Apps

mQuickDo Brings App Switching to the iPhone (+10 Promo Codes)

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

When I first heard and tried mQuickDo, I wasn't really impressed at all. First, the description didn't highlight the real benefits of this application because the developers sell it as a "virtual home and power buttons for the iPhone". What the hell does that mean? Exactly! I tried mQuickDo and was very confused about what it did and how it worked. I quickly gave up on this app without giving it much more thoughts.

Then last week I read an article by fellow iPhone blogger Patrick Jordan at JAIB. Patrick's article described mQuickDo as what it really is: an app switcher for the iPhone. This is what really made me think twice about this app, and ultimately led me to give it another shot.

Originally, mQuickDo lets you set up gestures to perform predefined actions (ie. slide left to right to close an opened application; or slide right to left to shut off the phone, etc...) but to be honest with you, I think this is kinda useless.

The real power and most exciting feature about mQuickDo is the App Switcher. As its name suggests, the app switcher allows you to quickly switch between apps. You have to tweak the settings to customize the gestures to trigger the app switching, but once you got it to work properly, this is a real time-saver.

I have to admit that it takes time to get used to some of the gestures. To make it easier, I set up mQuickDo to launch the app switcher for all the predefined gestures, which means I am not using any of the other features of mQuickDo, but as I said above, I find them useless anyways.

The app switcher feature is pretty awesome. Add Backgrounder to this and you actually get a productivity booster that will allow you to multi-task and really get the most out of your iPhone.

mQuickDo is available from Cydia and comes with a 3-day trial period. After that, it will cost you $7.99 if you want to keep it. Although a little pricey, I still think mQuickDo is a must-have application and it undoubtedly makes it in my Top 10 list of favorite applications.

The developers of mQuickDo were kind enough to provide us with 10 promo codes for our loyal blog readers.

How to Win

You have to do 2 things to win one of the 10 promo codes:

Follow me on Twitter and Retweet this post by clicking here Leave a comment at the bottom of this page with your Twitter ID Download the mQuickDo free trial from Cydia

10 winners will be randomly selected and will be notified on Twitter sometimes next week.

Good luck :)

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PrivaCy Prevents These iPhone Apps From Spying on You

Sébastien Page ∙ August 25, 2009

Last week I wrote an article about how certain applications are spying on you and tracking some of your personal data. Although the practice is legal, it is nonetheless very controversial.

Thanks to the collaboration of Saurik, BigBoss, and the major companies tracking your apps stats, it is now possible to opt out of being spied on via an application appropriately named PricaCy.

Pinch Media realized this fact, and took the lead in contacting me regarding getting this feature out there to all the users of jailbroken devices: they care.

With BigBoss, we then contacted all of the other providers, getting not only their blessing, but also their technical expertise in disabling their systems.

The result is PrivaCy: a new Settings panel that allows you to selectively opt-out of sending anonymous usage statistics to each of these providers.

This extension was a team effort, and was able to be executed as quickly as it was thanks to the help and interest of the companies involved.

I am positively surprised to see how the major tracking providers were proactive and willing to address the matter by collaborating with Saurik and BigBoss.

If you're slightly concerned about your privacy, I suggest you download PrivaCy, which is available for free from Cydia. Hopefully, Apple will release a similar feature to allow the opt out from data tracking for non-jailbroken iPhones also.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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TwitVid Sends Videos to Twitter Directly From Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

TwitVid is a new application that allows you to send videos from your iPhone 3GS to your Twitter account.

TwitVid is very simple to use. Launch the app, select a video to upload or record a new one, tap "choose", add your tweet's text and that's it. It will send the tweet with a short link to your video.

When people click on the link, they are taken to TwitVid's website where they can watch the video, and even chat about it. The video and the chatroom can be embedded in any website, which I think is a really neat feature.

If people click on the video link from an iPhone (ie Tweetie), it will launch the video directly from the app and return to it at the end of the video.

I tried to upload the same video over wifi and over 3G. It took about 1 minute to upload a 1 minute video over wifi, while it took about 3 minutes to upload the same video over 3G. All in all, I think the upload time is very reasonable.

Below is the video embedded.

You can download TwitVid for free from the App Store.

Let me know what you think.

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Write Emails On Your iPhone More Quickly With FastMail

Guest Author ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

Being that I love to email out of my iPhone more than my computer, this particular little app called FastMail really caught my attention. While using it I felt more in control of my email composition creativity. Yes you already have the iPhone application for mail that comes built in and allows you to compose as you type offering optional words above the one being typed. However there are of course certain things that the mail app can't accomplish. You might struggle with having to retype the same long words over and over or if you’re like me, you might not be in favor of typing the word almost to completion before having the word offered to you.

Fastmail works similarly as the apple mail app except that you can see an entire list of words being offered for your use to the right of your current composition. Here’s the other kicker, you can set it to appear on the left side of your screen if you're left-handed! But keep in mind this has to be done at the beginning of the setup of the app. The controls and face of this app is very well put together in that there is no extras, it is very simple and easy to roam through it.

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TomTom Brings Turn By Turn GPS Navigation to the iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 11, 2018

xGPS kinda pioneered the turn by turn navigation for the iPhone but you have to admit it was a little buggy.

TomTom's co-founder demonstrated TomTom’s navigation software in combination with a specially designed car kit on the iPhone earlier today at the WWDC, and it looks good!

There is no cost information or release date announced yet but according to TomTom's website, we should learn more about it in the next couple weeks:

The TomTom navigation application for iPhone will be available via the Apple iTunes App Store, following the release of Apple’s OS 3.0 operating system. Details regarding pricing and availability for both the application and the TomTom car kit for iPhone will be made available in advance of the products’ launch later this summer.

As Engadget puts it:

We can't imagine this being cheap. You think TomTom wants a $19 app undercutting its $300 navigation systems? Doubtful.

Apparently, you'll be able to get a special car kit with it.

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Space Shuttle On Your iPhone

Guest Author ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

Laminar Research (developers of the popular X-Plane series for iPhone) has released another realistic iPhone app: Space Shuttle.  Space Shuttle is all about... you guessed it, the space shuttle.

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iPhone Apps From The TV Ads

Sébastien Page ∙ May 20, 2009

I rarely visit the App Store but yesterday I wanted to check out new apps so I opened the App Store from my iPhone and I noticed that there was a new section in the store called iPhone Apps From TV Ads. I don't know how long it's been here but I thought it was a good idea.

I also think it's a great opportunity for the showcased applications to gain further exposure. I wonder how the applications that appear in ads are chosen. I guess it's a mix of top rated, staff pick, and randomness...

Anyway, so now when wonder what this app you see on TV is called, go to the App Store and look into the 'iPhone Apps From TV Ads" section and you'll find out.

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