iOS is certainly among best mobile operative systems, if not the best one. Still, some features, while pushed out by Apple can and do irritate large number of iPhone users. After all, iOS is used on millions of devices and users and their preferences certainly aren’t the same. Every one among us has things he prefers and those he more or less deplores. We are sure, most of us jailbreak our favorite Apple devices to upgrade features we enjoy and disable things we don’t enjoy as much. PullToDismiss is a jailbreak tweak which prevents the second kind of iOS features.
Whenever you try to read some message, be it an email or a humble SMS, iOS tends to display the virtual keyboard. This wastes half of your precious iPhone screen, making it a complicated task to read some longer messages. If you are someone who doesn’t like this, stay tuned as we show you how to prevent this from happening via this jailbreak app.
PullToDismiss is invented and created by well known jailbreak app developer Ryan Petrich, who is also the main force behind other great jailbreak tweaks and apps like DietBar, Activator and other. This tweak makes it easy to pull down the keyboard, as you only need to drag it above it’s usual position on the screen. The tweak works so flawlessly across every part of iOS and any iOS app, that you could mistakenly think of it as a native feature of iOS itself.
You can get this excellent tweak for free from the Cydia app store. Of course you’ll need to jailbreak your device first. If you are a regular reader on our blog, you’ll know it is fairly easy to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad with RedSn0w, Pwnage or Corona jailbreak. Untethered jailbreak is available even for iOS 5.0.1. For guides and manuals, feel free to check our blog archive.
For those of you which do not know what Zephyr is, it is a kind of multitasking gesturing app fro iPhone and iPod Touch. With Zephyrs swiping up for the multitasking switch or quick sweeps from app to app, Zephyr offers a rich world of gesture multitasking on your iPhone or iPdod Touch.
This app was made by a well known jailbreak developer known as @Chpwn, who has just updated his jailbreak app to latest version 1.0.1. This version offers a number of incremental updates and bug fixes. One of the most important updates is the possibility to actually block multitasking gestures in certain apps like Cut the Rope and others where this ability could crash the app.
With Zephyr 1.0.1 you can start using multitasking gestures, almost as same as what is by default available on iPad tablet. You can get this app from Cydia app store for only $2.99. Get this app and enjoy playing with it, if you have jailbroken your iPhone or iPod Touch. If not, you can check our blog archives for instructions and downloads on how to jailbreak your favorite iOS device.
After a long period of development and testing phase, Google has just launched a new social network service for reading. Google Currents is a new product which aims primarily to serve social network publishing. The project was earlier known as “Propeller” and it is actually an app for Android and iOS mobile devices. With this app publishers can push their content inside an HTML 5 based web app accessible on smartphones and tablet computers.
Publishers can access Currents with a simple web browser, which makes it possible for them to easily upload, edit or remove content, work with Ad Sense adds, monitor patterns of use and much more. Currents can be served in different styles which include multiple layouts and various formats for different devices. Users can easily navigate through the table of contents, articles, images and videos.
Besides providing app users with rich media content in an accessible format, Currents will also provide publishers with a great content providing platform. Every publisher will receive complete instructions for solving any occurring technical problems. Users will be able to purchase chosen articles through Google’s own payment system, Google Checkout. Currents is obviously trying to provide a service similar to what is already available within iOS world with Flipboard, which is an iPad app, launched only a couple of days ago for iPhone too.
You can see a short Youtube video on Google Currents bellow.
If you are an iPhone or iPad owner and want to check your Xbox 360 profile you can do it now from your favorite iOS device. Microsoft has just pushed out their frist Xbox Live app for iOS devices named My Xbox Live.
Users can now exchange messages, manage contacts, edit their onlline profiles and view their gaming results directly from their iPad or iPhone. So wherever you are you can always check your status in the Xbox gaming community. Besides all this you will also receive a stream of gaming related news tips and tricks. This new app is created with the help of Microsoft’s new design which is known as ‘Metro’. Metro is a new user interface design concept which is pushed by Microsoft on their other platforms as well. Metro was already introduced on Xbox’s website, on the Windows Phone 7 and even on Microsoft’s latest Windows 8 operative system.
If you are a devoted gamer, My Xbox Live will be a great addition on your iPhone. While some people may look down on Microsoft made apps on their iOS device, if you are serious about your Xbox, you should definitely try out this app. You can get it right now as a free download in app store.
Sources from Microsoft Co. claim that the Richmond based company is working on a iOS version of their famous Microsoft Office suit. According to the rumor, Microsoft is preparing a version of the software for iPad as wells as a version of Office compatible with Mac Lion OS X. This is not a big surprise as former head of Microsoft Business Unit, Stephen Elop who is now CEO of Nokia, has already pointed that Microsoft had strong plans for such development.
At the time being iWork apps such as: Numbers, Keynote, Pages and others have been the primary office apps on iOS devices. The same apps were also widely used as a office suite on Mac’s. If Microsoft surprises us and does a good job with their Office package for iOS devices, they could easily take a chunk of the market from Apple‘s own iWork package. Microsoft will probably target the price range for the app to be competitive with iWorks suite.
A well designed Microsoft productivity package of apps priced at 10$, which is the current price of iWork, could be a great alternative to Apple’s iWork.
Would you consider using Microsoft Office on your iPad if it ever becomes available? Let us know in the comments bellow.
Long time ago the majority of population was illiterate yet people had to sign some documents which required legally binding signatures. Sometimes they have even used their fingerprints as a legal sign. Fast forward to the future: large parts of our lives are digital now, and this asks for legally binding online document signing procedures. This was and still is solved in different ways but now we have one which is exclusively iPad based, and if we may say so, quite interesting. Softsign is basically an iPad app which enables users to sign documents with the iPad touch screen.
When you start the app for the first time you’ll need to create your master password. This password will protect the app when it is not in use, like when it is idle or after you restart the app. This is required to prevent unauthorised use of the app by anyone else than you. After you sign up you need to agree on the terms and conditions. Afterwards the most important thing: you will be presented with a drawing session which will enable you to draw your own personal signature.
It is obvious that the creators of this app have invested a great effort to make the user experience as good as possible. This made using the app really intuitive and easy to grasp after a little bit of practice. Something we really enjoyed much less, is the large number of menus which are visible and needed for more complex tasks like annotations and similar. After you examine your document you can sign it by drawing your personalised sign. Afterwards you can print it out or share it with your network. The app allows you to share signed documents with DropBox, AirSharing or other similar cloud based services. To open a document you can send it to yourself and use the ‘open in’ option to move the PDF document to Softsign.
We think this app is a great tool with a lot of useful options. You can download it for free in the App Store for a limited time. So hurry up and download your copy of the app, and let us know your opinion on it.
It seems that Apple is working on another potentially highly interesting project, an iPad only app for video streaming which could directly compete with cable companies. This app which is rumored to be rather strongly influenced by Steve Jobs himself, will challenge established cable companies but with the video being delivered online. This new app could offer a large quantity of content which is an obvious requirement given the huge amount of video already available to cable subscribers.
Some analysts have already commented that this app should as interesting and similar to the concept of Direct TV which is already well proven in tough market competition. Given that Steve Jobs is personally involved with this app it could be expected that it will have some interesting peculiarities, as Steve Jobs never failed to create breakthrough ideas in any of the areas he was invested in.
This new project could be also related to Apple’s new data center, which to illustrate things a bit is almost double the size when compared with Facebook’s data center. In fact it could be that this heavy duty data center is purposefully created for video data sharing only. How will Netflix react to this new challenge?
Another interesting question is will iOS 5 and the next iPhone offer some clues on this new Apple project? We will have to see and wait as iOS 5 and the next iPhone are about to be released. What do you expect to see coming from Apple? Let us know in the comment section!
One of the best open source software alternatives for watching video and listening audio VLC has now been released in beta version for all Android devices. VLC mediaplayer is an app which is available across different platforms including Windows PC, Mac OS X and of course iOS. Interestingly VLC was available as an iOS app but was removed by Apple after some copyright claims against the app.
Unfortunately this is still in early beta phase so while you can download the app you will have to be quite knowledgeable to install it on your device, as you’ll have to compile it and do some other developers stuff before you can use it for viewing movies on your tablet or smartphone.
You can choose among two slightly different versions of the app: Neon and Noneon. You must choose the version which will work with your particular device and the difference depends on the hardware of your device. To check this search for the cpuinfo file which is located in the proc folder on your device. When you edit this file you will see Neon or Noneon and you will know which version of VLC will work for you. You must enable the option Unknown sources – Applications before you can install any app from unofficial sources.
Please note: VLC for Android is still in it’s infancy and you wont have any support available if something goes wrong for you. And given that this is just a sideline project for the people working on it, it will probably have some serious issues and bugs. If you test this out please let us know how did it went for you. Anybody interested in VLC for iOS?
One of the most popular and widespread social networks Twitter has made another step to improve an already great service. Now you can easily share image you capture with your mobile devices and share them with your Twitter contacts by sending an MMS.
The service works quite simple: you capture an image of your favorite restaurant, your pet or anything else you find interesting, type the short Twitter message, attach your image and send it to a number used by Twitter. Keep in mind, this is still in works and there is only a small number of network carriers globally which can provide the service at this time.
Here are some networks: AT&T (US), Verizon (US), O2 (UK), Vodafone (UK), Orange (UK), Vodafone (Italy), Rogers (Ca) and Tim (Brazil). Twitter plans to add many more networks globally in the near future. This option is already available in many countries with FaceBook. So Twitter is a little bit behind the curve here. But still, keeping in mind that Twitter is being used differently than Facebook ,this option could prove quite useful for many users.
Are you a Twitter or Facebook user? Or both perhaps? Let us know in the comments bellow!
If you are a proud Mac owner and would like to show your friends how awesome does it look and feel like here is your chance. This amazing tweak will go a long way of transforming your iPhone screen into a Mac OS X like device. Lion Ultimatum is a theme pack which will create the look and fell of your OS X Lion user interface and implement it on your smaller iPhone screen.
You will find icons, background themes but also a launchpad, movable windows, stacks, find menus and many other features which are available only on Mac’s.
You can get this jailbreak tweak as a free download from Cydia. Please note that it is not particularly user friendly and it easily demonstrates why did Apple completely redesigned OS for touch screen devices like iPhone and iPad. Otherwise it is really an interesting tweak to have and experiment with if for nothing else than for its pure novelty. Feels like installing Windows XP on a Windows 7 Phone.
Let us know do you think if this is worth the effort. Here is a demo of the tweak.
