The iDongle is a small gadget that runs off the iPhone’s internal battery and not only allows you to boot your tethered jailbroken device BUT can also jailbreak your unjailbreak-able iPhone/iPod Touch on firmware 3.1.2 or lower.

FAQ

• What is it ?
  This is a standalone piece of hardware able to boot your jailbreaked device (a.k.a “tethered boot”), and optionnally to jailbreak and hacktivate it if not already done.
• Why do I need this ?
  If your jailbreaked device is stuck into “recovery mode” (i.e Connect-to-iTunes logo) each time you restart or reboot your device, then it may be usefull for you =)
• I want one !
  From now, I only have a dozen of (working) prototype. I need to raise some minimal funds to start manufacturing them in quantities, to lower the price as much as possible for the community. You can help by buying me a prototype at good price, or simply donate as pre-order. If you place an order afterward, please remember me your Paypal ID, I’ll deduce your donation from your order, and if I can’t raise enough funds, I’ll return money back to anyone asking it.

• How do I know if my device is concerned ?
  Any iPhone 3GS made after week 40 (2009). The week number is usually the 4th and 5th digit of the serial number. iPod Touch 2G whose serial number begins with “MC” are concerned or any iPod Touch 3G.
• Which device is supported ?
  From now, iPhone 3GS and iPodTouch 2G/3G are supported, all with OS 3.1 / 3.1.1 / 3.1.2 only, but the later is recommended.
• Will you support OS 3.1.3 ?
  Maybe, or not. iDongle can be easily updated through USB. If jailbreak is available, I’ll try and post a free update.
• Does it provide unlock ?
  Not directly. Look for Geohot’s “sn0w” or Dev Team’s “ultrasn0w” package on Cydia.

You can visit the iDongle website HERE.

Now, you know I wouldn’t actually force you to upgrade to Firmware 3.1.3, but BigBoss has released a Tweak which can be downloaded from Cydia which actually makes iTunes and any app that (well most) require 3.1.3 to think that your iDevice actually has 3.1.3!

It’s a small Tweak (1KB if that) and it just modifies one of the system files that holds the iDevices current firmware information and can easily be installed if and when you do actually want to upgrade to 3.1.3 (For some bizaaaarrre reason). Just thought I would share! I like it!

UPDATE: BigBoss has reported that the Firmware 3.1.3 had an uninstall bug! But has released another application called Firmware 3.1.3 App which allows you to toggle between 3.1.2 and 3.1.3! Find it in the System Section of Cydia!

There is a whole goldmine of quality applications that developers have released onto both Cydia and Rock but here at 5 of the most must have jailbroken apps (in my opinion).

Iprotect

All this app does it lets you choose what apps you want to password protect. Its good for those people who want to keep people from snooping threw their stuff. It will even password protect your sim card. You can protect your phone so you cant make a call without a password.

AndroidLock

I love this android lock screen. You can make any pattern you want with the only restriction being number of lines. What i like most about this is the double lock screen, the standard 4 number and then the android lock. Keep in mind though if you restart your device it does skip past the lock screen.

SBSettings

By far the greatest app you could ever install. Its puzzling how apple has not added this in themselves. What SBSettings does is allows you to quickly and easily control settings of your choice. WiFi, Bluetooth, and Brightness are the main ones that I always use. It is defiantly worth downloading if you haven’t already done so.

Rock App

Rock app is a Cydia replacement. It tends to run a lot smoother and it can download in the background. I personally prefer it over Cydia for its speed and user interface. Whats really nice is it doesn’t have to constantly go out refresh the data.  Another app you should get.

ProSwitcher

ProSwitcher works together with backgrounder to give you the palm switcher layout on your device. It works great for allowing you to keep that game you were running playing to finish later.

A new program called CanIHazRecover has been created to help users who are stuck on the boot logo of their devices and therefore cannot get to the SpringBoard without the need of restoring.

The program only works with the following devices: iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch and iPod Touch 2G non-MC model only. It also is only available for Mac users at the moment.

The usage of this program is simply. Download and unzip the .rar file from below. Then use the simple instructions included in the readme.

Click to download: HERE

Hey guys, so for the past few days i’ve been playing with qTweeter, an application created by Efiko Software. It is a very easy and fast way to update your facebok status or post a tweet to twitter.

The trial version can be downloaded from the Cydia Store and costs $4.99 if you want to go for the full version as the trial only gives you a maximum of 20 tweets or status updates.

Usage is very simple. Simply slide down from the status bar and the qTweeter dialogue box will drop down and allow you to type in a message, or, using the icons across the top, you can tweet your currently playing song, a photo or your map location (with support for geotagging).

You can attach as many accounts to the program as you like, so if you like to tweet, I would recommend this program!

Click here for Efiko Software website!

Monty has done it again! He has released a new theme called Adeline and it’s free for only 1 day so grab it quickly!

The theme is iPhone only but he is working on an iPod Touch version. You MUST have Iconoclasm installed on your iPhone to use this theme.

Download: (links will be removed after 1 day. After this, you will be able to purcahse Adeline from Cydia.

• (DOWNLOAD REMOVED) You can now buy it from Cydia.
• Adeline Iconoclasm (174) (you can’t just click on this, you need to right click and click save as to save it onto your computer)

This has to be my favorite theme I’ve made and I hope all you love it as much as I do. Like as I said in earlier post, this theme will only work with the Adeline Iconoclasm Layout made for it. I tried every way possible to make it work with every SpringBoard tweak available on Cydia using iBlanks before resorting to Iconoclasm ( I knew alot of users may not users already have it)

You’ll need Stack v3 or Categories (Apps or Tools and Games) to make the “Biz” and “Party” folders. SpringJumps are optional and you can use them if you want.

Adeline boost:
Over 230 beautiful icons (more to come)
Custom User Interface (Beta v.2)
“Brick Heart Breaker” Lockscreen
Text bubbles
Music player skin
New Original Weather and Date Widget
Phone dialer
Custom signal bars
Blah Blah
And so much more…

Chpwn, one of the most succesful iPhone jailbreak devs out there, has released yet another interesting SpringBoard tweak. This one is called InfiniBoard and allows vertical scrolling on your iPhone/iPod Touch.

You still have pages on your iPhone and to access them, you still scroll from the side to side but what this tweak does is allows you to store up to 100 apps on each page and with which you need to scroll vertically to get to. This means you can 1100 (not including your dock) apps on your SpringBoard.

Infiniboard is also customizable, you can set everything from the scroll bar color to where you when the lists bounce at the ends.

InfiniBoard is avaiable from Cydia for only $1.99.

Description:

Vertically scroll your home screen pages!
Infiniboard lets you add as many icons as you want to each page, and access them through a flick up and down.
Many settings provide full customization -- and resprings don’t mess up your icons.
Support for OverBoard coming soon with a new OverBoard update.
Created by the developer of Infinidock, Infiniboard is the ultimate way to manage your icons!

Screenshots:

Saurik, the creator of Cydia, has released a new APT update which greatly improves Cydia’s speed.

We all know that Cydia is pretty damn slow so this update is warmly welcomes by myself. Saurik announced it via his Twitter saying :

I also uploaded a new version of APT I’ve been working on: it has an optimized cache generator and more error tolerant repository parsing

The update should come up automatically in your Cydia so update it and enjoy the new speediness of Cydia!

Your iPhone/iPod touch must be jailbroken to do this.

1. You must first download the MediaMonkey and install it.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

2. Once you have it downloaded and installed, you need to download IphoneBrowser (an ssh tool). You can use any ssh
tool of your choice.

http://code.google.com/p/iphonebrowser/downloads/list

Or Iphone Explorer

http://www.iphone-explorer.com/

3. Go into your device and navigate to the directory, root\private\var\mobile\media\iTunes_control\Music.

4. Inside the Music folder should be a bunch of folders named F00 F01 F02 and so on. Those folders contain all your music which you are about to save to your computer. You now want to save it to your computer, click “Save Folder In…” and
choose a directory.

Or for iphone explorer select them all, and drag and drop to a folder

5. Once it has saved it all to your computer you may notice that it is all random letters. This is where MediaMonkey comes in. Open up MediaMonkey and go to “File-Add/Rescan Tracks to the Library. And navigate to the directory that you saved the music from your device.

6. After the music is imported it is still labeled with random letters. You now want to select all your music, right click with it all still selected and click “Auto-Organize Files” and a window will pop up. Make sure “Move and rename files to new destination based on track tags is selected.

7. Change your destination of where you would like all your music to be saved to. Next you want to click the [>>] button and choose
the <Artist> then <album> so it should look like this so far. “”"YOUR MUSIC FOLDER”"”\<Artist>\<Album>\

8. Now you want to change how you want to have the file names changed as, so click [Configure] and make sure Subdirectories: is
<Artist>\<Album> and Filename: is changed to <Artist> – <Title>

9. Click OK and then Click OK again and if it is done correctly it should automatically change the name of the song to what it is tagged
originally and it should put it into directories of ARTIST then a sub directory of ALBUM.

10. Your Done (Note – you can also use MediaMonkey to get your album artwork as well)

Not only that but this app gives you a screensaver that displays before your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen dims. iAccounts can be bought from the Cydia Store for $1.99.

Description:

iAccounts brings users to the iPhone and iTouch. This will allow you to lock certain apps, as well as lock other things such as: icon moving, searching, and even wifi locking! These options can all be set for custom users which you can configure to your own needs. You can then log in and out as many times as you want with any user you want! There is also a screen saver that runs when the iPhone or iTouch is dimmed, right before it sleeps

See More Info below for screenshots.

Screenshots:

Name: Ellis | Price: $2.99 [Link] | Rating: 4/5

“Highly polished, fantastic sounds and music, innovative use of multi-touch controls and gorgeous graphics, make Eliss, most probably, one of the most creative and innovative games in the AppStore. One and only, it’s a must!” CreativeApplications

Eliss is all multi touch. It is probably one of the biggest apps on the AppStore to utilize the multi-touch idea to this extent.

Eliss puts you in a world of extreme chaos, where you are in charge of different colored planets.

Planets are randomly spawning, and it is your job to combine, or make planets smaller to fit in black hole type things that randomly spawn. Also, planets spawn too, at very fast rates. You use both your fingers to separate the planets. There are also many different colored planets, that correspond with the same colored black holes. If different colored planets start to touch, they start making red lines and you have to separate them before it makes your health drain out!

Also it doesn’t help that planets spawn at a incredibly fast and unpreditable rate either!

After you fill up a black hole with a planet, it explodes out mini triangles, which regain your health. Their is a set amount of black holes you have to fill with planets until the level ends too.

Black hole being filled up by planet.

Be warned though, once you get past a few levels, a very terrifying sound will appear, and a very big black whole spawns, which squishes all the planets together, so you have to pull them apart using all of…5 fingers!

5 fingers being used to play

The Design: The design of this game is really unique, and which is why i like it. Their are 25 sectors, or levels you have to go through. The writing for the title screen is stencil-looking type, giving it a easy going feel

Be warned though.. this game gets very difficult, very fast, so be sure you are up for a challenge!

I personally enjoyed this game very much, and am pretty sure you will too, if you like challenges!

Name: Ellis | Price: $2.99 [Link] | Rating: 4/5

Some new information has been found out by the folks over at GumBallTech informing us that the iPad may have the ability to do emergency calls! Simply by entering the wrong password 5 times on the device brought up the menu shown in the screenshot about.

By entering the wrong password three times, a slider come up allowing you to slide to do an emergency call. Perhaps, once the iPad is jailbroken, a hack will be made to do full phone calls with the iPad!

iPhone:

Paying attention to just a few commonsense pointers will pay off with a longer battery lifespan and battery life for your iPhone. The most important thing is to keep your iPhone out of the sun or a hot car (including the glove box). Heat will degrade your battery’s performance the most.

Some Terms You Need to Understand

“Battery life” means the time your iPhone will run before it must be recharged. “Battery lifespan” means the total amount of time your battery will last before it must be replaced.

iPhone Temperate Zone. Your iPhone works best from 32° to 95° F. You should store it in environments of -4° to 113° F. That’s 0° to 35° C and -20° to 45° C for the metrically inclined. Keeping your iPhone as near room temperature as possible (72° F or 22° C) is ideal.

Viewing Usage Statistics

Awareness of how you use your iPhone and knowing how long your battery typically lasts can help you improve its battery life. You can view your iPhone usage statistics by tapping the Settings icon on the Home screen and choosing General > Usage. Under the “Time since last full charge” heading you’ll see two items:

• Usage: Amount of time iPhone has been awake and in use since the last full charge. The phone is awake when you’re on a call, using email, listening to music, browsing the web, or sending and receiving text messages, or during certain background tasks such as auto-checking email.
• Standby: Amount of time iPhone has been powered on since its last full charge, including the time the phone has been asleep.

Update to the Latest Software

Always make sure your iPhone has the latest software from Apple, as engineers may find new ways to optimize battery performance. Using iTunes 8.2 or later, you can update your iPhone with the latest software. Connect your iPhone to your computer, then select iPhone in the Source List. In the Summary panel, click “Check for Updates” to see if there’s a new version of the iPhone software available. Click Update to install the latest version.

Optimize Your Settings

Depending on how they are configured, a few features may decrease your iPhone battery life. For example, the frequency with which you retrieve email and the number of email accounts you auto-check can both affect battery life. The tips below apply to an iPhone running iPhone 3.0 or later software and may help extend your battery life.

• Minimize use of location services: Applications that actively use location services such as Maps may reduce battery life. To disable location services, go to Settings > General > Location Services or use location services only when needed.
• Turn off push notifications: Some applications from the App Store use the Apple Push Notification Service to alert you of new data. Those applications that extensively rely on push notifications (such as instant messaging applications) may impact battery life. To disable push notifications, go to Settings > Notifications and set Notifications to Off. Note that this does not prevent new data from being received when the application is opened. Also, the Notifications setting will not be visible if you do not have any applications installed that support push notifications.
• Fetch new data less frequently: Applications such as Mail can be set to fetch data wirelessly at specific intervals. The more frequently email or other data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain. To fetch new data manually, from the Home screen choose Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and tap Manually. To increase the fetch interval, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and tap Hourly. Note that this is a global setting and applies to all applications that do not support push services.
• Turn off push mail: If you have a push mail account such as Yahoo!, MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange, turn off push when you don’t need it. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off. Messages sent to your push email accounts will now be received on your phone based on the global Fetch setting rather than as they arrive. If the global Fetch setting is set to Manually, you will not be able to locate your iPhone using the MobileMe Find My iPhone feature.
• Auto-check fewer email accounts: You can save power by checking fewer email accounts. This can be accomplished by turning off an email account or by deleting it. To turn off an account, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account, and set Account to Off. To remove an account, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account, and tap Delete Account.
• Minimize use of third-party applications: Excessive use of applications such as games that prevent the screen from dimming or shutting off or applications that use location services can reduce battery life.
• Turn off Wi-Fi: If you rarely use Wi-Fi, you can turn it off to save power. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off. Note that if you frequently use your iPhone to browse the web, battery life may be improved by using Wi-Fi instead of cellular data networks.
• Turn off Bluetooth: If you rarely use a Bluetooth headset or car kit, you can turn off Bluetooth to save power. Go to Settings > General > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off.
• Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas: Because your iPhone always tries to maintain a connection with the cellular network, it may use more power in low- or no-coverage areas. Turning on Airplane Mode can increase battery life in these situations; however, you will be unable to make or receive calls. To turn on Airplane Mode, go to Settings and set Airplane Mode to On.
• Adjust brightness: Dimming the screen is another way to extend battery life. Go to Settings > Brightness and drag the slider to the left to lower the default screen brightness. In addition, turning on Auto-Brightness allows the screen to adjust its brightness based on current lighting conditions. Go to Settings > Brightness and set Auto-Brightness to On.
• Turn off EQ: Applying an equalizer setting to song playback on your iPhone can decrease battery life. To turn EQ off, go to Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Off. Note that if you’ve added EQ to songs directly in iTunes, you’ll need to set EQ on iPhone to Flat in order to have the same effect as Off because iPhone keeps your iTunes settings intact. Go to Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Flat.
• Turn off 3G: Using 3G cellular networks loads data faster, but may also decrease battery life, especially in areas with limited 3G coverage. To disable 3G, from the Home screen choose Settings > General > Network and set Enable 3G to Off. You will still be able to make and receive calls and access cellular data networks via EDGE or GPRS where available.

Lock Your iPhone

It may seem obvious, but you should lock your iPhone when you aren’t using it. You will be able to receive calls and text messages while it is locked, but nothing happens if you touch the screen. To lock iPhone, press the Sleep/Wake button. You can also set the Auto-Lock interval so your iPhone will turn off more quickly after a period of inactivity. To set Auto-Lock, go to Settings > General > Auto-Lock and set the interval to a short time, such as 1 minute.

Use iPhone Regularly

For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

iPod Touch:

Paying attention to just a few commonsense pointers will pay off with a longer battery lifespan and battery life for your iPod. The most important thing is to keep your iPod out of the sun or a hot car (even the glove box). Heat will degrade your battery’s performance the most.

Some Terms You Need to Understand

“Battery life” means the time your iPod will run before it must be recharged (sometimes this is also called “playtime” or “runtime”). “Battery lifespan” means the total amount of time your battery will last before it must be replaced.

iPod Temperate Zone. Your iPod works best from 32° to 95° F. You should store it in environments of -4° to 113° F. That’s 0° to 35° C and -20° to 45° C for the metrically inclined. Keeping your iPod as near room temperature as possible (72° F or 22° C) is ideal.

Update to the Latest Software

Always make sure iPod has the latest software from Apple, as engineers may find new ways to optimize battery performance. For instance, early iPod models without a dock connector benefit from update 1.3 or later. Using iTunes 7.4 or later, you can update your iPod with the latest software. Put your iPod in its dock or plug it into your computer and iTunes will notify you if an update is available.

Use iPod Regularly

For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month. If you use your iPod infrequently (gasp), you might want to add a reminder to your calendar program.

Extend Your Battery Life

If you want to extend the battery life of your iPod for any given charge cycle, you may conserve power by following these tips.

Hold and Pause

It may seem obvious, but set the Hold switch when you aren’t using your iPod. This will prevent iPod controls from inadvertently waking up iPod and using unnecessary power. Also, if you are not listening to iPod, pause it, or turn it off by pressing the play button for two seconds.

Optimize Your Settings

There are a few features that use your iPod battery more quickly. If you don’t use these features, your iPod will play tunes longer.

• Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi consumes power even if you are not using its features to connect to a network. You can turn it off to save power. Go to Settings > General > Network > Wi-Fi.
• Backlight: Setting the backlight to “always on” will significantly reduce your battery life. Only use the backlight when necessary.
• Equalizer: Adding EQs to playback uses more of your iPod processor, since they aren’t encoded in the song. Turn EQ off if you don’t use it. If, however, you’ve added EQ to tracks in iTunes, you’ll need to set EQ to “flat” in order to have the effect of “off,” because iPod keeps your iTunes settings intact.
• Minimize use of third-party applications: Excessive use of applications on iPod touch, such as games that prevent the screen from dimming or shutting off, can reduce battery life.
• Fetch new data less frequently: Applications on iPod touch such as Mail can be set to fetch data wirelessly at specific intervals. The more frequently email or other data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain. To fetch new data manually, from the Home screen choose Settings > Fetch New Data and tap Manually. To increase the fetch interval, go to Settings > Fetch New Data and tap Hourly. Note that this is a global setting and applies to all applications that do not support push services.
• Turn off push mail: If you have a push mail account on iPod touch such as Yahoo!, MobileMe, or Microsoft Exchange, turn off push mail when you don’t need it. Go to Settings > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off. Messages sent to your push email accounts will now be received on your iPod touch based on the global Fetch setting rather than as they arrive.

Maximize Your Memory

iPod plays music out of a solid-state memory cache to provide skip-free playback and maximize battery life. iPod spins its hard drive to fill this cache, which uses power. A couple of factors affect how often this happens, and if you minimize these factors, you’ll extend battery life.

• Limit Fast-Forwarding: If you fast-forward through your playlist, iPod has to fill its cache more frequently, thus accessing the hard drive more often and using more power. This decreases overall battery life. By creating great playlists in iTunes that cater to your personal taste, you can decrease your need to fast-forward. Using the shuffle feature may also help to minimize your use of the fast-forward feature.
• Use Compressed Songs: The iPod cache works most efficiently with songs of average file sizes (less than 9MB). If your audio files are large or uncompressed (including AIFF or WAV format), you may want to compress them, or use a different compression method, such as AAC or MP3, when importing them into iTunes. Also, consider breaking very long songs or tracks into shorter tracks that have smaller file sizes. If you encode your music at 128 Kbps, your iPod will fill its cache about every 25 minutes.

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’ll make myself clear.  I’ve got nothing against MobileSubstrate, and there’s nothing devastatingly wrong with it.  There, now Jay Freeman will get off my back.  But if you’ve ever wondered why your non-3GS iPhone or your non-3G iPod touch have been a lot slower than those lucky 3Gs and 3G owners, MobileSubstrate is the reason.

So when you first found out about jailbreaking or your nerd friend showed it to you, he probably made a stance on how you can theme your device.  That’s the most popular reason to jailbreak (illegal App Store downloads aside).  It’s been a feature since the first unlocks and jailbreaks.  It also seems very straightforward, and it is.  At least, on the outside it does.

What’s happening when you use WinterBoard is much more complicated.  WinterBoard uses MobileSubstrate.  MobileSubstrate hogs processing power.  Small amounts of processing power, but they add up.  Why?  Because when you use WinterBoard, a thing called a daemon task, a program that runs silently in the background and runs all the time, is executed.  This daemon task is always there, taking up a little chunk of your CPU and RAM.  It has to change all your icons on the spot, as well as the wallpaper, and the colors of the UI.  It’s doing all the work.  Soon, you keep installing more MobileSubstrate add-ons.  Anything that the device doesn’t initially support is probably part of MobileSubstrate: SBSettings, qTweeter, CategoriesSB, Music Controls, QuickWidgets…All of these run using MobileSubstrate, and added up, they take a lot of RAM away from the puny supply our devices already have.

So, when you add it up, it becomes a lot.  I always knew this, but I always felt the pros outweighed the cons with MonileSubstrate.  Now I have a freshly jailbroken iPod touch, and all my games (Minigore, COD WaW Nazi Zombies, GTA Chinatown Wars, all the processor intense ones) can run at full speed, something I thought my device could never do.  And all it took was me rediscovering my device, seeing how fast it could go without all these daemon tasks in the background.  It shows too: I took my friends device, with SBSettings, WinterBoard, and other add-ons, and I opened the Settings app on both our devices.  Mine opened in a second and a half, while his took 7 or 8 seconds to load.

So, what I guess I’ll say instead of avoid MobileSubstrate all together, is instead see if the pros outweigh the cons.  Some of you may not want to lose all the customizations you have already, so for you I’ll recommend SwapMode.  It’s an app that will disable MobileSubstrate, keeping all your changes the same when you reactivate it.  Use that to keep it off for a while, do the things you couldn’t do with your device before (3D games for example, I love gaming on my iDevice now), and decide if you like it better or not.  You may find that you like the speed of your device better than the functionality.  Isn’t that why you bought an Apple product in the first place?

A new great app has hit Cydia called iNoRotate. It allows you to disable rotation (ie the accelerometer) on your iPhone and unlike the NoRotation SBSettings toggle (which is great none the less) allows you to disable it only in certain apps.

It gives you the options of disabling it in all applications, or just SMS, Mail, Safari, Notes or Calender. Surprisingly to me they don’t offer an option to disable it on the Music application.

App Description:

iNoRotate disables your rotation ability when enabled. You can choose from: All Applications, SMS App, Mail App, Notes App, Safari App, and Contacts app

You can get the iNoRotate application off the BigBoss repository on Cydia for free.