There can be no denying that the favored jailbreak flavor of late 2011 and 2012 has to be the iOS 5 exclusive Notification Center and Siri digital assistant. The inclusion of the two new features in the public release of iOS 5 presented practically limitless opportunities for developers when it comes to extending their native limited abilities.
JoinedDecember 18, 2011
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A technology enthusiast, former software developer, and current Head of Quality and Testing at a leading SaaS company. A developer of multiple apps. A lover of pleasing people and a believer in being your authentic self.
Instagram, Lovestagram and now Cinemagram. Every way we turn there is a new 'gram' application which uses the power of visual art to entice users in to using the service. As we all know by now, Instagram is the popular photo sharing application which allows filters to be applied to photographs and shared with the Instagram network. Lovestagram is a soon to be made live service which has been created by an adoring girlfriend as a valentines day gift for her man, and Cinemagram, well that is a new application released onto the App Store two days ago which exists to create a beautiful hybrid image born out of image and video.
The world is going Siri crazy. Well, maybe not the whole world, but it seems that Apple's personal assistant software has caused a storm with the iPhone 4S flying off shelves, television commercials popping up all over the place, the Cydia store being infiltrated by Siri based enhancements and even developers pushing out Siri clones onto other mobile operating systems. In the last few weeks alone we have seen the introduction of the 'Evi' iPhone application, as well as 'Sara' making her way onto the Cydia store.
There is no doubt about the fact that the current trend for Cydia tweaks is all about modifying the new Notification Center and giving additional functionality to the Siri digital assistant software. Since the release of iOS 5 in October of last year, the Cydia store has been inundated with modifications and tweaks which add widgets, settings and even an animated Nyan cat to the Notification Center screen, but in all honesty there are only a handful which are any good.
In May of last year we brought you some news about a truly fantastic piece of development work by a developer known as Chris Simpson, also known as Apocolipse if we are to give him his online moniker. We covered the initial release of a tweak known as 'RecognizeMe' which used the front facing camera on a jailbroken iOS device to provide an extra layer of security before access could be granted to the passcode protected gadget.
If you are a long term, regular user of the Cydia store then you might be familiar with the MultiIconMover tweak which was created and submitted by Lance Fetters quite some time ago. One of the most annoying thing about a stock installation of iOS in my opinion, is the fact that when in editing mode. you can only select and move one icon at a time. I am sure Apple has some deep underlying reason why it is so, and always has been the case, but the bottom line is; from a user experience point of view it just seems pointless.
The good people at Google have been getting their heads down, with their Director and Managing Counsel of Telecoms and Media, Richard Whitt filing a 'special temporary authority' application to the Federal Communications Commission which will let them test their new next-generation personal communication device outside of a laboratory environment. It all sounds very technical, but just what is a 'next generation personal communication device'?
With the release of any new piece of consumer technology, especially an eagerly anticipated release, we expect a certain amount of rumors and speculations going side by side with it. However, as the conjecture flies in from all different angles, it sometimes becomes difficult to establish what is actually based on some form of reality and what is purely fabrication. The release of the next generation Xbox console is hot news, and rightly so in our opinion considering the current 360 is one of the world’s most popular consoles with millions of gamers around the world using it on a daily basis.
Back when the iPhone Dev team were unable to provide an update to Ultrasn0w to provide a software-based unlock on certain iPhone 4 basebands, it was left to a Chinese development team to step into the limelight with the introduction of the Gevey SIM. For those that don't keep up to speed with the happenings in the world of unlocks, the Gevey SIM requires the user to actually place the SIM interposer between the network’s SIM card, and the rest is well, magic.
As owners of smartphones and tablet devices; we have become so accustomed to tracking our own location and telling the world where we are at any given time, which goes some way to show just why applications such as Foursquare are so popular. For those who are yet to discover the wonder, that is letting others continuously know about your whereabouts, Foursquare is a mobile application which relies on a user sharing his or her location with their network of friends.
