The iPhone is an amazing portable media device. Even the vocal iPhone haters have to admit that. A gorgeous screen, the ability to listen with or without headphones, and silky smooth playback all add up to creating an exception viewing experience. Yet when it comes to video players, content is king!!
A video device is only as good as the media available for it and the easy of getting that media on the device. Having owned a first generation Creative Zen Vision PVP, I know first hand how frusterating it is to have a decent device but no easy way to get content on it. The device was great but getting viewable material on it was downright aweful. I sold it two months later.
Lucky for us there are a growing number of ways to get great content on the iPhone and a new device for streaming TV over wifi may shake things up even more.
So lets take a look at the current options and this new, groundbreaking device, that may take it all up to the next level.
Ok Folks - Patrick mentioned it earlier and I decided to give this method a go. Honestly, this *next to the tiff exploit for 1.1.1* is the easiest jailbreak yet. Seriously. I kept all my springboard links, and everything. No restores required. Total time from start to finish was less than 5 minutes.
So - in case you’re wondering here’s what I did while starting from an NON-jailbroken 1.1.3 iPhone. (Lots of sarcasm to follow)
First - head on over to http://www.iphone-elite.org/ and pick up a copy of ZiPhone. If you can’t find it - you shouldn’t even bother trying to use it.
Second, and this is cruicial (ok not really) put the ZiPhone directory directly on your C: Drive. Basically this just makes the command line bit a little easier to do - but it’s up to you.
Connect your iPhone to iTunes. Plug the little white cable thingy into your iPhone (on the bottom).
Let iTunes do it’s sync/backup thing just in case something goes horribly wrong. Once the sync completes, leave your iPhone connected and click start > run and type: cmd to open a command window. In that command window do the following:
cd C:\ZiPhone
C:\ZiPhone>ziphone -j
At this point you should see the following: Searching for iPhone… Please power off the iPhone, then hold the home button and connect to dock to enter recovery mode.
Nothing tough right? So put your iPhone into recovery mode. Press and hold the Home button and plug the iPhone into your computer. Keep holding the Home button until you see the little plug/iTune logo. Once that’s done you should see:
Working… Please wait 45". Done!
When your iPhone reboots - You’ve got Jailbreak. At the download link you found earlier is a list of all the command line switches. There’s one for unlock as well. I’m an AT&T customer so I didn’t try that one. If you do - let me know how it goes for you!!
THANK YOU ZIBRI and the rest of the folks that contributed to this jailbreak. It is greatly appreciated!!!!
Just discovered another neat little home screen navigation sort of tip (for those on firmware 1.1.3), that allows you to pause as you are dragging to move between home screens.
Here’s how to do it: start moving between home screens as normal, then tap the ‘dots control’ (bottom center of the screen, that indicates which home screen you’re on) and the screen should pause wherever you are, so you can see two home screens at once - as shown in the screencap above.
Also did anybody else notice that Google changed the home screen icon for Google Reader last night? Much prettier now
Pretty cool little trick I think.
This tip comes via TUAW’s post and originally from their reader, Andrew.
I love to be able to scroll the screen on my iPhone. Six months after getting it, it still provides me with endless entertainment. (Yes, I have always been easily amused.) Even now there is still something almost magical about being able to scroll through a list of names or songs with the flick of the finger. And the fact that the faster you flick, the faster it scrolls, that’s just gravy! It’s one of those simple, stupid joys in life.
And now, with the ability to add web favorites to the home screen and to have multiple home screens as you add more icons, there is the added “flickability” of going from one page to the next. (I currently have three pages of springboard icons in use.) And knowing that it is as practical as it is amusing since it allows me to have my most relevant sites just a “flick” and a “poke” away is a nice bonus.
Well, here’s a quick tip Patrick turned me on to …
If you have more than one screen of icons you can touch/poke to the left or the right of them to move to the next or the prior screen. It has the same functionality as flicking the entire screen left or right to move forward or back.
So - here’s the thing. We all wanted a 1.1.3 upgrade with a bunch of new “stuff” and we all wanted to get it on our iPhones immediately. Ok, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Maybe you installed it, maybe you didn’t. If you didn’t this may not be for you - but if you’re like me and you just couldn’t resist, only to find out it isn’t all that and a bag of chips - you’ll be happy to know some people a heck of a lot smarter than me have figured out how to get you back to 1.1.1 WITH a working modem firmware (the phone works). Earlier, I came across a post at iPhone Alley and decided to give it a go. I missed my wallpaper.
Reality Check. If updating your iPhone is a tough gig for you - DO NOT attempt this. If you think you can blame me (or any of the other sources) when something goes wrong - DO NOT attempt this. You break it, you buy it.
Keep on reading … I’ve got a couple tips that might keep you from pulling your hair out.
So - first things first - charge up your iPhone. You’re going to spend some time disconnected and while its not a long stretch of time having you battery crap out is going to make your life bad.
Next - head on over to HackThatPhone and start following the instructions. I am however going to mention a couple things in this process that might snag a couple people.
This one is not for everyday use. It’s more of a ‘use on a rainy day’ type tip, or in this case use when you’re not able to hit a WiFi hotspot and your Edge data connection is not good or not happening at all.
If that’s the case, give Google SMS a try. I had not realized how handy Google SMS was, or what sort of queries you could send to it. Thanks to a nice little tip in Erica Sadun’s book, ‘Taking Your iPhone to the Max’, I do now, and thought I’d share. Here’s some of what you can do:
You can text to Google SMS at 466-453 (Google) and get just about instant reponses back, like so:
Send pizza yourzipcode = it will return a short list of pizza places at that zip code (as seen in the screencap above), with address details and the phone number
Send lakers scores = it will return a few recent game results for the lakers, and info on their next scheduled game
Send translate roof into spanish = it will message you back, telling you techo is the Spanish word for roof
You can also request weather for a location, get directions, do a general Google web search, and more. See HERE for more sample queries info.
This one is not a great idea to use too often if you don’t have an unlimited (or generous) text messaging plan. But for occasional times when Edge isn’t cutting it and you need a bit of info fast - pretty cool I think …
The iPhone’s iPod app is super-easy to use, and it’s very intuitive to get the hang of all its main controls. But … if you’re like me and you just never looked much beyond the basics with it, here’s a quick tip on customizing one major part of its interface - the Home Row Buttons.
The Home Row Buttons are the ones that run along the bottom of the iPod screen and let you switch to the Playlists, Songs, Artists and Videos views when you tap them. Although the number of buttons displayed there is fixed at four, you can easily change which ones are displayed. So, for example, if you don’t play that many videos on the iPod, and you would really rather have one tap access to Audio Books or Podcasts, you can easily get it.
To customize the Bottom Row buttons:
Hit the ‘More’ button
Tap ‘Edit’ on the More screen
On the Edit screen, just drag the button you want to the desired slot on the bottom row you want to replace.
You can also re-arrange the order of the four buttons on the bottom row just by dragging and dropping them on the same Edit screen.
I found this tip in the ‘How To Do Everything with Your iPhone’ book (which I’ll be reviewing soon), and was happy to be able to swap the Podcasts button onto the bottom row for one tap access.
Here is the second installment in our "How-To Get and Stay Organized with JOTT and Remember The Milk" Series.
Getting Set Up Step 1- Get to the RTM website (www.rememberthemilk.com) and sign up for an account. The basic account is free, while the Pro account, which includes the iPhone interface among other great services is just $25 - and you can try it out for size for 2 weeks before you have to pay up.
Step 2- Once you log in you will be greeted by the homepage displaying the "Today", "Tomorrow", and the "Overdue" tabs. By clicking the button "Continue to Tasks" you will be brought to a new screen with the categories "Inbox," "Personal," "Study," "Work," and "Sent." Under the "Personal" list you will see a task entitled "Try Out Remember The Milk". This is a default task to help you get the feel for the interface but instead of using it let’s start from the very beginning. Click on "Add Task", type in "My Practice Task" and hit the "Enter" key. (You can also hit the letter T on your keyboard.) You have now created your first task.
Do you have a difficult time remembering to check your RSS feeds?
Is it too much trouble to open Safari and click your Google Reader bookmark?
Have you ever longed for your news to come to you rather than you have to go to it?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, boy oh boy do we have the service for you.
web-alerts is a new service that will text your favorite RSS feeds to you whenever they are updated. That’s right, once you go through the simply set up you will receive an SMS every time a new item is posted. Its easy and best of all.. its free. (But make sure you have an unlimited SMS package.)
There are a multitude of ways to view video on the iPhone. You can sync it the same way you would with an iPod classic. But the 8gb of storage space can be quite limiting. You can use Orb or a similar service. But you don’t actually need a service like Orb to stream movies directly over a wifi connection. Heres how to stream video directly from your Mac in a few easy steps.
Convert files to MPEG-4 or H.264
Transfer the resulting file to the Sites folder in your Home directly
Go to System Preferences and turn on Web Sharing
Make sure your home router is configured to forward port 80 to your Mac
In Safari pull up the website - http:the IP for yourMac/-your username/the name of the movie.mp4
Enjoy
Thanks to the British Magazine MacFormat for this great tip.
How many GPS-based applications do you expect to see for the iPhone in the future? A hundred? Two hundred? I say, all of them. Whenever it makes sense, the app will know where you are and where other iPhone users are, and make use of it. It’s going to be useful, it’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be huge. — Mashable
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to a nice little tip in Erica Sadun’s book, 
![web-alerts1]](http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/web-alerts1.jpg)
have to go to it?
o on the iPhone. You can sync it the same way you would with an iPod classic. But the 8gb of storage space can be quite limiting. You can use Orb or a similar service. But you don’t actually need a service like Orb to stream movies directly over a wifi connection. Heres how to stream video directly from your Mac in a few easy steps.
