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Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
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Release Date: September 29, 2009
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Discover New Music

  • Billy Miles

    • 10 out of 10
    • Billy Miles
    • Take the voice of a young Billie Holiday and stuff it into a svelte, petite body with the face of an angel, and you have some idea of what it's like to experience the music of Billy Miles in her self-
  • Goodbye Jumbo

    • 8 out of 10
    • World Party
    • Released in 1990, World Party's

  • Playing the Angel

    • 8 out of 10
    • Depeche Mode
    • Oddly enough, Playing The Angel is a return to form for Depeche Mode, even though it may well be argued that they never truly deviated from their roots in their more recent offerings. In the

  • An Evening with George Shearing & Mel Torm�

    • 10 out of 10
    • Mel Torm� & George Shearing
    • Of the three men who taught me how to sing, the last was Mel Torme. Apparently, Mel Torme is a joke to anyone more than a decade older than me, a living parody of a Vegas crooner. But I stumbled on th
  • Odyssey Number Five

    • 10 out of 10
    • Powderfinger
    • Guitar-driven rock out of Australia, Powderfinger has not seen much exposure in the States, but should get a nod for their toe-tapping songs. Building off their previous release, "Internationalist" (

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A Guide to Installer for Jailbroken iPhones

Until iPhone 2.0 Software is released in June, if you want to add third-party software to your iPhone, you first need to jailbreak it (as I discuss in a blog entry). Jailbreaking, however, is only the first step. The next step is to actually install your choice of software. For this task, hackers have standardized on an iPhone application called, appropriately enough, Installer. This program downloads software directly to your iPhone (assuming you have a Wi-Fi or EDGE connection), much as Apple’s App Store promises to do.

If you decide to jailbreak your iPhone (which I encourage you to do), you’ll need to get comfortable with this Installer. It comes with no instructions, however. In searching the Web, I found that there is very little tutorial information on how to use it. Admittedly, Installer is not a complex program, and you can figure out much of it yourself. Still, there are several nuances to the program that are not immediately obvious. So...for the benefit of those who may find it useful...here is my brief guide to using Installer.

After you launch Installer (and you wait briefly while it refreshes its sources), you’ll find five (5) buttons along the bottom of the screen: Featured, Install, Update, Uninstall and Sources. Tap each to go to the designated screen. Featured is the default screen; you’re already there. From here, you can find out what’s hot and what’s new in the world of Installer. The remaining 4 buttons are where the bulk of Installer’s work is done.

Install

To start installing software, tap the Install button. This brings up a list of Category folders. The top folder is "All Packages." Tap this item to see an alphabetical list of all the software currently available to install.

Alternatively, scroll down the Categories list and pick a category of interest, such as Utilities. Tap this to see the subset of software that falls into that category.

The first thing I recommend that you install is Community Sources. Doing this greatly expands the list of software available for installing. Here’s what to do:

  1. Tap the Sources category
  2. From the Packages list that appears, tap Community Sources
  3. From the Package screen that next appears, tap the Install button in the upper right corner.
  4. From the buttons that pop-up from the bottom of the screen, tap Install.

Wait briefly while Install does its work. When it’s done, you are ready for the next installation. Repeat the same procedure for any other software you select.

I leave it up to you to explore the programs available and decide what you want on your iPhone. However, if you share my interest in "under the hood" utilities, here are a few programs I highly recommend you check out: MobileFinder, AFPd, SysInfo and Services.

Here are several Install tips you should know:

  • A program’s Package screen may include a More Info item. Tap it to get more detail about what the program does.

  • To go back to a previous screen at any point, tap the button in the upper left (typically it will say Packages or Categories).

  • As stated above, when you tap the Install button in the upper right of the screen, a menu of buttons pops up. One button here is Add to Queue. If you tap this icon, the selected software is not immediately installed. Instead, you are returned to the previous screen, from which you can add further software. You can keep doing this. For the last selected item, tap Install instead of Add to Queue and all the items in the queue will be installed at the same time.

    If there are items in the queue, the pop-up menu additionally includes a Clear Queue button.

    Unfortunately, there is no way you can actually view the contents of the queue.

  • The Install pop-up menu may warn you that a selected item is "untrusted." This will typically appear for software from sources you have added yourself (as described below). Assuming you had confidence that the added source was not fraudulent, you can ignore these "untrusted" warnings and install the software.

  • If an installation fails and an error message pops up, the most common cause is that the server where the software originates is having problems. Try again later.

  • After installing new software, it’s a good idea to press the Home button. What will likely happen is that the iPhone’s sundial "cursor" will briefly appear, followed by a jump to the iPhone’s Lock screen. When you return to the Home screen, you’ll see the icons for your newly added software.

  • If you ever need to restore your iPhone, all of your Installer-added software is erased. As far as I know, there is no way to back up this software so that it can be automatically reinstalled after a restore. You’ll just have to start over again from scratch. As such, it’s probably a good idea to maintain a list of everything you’ve installed.

Update

Installer automatically checks for updated versions of any software you have installed. If it finds any, a number will appear over the Update button at the bottom of the screen. The number indicates how many updates are waiting to be installed. Tap the Update button to access the Update page. If there is more than one item listed, you can install just the programs you select or you can choose to install all listed programs at once.

Uninstall

If you tap the Uninstall button, you are taken to a list of all currently installed software. Tap any item to go to its package page. An Uninstall button should be in the upper right. Tap it to uninstall the software. If the button says Reinstall instead of Uninstall, you’ve selected a "base" program (such as the important BSD Subsystem software) that cannot be uninstalled. All you can do is reinstall it, which may be needed if you believe there is currently some problem with the software.

This page also serves as a convenient record of everything that you have elected to install on your iPhone.

Sources

The final button in the row of buttons along the bottom of the Installer screen is Sources. Tap this to see a list of all the source servers that are contributing to the list of programs available from the Installer. This Sources list includes all the default sources put there when Installer was first installed plus any you added via items in the Sources category of the Install list.

Although it is unlikely that you will want to do so, you can uninstall any item in Sources. To do so, tap the Edit button in the upper right of the screen. Next, for each source you want to uninstall, tap the minus (�) icon that appears next to its name followed by a tap of the Delete button. Finally, tap Done (which has replaced Edit in the upper right).

More often useful is the ability to add further sources. This is how you can gain access to software that is not included in any of Installer’s sources. To do this:

  1. From the Sources screen, tap the Edit button in the upper right.
  2. Tap the Add button in the upper left corner.
  3. From the Add Source window that appears, enter the URL of the desired source.
  4. Tap OK; then Tap Done in the upper right corner.
  5. Tap the Refresh button in the upper left corner.

How do you find out the needed URL to enter here? From iPhone Web sites. Here are two examples of sources to add, which also happen to show off two of the cooler things you can do with a jailbroken iPhone:

Apple Screenshot Enabler. Want to take a screenshot of an iPhone display? You’ll be happy to know that Apple has built a screen capture function into the iPhone software. Unfortunately, they aren’t telling anyone about it and, in fact, have the feature turned off by default.

To turn it on, you have to modify a .plist file on the iPhone. Yup, this is the same technique used to add "secret" features to your Mac (as I describe here). For iPhone screenshots, the required file is com.apple.springboard.plist, located in /var/mobile/Library/Preferences. What you have to do is add a SBMobileScreenshotr property to this file, with a Boolean class and a value of Yes. Exactly how to do this "by hand" goes beyond what I want to cover in this article. Happily, there is a simpler alternative:

  1. Using the Installer utility, go to Sources and add http://repository.ripdev.com as a source.
  2. Go to Install and, from the RiP Dev category, install Apple Screenshot Enabler.
  3. Press the Home button to complete the installation. The Enabler utility has now made the .plist file modification for you.

That’s it. To actually take a screenshot, press and hold the Home button while toggling the Mute button. When the screen flashes white, you have your shot. You’ll find it stored in Photos’ Camera Roll folder.

ShowTime. Want to take a movie using the iPhone’s camera? Just install ShowTime. To get it to appear in Installer’s listings, you first have to add http://www.polarbearfarms.com/repo/ as a Source. You’ll now find it in the Multimedia category. Recorded videos are stored in the iPhone’s /var/mobile/Media/PBFVideo folder. You can transfer recordings to your Mac by using the AFPd utility to mount your iPhone as a shared hard drive and navigate to this folder.


Ted Landau is the founder of MacFixIt, and the author of Take Control of Your iPhone and other Mac help books.  You can .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Ted Landau or post your polite comments below.

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