ModMyiPhone is living up to its name. A haxor developer nicknamed “Cranium” has created a Windows-based File browser that enables users to access and transfer files directly to the iPhone, in mounted fashion, bypassing the sync process.
Unfortunately this is a quick and dirty application created in visual basic express. There is no installer and you’ll need .Net libs to make the magic happen. But if you do manage to fill these requirements, you’ll be rewarded with a window to your iPhone that allows full drag and drop support, Right-click save as, Auto previews, file backups, etc. The usual fare.
Parallels is beta testing a new release of its desktop virtualization software that incorporates iPhone syncing with XP and Vista. Now you’re probably asking yourself “Why the hell would I want to sync my iPhone with a Windows virtual machine on a Mac?” And honestly, other than perhaps the same reason my Doberman Pinscher licks his genitals, I can’t think of one good reason. But it’s nice to know the option is there should I choose to utilize it, right?
Among the added features in this release…
<li>Coherence windows now work with Expose! This means that each individual Windows application window will appears a separate, selectable window when you hit F9 to enter Expose. Windows windows (man, that sounds weird to say…) also have neat OS X effects too, like drop shadows. You’ll also be able to “stack” Windows application and Mac application windows in any order you’d like, so the experience is completely seamless.</li>
<li>The Image Tool is back at full strength and completely compatible with snapshotted drives. Using the image tool, users can:
- Convert virtual hard drive format (plain to expanding, expanding to plain),
- Enable/disable the "undo disk" option, which will erase all changes made during a session at shutdown. Its ideal for those of you doing a lot of testing or working in school settings),
- Easily enlarge a virtual hard drive if you're running out of space.</li>
<li>Explorer, our free utility that lets you browse and work with your VM’s hard drive even with the VM is off, now also works with VMs that are suspended. Be sure to read the release notes/user guide on how to do this safely.</li>
<li>iPhone support in XP and Vista. Yes, I realize the irony of syncing an Apple device with Windows running on a Mac, but lots of people need to hook their iPhones up to Outlook. Try not to judge.</li>
Coolgorilla.com breaks down language barriers and offers a novel way to meet foreign women in bars with the help of its talking translation service. Avoid those embarrassing social faux pas as you stumble to form poorly structured sentences from a book.
Just visit CoolGorilla.com on your iPhone – select any available sentence from the phrase book and your iPhone will repeat it back in the desired native tonque of your guests.
Gentlemen, start your downloading! Upon docking my iPhone I nearly spewed Coke Zero through my nostrils when a message popped up alerting me to a firmware update for iPhone, version 1.0.1. According to the documentation this is almost entirely a bug fix and little else. Correction It’s a security fix for several recently published Safari vulnerabilities.
Bummer. I was expecting some value added goodness.
UPDATE: Apple has posted documentation for this update here.
UPDATE 2: Since installing this update the Mail app has become alarmingly unstable. It seems to freeze up often. On the plus side IMAP folder support appears to have improved, allowing full server-side folder browsing. Nice, but I can do without the crashy crashy.
Thomas Robinson has started a really cool project that enables XBOX 360 owners to use their iPhone as an XBOX Media Center Remote, controlled via WiFi. A simple menu-driven interface allows you to play music, video, DVDs, photo slideshows, and more. I like!
The project is fully open source and can be downloaded free from Thomas’s website.
YouTube junkies looking for an easy way to transfer and view Flash video to your iPhone, in place of Apple’s ill-equipped streaming client, can now breath a sigh of relief. TubeTV makes saving and converting any Flash video content to iPhone/iPod format quick and easy, just the way we like it.
Download this free application now so you watch all those wonderful videos of cats wearing hats and sweater vests.
Are you sick of staring at that annoying AT&T logo? Do you hate the default arrangement of icons on the home screen? Is the incessant percussion sound of the Marimba ringtone making you wince with every incoming call? Well fret no more, with iFuntastic you can say goodbye to those walled-garden blues.
iFuntastic enables users to easily create custom ringtones and make various tweaks and changes to the iPhones settings and GUI, right from within from within a very simple interface.
Today iPhone is one step closer to gaining third party software support, unofficially of course. Hackers from the #iPhone IRC channel managed dissect embedded OSX’s source libraries and create a basic proof of concept application that does nothing more than display the words “Hello World”. The devs have now released these source binary files on public servers, available for anyone to download.
This is by no means the final solution in opening iPhone to software developers (that will come only through Apple), but I’ll take third party software any way I can get it. Even it is the result of a raped and violated hack ‘n slash effort.
Tunji Afonja from Efiko Software informs me that he has created a new custom ringtone application that enables iPhone users to roll their own ringtones, bypassing Apple’s lame default set of barely audible tones. Thank God someone developed this software. The Marimba sound is getting on my nerves!
So yesterday afternoon I was bantering with a friend of mine, who works at Yahoo, about the iPhone and what each of us thinks about the device, etc. As we were dinging its shortcomings the subject of third party software came up and whether Apple will ultimately open the platform up to software developers. He told me something interesting – not only is it possible, but apparently Yahoo is working (with Apple’s support) to bring its mobile services application, called Yahoo Go, to iPhone.
My initial reaction was that he was referring to a Safari web based app. Nope! According to him this is a native home screen application, and it’s being tested right now by the mobile team at Yahoo. Gah!
Now, I care as much about Yahoo Go as I do a bowl of leftover oatmeal. It was the revelation that somewhere in the world, outside of Cupertino, applications for iPhone are being developed and tested that had my ears standing.
This opened more questions that my friend had no answer for, namely whether development will be open to all developers or merely those hand picked by Apple? All I got back was a firm “don’t know. I only know we have an app in development now, and we’re working with Apple on services.” So there you have it. Will there be an SDK for developers…or will Apple only allow developers into its tent that it deems worthy of the Blessings of Jobs?
As much as I hate to say this, I think the latter will be the case rather than the former. My hunch is that Apple will erect guard towers around iPhone, and limit platform development. We’ll have to wait and see how this shakes out.
