Skip to Content

Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

ipod-touch posts

Filed under: Apple, iPhone

Cydia creator releases tracking opt-out for jailbroken iPods and iPhones


Opened Cydia on your jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone today? If so, you probably noticed an item on the front page about PrivaCy "Opt-Out."

Recently there's been a lot of talk about app developers like Pinch Media harvesting analytics from users of their applications. There are plenty of good reasons for them to do this -- such as learning how to make their applications better.

Still, some people aren't too keen on this kind of tracking. So Pinch contacted Cydia's Jay Freeman to address the situation. Freeman and BigBoss together contacted the three other providers -- Flurry, Medialets, and Mobclix. In his words, they "not only [gave] their blessing, but also their technical expertise in disabling their systems.

After installing PrivaCy, you'll see a new option in your settings screen. Tap it, and the screen above appears. Opting out is as simple toggling on/off.

Who knows, maybe some day Apple will allow a similar toggle for users of non-jailbroken devices. Feel free to weigh in on that thought in the comments.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Apple, Microsoft, Commercial, Windows x64

TouchDrive gives you full access to iPhone/iPod in My Computer


Sure, plugging in your iPhone or Touch gives you access to its DCIM folder, but that's pretty much where the easy file management ends.

For more complete access, grab TouchDrive - it's a handy, unobtrusive way to manage your files. Once installed, you'll be able to access just about anything on your device like any other folder on your Windows system. No jailbreaking is required, though the .Net 2.0 framework is and iTunes must be installed.

Right now, TouchDrive only works on 32-bit Windows, though 64-bit support is in the works.

The 30-day trial is a free download, and you can find it on the developers homepage and Softpedia. The full version is priced at $19.99.

Filed under: Internet, Security, iPhone, Beta

DLS Exclusive: sneak peek at LastPass for the iPhone

I've been using the LastPass bookmarklet for a while now to securely access my password vault from my iPod Touch. It gets the job done, and it's certainly much easier than re-entering all my passwords into Safari.

Yesterday, I received an email from LastPass' Joe Siegrist with some exciting news: they've been quietly working on an iPhone app, and were ready to let me take it for a test drive. So far, it's looking good.

In addition to providing secure access to your LastPass vault, the app also includes a useful notepad function. It's a good place to store sensitive informations on your iPod, and the notes are also accessible via the web interface. They get stored in your vault in a group called (logically enough) secure notes.

Once you've signed in to the app with your master password you can browse or search for a site and log in. Press the go button, and the login page is displayed with your details pre-filled.

The toolbar currently includes forward and back buttons, return (to go back to the iLastPass main screen), and a LastPass button to take care of form filling duties. The form fill is a real time saver on the iPod and makes site registrations and checkouts a breeze.

Want to see more? Check the gallery after the break! Keep in mind that LastPass is still in development, so there will likely be changes/improvements before it hits the App Store.

Read more →

Filed under: Developer, News, Apple, iPhone, Beta

Torrenting iPhone 3.0 firmware: a cautionary tale

You probably know that installing a copy of the new iPhone 3.0 firmware that you grabbed off a torrent site is illegal, but you should also know that it's a royal pain in the butt. Users on iPhone forums are discovering the hard way that a copy of 3.0 is no good unless you're a registered developer, so it can be unlocked on your device. Otherwise you're in for a world of hurt, with hacky workarounds that require you to turn off your Internet connection every time you want to use your phone with iTunes.

Once you've gone to 3.0 without registering, it turns out to be really hard to go back. Users having trouble downgrading back to the current version of the firmware are all over iPhone forums, annoying legitimate developers (or their friends -- each dev can apparently sign up 100 devices) with questions about restoring to the old version. Meanwhile, the iPhone just throws a bunch of errors at them. I'm sure a way to restore will pop up soon, but if it doesn't, you could be holding a brick until the official release. Is it really worth all this trouble to avoid waiting a few months for copy and paste?

Note: Gizmodo has a step-by-step guide to downgrading.

Filed under: Apple, iPhone, Lists

5 iPhone apps for old school computer geekery

There are all kinds of fancy modern things that you can do with your iPhone, including all the techno-superhero things Jay covered in his post.

What if you like things that are a little bit more nostalgic? Here are five apps packed with old-timey computing goodness!

These are all available through iTunes - no jailbreaking required!

Fortune [iTunes link] - Ever wish you could tap into the wisdom of Fortune's terminal quotes no matter where you are? This app is a faithful port for the iPhone, right down to the monochromatic fixed-width font.

Chip-8 Emulator [iTunes link] - It's no surprise that a computer system considered cutting-edge in the 1970s can now be emulated on a handheld device like the iPhone. Geardome's app allows you to play all the Chip-8's vintage public domain games in their full-on low-fi glory.

Sid Player / Sid Player Lite [iTunes Link] - The iPod started out as audio-only, so this one's sort of doubly-old school because it plays Commodore 64 SID files. The full version ($2.99) provides access to more than 35,000 songs from the High Voltage Sid Collection and includes soundtracks from classic games and musicians. The free Lite version provides more limited access.

HAL 9000 [iTunes link] - What are you doing, Dave? Why, he's installing HAL-9000 on his iPhone, of course! Take history's best-loved demented computer with you everywhere. Launch it and cackle any time you want to reassure people that you're not all there yourself.

iMud [iTunes link]- Apple loves to flaunt all the shiny, new games you can play, but what about classic text-based gaming? iMud (from the developer of Metal Mudder for Mac) is $4.99, but it's a great mobile interface for playing all your favorite classic MUDs like Wheel of Time and Mozart. Don't forget to visit MUD Connector to search for a MUD that's to your liking.

Filed under: Photo, Apple, Commercial, Freeware, iPhone, Mobile

Print pics directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch with Air Photo

Looking for a way to print images from your iPod Touch or iPhone without having to transfer them to your computer first? Air Photo is just what you need.

There are two components to Air Photo: the server (a free download and runs on both Windows and Mac) and the client app, which you'll find on the App Store (just search for air photo).

In a single-server setup, the app will automatically connect via Bonjour - otherwise you can use the connect button to specify the server you'd like to use for printing. Press the print button, and your server's Air Photo window will activate. It automatically selects landscape or portrait orientation and allows you to scale images or leave white space.

At $1.99, the app is a great buy - especially if you print a lot of images that you've saved on your iPhone or Touch.

Filed under: Apple, iPhone, Browsers

Apple loosens restrictions on alt web browsers for the iPhone

iPhone browsers
The iPhone App Store may be filled with games, productivity apps, and umm... other utilities. But up until recently there was one thing that you couldn't find in the App Store: web browsers that would compete with the Safari browser that comes with the phone.

But over hte past day, at least four alternative web browsers have shown up with prices ranging from free to about $2. The browsers add features like a full screen mode with no toolbars to an algorithm that compensates for your shaky hand.

All the browsers are still based on WebKit, which is Safari's rendering engine. So it doesn't look like we'll be seeing Opera or Firefox for the iPhone just yet. But it's a start.

[via Engadget / image via Gizmodo]

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, iPhone, Troubleshooting

What's really on your iPhone? Find out with iPhone Backup Extractor

When you back up your iPhone or iPod Touch, iTunes can use the backup to do a restore, but not much else. It's nice when Apple's stuff "just works," but what if you want to see inside the black box and interact with the data on your phone? This is especially important for developers, who can fix bugs a lot more easily if they can look at a user's backup to figure out what's causing problems with an app. iPhone Backup Extractor is a tool that makes this possible.

With iPhone Backup Extractor, you can convert an iPhone/iPod Touch backup to make it readable by the OS X Finder. This lets developers get access to application resources that there's no way to see in iTunes. It might be of some interested to curious non-developers, too, if you just to figure out what files a 3rd-party app has created on your phone.

[via furbo.org]

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, iPhone

Use an iPhone or iPod Touch in disk mode with DiskAid

One of the first things that iPhone and iPod Touch users noticed was the lack of a built-in "disk mode," where your device would appear on the desktop as a drive that you could use for file storage. Other iPod models even had a setting to specify how much of their storage space should be used for music, and how much should be used for disk mode, but the latest and greatest ones didn't. But thanks to an app called DiskAid, you can still transfer files between your iPhone and your Mac or PC without jailbreaking or using iTunes.

Sure, you may already know how to access a jailbroken iPhone's hard drive via SFTP, but that's a pain in the butt compared to DiskAid. You can just plug your device in, start it up, and start transferring files in a straightforward interface that anybody who's ever used Windows Explorer or the OS X Finder can figure out. As a brief disclaimer, realize that storing files on your iPhone doesn't mean your iPhone can interact with them. It's like putting music on an old iPod in disk mode: you can store it there, but you can't play it.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Video, iPhone

Orb Networks to let you stream media from home to your iPhone


The Register reports that streaming media company Orb Networks plans to announce support for the iPhone and iPod touch this week. Orb is sort of like the software version of the Slingbox. You install a client on your home PC and then you can login from pretty much any device with a web browser and stream your music, picture, and video collection over the internet to a remote computer or mobile device. If you've got a TV tuner on your home computer, you can even watch live TV over the internet.

While you could theoretically access Orb's web interface using Safari on an iPhone today, Apple blocks Orb's usual streaming protocol. So the folks at Orb went and reworked their system to stream MP4 files instead.

Oh, and if you're wondering why the video above is showing Winamp Remote, it's because Winamp and Orb have teamed up to provide support for controlling your Winamp playlists over the web.

[via Engadget]

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio

Joystiq

TUAW

Daily Finance

Autoblog

Urlesque

Engadget

WoW

Switched.com

FanHouse