JordanDev

iPhone, Software Development, Music, Tech and other geeky stuff

Posts Tagged rockapp

Circuitous – another great multitasking app for the iPhone

Mar 16

Posted by jordandev in iPhone, jailbroken app reviews | 6 Comments

Following in the footsteps of Kirikae, Multifl0w and ProSwitcher, Circuitous is another great new innovation in multitasking for the iPhone. Like the others, it provides a useful interface for Backgrounder’s multitasking capabilities. Kirikae does it like a processes list screen, and Multifl0w and ProSwitcher did it like the Palm Pre’s Cards implementation. Circuitous does it like a dock:

It looks nice and has easy to use close buttons. The springboard icon can be turned off. One missing feature for now is the inability to turn off icons for the stock apps like Phone and Mail. Circuitous hooks into Activator like a lot of recent jailbreak apps which is great and any new apps should use it as it is becoming the standard and makes management of what gestures and buttons do what centralized.

One thing that I like about Circuitous that the other task switching apps don’t do is that it can open up on the lockscreen if you want it to:

If you still use Kirikae or ProSwitcher and you want to try out Circuitous there is no reason not to as it is free and it can be used at the same time as the others with no incompatibilities that I’ve seen. Hopefully all this competition for task switching apps creates even more innovative features to come.

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Top 15 Best Jailbroken Apps for the iPhone

Jan 31

Posted by jordandev in iPhone, info | 30 Comments

Jailbreaking an iPhone is essential. Without all of the jailbroken apps the phone would be severely limited in functionality and usability compared to most other smartphones. Apple’s restrictions on what you can install is THE major problem with the iPhone. Jailbreaking is the solution around their limitations. There are many apps available now through Cydia or RockApp. Some are free, and some are paid. I have used everything. Everybody has their own ideas on what is useful, but here is my opinion on the best jailbroken apps:

1. iRealSMS - As a heavy texter, the default way of receiving and sending text messages felt way too limited. iRealSMS completely fixes it. When you receive an SMS, it pops up in a new window that let’s you reply right in it. No more having to open the SMS app. You can also quickly send a message right from the lockscreen too. The new version supports contact pictures in the popup and MMS too.

2. Backgrounder (with ProSwitcher) – Being able to multitask has long been a serious limitation of the iPhone. Push Notifications was Apples solution. It was not really a solution as it only let you receive notifications and not actually multitask. Backgrounder allows you to basically minimize applictions to the background and go back to the homescreen to open another. You just have to be careful of opening too many applications because of running out of memory, especially on the 3G. ProSwitcher is an interface built on top of background that emulates the Palm Pre’s cards style multitasking. You can configure it to be activated in almost any way and it provides a nice looking, easy, and quick way to switch between multiple running applications.

3. SBSettings – This app allows you to add toggles for different settings to a drop down menu that is accessible from anywhere. It makes it so much easier and faster to toggle things such as Bluetooth, 3G, WiFi, Brightness, and more. No more going back and forth between tons of submenus in the Settings. It also has a few tweaks such as adding free memory to your status bar, hiding apps, and more. Another bonus is that is supports theming.

4. Categories (with CategoriesSB) - Another problem with the iPhone shows itself once you have installed a ton of apps. If you have enough apps to fill up 5 or 6 springboard pages it can become quite annoying to find what you are looking for. Categories adds a folder system to your springboard. Easily grouping apps together provides a much needed way of organizing all of your apps so your pages are not so cluttered. CategoriesSB is an extension that integrates Categories better. Read more about it here: http://jordandev.info/?p=165

5. LockInfo – The lockscreen is a very empty place. It could be used for so much more. A lot of apps have started to come out to try and use all that empty space for something useful. It started with Intelliscreen, but the current best of the bunch is LockInfo. It let’s you see the weather, SMS messages, emails, push notifications, twitter, todo lists, and a bunch of other useful things right on your lockscreen. New features include email previewing and notification clearing right from the lockscreen. You can read more about it here: http://jordandev.info/?p=228

6. Winterboard - Apples limitations on customization are so bad that you cannot even add a wallpaper to your homescreen, only your lockscreen. Winterboard allows complete customization of basically everything. You can add icon themes, wallpapers, tweaks, and even full UI themes so you can make your iPhone look exactly how you want it to.

7. GRiP – Apple’s recent Push Notifcation system was a welcome addition to be able to receive messages from apps that are not running. Getting Twitter, Facebook, IM, sports scores, and more is great. The problem with Apple’s implementation is that you only ever see the most recent message. What if you had received 10 different messages? You have no idea what they were. GRiP fixes this by adding a whole new way of managing these notifications. Each application’s notifications will show up in their own popup list. You can tap on that application to open it. Read more about GRiP here: http://jordandev.info/?p=98

8. Adblock – MobileSafari has no built in ad blocker. If you want one, get this. It works great and it’s functionality is pretty self explanatory. You can see examples or read more about it here: http://jordandev.info/?p=122

9. ActionMenu – When Apple finally added Copy and Paste, it was done by using a menu that popped up whenever you tapped and held down on some text. This extends that functionality by giving you more actions you can perform. Some examples are Copy All, Dial, Lookup, Tweet, etc. It also provides a clipboard history manager and a favorites list where you can store things you want to paste all the time, like your email or something similar.

10. Quickscroll – Have you ever been on a website or reading your twitter timeline or something where you have had to scroll down through what seems like thousands of pages? You have to swipe the screen madly to get to the bottom. Quickscroll replaces the standard scrollbar with one that you can grab and scroll very quickly with. You can scroll around the whole page very, very quickly. It works in every app that I’ve tried it in, including things like viewing photos. It also has a handy feature where if you tab the scrollbar it will scroll one page at a time which is nice for reading a lot of text.

11. qTweeter – If you have ever wanted to be able to post to Twitter or Facebook or both while inside an app or from your homescreen then qTweeter is for you. It provides a quick way to post messages by adding a menu you can drag down from the top of the screen. You can shorten URLs and add images also. It also has a nice feature where if you are in MobileSafari you can post a link to the current page you are on.

12. iFile – With iFile you get a file manager and viewer where you can access your entire iPhone’s hard drive system. It is great for storing things on your phone, moving files around, editing configuration files, and many other things. You can download songs, videos, or documents in MobileSafari and view them here.

13. Safari Download Manager – Provides a download manager for MobileSafari where you can queue up downloads in the background. It also integrates nicely with iFile letting you open up completed downloads.

14. 3G Unrestrictor – If you have ever needed to get around restrictions apps have on only allowing certain things on WiFi and not 3G this works great. You can view high quality youtube videos, get higher bitrate on streaming radio apps, use SlingBox, and more.

15. Overboard – If you do not like swiping between pages to get to your apps Overboard provides an overview of all of your pages where you can easily see and select where you want to go.

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LockInfo 2.0 – How the iPhone Lockscreen Should Be

Jan 20

Posted by jordandev in iPhone, jailbroken app reviews | 19 Comments

IMG_0159LockInfo has been a mainstay on my iPhone’s Lockscreen for a few months now and it’s creator David Ashman (aka @Stimpy5050) has been working on a major update for awhile and it has finally been released. He maintains a good connection with the jailbreak community through his twitter, and has even commented on this blog before, showing he is listening to what people are saying. LockInfo has proven itself to be very popular due to it’s combination of being easy to use and setup while still having enough features and customization options to match what people are looking for in a lockscreen extension.

The new features of LockInfo 2.0:

  • Push notifications on your lockscreen listed
  • Preview your emails from the lockscreen without unlocking
  • Delete your emails after previewing
  • Mark As Read your emails, SMS messages, and Push notifications right from the lockscreen
  • Manually refresh your email, weather, and twitter plugins
  • Privacy settings to hide email subjects, email previews, or SMS message text
  • Adjustable font size
  • Performance and stability improvements

The plugins that are included are:

  • Mail – see your email
  • Calendar – see a listing of the next events in your calendar
  • SMS – new SMS messages
  • Phone – missed calls or voicemails
  • Push Notifications – listing of Push notifications received

Available optional plugins:

  • Clock – adds the current date and time with a collapsible calendar
  • Todo – integration with either 2Do, Appigo Todo, or Things
  • WeatherIcon – integrates with WeatherIcon for live updating forecast for your location
  • Twitter – lists your timeline and updates on a specified interval

Other recommended packages to have:

  • Lockscreen Clock Hide – goes great with the above mentioned Clock plugin to hide the stock time
  • Lockscreen Dim Delay Control – made by the same author to control the amount of time your lockscreen stays open before dimming
  • Lockinfo Icons – replaces the stock Lockinfo icons for the different plugins with more stock iPhone app lookings ones(can be seen in my screenshots)
  • Lockscreen Mini Slider – smaller slider, more room for LockInfo (can be see in my screenshots)

Customization Options:

  • show on Lockscreen, show on Homescreen, or show on both
  • order that the plugins show up in
  • scrolling
  • extend all the way to bottom (useful if you have use the mini slider mentioned above)
  • block popups (stock popup alerts for SMS, Push, etc)
  • font size
  • collapsible sections
  • hide empty sections
  • transparency
  • can be customized with themes (though plugin support depends on the theme)

Screenshot Tour:

The 5 stock plugins, collapsed and expanded (notice the new refresh and X mark as read buttons):

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Previewing emails, basic text and HTML:

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Added the Clock and WeatherIcon plugins, collapsed and expanded:

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Added the Twitter plugin, then enabled as homescreen

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I really like the new way that emails and other messages can be marked as read with a simple tap of the X button. It saves me time from having to open it or even just preview it. I was previously using Elert for this and don’t feel the need to keep it enabled anymore.

Having a list of Push notifications is great. I am currently using GRiP (my post on that here) which provides me with a list of the notifications grouped by the app they come from but having all my notifications in one place is a nicer solution. I just wish that you could open the app that the Push came from by tapping it.

The new manual refresh, privacy settings, and adjustable font sizes are nice to have.

One of the bugs that was fixed was how LockInfo would sometimes not show up on the lockscreen. You would have to unlock and lock again to get it to show up some of the time. That is a very welcome fix as it was probably the biggest gripe I had with LockInfo. As for performance improvements I didn’t really notice much as it already ran perfectly fast in the first place.

Missing / Wanted features or plugins:

  • To be able to tap on links while previewing emails and open them
  • To be able to tap on links in the Twitter timeline and open them
  • To be able to tap on Push notifications to open the corresponding app
  • Facebook plugin
  • RSS Reader plugin that syncs with Google Reader
  • the Calendar in the Clock plugin
  • some sort of application badge plugin, how great would it be to be able to show the number of updates available from the badge on Cydia for example
  • support for themes that can’t use non-native plugins (if possible? for example ame235′s teehanlax theme doesn’t support previewing emails)

Apparently the Plugin API is going to be released in the coming future so hopefully some of the above features can become a reality.

I have used the beta for awhile now and it’s now completely won me over from any other competitors (Intelliscreen, Smartscreen, etc). All in all a great lockscreen add-on that makes the iPhone’s lockscreen what it should be. This is the kind of thing that Apple should be implementing in OS 4.0. Don’t hold your breath. LockInfo 2.0 is $5 and is worth every penny.

Any thoughts? Comment below.

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