consumer Reports tablet ratings, Retina display “a new benchmark in excellence”

Following a favorable ChangeWave Research study which put to rest so-called Heatgate, the influential United States consumer advocacy group Consumer Reports published this morning their definite findings concerning Apple's third-generation iPad tablet.

Just as they did with iPad 2, Consumer Reports says the new iPad tops their tablet ratings, stressing its high-resolution screen "establishes a new benchmark in excellence"...

Owners are loving their iPad’s Retina display, say Heatgate is a non-issue

In spite of way overblown 'problems' with the new iPad overheating, charging slower and having minor performance issues with native Retina gaming, owners are simply loving their new gadget, with a whopping 98 percent being satisfied or very satisfied with their purchase in a new ChangeWave poll.

The study, released this morning, polled two hundred owners of the new iPad, with three-quarter singling out the high-resolution 2,048-by-1,536 pixel Retina display as its defining feature...

Nokia lampoons the iPhone with web videos ahead of Lumia 900 launch

AT&T is saying its high-profile launch of the Nokia Lumia 900 in the United States will dwarf the iPhone. We'll see about that, but if a new Smartphone Betatest website is anything to go by, the Finnish cell phone giant isn't afraid at all to take pot shots at the carrier's 'hero' device.

Specifically, Nokia-posted videos on the site allude to the iPhone 4's perceived weaknesses, including the infamous cellular reception issue that culminated under the controversial Antennagate headline in 2010.

Thoughts on the new iPad

The new iPad has been out for nearly three weeks now, and most of the folks who are going to weigh in on the tablet, have. The Retina display looks great, and LTE is lightning-fast. But otherwise the consensus seems to be that it's not much different than its predecessor.

This has spawned quite the debate throughout the internet on whether or not iPad 2 owners should consider upgrading to the newer slate. And the, once again, consensus seems to be that it isn't. Does this mean that Apple is losing its touch? Read on for my thoughts...