Well it’s Monday and most of you are returning to work or school and gearing up for the week ahead. What’s going to help, you ask? Well another theme post from your friends over at iDB of course! In this series we lay out instructions on how to turn that boring stock Lock or Home screen into a beautifully crafted setup. The Lock screen has been neglected by Apple long enough so lets make it feel special for once.
Let’s get started…
Evidence supporting a call for Apple to produce a budget-minded smartphone keeps mounting. The latest evidence: Android's market share lead over iOS in the US is widening, according to research concluded in February. What once was a 2-point domestic lead for Google's mobile software in 2012 has stretched to 8 points.
Android now has just over half of the US smartphone market with 51.2 percent of sales, according to a survey by Kantar Worldpanel. That is a gain from 47 percent during the same period a year ago. Apple's iOS is in second place in the U.S. with 43.5 percent of smartphone sales, a 3.5 percent slip from 2012, according to Kantar...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kusQK7PCXTM
Nuance, which supplies Apple with the voice-recognition engine behind Siri, on Monday introduced a new voice-driven advertising platform. No, this isn't one of the April Fools' Day jokes hitting the web today. They are calling it Voice Ads and with a reason, too: the system gives advertisers an opportunity to literally create conversations with consumers through the power of voice recognition and interactivity.
We're not sure how users will react to mobile ads that talk back to them, but we'll admit that the addition of voice - when used the right way - could enhance mobile advertising by going beyond the limitations of mobile devices' limited screen real estate...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-P6jEMtixY
Today is April Fools' Day so don't take everything you read at face value. Practical jokers as they are, Google is pulling a bunch of April Fools' Day pranks so a lot of people will find it difficult to read today's headlines without disbelieving them. Google's jokes range from the Google Nose Beta button in search ("Smelling is believing") to Google Treasure Maps, a new mapping product to help you find treasure in cities to YouTube closing down after eight years.
They aren't the only ones, other brands pulled pranks of their own. Heck, companies are even issuing press releases with April Fools' Day announcements. I've included more stuff right after the break, like Gmail Blue, a Google Maps Street View feature which lets you decorate your house with themes, a Lumia-branded microwave oven, the Samsung Eco Tree and lots more...
In the summer of 2011, jailbreak developers participated in a cool project called tweak week. Several devs each took a week, and released one new jailbreak tweak everyday. It went on for 3+ months, and we got several great tweaks out of it.
One of those tweaks was ToDoNotes, by TwitkaFly developer moeseth, which added a notepad to the Spotlight page that talked with the Notes app, giving you quick access to your memos. And version 2 just came out with iOS 6 support...
Buried deep in the iOS Settings app, at the bottom of the Accessibility window, is a feature called AssistiveTouch. Apple built this tool to make its mobile devices more accessible to users with impaired physical or motor skills.
Enabling the feature adds a tiny icon to your device's screen that typically, when tapped, opens a menu with shortcuts for a variety of system functions. But with the new MyAssistive jailbreak tweak, you can change that...
If your device's battery life is a major concern for you, there are a number of jailbreak tweaks out there that will help you monitor and get the most out of it. There's BatteryDoctorPro, Battery Status and BattSaver, to name a few.
Today we're adding another one to the list, a new tweak called iBatteryInfo. This simple utility offers up all kinds of useful data, like whether or not your battery is fully charged, when plugging in and unplugging your iOS device...
Tiny Troopers made its mark on the App Store in June of 2012. The battle-heavy app mixed team-up gameplay with shoot-em-up action. The minuscule military men are back for more and Tiny Troopers 2: Special Ops is an excellent follow-up to its predecessor.
When I first started playing Tiny Troopers, the one thing that stood out to me the most was the use of military-related catch phrases. Every time a little soldier takes down an enemy, you’ll hear him squeak out a line like, “Hurrah!” or, “Open fire!” It was the thing that drew me in. Those little tough guys are so dang cute.
Tiny Troopers 2 incorporates all of the cuteness of the original while maintaining the manliness you’ve come to expect of war games. You’re not going to be sniping fools a la “Call of Duty,” but you can still get your shooter game action fix...
Like every Sunday, we bring you the stories that were the most popular on iDB during this past week. Whether it is a news piece, an editorial, a tutorial, a new jailbreak tweak, or an accessory review, we sum it all up in one convenient place.
If you like what you're reading, please make sure to spread the love by sharing our posts on your favorite social network.
We're usually hanging out a lot on Twitter and Facebook, more rarely on Google+...
P0sixninja says he’s discovered exploits for next jailbreak Popular jailbreak backup tool iBye updated for iOS 6 Spice up your device’s unlock animation with LiveWire Change up the look of your icon badges with Badge Customizer Quickly enable the Passcode on your device with TapTapPass Wake up to the date, temperature and more with Wake Info T-Mobile finally lands the iPhone: available April 12, $99 upfront What you need to know about Apple’s tweaked A1428 iPhone 5 Comparison of iPhone ownership cost on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile Jailbreak hack lets you enjoy T-Mobile LTE speeds on your iPhone 5 webOS-inspired iOS 7 multitasking concept Sentry’s new App Switching concept makes it easier to move between apps If Samsung made an iWatch…Of course, don't forget to listen to the latest episode of our podcast, Let's Talk Jailbreak:
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Folks who are fans of the LockHTML jailbreak tweak will be happy to hear that version 2 is now available. The tweak, which is developed by Busche, hit Cydia last week with new code, new features and a number of improvements.
For those unfamiliar with LockHTML, it is (was?) a jailbreak utility that allows you to customize the appearance of your Lock screen with a clock-hider and themeable HTML widgets. And version 2.0 adds a host of new options...
Over the past few days, several well-known iOS and jailbreak developers have reported that they've been hit with an iMessage DoS, or denial of service, attack. The attacks feature a series of spam messages that end up crashing the iMessage app.
The list of affected developers include Sn0wBreeze creator iH8sn0w, Zephyr creator Chpwn, and others. And the perpetrator has been tracked to a Twitter account involved in selling things like provisioned UDIDs and Siri proxy servers...
Despite the ongoing legal wrangling over mobile technology patents, Samsung to this date remains the only supplier of Apple-designed processors which drive iPhones, iPads and iPods. The South Korean conglomerate has been exclusively building these chips according to Apple's blueprints at its multi-billion dollar fabrication facility in Austin, Texas.
However, recent chatter increasingly points to rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) possibly stealing the Apple contract from Samsung as Apple looks to further distance itself from its chief rival.
A new report from South Korea alleges Apple has now actually excluded Samsung as a future mobile processor supplier. In turn, TSMC, which is the world's largest independent semiconductor foundry, may produce a significant portion, even possibly all of mobile chips for Apple's next-gen iPhone 6 to be released in 2014...