RazorSharp iPods & Raw Gadgets

Fring is an application that allow you to chat! Mainly chat, but it also allows voice chat via VOIP.
It allows you to chat with many clients, many more than most other chat applications. It allows chat with Skype, MSN, ICQ, SIP, Gtalk, Twitter (chat only), Yahoo chat only, and AIM (chat only).

Fring for iPhone 3g will soon be released according to Fring.

The chat on Fring is basic. No emoticons, no profiles (buddy info), no away messenges, yada yada yada…. BUT it is really good for keeping you connected!

But the voice chat is something different. It is exceptionally awesome, to put it simple. There is no support for iPod Touch owners, at least for the voice chat. You can chat with your buddies from Skype, MSN, ICQ, SIP, and Gtalk. You can add phone numbers add buddies, and *call* your friends.

In my opinion, Fring is a great app, but doesnt get the credit it deserves. I hope that if you see Fring, you try it.The source is http://fring.com/iphone.xml, under the Category Fring. Notice that v. 2 is not released as of yet.

Screenshots:

This is definitely an application for me! I download such a lot of apps that such a program will save me a LOT of time whenever a new firmware-version is released.

Haakon

Whenever you upgrade to the latest firmware version there is no issue syncing the iPhone apps downloaded from the App Store as iTunes takes care of taking backups and syncing it for you after a firmware update.

However, in case of the jailbreak apps, the painful part of upgrading to the latest firmware is that you also need to start from scratch and reinstall all your favorite jailbreak iPhone apps one by one via the Installer app or Cydia.

AptBackup developed by Chris Featherstone is trying to address this problem, its a backup and restore solution for Cydia-installed iPhone applications.

Its a vicious cycle, Apple releases a new firmware version, iPhone hacking community figures out a way to jailbreak the latest firmware, iPhone users upgrade to the latest firmware version which  removes all their jailbreak apps, then they use the hacking tools to jailbreak their iPhone and then reinstall all their favorite jailbreak apps one by one via Cydia.

AptBackup developed by BigBoss is a backup and restore solution for Cydia-installed iPhone applications which should make it a lot easier and faster to reinstall your favorite jailbreak apps.

AptBackup doesn’t actually create a backup of the native iPhone apps, instead it creates a list of all the Cydia-installed iPhone apps on your iPhone and takes a backup of this list via iTunes which is later restored after the firmware update. It uses this list of all the Cydia-installed iPhone applications that was backed up to re-install all the applications automatically.

The user interface of AptBackup is also quite simple.

iPhone Firmware 2.2 that was seeded to developers of the iPhone Developer program recently has already revealed a minor tweak to iPhone’s Safari browser.

That’s not the only change, developers are reporting that they have observed couple of changes to iPhone’s App Store application shipping with the first beta version of iPhone firmware 2.2.

We could see a new categories page that will feature large category icons and more generous spacing between each listing as seen in the screen shot below.

iPhone Firmware 2.1 (left) compared to iPhone Firmware 2.2 (right)
As seen in the screen shot below, Apple appears to have also tweaked display pages for individual iPhone apps, shifting the “Tell a Friend” option from the title bar to just below the reviews summary, and adding a “Report a Problem” function that will allow users to report a problem with an application.

iPhone Firmware 2.1 (left) compared to iPhone Firmware 2.2 (right)
As per Apple Insider, the App Store related changes seems to be work in progress and could be related to the changes that were rolled out this weekend.

What would you like to see in iPhone firmware 2.2?

[via Apple Insider]

Now that the iPhone has 3G, Instant Messaging is a killer app - along with voice over IP (VOIP).

Agile is not yet updated to work with firmware 2.x - as soon as it is, get it!

Agile Messenger is a new iPhone Instant Messaging client app that showed up on Installer today - and from what I’ve seen so far, this is the best iPhone IM app yet!

Up to now Fring was my favorite iPhone IM client, because of its broad IM services support and strong background-running capabilities - but Agile Messenger matches up in both those areas, and goes well ahead due to its super slick interface and a bunch of cool features.

Here’s just a quick list of some of what’s cool about Agile Messenger based on playing round with it a bit this evening:

• Has a run-in-the-background capability (which can be turned off via Preferences) - that will play a sound and add a badge number on its icon to indicate when you have new messages.  This works even when the iPhone is in sleep mode.
• Has a Copy & Paste ability within chat sessions - so you can select a block of text, choose to copy it, and then paste it into your sending field.  This is implemented nicely too - not a bad example for other apps I think.
• Works with a broad range of IM services - GoogleTalk, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber
• Lets you snap pictures with the iPhone camera and send them within a chat session - and they show up very nicely in its built-in viewer
• Has easy one-tap icons for setting your online status and messages
• Its interface is slick and easy to work with at every level - working with contacts, showing individual conversations each in their own tab, menus that drop down and get out of the way quickly once you tap away from them, and good looking colors and buttons throughout.

Here’s a few more screencaps to give a little more feel for this great new app:

Agile Messenger is available now on Installer, via the ModMyiFone source, which is part of Community Sources - so you should not need to add any sources to see it …

If you have considered making your own applications or games, you ought to read Mike Ash’ story. Haakon.

I just got my first application in the iTunes App Store, and I wanted to tell the story of what it’s like to publish one, from start to finish. The app, NetAwake, is an independent project I wrote with my friend Joshua. It makes an interesting story, I think, because unlike the sordid tale of some people’s struggle to get accepted into the iPhone developer program, my personal experience was perfectly normal. (As far as I know.)

But even a perfectly normal experience with the iPhone developer program is intensely weird. Compared to the simplicity of developing and distributing a Mac app, Apple’s iPhone program is extremely convoluted and strange. Here’s the story, step by step.

1. Sign up with the iPhone Dev Center
The iPhone Dev Center is Apple’s portal page for iPhone development. Here, you can download the SDK and find tutorial videos and documentation. For reasons unknown to me, merely having an account with the Apple Developer Connection does not suffice. I have to sign up again for the iPhone site. This is pretty straightforward, however: just click through some scary legal forms and off you go. Now I can download the SDK and get started.

2. Enroll in the iPhone Developer Program
I’m not done signing up with stuff yet! You see, although I signed up and clicked through the scary legal stuff and downloaded the SDK, I can’t actually install any software on my iPhone. I can read documentation, write code, compile it, and even run it in the iPhone simulator, but I can’t get it onto my actual iPhone.

(And don’t think that the simulator makes for an adequate development platform. There’s a reason it’s called a “simulator” and not an “emulator”. Running on the real hardware ends up being pretty different.)

For this privilege, Apple makes me sign up for the developer program.

A private, limited beta of iTR has been released by TorrentRelay. The application allows you to download torrents to your iPhone. You can even play them, if the file is supported by the iPhone.

Hello to you, iPhone hacker! Hello to you too, iPod Touch hacker…

It’s not a secret anymore… many iPhone games and applications have been cracked. Basically, you can get 2 types of files. The “normal” .app file, and the cracked ipa file. We already covered the method to install .app files on your iPhone. Now here is the other method, the most popular one, to install cracked .ipa files such as games and applications on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

As a reminder, this is illegal! I do not encourage anyone to hack or crack iPhone games. Some developers spend quite some time working on them and they don’t want to see their work ripped off. If you see an iPhone game or application that you like, download it legally through the App Store. (I totally agree. I have bought lots of apps from App Store - but I like to test them first. Haakon.)

This method works for all firmwares from 2.0 to the current firmware available. The only thing that changes is the MobileInstallation file that you have to install. Each device (iPhone/iPod Touch) has its own MobileInstallation file for each version of the firmware. I started tracking these MobileInstallation files from iPhone 2.1. I do not have them for older firmwares and I do not have them for iPod Touch, although they might be the same as the iPhone’s. I don’t own an iPod Touch, thus I never tried this before on one but some users reported to me it worked great.

If you would like to know which iPhone games and applications have been cracked, check this list.

So, how do I install ipa files on an iPhone or iPod Touch?

1. You need to be on jailbroken iPhone with Cydia installed. For this, you may use QuickPwn, PwnageTool, or WinPwn.

Who can follow this guide?

My attempt is to make this as easy as possible for anyone to do, but note that I am going to assume that you are computer literate, you know what ’ssh’ is, and you know the basics of working on a UNIX command line such as the Mac, Linux, or iPhone terminal. If I’ve already lost you, I advocate reading up on some of these things and playing around before attempting something this in-depth .

What do I need?

1: A jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch with the 2.0 firmware. Jailbreaking is outside the scope of this guide — consult Google if you need to do this. Also, I’ll be referring to this device as an iPhone throughout this tutorial — but if you’ve an iPod Touch, it’s all the same

2: A few packages from Cydia: OpenSSH, GNU Debugger, and Link Identity Editor. If you’re not working on a Mac with Developer Tools installed, you’ll also want the iPhone 2.0 Toolchain.

3: A network connection. Your computer needs to be able to connect to your phone for this process, so you’ll want them both on the same network.

4: A file transfer application that supports SFTP (also known as SSH-FTP). WinSCP for Windows is good, as are Transmit (Shareware, but excellent) and Cyberduck (Free) for Mac, and gFTP for Linux.