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What The Duck? Here Is How To Add New Words To The iPhone Dictionary

Sébastien Page ∙ January 19, 2009

If you ever tried to type such words as "fuck", or "fucking" on your iPhone, you most likely ended up with "duck", and "ducking", if you didn't manually select the right word you wanted to type. While the iPhone is supposed to add words you typed several times to its dictionary, it doesn't work for some words (fuck being one of them).

My favorite iPhone blogger, Erica Sadun, posted a great tip about this issue over at Ars.

That database is stored in the "mobile" user directory, in /private/var/mobile/Library/Keyboard. The file is called dynamic-text.dat. It consists of a (mostly) plain text list of words that the iPhone has marked for special attention. Once a word appears in that list, the autocorrect feature updates itself and accepts those items as proper spellings. It's really convenient for jargon words and last names that are part of your normal typing but don't appear in the standard dictionary.

How to fix this? Simply go to Safari, and open a new browser (very important!). Now tap the Google search field and start typing the word you want to add to the dictionary. Tap "Google" to launch the search. Now you can close Safari and open your Notes app and type "fuck". No more "duck"! Your iPhone finally learned a bad word!

Clippy Finally Brings Copy/Paste To The iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ January 19, 2009

[digg-me]Copy/Paste is without a doubt the most wanted feature on the iPhone and I still don't understand why Apple hasn't given it to us yet... Last month, I talked about PasteBud, which was kinda bringing copy/paste to the iPhone through a combination of javascript bookmarks and web services. PasteBud definitely had its share of restrictions and it wasn't as great as I thought it would be so I gave up on it.

Now comes Clippy, a free application available in Cydia through the iSpazio repo. Let me tell you right away that, even though it's still a beta version, Clippy is the best app for copy/pasting on your iPhone so far!

How does Clippy work? After installing the application, type any text you want and simply hit the "123" button on your keyboard to show the copy/paste buttons. Tap "copy" and start selecting the text you want to copy. Tap "copy" again to end the selection. Then tap "paste" to paste this text where you want it to be.

Pretty simple, huh? It does have a few limitations though...

First, Clippy only works across the Notes, Mail, and SMS apps and that is a big issue to me. Most of the text I want to copy comes from the web and Clippy won't allow me (yet) to copy/paste snippets of text from Safari.

Second, Clippy will only let you copy one line at a time. For example, if you have a 5-line paragraph, you will only be able to copy one line from that paragraph. That is kind of an issue too because you most likely want to copy larger text areas.

Besides that, Clippy works great! Remember it is still in beta so it will most likely be improved and work for Safari and also let you copy several lines at a time.

UPDATE: Clippy got an update this morning and it now allows you to copy several lines at a time and use copy/paste anywhere you can use the keyboard (ie Maps, Twittfon, etc...). So most of my negative comments about Cippy are not valid anymore. Next step to make it the perfect copy/paste app is to allow it to copy text from Safari!

This Is My New Favorite iPhone Theme

Sébastien Page ∙ January 18, 2009

This is my new iPhone theme. I find it absolutely gorgeous! It's called Aladar and it's available through the MacCiti repo on Cydia. I tweaked it a little bit so it doesn't look exactly like the original, but it's still very close. You will need WinterBoard to activate this theme.

Do you like it?

RedSn0w Demo

Sébastien Page ∙ January 17, 2009

Dev Team member MuscleNerd showed us a demo of RedSn0w running on an iPod Touch 2G earlier today on Qik. The video reveals that RedSn0w is a patch that keeps the iPod Touch from detecting the jailbreak and stopping it from booting. Absolutely brilliant! RedSn0w is still not ready for a public release but as I said before, I am pretty sure it will be released before the end of the month.

EDGE: Interactive Puzzle Game

Guest Author ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Well I have been wanting for a game like this for a while. MobiGame has released their award-winning app EDGE [iTunes Link] for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I was one of the people that though this would not end up well on the iPhone when they saw the trailer.

But boy was I wrong! This game feels natural to the iDevices and you will get used to the controls almost immediately. Be warned; although the game offers a optional accelerometer control; this is not recommended. Touch controls work perfectly and are precise. The game features 26 levels. The game has a moving environment (as seen in the video) which makes the game experience richer. This is a puzzle game; but not the usual kind of game where you just guide the block to the goal. This game has a variety of game plays in which you must ride on moving blocks; hang on to them (called edge time) and more. And if that is not enough; this picture of you riding a robot made of blocks should win you over:

The dev told me that the next update (version 1.1) is coming, it will add :

- new levels - virtual keypad (optional) - accelerometer calibration - new tunes - global ranking

This app is currently $5.99 [iTunes Link] and definetly worth it. Highly recommended.

The RedSn0w Release Is Now Imminent

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

If you have followed this blog and the coverage of RedSn0w, I guess you'll be interested to learn about an update the Dev Team posted on its blog about RedSn0w.

Here is the news, in the Dev Team's own words:

Update 2: A picture is worth a 1000 words but a video might be better in this day of Photoshop and fake YouTube videos. So we’re thinking of doing what we did before Christmas for yellowsn0w — show a demo of the jailbreak on Musclenerd’s Qik account (announced via his twitter account over there on the right hand side). Since Qik provides a live chatroom right next to the video, we’ll probably be in there too right after the video’s over. Note: anybody posing as any devteam member on that chat right now is faking it. We won’t be on that chat except for a very specific time that we’ll announce. (We may possibly not even do the chat since it’s so ripe for abuse).

It's still not been officially said that RedSn0w is a jailbreak for the iPod Touch 2G but such screenshot kinda gives it away... If I had to make a guess on when RedSn0w will be released, I would say "before the end of the month". But hey, I'm right only 99% of the time...

iPhone App Store Downloads Chart

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

As you may have heard, the App Store got over 500,000,000 (yes, that's 500 millions!) downloads since it was launched last year.

Gizmodo has a pretty funny, yet true, chart breaking down the applications that have been downloaded in the App Store.

My iPhone talks to my Xbox 360

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 5, 2016

Well sort of. Between searching for new wallpapers on a daily basis, the alarm clock, Cydia, App Store, remotely controlling my computer, music, movies, and not to mention writing this article, you'd think I'd eventually run out of new uses for my iPhone, right? Wrong! With Flash and Sling mobile on the horizon for the #1 best selling phone of 2008, the iPhone platform is very hot right now and the list of cool and useful apps is hard to keep up with. Well, maybe I can help. At least I know I can help all of you Netflix users out there, even more so, you Xbox 360 users of that crowd.

Netflix is the largest online movie rental site, and you can rent either DVDs that are mailed out to you or stream them live on your PC, Xbox 360, or other Netflix compatible box. The library of titles you can stream instantly is smaller than that of DVDs you can have mailed to you but still very much worth the $8.95 monthly fee. You can only watch 1 at a time, but you can have up to 6 titles queued up and ready to go on your machine. Watch each one as long as you want, with no late fees, you just can not move on to the next movie until you have returned the previous.

Now, I told you that story, to tell you this one. I recently decided to give Netflix a try and knew I had seen iPhone applications in the App Store for the online rental service. There are actually a few of them that fit the description.

I knew I needed an app that would search movies available for my 'instant queue' or instant streaming, because for the most part I want to watch the movie right away. As I mentioned before, there are only a certain amount of movies available for instant streaming. Not all Netflix apps did that or made it easy to do. Instant Queue Add for Netflix [iTunes Link] did only that, but still didn't do it that well. This app only deals with movies available for instant streaming, but the interface is horrible. I could either choose from a list of popular choices, or do a search by name for a movie I wanted to watch. For the longest time I was thinking Netflix's library for instant streaming movies was ridiculously small, until I stumbled across a "see more like this" button, that unearthed a lot of movies that couldn't be viewed from the original 'popular' list.

Other options are Queuetastic [iTunes Link] by Timothy Schmitz and iPhlix [iTunes Link] by Brent Jensen. Both provide smoother interfaces with instant streaming video search options. iPhlix is a little more expensive at $2.99, rather than $0.99 like the others I tried out, but still worth it to me as I search for movies to rent on my iPhone at a red light on my way home from work. I choose 6 movies of 6 different genres and they are on my Xbox 360 when I get home. Out of those 6, my girlfriend looks at front and back case covers, reads synopsis and reviews, and decides on a movie, that is immediately available to watch on our big screen with complete playback controls. Playback is seamless a majority of the time. I did though, experience internet lag at one point, and a screen popped up that said "Your internet has slowed down, adjusting playback quality so you will not experience any more interruptions." Took 10 seconds, and I didn't encounter it again.

I have yet to try out Apple's rental service, or any other for that matter, but after watching 8 movies in 3 days, the Netflix service has already paid for itself. It does play in full screen across my 65" DLP, and the quality is quite good (for non HD). If you are a movie buff with an iPhone and the ability to stream video to a TV or computer in your house, the free trial from Netflix and one of the above mentioned iPhone apps will not disappoint. We plan on cancelling our 20$ cable movie package (were planning on anyways to save money), and hopefully this can take the place of those annoying trips to the video store at 11 o'clock at night.

I'm not an employee of nor was I paid by Netflix in any way. Always skeptical of the 1-3 wait periods for DVD delivery, I never thought twice about the service, but when my girlfriend told me about their instant streaming video, my ears perked up. Being able to browse and choose movies from virtually anywhere on my iPhone is also largely convenient, as it surely beats walking aimlessly around a BlockBuster. Even sitting on my couch in our movie room, it proved itself worthy. Additions and changes show up almost instantly, from my iPhone to my Queue screen on my Xbox 360.

It's funny because tonight when asked by little Brianna, who is just 8 years old and in search of answers, "How does the movie you pick on your phone, end up on our TV?" I had no idea how to respond. It was such a simple question, yet I did not know what to say. How do I play music off my iPhone through the car speakers? How do I play creepy sounds in the basement from upstairs to scare your brother? How do I pay bills, order Chinese food, and race high performance sports cars, all from my phone?

The truth is, I just can, because I own an iPhone. Because Apple re-invented the mobile phone. I know that because I saw the flurry of touch screen phones hit the market, shortly after the iPhone was announced. I know that because the iPhone made the Stylus an unattractive and unnecessary accessory of the past. I know that because Verizon, Blackberry, Google, and Amazon have all announced plans for mobile platform application stores, very similar to the App Store. I know that because, even at a base price of $199.99, the iPhone took over the #1 best selling cell phone of 2008, beating out the Motorola Razor that carriers were practically giving away. I know all of this, and my best answer for her was, "My iPhone talks to my 360." That's the best way I could explain it.

With tons of apps being released daily, it really is hard to keep up with the good stuff. If you are like me, and are fairly picky about what ends up on your spring board, check in a few times a week, and I will let you in on those rare apps that might make life a little bit easier, and are worth more than the "Check out what my phone can do" titles, that loose their appeal after a few well timed demonstrations.

P.S: Sebastien was right, the "Oh shit!" "What?!" "I forgot to shave!" gag while whipping out the iPhone with virtual electric razor on it is classic.

FreeYourPhone.org Petition To Make Unlocking, Jailbreaking Exempt From DMCA

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 27, 2017

Jailbreakers and unlockers unite! Now is the time to get heard and do something against to make jailbreaking and unlocking legal. Yes, in case you didn't know, jailbreaking your iPhone is technically illegal. If you're like me, you're probably thinking something alon these lines: "fuck that! I paid for this phone so I should be able to do whatever I want with it". Truth is you legally can't!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation created FreeYourPhone.org in order to collect signature from people like us to appeal to the Copyright Office:

Hundreds of thousands of cellphone owners have modified their phones to connect to the network or run the software of their choosing, and many more would like to. But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act poses a legal threat to phone users, even though the law was supposed to protect copyright owners and distributors of digital music and movies. This threat of litigation has driven consumers underground, stifling innovation and competition.

Now, you can support EFF's request that the Copyright Office grant an exemption to the DMCA that will protect phone users.

After submitting your electronic signature,

RedSn0w Through Safari?

Guest Author ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

I read an article saying that there is a flaw on desktop Safari:

I have discovered that Apple's Safari browser is vulnerable to an attack that allows a malicious web site to read files on a user's hard drive without user intervention. This can be used to gain access to sensitive information stored on the user's computer, such as emails, passwords, or cookies that could be used to gain access to the user's accounts on some web sites. The vulnerability has been acknowledged by Apple.

Now this got me thinking.... RedSn0w.com = on the fly jailbreak?

Think about it. If their website accesses your iPod and does the things necessary either to jailbreak on the go or to prepare for a jailbreak (Chronic Dev said that the exploit is in some sort of file in 2.1.1); this could be interesting and true.

This is one of the only reasons I can think of for the RedSn0w domain.

I do not know if mobile Safari has the same weaknesses as desktop Safari; but it could . There are some Safari exploits that actually crash your iPod (try this to crash yours if you dare!) ; I had to connect mine to the power to get it to restart. But whatever the Dev Team has up their sleeves should be interesting.

Steve Jobs Takes A Six Months Leave Of Absence From Apple

Sébastien Page ∙ January 14, 2009

Following his message telling he was feeling better a couple of weeks ago, it appears that Steve Jobs doesn't feel as good as he wants his stockholders to think...

Steve sent this email to Apple's employees today:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Still the same question lingering in my head... Why? Why does Steve keep pretending everything is going to be fine. Steve is dying and it is time to choose a new CEO. Apple needs a smooth CEO transition and now is your last chance, Steve. Tim Cook is obviously the top contender and most competent possible replacement.

Is Apple Becoming NOT completely Stupid About The App Store Policy?

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

The title of this post is a rhetorical question. The answer being quite obvious as Apple has started to approve 3rd party web browsing applications.

Within the last day, the App Store has seen the additions of at least 4 web browsers, priced from free to $2. Each browser has it's own little feature:

- Edge Browser (Free) - No navigation bars. - Incognito ($1.99) - Browse without leaving web history. - WebMate:Tabbed Browser ($0.99) - Queue up all the links you click on, then view them one by one when you're ready. - Shaking Web ($1.99) - A sophisticated algorithm to compensate for small hand shaking to allow for easier reading.

According to MacRumors:

This could open the door for mobile versions of prominent web browsers such as Opera and Firefox, though there remain other SDK restrictions that could prevent full-featured versions of those browsers from appearing. Still, Apple appears to be loosening some early restrictions they had applied to the App Store approval process.