I don’t know how I didn’t know about this sooner, but it appears the long wait is [sort of] over. .NET has come to iPhone development. Yes, you heard me, the ability to write for the iPhone in C# is here.

This changes everything.

First, the bad news.. It’s not free. The personal edition will set you back $400. There was a beta test program but 1.0 was released today so there will be no more of that. I’m sure it will eventually show up on torrent sites but for now there doesn’t seem to be anything out there.

MonoTouch is the Mono edition for Apple’s iPhone and Apple’s iPod Touch devices.  MonoTouch allows developers to create C# and .NET based applications that run on the iPhone and can take advantage of the iPhone APIs as well as reusing both code and libraries that have been built for .NET as well as existing skills.

To purchase a copy, you need to head over to Monotouch. It seems this was also just posted to Slashdot, and the site already seems to be suffering, so I am reposting the following from the FAQ which is what most of you will be interested in.

What is MonoTouch?

MonoTouch is a software development kit for Mac OS X that lets you use .NET programming languages to create native applications for Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch devices. MonoTouch allows developers to use the .NET framework and more efficient programming languages, such as C#, to create applications that run on the iPhone and can take advantage of native iPhone APIs. Developers can test MonoTouch applications on the iPhone simulator, as well as physical hardware, and can distribute MonoTouch applications on Apple’s App Store.

What is included in the MonoTouch SDK?

MonoTouch is delivered as a static compiler that turns .NET executables and libraries into native applications. There is no JIT or interpreter shipped with your application, only native code. In addition to the core Base Class Libraries that are part of Mono, MonoTouch also ships with bindings for various iPhone APIs to allow developers to create native iPhone applications with Mono.

Do I need a Mac to use MonoTouch?

MonoTouch requires a Mac and Apple’s iPhone SDK to test on the emulator and deploy on the device. And you will need to be an Apple iPhone developer to deploy on the device.

How is MonoTouch Licensed?

MonoTouch is a commercial product based on the open source Mono project and is licensed on a per-developer basis.

With which version of .NET is MonoTouch compatible?

MonoTouch is based on a hybrid .NET 2.0 and Silverlight 2 API profile. If you want to use existing C# code, you will need to compile it from scratch using our compiler and tools to make sure that the proper assemblies are referenced.

What .NET features does MonoTouch support?

MonoTouch supports garbage collection, multi-threading, and many features of .NET 3.5, including C# 3.0 and LINQ, with some exceptions due to the security system in the device. See Limitations for more information about the limitations of MonoTouch.

Does MonoTouch support running Silverlight /Moonlight applications?

No.MonoTouch does not currently include Moonlight or Silverlight functionality.

What is the difference between MonoTouch Personal Edition and MonoTouch Enterprise Edition?

A MonoTouch Personal Edition license is non-transferable, entitles the owner to one year of MonoTouch updates, and allows distribution of applications built with MonoTouch on Apple’s App Store.

A MonoTouch Enterprise Edition license is owned by a legal entity for use by one developer at any given time, entitles the owner to one year of MonoTouch updates, and allows enterprise deployments of MonoTouch applications, as well as the distribution of applications built with MonoTouch on Apple’s App Store.

Soooo. If anyone decides to pony up the cash for MonoTouch, or happens to find it by some other means, let’s hear about it in the comments. How does it stand up? Is it the biggest thing since sliced bread?

If you haven’t noticed yet, OS 3.1 was made available today as well as iTunes 9. As always, if you are jailbroken and wish to stay that way, do NOT update to 3.1 just yet. Wait for the Dev-Team to release a 3.1 jailbreak. More importantly, if you require the ability to unlock your phone ala ultrasn0w, DO NOT update to 3.1. The 3.1 update has a new baseband and will render your phone un-unlockable, possibly for good. You will need a custom firmware containing the current (04.26.08) baseband. (You can see the version in the Settings app under General and About, look for modem firmware).

Along with that, before updating, I would recommend launching Cydia at least once more. If you haven’t noticed, there is a new announcement on the main screen. After opting in, the top of the app will say you are pending (didn’t grab a shot of that) and eventually it will change to this

It isn’t totally clear if, when, or how these will be used, but the current assumption is it would allow you to downgrade from 3.1 back to 3.0. If you don’t plan on updating to 3.1 until the jailbreak is released, then I wouldn’t worry about this. If you do update to 3.1, it *may* be possible to downgrade back to 3.0 but doing so will keep the updated baseband preventing you from unlocking unless a new exploit is found. Has anyone tried going back to 3.0 after updating? Were you successful?

As far as what’s new in 3.1, the list is not all I could have hoped for but there are a few notable items. One thing that doesn’t seem to be listed is MMS support (beyond an indirect mention anyhow). Seeing as AT&T is turning on MMS support on September 25th, it would be fair to assume 3.1 will have the capability and it will be enabled through iTunes at that time. On with the list.

• Genius recommendations for Applications
• Support for iTunes 9
• Redeem iTunes Gift cards, codes, and certificates in the App Store
• Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store
• Browse and download ringtones wirelessly from the iTunes Store
• Save video from mail and multimedia messages into Camera Roll
• Option to "save as new clip" when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS
• Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on
• Remotely lock iPhone with a passcode via MobileMe
• Use Voice Control on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets
• Paste phone numbers into the Keypad
• Option to use Home button to turn on Accessibility features on iPhone 3GS
• Warn when visiting fraudulent Web sites in Safari (anti-phishing)
• Improved Exchange calendar syncing and invitation handling
• Fixes issue that caused some app icons to display incorrectly

With iTunes 9 finally comes the ability to rearrange your icons from your computer, big win! It is also not yet known if iTunes 9 has any effect on AppSync 3.0 or ipa’s that it would be needed for. Let us know if you have upgraded if this still works for you.

If you have already upgraded are there any notable changes not mentioned or subtle but useful features that snuck in?

Last, how is Wi-Fi working for everyone? 3.0 seemed to be plagued with instability and unexplained fluxuations in signal strength along with high packet loss, mostly associated with having push email on. Any improvements there?

If you run SBSettings, as it would seem most jailbroken users do, you’ve no doubt seen the Free Memory feature when viewing processes. This is one of those things that I would definitely not respond well to if it went away. The lack of a swap file in iPhoneOS, means memory is much more of a concern than pretty much everywhere else. If your app uses too much memory, it is swiftly terminated by the OS, no questions asked. Poorly written apps will also cause memory leaks and leave you with less free memory than you started with after running and exiting them. Apple’s solution to this? Reboot.

Wut? No thanks. Boot up time for the iPhone 3GS is anything but lightening fast, and the 3G is takes even longer. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t typically restart my phone. This is where the ‘Free Memory’ option is crucial.

The free memory option is not limited to jailbroken users. There are a few AppStore apps that have this ability as well, or at least there were. Apple it seems is having a fit over this function and is forcing developers that currently offer it to remove it or have their apps ejected from the AppStore. Why would they do that?!?!?!?

Here’s my best guess… The method used to free the memory works by allocating everything available. The OS will then see memory levels are critical and start terminating background processes. Here, this means Phone, Mail, and iPod. Of course they automatically restart, and in the end you typically have much more memory available. So what is Apple’s problem? When the apps are terminated, a crash log is produced. These are sent to Apple when you sync. Apple is likely getting flooded with these crash logs and so has decided to pull the plug on the ability to use this method.

What is my response to this? Free your RAM every chance you get. Apple has been all but negligent in their AppStore processes and their refusal to approve certain apps or the adamant rejection of apps that use undocumented or restricted API’s, not to mention the rejections that have no real merit whatsoever. Free your RAM every chance you get. Apple is not a company that exercises the skill of listening to it’s users or even acknowledging when problems exist. They come up with blatant lies to discourage and attempt to make illegal the process of jailbreaking YOUR device that YOU own¹. They spew their bullshit claiming they don’t know if Google Voice uses VoiP technologies, or that it hasn’t been rejected, they just haven’t approved it yet. Come on guys, there is no doubt they have plenty of tools at their disposal that will tell them exactly what your app does, what API’s it uses, etc. Free your RAM every chance you get. They charge $99 a year for the privilege of being able to develop iPhone/iTouch apps, so that you can submit them to the AppStore so they can take another 30% of your profits. What about refunds? A little known fact is that if someone purchases one of your apps, and is later granted a refund for whatever reason, the entire purchase price comes out of YOUR pocket while Apple sits back and keeps it’s 30% commission. Apple is obviously annoyed by what results when users free their memory the efficient way, so let’s stick it to them until it hurts.

Free your RAM every chance you get and use one of the few things that has actually gotten Apple’s attention to protest their [mis]management of just about everything related to the AppStore.

1. Apple’s claim to the copyright office in response to the EFF’s request to officially declare jailbreaking a legal activity. It’s a hefty read, I’ll note some of the key pieces of manure here.

5. In testimony, the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated that the iPhone warranty would not apply to an unauthorized modification on an iPhone. Would other services or functionality be affected by “jailbreaking” an iPhone, e.g., would AT&T phone, data, or GPS functionality be affected? Would AT&T be required to provide service to an iPhone modified by the user?

Apple’s Response:

Yes, ..services and functionality of the iPhone can be affected by jailbreaking of the
phone, as well as services .. on AT&T’s phone and data network. The OS controls a critical portion .. known as the “baseband processor” (“BBP”) that is used to connect .. to a .. network and to utilize services .. Once an iPhone is jailbroken, it is much easier to hack the BBP software .. Such modifications can interfere with ..phone, data, and GPS functionality .. Modifications to the BBP software may introduce .. errors into that software or cause it not to function correctly .., which in turn can render the iPhone incapable of connecting to the network at all in order to make phone calls or send/receive data. Such modifications may also interfere with GPS functionality. There is a special GPS chip in the iPhone that .. computes location of the phone .. However, an enhanced functionality called “assisted GPS” enables the location .. to be pinpointed
with greater accuracy than ordinary GPS by utilizing data about the location of the cell tower to which the user is .. connected. If modifications to the BBP software were to render the user unable to connect to the local AT&T cell phone tower, the assisted GPS functionality would, in turn, not function.

It gets better..

…each iPhone contains a unique Exclusive Chip Identification (ECID) number that identifies the phone to the cell tower. With access to the BBP via jailbreaking, hackers may be able to change the ECID, which in turn can enable phone calls to be made anonymously (this would be desirable to drug dealers, for example) or charges for the calls to be avoided.

To me, this sounds like “We didn’t make the devices and network secure enough and people figured it out, rather than fix anything, outlaw jailbreaking!” Seriously guys… We’re on the 4th generation now with the 3GS and they haven’t managed to store this uber-sensitive data in ROM? Implement a secure handshake process between the towers and devices that is based on more than one piece of information? Add a carrier password of some form that the user chooses which is authenticated with the tower? All of the ill-doings Apple is claiming are possible with jailbreaking come down to design faults in the end. Poorly implemented protocols that can be easily hacked. History has proven time and time again that the black box design approach does not work. Security through obscurity is not a solution but an effort to cover up a poor implementation. I also like how they state specifically state “this would be desirable to drug dealers”. Ok, it would also be desirable to illegal telemarketers, robo-callers, collection agencies, scammers, politicians, basically anyone who might want to make an anonymous call.

I could go on and rant about Apple’s incompetence and need to play puppet master for another 15 paragraphs. Perhaps another day as if I continue this is likely going to meander a bit past the “all-ages” rating I aim to keep here.

FREE YOUR RAM EVERY CHANCE YOU GET. Make Apple bend over and take it without any lube while convincing them it’s really better that way, just like they do to their users.

Got something to add? Go.

Nobody can deny the fact that the Facebook app has been quite lacking for some time. After waiting forever for an update, Joe Hewitt announced 3.0 was finally complete and submitted. After waiting in queue to get its allocated 10 minutes or so of review time, it finally showed up in the AppStore tonight yesterday (believe it or not I started typing this paragraph yesterday).

By now I’d imagine most everyone has already updated but I still have to at least give it a mention. The  functionality boost from 2.3 to 3.0 is the difference between Windows 3.1 and XP. Better notifications, notes, events, pages, chat, it’s all there. Long overdue is also the ability to now manually refresh posts, ‘like’ posts, and even the ability to apply your filters to the news feed. Along with all of this, icons can be added for profiles and pages that you might frequent.

The icons can also be rearranged the same way as the springboard icons, just hold one for a few seconds. This is cool, but if you’re like me it’ll take a while to get used to NOT pressing the home button when you are finished rearranging and closing the app. Doh!

All in all, this is an awesome update. Personally, given the bugs and lack of functionality, I would have considered everything prior to 3.0 to be beta. Now we wait for 3.1 on which work started immediately after submitting 3.0. The only change coming in 3.1 I can say for sure is that it will finally bring push notifications to Facebook.

A few people seem to dislike the new version. What do you all think? After only 5 minutes I could never go back to pre-3.0.

New Features

- Landscape mode
- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically

Being physically unable to upgrade anything, ever, without first reading the change log, I noticed a message from Saurik in the latest Winterboard update. Given that the message is 2 taps from the package screen I’m guessing most folks have not and will not ever see it so I am re-posting it here in an attempt to spread the word.

A Word on Remapping Files

I have gotten a flood of questions from users asking why SMS themes “don’t work”. The answer is: the applications changed, and the people making the themes refused to upgrade them.

WinterBoard is designed to be very flexible: it can theme nearly anything. With such power comes responsibility. In essence, the process of making a theme for WinterBoard requires an understanding of the application you are theming and knowing what files it loads, so you know what to replace.

This, in turn, means that when the themed program changes, such as from 2.x to 3.x, the themes may also have to get upgraded to still match.

No one seems to get this fact.

Instead, theme developers complain to me to “fix WinterBoard” so that, for example, SMS themes work again.

That is simply not reasonable: every time I add code to WinterBoard to remap old filenames I slow down a performance critical component. In this case, what happened is that the SMS application got broken up into the actual application and a new 3.x framework called “ChatKit”.

Most of the images people had been theming are now part of ChatKit: if you want to keep theming them, you need to start theming that bundle, not the SMS application. I don’t think a single theme has been updated to account for this change in the last two months.

OK: I did it. I added a remapping for the SMS application. If I am loading an image for ChatKit that isn’t themed, I check to see if a file with the same name from the SMS application was themed, and take it instead. In practice this is not a big deal, as it is a single remapping and most of the cost is going to come from the SMS application, but if something similar to this were ever done for UlKit it would be downright devastatingly painful.

So, this is the last time I want to do something like this, and I even consider this ChatKit remapping “deprecated”, even in the first version of WinterBoard that includes it: people really need to upgrade their themes to theme the right files going forward. (Note: this has nothing to do with SMSBackground.png, which is a WinterBoard-specific feature that simply had to get rewritten for 3.x.)

This is straight from the horse’s mouth. This is a very simple step but has the potential to have a big impact if you’re unaware of it and are now on 3.0.1.

iPhone OS 3.0 SDK and iPhone OS 3.0.1 software release for Mac OS X v10.5.7

To continue development with iPhone SDK 3.0 on your iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.0.1 will need to perform the following:

1. Log into your Mac with an Admin account and launch the Terminal application
(/Applications/Utilities)

2. Copy and paste the following line into Terminal:
ln -s /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.0\ \(7A341\)/ /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.0.1

Note: If you installed iPhone SDK 3.0 somewhere other than the default /Developer
location, replace the "/Developer" directory as appropriate.

*I am seeing a lot of hits to this page from folks searching for iphone 3.0.1 advisory. This is somewhat confusing to me as I would think if you are aware of the advisory, then you know what it is. So what’s up? Are you finding what you’re looking for here? If not, please do post a note in the comments as to what you are actually trying to find out and I will be happy to update the post with whatever the answer might be.

This Article is from 2009 and outdated. I do not even own an iPhone anymore. It is here only for historical purposes. I will be providing no further support nor will I be approving or responding to any comments.

In keeping up on the logs for the site I’ve noticed quite a few people arriving here after Googling some variation of ‘install cydia over ssh’. So to all of you out there, what exactly is it that you are looking for? The only conclusion I can draw is that folks are searching for jailbreak instructions using incorrect terms. That, or some of you have managed to remove Cydia and now need to get it back. Based on the fact that you cannot have the ability to SSH without first having Cydia, what other possibilities could there be?

If you are looking for jailbreak instructions, there is a guide in the menu on the right.

If you have managed to remove Cydia, first of all, BAD USER! Go stand in the corner! Why would you do that??

All reasons aside, if you’ve managed to get into this situation, you’ve come to the right place as I have a solution for you. First, download the following file.

• Cydia and essentials

Now unzip the file, you will have 2 .deb files. You will need to get them onto your phone using your client of choice (WinSCP, FileZilla, etc).

In an SSH session, change to the folder you put the debs in. Type exactly the following:

• dpkg -i essential_0-1_iphoneos-arm.deb cydia_1.0.2953-59_iphoneos-arm.deb; respring

If you attempt to install either on it’s own you will get errors and it will not work. Once it has finished, your phone should respring, and if all is well, you should again have Cydia on your springboard.

If the situation is that you simply deleted the Cydia.app folder, I can make that available as well but I’m not going to unless it’s requested you can download it as a zip here. I zipped it directly on the device preserving the permissions, so you can either unzip it on the device, or make sure that after FTP’ing, you right click the Cydia.app folder to edit the permissions, set it to 755 and choose the recursive option.

So there you all go. Hopefully this is what you guys have been looking for, if it is not, be sure to make yourself heard in the comments. As you can see, your questions get answered even if you do not ask them, imagine what might happen if you do!

Unpacking cydia (from cydia_1.0.2953-59_iphoneos-arm.deb) …
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of cydia:
cydia depends on essential; however:
Package essential is not installed.
dpkg: error processing cydia (–install):
dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
cydia

likewise, attempting to install just essentials will yield:

Unpacking essential (from essential_0-1_iphoneos-arm.deb) …
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of essential:
essential depends on cydia | com.ripdev.icy; however:
Package cydia is not configured yet.
Package com.ripdev.icy is not installed.
dpkg: error processing essential (–install):
dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
essential

There are a few services available now for tracking your phone. As far as I know, all of them can be disabled by a would be thief rather easily. I have found a method that will give no indication whatsoever that your phone is being tracked. Additionally, there is only one way to launch the app to change the settings or disable it, and for the common thief is not likely to happen.

The idea just came to me when I was backing up my Cydia applications and saw the FieldTest.app folder. If you aren’t aware, there is a special number you can dial on the phone that will open the field test application. To check it out, dial *3001#12345#*. When you hit call, the field test app opens. So I thought it could probably be replaced with something else, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I should note that only jailbroken phones will be able to use this method. You will need to have SSH installed, and I would recommend plist editor as it allows you to edit XML and binary plist files, both of which you will likely encounter.

Ok so the first step is to ftp to your phone. First go to /Applications. This will take you to the real location of the apps (Native and Cydia). Find and delete the FieldTest.app folder. Note that you will need to use root as the mobile account will not be able to remove it. (If you still want to have the fieldtest app available, change it’s identifier and remove the lines used further down to hide the icon)

Next you will find the folder for the app you wish to hide. If it is a native app or something installed with Cydia, you should look in /Applications. For AppStore apps, instead go to /private/var/mobile/Applications. You will see folders named something like 1B8A526F-88B8-4447-8EAD-E7F9575E07E6. You will have to look at each one until you find the app you are looking for. As an example let’s just use Navizon. You will find the folder containing Navizon.app and then enter that folder.

Copy the Info.plist file to your computer and open it in plist editor. Find the line that says

<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>

and change the next line to say

<string>com.apple.fieldtest</string>

This will cause Navizon to be identified as the field test app. Next, go to the end of the file and right above </dict>, add the following

<key>SBAppTags</key>
<array>
    <string>hidden</string>
</array>

This will prevent the icon from showing up on the springboard. All that is left is to respring.

Now, when you dial *3001#12345#*, Navizon will open.

One thing I should note is that Navizon in particular will show an icon on the status bar when it is running in the background. To get around that, simply delete or rename the TopBar.png file in the Navizon.app folder.

This method can be applied unchanged to any app you like.

A few days ago I posted about Google Latitude. After having a while longer to play with it, I’ve determined that the fact that it is a web app is pretty much a deal breaker. Even on a 3GS with Backgrounder, it just won’t do. Folks who frequently use the Safari download toggle for SB Settings will have to re-start Latitude after each toggle as well. Not to mention the battery drain. Even if you do keep Safari running in the background (or foreground), does it even function if Latitude is not the active page?

So, enough with Latitude, at least for now. I’ve begun using an app called Navizon. It is available from Cydia for both OS2 and OS3. If it does not show up when you search, add the Navizon repo (http://cydia.navizon.com/) (or xsellize). The two main differences between Navizon and Latitude, are Navizon is a real app, and it does run in the background. Along with that it updates the location every 10 minutes, so it’s not hard on the battery, and can be turned off at any time.

One thing that would be nice is the ability to change the update interval, but maybe that will come with the next version. When active there will be a GPS crosshair icon in the status bar.

Tapping the GPS icon at the bottom left will show your current position. Tapping the buddy icon will show an overview of all of your buddies. The zoom level for buddy view is anything but intelligent. You can quickly pan and zoom on your own though.

The buddies button at the upper right will show everyone on your buddy list along with their status, last update time, and method of location.

Locations can be reported based on Phone (cell tower), Wi-Fi, or GPS.

Tapping the name of a friend in the buddies view will zoom to that person’s last known location.

Tapping the arrow next to a buddy will allow you to quickly get directions to or from their location, show them in the maps app, or email their location.

Along with everything in the app, there is also a website that you can use to view the location of your buddies using Google maps. For a fee of $10 (one time) you can also have historical locations stored, for yourself only, that you can view on the website.

On the site you can set up alerts. You can either have an email sent or a user defined URL called when a selected buddy enters or exits an area you designate. Keep in mind though, that you might want to make the radius of the alert area larger than you would think. Because the background service updates every 10 minutes, if the area is too small the person could enter and exit between updates and no alert would be triggered. Without the $10 fee I believe you can have 5 alerts per month.

As an added bonus, if you are planning a trip, you can use the ‘My Coverage’ section to view the locations of previously mapped cell towers. Wi-Fi Access Point and cell tower locations are all ‘provided’ by other users running Navizon on GPS enabled phones. As you drive, walk, etc, if Navizon finds an AP or cell tower, and has a GPS location, it will report back to their servers and make those AP’s/towers able to be used as locators for those without GPS enabled phones running Navizon. As you locate and report (all automated) new APs and towers, you receive reward credits.

• Wi-Fi Access Points discovered by you / already mapped: 3 points / 1 point
• Cell towers discovered by you / already mapped: 15 points / 2 points

If you rack up 10,000 points, you can redeem a reward of $10 via PayPal. Free users can redeem only one reward, coincidentally the same amount as becoming a paid member. If you live in an area with few access points mapped, take a slow cruise or a walk around your neighborhood with the Navizon app running to get some easy points, or look for areas with few or no cell towers mapped. In 3 days of just background use, I have gotten 67 points.

The website at times does not like to cooperate though. When trying to view coverage for a large area it can take quite a while for it to load. Setting your home area and alert areas can sometimes take a few attempts to get the bounds where you want them.

Overall, Navizon definitely beats out Google Latitude, at least for now.

The good news, you’ve already read it up there in the title. The bad news, it’s a web app. Apparently it was decided between Google and Apple that a standalone application would be confused with the standard Maps app. (Read: Apple said no).

Seeing as Safari tends to stay running anyhow, using backgrounder (jailbroken users only) with this shouldn’t be too much of an issue even for 3G owners. Perhaps even using a lightweight alternate browser app solely for Latitude with backgrounder. I haven’t explored much in the browser area so I can’t make any recommendations at this point.

Accessing Latitude is the same as signing into any other Google account. Once a friend is added a request will be emailed to them. They can then choose to accept and share their location, accept and hide their location, or deny. Once accepted, you must use an iGoogle gadget to view the sharers location.

Some folks have no idea what I’m talking about so let me explain. Google Latitude basically lets you  share your location with whoever you like so long as they have a Google account. On the iPhone side of things, you can choose if and how you want to share your location.

Choosing the middle option shown on the right, you can select wherever you’d like your location to appear as.

So far I’m not sure how refreshing works on the PC side of things. After manually setting the location I waited a few minutes and nothing changed. I refreshed the page and then the new location was shown.

Head over to http://google.com/latitude on your iPhone to check it out.

There are also plugins for Latitude. One allows you to publish your location to your blog or website. The other will show your location in Google Talk, currently listed as beta. For the website one, you can choose to share your actual location or just the city. To check either of those out visit the Do More with Google Latitude page.

Hopefully Google will release an API for using Latitude and somebody will create a daemon for running it in the background.

Has this happened to anyone? You’ve got headphones or external speakers plugged into the headphone jack with nothing playing, and when you unplug them, music starts playing on the built in speaker?

I have run into this several times. Upon trying to search for a cause/solution, I found that I am hardly alone with this issue. I have a theory and need your help to confirm it. I do not have the special Apple audio cable/adapter, I simply use regular headphones or a car tape adapter with it. I believe the problem may only occur when the headphone jack is being used WITHOUT a crApple proprietary audio adapter. I have had this problem since 2.x so I do not believe it is a software bug.

While it continues to happen, I have not been able to reliably reproduce it at will.

Has this happened to you? Are you using an Apple audio cable/adapter, or something with a standard headphone plug? Found a solution?

Go

SOLVED

I purchased an Apple audio adapter (ebay of course) and have confirmed the cause of this issue. The Apple adapter has one extra contact on the plug. There is also a button that, depending on how many times is pressed or how long is held, will perform certain actions such as voice command, starting / stopping music, skipping tracks, etc.

The second I discovered that 1 short push of the button toggles music playback, it was pretty obvious what’s going on. A standard headphone plug (non-Apple) will have 3 total contacts (left, right, ground). The one that is furthest from the tip is split in 2 on the Apple adapter. I believe the button on the Apple adapter crosses these contacts to perform the user actions.  So basically, what it comes down to, is when you insert or remove a standard headphone plug, because the contact is so long, it bridges the contacts inside your phone and completes the same circuit the little button would, causing the music playback to toggle.

So if you are having this issue, your options are either to live with it, or fork over a few bucks for the adapter. DO NOT BUY IT FROM APPLE unless getting ripped off makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Go look on EBay, I got mine for less than $2.

(Just because some people will need this to be said, this goes for any cables you might need. A $40 cable from Apple (of whatever variety) can be found on EBay for 1/10 that price.

A few days ago I posted about Tapulous and the potential to have your associated Facebook / Twitter accounts hacked. There is another potential problem here. Let’s say you sell your phone. The UDID has not changed, so whoever you sell it to, if they install an app that you used that identifies you only by UDID, you’ve just given them access to your “account”. Now, it is possible to change the UDID (jailbroken users only), but it appears Apple may use this for verifying warranty coverage so if you change the UDID of a phone still under warranty and then sell it, the buyer may not be able to use the warranty. Likewise, it may be possible to change the UDID of a phone that is no longer under warranty, to one that is in order to have it serviced.

What I would recommend, is if you are going to sell your phone, email the contact for any apps you use that store settings on a server but don’t require a login, and ask them to remove your UDID from their system, or change it to your new one.

To see your UDID, just hold shift and click the serial number in iTunes.

What does this have to do with Push? Not much. In fact Push notifications are not sent based on UDID. They are sent based on a device token that is generated.

There is an issue that has cropped up that some people have stopped receiving push notifications. Apple has confirmed that in certain cases, your token can change when you sync with iTunes. When this happens, you will no longer receive any Push notifications. Their solution is to simply launch any apps that use Push and they will update the token.

Has anyone run into this? Has opening the app once resolved it for you?

Well folks, we’re up to 0.9.3 Beta. This time I’ve managed to get in a bit more testing before releasing to the wild and I think I have all of the issues to date licked here. The problem with the threshold notifications came down to a rounding error. You may have also noticed that no matter if monitor at launch was checked or not, it did not how you say, monitor at launch. This has also been fixed. I did not add any features in this as I just wanted to get all of the quirks worked out of the existing features first. So as long as nothing big pops up here, I should be able to start adding things shortly. So, if there’s anything you want µGrowl to do, now would be a good time to make yourself heard.

*Update* Shortly after posting the new release, I noticed one fatal flaw. The checkbox for monitoring was indeed checked at startup if it was supposed to be, however the monitoring was not actually started! Only a few people downloaded it during that window so to you, please update again and I apologize. Along with that, I had already began working on the next version so you get a little added benefit here. There is now a differentiation between changing from Downloading to Seeding and Seeding to Finished, though both are covered under the ‘Finished’ option.

Currently in the works

• More informative notifications. For example, threshold notices are nice, but  wouldn’t it be better to know how much is left?
• Some kind of summary on a user defined interval. (X active, X total, X seeding, total bandwidth, etc)
• An option to consider a transition from Downloading to Seeding to be a finished torrent.
• Alternate delivery methods for those who do not use Growl. Perhaps via email? If you could benefit from µGrowl if it supported another notification method, please post in the comments or forums.

Enough of the small talk, on with the goods!

Head over to the µGrowl page to grab the latest version.

I myself have not run into this, but there have been a lot of other users reporting problems with their Visual Voicemail not notifying them of new messages. It’s not clear yet if this is an issue exclusive to jailbroken or IPCC hacked iPhones, or if it is an issue with the service in general. Either way, if you have stopped receiving Visual Voicemails, give these steps a try.

• Open the Settings app
• Select General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
• After resetting reboot your phone if it does not automatically.

There is also another method I have seen that isn’t quite as convenient:

• Open the Phone app and go to the dial pad
• Hold 1 until it dials your voicemail
• Check your messages
• Call your line from another phone and leave a message.

If neither of these solve the problem you should probably call AT&T about it, especially if you are using a non-jailbroken phone.

If one of these DO solve the problem, please post it in the comments along with whether you are jailbroken or have applied the IPCC hack.

*EDIT* 6/15/09 – This post seems to be getting another rush of visitors since the 3.1 release. I have seen the IPCC hack has been updated as well, is this issue occurring all over again in 3.1 for you guys?

First of all, Cydia is awesome, no question about that. But if you have anything but a 3GS, it can be painfully slow to load and that can be a deterrent for keeping things updated. Let’s have a look at a much faster way. Enter Apt.

You will need SSH enabled on your iPhone/iTouch to begin with. If you do not, you must install OpenSSH from Cydia and probably the SSH Toggle for SBSettings. Also you’ll need to install Apt from Cydia. Look for ‘Apt 0.7 Strict’.

Now go ahead and SSH into your device. Be aware that you cannot use the apt tools while Cydia is running. The commands you will use the most frequently are as follows:

• apt-get update
  • Updates the repositories. Equivalent to refreshing in Cydia.
• apt-get upgrade
  • Installs any updates available.
• apt-cache search <search string>
  • Search the repositories
• apt-get install <packagename>
  • Install a package. If there are dependencies, you will be prompted to continue.
• apt-get remove <packagename>
  • Uninstall a package
• dpkg –l
  • Lists all installed packages
• respring
  • Respring your device from the command line

A couple of things to note is that for install and remove, you can list multiple packages separated by a space. When searching, the beginning of each line is the package name. Sometimes it will be a single word, though usually it will follow the patter com.companyname.appname. 

Even if you only ever plan on using Cydia for managing your packages, I would highly recommend installing Apt (along with syslog). Ever installed something that really screwed your phone? Ever been stuck in a reboot or respring loop? I know I have, and it’s no fun. What option do you have other than restoring? Well, if you’ve got Apt at your disposal you can connect via SSH and remove the offending package if you know what it is. Otherwise you can do the old ‘tail –f /var/log/syslog’ and watch for clues as to the which app is responsible.

Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell, there is no difference in using apt vs Cydia other than having to manually respring or reboot as Cydia is able to detect which if either is necessary.