This was in march 2008. We had gone to Orlando for a job fair. You experience 3Gs of acceleration. Next stop bungee jumping.
Most of the applications need you to jailbreak your iPhone except the ones available on App Store.
1. SBSetting: Do you ever feel like changing something in your settings while you are working on another application? Dont you hate quitting the application just to make a small change like enabling the WiFi or change the auto lock ability. Then SBSetting is for you. Its the next level BossPref. It gives you the ability to access all the features of BossPref just by sliding your finger over the top status bar. So you can quickly change the setting and go back to your application. Available on Cydia/Installer.
2. IM+ Lite: After almost an year of searching i found a chat client while works with tzone. I haven’t tried the Pro version but if you want a basic client which does not drain too much of your battery like Safari you should download this. The app is available on the App Store. It supports Gmail, Yahoo etc.
3. MxTube: Lets you download YouTube video. Its very easy to use and the video quality is awesome. Available on Cydia and Installer.
4. Fring: You can chat and make VoIP calls to your Skype, MSN, ICQ, SIP and Google Talk friends. You can also chat with your Twitter, Yahoo and AIM friends. Now available on App Store. One of the few applications which went legal and is still free.
4. Nimbuzz: Chat, make VoIP calls to your Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN etc. friends. The voice quality on the calls is good and there is no lag. Install VoIPover3G to make calls over 3G. I am assuming with a AT&T 3G you would not have any lags. Much better than Fring in terms of lag and voice quality. Available on App Store. VoIPover3G is available on Cydia.
5. Finder: Similar to Finder on Mac, it gives you a GUI to cut/copy/paste files, manipulate folders and even run a file with a given application.
6. Winterboard: When the developers Summerboard on iphone 1.x decided not to port it to 2.x, winterboard came to the rescue. Its Gui is not as impressive as Summerboard, but the features available are almost the same. You can change wallpapers, lock screen, battery, icons etc. You can have a video wallpaper, rotating wallpaper or you own picture as wallpaper. Be careful it makes iPhone slow. But a good theme changes the appearance of your iPhone. Available on Cydia and Installer.
7. Netatalk: This application helps you display the contents of your iPhone on Finder in Mac. You can use either the mobile user account or the root account on your iPhone(default password for both is alpine which you can change in terminal). You don’t need to install SSH on your iphone. Once you connect your iPhone to your Mac and connect your iPhone to a wireless network, the name of your iphone will appear on the sidebar of the Finder. Click on Connect As and provide the username and password. Once connected you can see the contents of your iPhone. I use Netatalk to copy new ringtones, MxTube downloaded videos and Videos taken using Cycorder. Its available on Cydia and Installer.
8. Cycorder: The best video recording application for iPhone. Video immediately available after recording. Available on Cydia.
9. GasBag: Okay i added this to my list coz i travel about 65 miles 2-3 days a week. This application gives the price of gas at close by gas stations on Google Map. You can also search for a given address and find cheap gas around that address. Available at App Store for FREE.
10. Google Earth: Yes its now available on iPhone and it more realistic. Available on App Store.
10. CToggle: Allows you to disable auto-correction. This is really helpful when you use lot of abbreviations. Its available on Cydia and Installer.
11. biteSMS: I think the best application for people who do lot of text messaging. Lets you type in the landscape mode and forward messages too. I haven’t tried their sms packages but you can always use the sms service provided by your carrier, Give it a shot. Available on Cydia and Installer. Don’t update to 3.0 which is a paid version with 30 days free trial. On Installer you can still get the 2.7 version.
12. Terminal: Similar to the Terminal on Mac, this gives a command prompt to work on iPhone. The number of commands availabe is not as extensive as what is avaiable on Mac but you can add extensions(ssh, gcc etc) to this terminal for different command. Available on Cydia and Installer
List will be updated again if i find better applications….. A new post on how to upload ringtones to your iphone here…
Finally now that my semester is over and I have loads of free time, i will start writing about our wireless project-Virtual Drums using SunSPOTs. It all started when I first entered the Wireless Fundamentals class after a short vacation in India. I had attended my other two classes (full of people I didn’t know) in the afternoon. I was expecting to have no luck in this class either. When i entered the class i was so relieved to see Vijay in class. Though I saw a few familiar faces but they were just acquaintances. Then Dinesh entered and I remembered all the days in CSE Services. Dinesh and Vijay shared most of the courses so they had decided to do the project together. I asked Vijay if i could join them and he said okay. I was quite relieved I must say. Then Dinesh told me Shrikanth would also join our team. We had seen the earlier semester projects and were anxious to start working on the SunSPOTs.
How to start? We created a google doc and decided to add our project ideas in that. We decided on a server monitoring project wherein we use different sensors to detect intrusion, follow it using camera and send the videos/photos back to the administrator. Dr. Liu wasn’t very happy with the concept and he said it too easy(we thought we were over ambitious). Then we sent him few project concepts and hold him to select one. One interesting concept which i thought had lot of application was the automatic traffic signal based on the number of vehicles approaching the intersection.
But Dr. Liu had already made his mind on another project. Vijay sent me a link about new type of instruments using hand gestures which helps kids create music. So how can we create music using SunSPOTs. Guitar too tough, piano not possible, Drums hmmm. Drums can be easy. So Shrikanth and Vijay started searching for projects on music using sunspots. They found an interesting site : JFugue
But we just wanted to play midi files of different parts of a drum set. May be we can different intensities also. Once we found a java class which played midi files and the sounds we were ready to start. But we were scared how we would manage to code these devices. I personally had no experience working on a sensor device. Thanks to the “SunSPOT quick start tutorial” in NetBeans we got everything set, deployed the BounceBall demo. This is what we did on day 1. We also decided to meet every Tuesdays and Thursday for an hour.
Day 2: “We created music”, says Vijay. See the videos below for the results of day 2.
