News, apps, rumors, hacks and cracks
When I was a kid, I loved doing the cryptogram puzzles in the puzzle magazines. My mom would buy them for me chock full of crosswords and word searches and other types of puzzles and I would always do all the cryptograms and hand the magazine off to my little sister.
For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, cryptograms are word puzzles where they give you an encoded phrase, idiom or quote. Then using a simple substitution cipher, you, letter by letter, translate the quote.
When I saw the new game, Cipher [iTunes Link] I thought cool. I downloaded it and couldn’t stop playing for an hour.
The app starts you off with a tutorial where it gives you an easy two word phrase to start off with and gives you tips, like look for contractions, double letters, one letter words, etc.
They also supply Hints if you get stuck (I would never use them, honestly 
The game supplies you with a six categories of phrases from Arts & Literature, Famous Quotes, History, Science and Technology, Sports, and Religion.
The new Sonos[iTunes Link] Controller for iPhone app has really got me thinking about all the cool things we are going to be able to do with the iPhone. I’ve compiled this list of things you can manipulate with your iPhone.
Delphi has come up with a really cool app that lets your lock and unlock your car, power automatic doors, and even remote start your car. Although it is just a concept, it was demo’d at CES 2008 working with a GMC Acadia vehicle. It works with a blue-tooth enabled key fob that can work from up to a mile a way. This software also allows users to monitor and control several aspect’s of a vehicle’s system, including temperature, tire pressure, gas levels, oil levels, and can detect break ins.
I already wrote about controlling your DirecTV DVR to setup recordings, but you can also control Tivo interface.
The clever folks at UC Berkeley have developed a system to issue commands to unmanned aerial vehicles using a device we all know and love: the iPhone.
While the iPhone is specifically restricted from piloting the drones themselves, the team uses Mobile Safari on the iPhone to enter coordinates and select tasks for its airborne fleet. A web server then relays the tasks to the aircraft mid-flight.
The video shows, in real time, an exercise where a remote-controlled airplane is instructed to photograph a particular area underneath it. The photo is then transmitted wirelessly back to a workstation at ground control.
There have been several different home automation applications for the iPhone. iPhone Home Controller lets an iPhone User set up a home automation scheme using x10 automation hardware and a Safari/iPhone/iTouch optimized web interface controller. Crestons Home Automation iPhone Application elegantly enables wired home owners to control lighting, temperature and all sorts of other things via WiFi or 3G, at home or anywhere else in the world. Users can even program in settings for multiple houses, enabling them to turn the AC on in Orlando while blasting the heat in Jackson Hole. You can get the source code for a home grown X-10 iPhone app as well.
You can even regulate the bubbles in your whirlpool tub with an iPhone. Now that is luxury.
A guy having fun figured out how to use the iPhone to control his RC Car. He set up an interface and leveraged the accelerometer to steer it.
Sonos is a wireless digital music player that plays digital music files from your PC or networked hard drive anywhere in the home. The Sonos Controller for iPhone™ is a free application that turns your iPhone (or iPod® touch) into a full-fledged Sonos Controller. I am really excited because I have been eyeing their system for years but didn’t want to spend the $900. Their new iPhone app will let me buy just the ZonePlayer Base and I can use our iPhones and iTouches to control it around the house.
Remote, the well known free Apple app that lets you control iTunes and pipe music throughout your house. I described how to do this here.
There are iPhone Applications that use your iPhone / iTouch touch as new generation midi controller for your favorite audio DAW or VJ performance tool. iTM MCU [iTunes Link] is the latest iTM release Mackie Control Emulation for your iPhone or iPod touch ITMMidi [iTunes Link]. ProRemote [iTunes Link] is a product that runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses your existing wireless network to control professional audio products such as Digidesign’s ProTools and Apple’s Logic Music production systems.These apps free you up so that you can sit at your instrument and make changes to your setup without stopping and walking across the room every few minutes.
There are several apps that let you remotely control your home or work computer with your iPhone. Jaadu VNC [iTunes Link], formerly known as Touchpad Pro, lets you wirelessly control your PC or Mac through your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can use it to advance slides in a presentation, control your media center, check e-mail — whatever a regular touchpad and keyboard can do. It’s got various features that you really have to see to believe. With ScreenView, you can now see what’s happening on your screen and control your computer even if you’re miles away. Watch the video to learn more! It is a bit pricey at $24.99 but a lot more expensive that one of these presentation remote controllers they sell in office supply shops. Also available in the App Store are Mocha VNC, and Mocha VNC lite. If you’ve jailbroken your phone, you can use Cydia to get Veency, a very robust useful VNC application to reverse this, i.e., control and view your iPhone from your computer.
Now that Wifi digital picture frames are becoming more available, I expect to see more of this, but right now I could only find one company that let you do this: Control your digital picture frame with your iPhone. eStarling frames lets you use the application by SeeFrame [iTunes Link], to send photos from your iPhone to wifi connected picture frames.
We have reviewed several different Video to iPhone converters on this blog, but I thought this product, Handbrake, is worth a mention. It did a pretty nice job and you have to love the price. Free!
HandBrake, by a group called Handbrake Devs, is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X 10.5, Linux and Windows 2000/XP/Vista. You can get it from their web page.
I converted one of my favorite movies, Grosse Pointe Blank to my iPhone. All in all it took about 45 mins to do the conversion, but it looks pretty nice. I will definitely start these in the future before I go to bed.
I just downloaded Google Earth and so far it seems pretty nice. It takes advantage of both the Accelerometer and the GPS in the iPhone 3G. It is stunning. Tilting the iPhone allows you to move through the terrain and works pretty well. The GPS allows you to find your current location and see the Panoramio geolocations around you. And although not a replacement for Google Maps because you can’t see the street names, it is pretty cool.
Its at the App Store [iTunes Link]. Here is a link to the YouTube video demonstration.
Here is what the Google Blog had to say:
Even before we introduced Google Earth back in 2005, the team had long dreamed of being able to carry the Earth around in your pocket. Well, today that dream becomes a reality as we introduce Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch. With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of our 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.
With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the ‘Location’ feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local SearchIt’s available today in 18 languages and 22 countries in the iTunes App Store. To learn more, check out this video tour and read the blog post on the Lat Long Blog
If you would like to silence an incoming call, just press the sleep/wake button on the top of the phone. If, instead, you would like to send the call directly to your voicemail, press this button twice.
A lot of times you want to automate dialing a series of numbers. We do this all the time for calling cards, extensions, etc. For example, I have a telecom number at work and I want to dial the main number, wait a second or two and then dial the passcode for me. On my blackberry it was an X to insert a pause, but on iPhone it is a comma. Here is how it looks in my contact: 18005555555,,1234567. The two commas created a long enough pause for me to make this work for me.
Instead of calling regular 411 to get information (and an extra charge on your phone bill), Google by voice by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 to get a street address or phone number. Some Lifehacker readers say GOOG 411 works better than others; if you haven’t tried it, here’s a YouTube clip (courtesy of Google) on how to give it a try
Do you have people calling you that you want to ignore? Create a silent ringtone and make a contact for them and set the ringtone to silent.
If you’ve got automated phone marketers or political campaigns or debt collectors ringing your phone at all hours, trick the system into thinking your phone’s dead. Add the U.S. Special Information Tone signal for “vacant circuit”to the beginning of your voicemail greeting to automatically unsubscribe your phone number from bot call lists.
If you are roaming and visual voicemail is unavailable, you can call your own phone number and get your voicemail the old fashioned way.
to avoid roaming charges, set your phone to “unconditional call forwarding” that way, your phone will NOT ring while you are roaming (calls go STRAIGHT to voicemail). to do that, follow these instructions:
# On your phone, dial *#62# and click Send.
# Phone number of your voicemail will be displayed.
# Write down the number (including +1)
# Dial **21*+1xxxyyyzzzz*11# and hit Send. +1xxxyyyzzzz is the number you wrote down previously to forward your calls automatically to your voice mail.
# Dial *#21# to verify that the new settings are active.
# When no longer desired, dial ##002# to reset back to normal.
If you want to save that favorite voicemail message to your PC so you can save it for all time, follow these steps.
/private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail/ to view the list of VM files. They’re saved as .AMR files, which QuickTime can play. Transfer them to your computer and you’re done.A very nice person created a web site that lets you associate a phone number with a web page so that you can create a Homepage bookmark that dials a number. Click here for instructions.
Most people have figured this one out, but I recently talked to two people lately who hadn’t put it all together. You can set up your phone so that pressing the home button twice (In Settings/General/Home Button/Phone Favorites) brings up your contact list Favorites list. This makes dialing a number simply pressing the home button twice and then selecting one of your favorites in the list.
Favorites are usually displayed in the order they’re added to the Favorites list. But they can be reordered in whatever way you want. It’s as easy as drag and drop.
I know that most people have figured this one out, but to be complete, and for Newbies, I thought it would be good to add this. When you press on a key and you hit the wrong letter, simply slide your finger to the right letter (without lifting it) and lift up to correct your mistake.
Instead of switching between letter and punctuation modes, slide your finger to the @123 button, but don’t release it until after sliding and releasing over the period key. The keyboard will switch back to letter input automatically. This makes a big difference. Be sure to measure the improvement of the slide method on your typing speed. This is also known as the McCallum method via Pogue. An otherwise, well documented shortcut, but addresses a very common complaint about the iPhone keyboard.
You can intentionally spell it’s incorrectly as “itsp” or “itsa” and “it’s” will be suggested. The A and P keys are ideally positioned for this kind of a shortcut. To get popular contractions filled in automatically just add a third repetitive letter to get Safari to suggest the contraction word. Examples include “helll” -> “he’ll” , “welll” -> “we’ll”, “weree” -> “we’re” etc.
Press the space bar from the .123 keyboard to return to the alpha keyboard. This can be good when you just need a number or a period. If you have the iPhone 1.1.1 update you can simply double-tap the space key to get a period.
On the keyboard press and hold the .com key to see other tld extensions based on your selected languages. For example in the U.S. you will see .net, .edu .org, with German you will see .edu .org .de, and with Spanish you will see .edu .org and .es in a pop up list.
Just like a real browser, it appears that the iPhone will allow you to type in most .com URLs without having to type the actual .com or pressing the button. Simply press Go after typing the site name and iPhone’s Safari browser should automatically insert the .com for you.
When typing in an email message, URL, web page text box, or any other item that requires the keyboard, you may make a spelling error. To fix any errors that aren’t at the tail end of the string you just typed, hold your finger over the text until a small magnifying glass appears. You will now be able to position the cursor at the proper location in order to make your change.
If you want to send the URL of a Web page you’re viewing to a friend, tap the Address Bar, then tap Share. A new e-mail message, containing the URL, will open in Mail; just choose a recipient(s), add any comments you want to include, and tap Send.
When not using a zoomed-in display, double-tap towards the bottom of the screen. The page will re-center around your tap. Make sure not to tap a link!
Double-tap the very top of the screen, just below the time display to pop back to the top of the page. (Thanks John C)
Double-tapping images in Safari zooms them to fit your iPhone display. If the picture is linked to a URL, this can prove a little tricky but it works great for non-linked images. Double-tap again to return to the unzoomed display. Using 2 fingers to double tap, and zoom a section of a web page will avoid the accidental clicking of links.
You can zoom text columns as well as pictures. Double-tap on the column to fit it to the display. Double-tap again to return out of the zoom. Not only does Safari zoom block-quoted text independently of regular text but if you move your finger after the first double-tap-to-fit, it interprets the next double-tap as a re-center page command rather than a return-to-previous-zoom. Smart.
After flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement. Don’t forget, you can also manually drag the screen display to reset the part you’re viewing.
This is probably one of the most-advertised Safari features (along with the flip-the-phone-on-its-side-trick) but it’s worth mentioning again. To zoom into a Safari page, put your thumb and forefinger on the screen and move them apart. To zoom out, pinch the fingers together after starting with them apart.
To peek at a link’s destination, touch and hold the link for a few seconds. You can also do this with images to see if they are linked. If a link appears and you don’t want to activate it, just slide your finger away until the destination text disappears.
The iPhone ‘locks’ your scroll to either vertical or horizontal only if the initial finger-slide is straight up/down or right/left enough. This can be very useful if you’ve got a skinny column of text with room on either side to get derailed. If not your initial scroll, using 2 fingers side by side will force vertical scrolling. Likewise 2 fingers stacked is horizontal.
Save images in Safari by tapping and holding on the image and you will see a “Save Image” button. Great feature if you want to use images you find online as your wallpaper.
Hold a letter for a popup of various versions of the character (i.e. to type España with the “ñ” simply hold “n” and simply slide/release to the appropriate character).
In Safari, hold a link to see the URL and site name.
When you have selected the number keypad (@123) while typing text in the Safari Address bar, pressing the Shift Key, changes the symbols you can select. In other keyboards (for example the Google search text box, the Shift key is replaced with a second symbol option key (#+=) but this doesn’t appear in the address bar. To access these symbols, just press Shift key and pick the character.
By default, Safari uses the Google search engine when you enter search text. However, you can change it to Yahoo but selecting the Safari Option in the Settings application. Pick this option and select the Search Engine option to change it to Yahoo.
I wanted to start a Tips and Tricks thread. I am compiling a bunch I have found on the net, and adding a few of my own, but please help us and add any ones that I didn’t list. If this works out, we can add it to our FAQ.
Navigate to the site in Safari. Click the + symbol to add a bookmark. Select the Add to Home Screen button to save the bookmark in your current app panel. Now use the normal methods to move it (press and hold until icons start to wiggle) to the desired spot.
This one’s a little more confusing. In the previous tip, I explained how to create an Icon for a bookmark, but following those steps, the image in the icon, however, is a screenshot of the page you were on. So if you want the icon to look a specific way, zoom in on a particular item on the page. Whether you want the website’s logo, or some picture on the page, simply zoom in on that part of the page before you press “Add to Home Screen”.
Note: This doesn’t work with all websites. Popular sites like Google have special icons for the iPhone’s home screen.
Moving icons from one panel to another can be a pain because the feedback lets you only move one panel at a time. If you are moving icons across multiple panels, use this trick. Once in wiggle mode, momentarily drag one of the icons in the bottom tool bar to the screen. Now replace it with the icon you want to move. Scroll to the target panel, and drag the icon out of the tool bar to its new location.
If you have a jailbroken iPhone or iTouch, install Categories. This tool lets you define folders (and associate icons to them) where you can use to contain your icons. Works pretty good.
I have a Hotmail Plus account so I have been able to access my hotmail account on my iPhone but I couldn’t access my folders and I had to go back to the web interface to permanently delete my mail. It was an okay solution so that I could at least read it on the go, but nFluent just came out with a new app mBoxMail [iTunes Link].
I installed it yesterday and I love this app. It is a bit pricey at $9.99 but I have to say that I didn’t even hesitate to buy it. It is very easy to setup and very intuitive and straightforward to use.
nFluent created a short demo on their web page so you can see how it works.
Here are the features of the software according to nFluent’s website:
Security
In today’s world, your information is only as secure as your email account. There is no middle man with m•Box Mail. This application speaks directly to the Windows Live Hotmail servers so you do not have to worry about your confidential information getting stored elsewhere. Your email, user name and password are not stored outside your mobile device. Passwords are securely kept in iPhone’s key store so they do not get into the wrong hands.Sync your Hotmail and Live Mail
Sync your Microsoft Hotmail or Live Mail to iPhone, including all the read and unread flags. All your folders also are available through m•Box Mail so you can stay organized even while on the go.Fast and Efficient
m•Box Mail is highly optimized for mobile platforms so access to your email is the best possible experience. For example, you will be amazed at how fast your email is synced onto your iPhone.Attachments
View emailed image attachments right on your iPhone.Hotmail Contacts
All your Hotmail contacts are available so addressing an email from your iPhone is now as easy as doing it from your computer.Send from Hotmail
m•Box Mail supports sending email from your Hotmail account. Your signature also can be customized on your iPhone for outgoing messages, and you can edit your sent messages folder – keep email for review or delete them as wanted.
iFoneTec Ltd released version 2.0 Cylay, a tool that helps you secure your phone and its data. Touted by the company’s web page as the “the first security application for the iPhone”, the company says the application will:
- Report current user phone number when iPhone is lost;
- Backup iPhone data to Cylay Server or Google Server;
- Delete all of iPhone information when iPhone is lost;
- Find lost iPhone location;
- Report Call history and SMS log of lost iPhone;
- Remotely control lost iPhone: forward SMS, and restore data to iPhone;
No setup Server and Client fee.
Free to update Cylay during in 1 year.
unlimited access Cylay server , backup, restore iPhone information to Cylay server and iPhone
unlimited the notices of warning unlimited to access Calllog,SMSlog, Contacts,Notes.
