A Giant Step Forward - Pocket Touch Lets You Swipe Your Music Blindly

Multi-touch technlogy is nice, but Apple’s design has one serious drawback — it’s useless unless you can see where you are touching! You know what I mean if you ever tried to change the Music’s volume blindly. It’s impossible! That’s why I use my 1st generation iPod shuffle when I go for my morning walk; it’s so clickable.

Thank goodness SkylarEC, a Super Moderator of iPod Touch Fan forum, made a unique app called “Pocket Touch” (ver 0.3b). It’s still in beta but boy it’s fantastic. You can change tracks and volume level simply by swiping your finger across the screen, blind-folded! Swiping left or right tells the music player to skip to track. A single tap pauses or un-pause the music player.

A quick swipe upwards brings

Firefly Media Server - Redux 1.1.3/4

I wrote about the Firefly Media Server when we all had firmware 1.1.2. I love the server. In fact, I feel Apple should include such as server by default in every iPod touch!

Unfortunately Firefly (version svn1586-r1) cannot be installed via the Installer successfully as it hasn’t been updated to work in firmware 1.1.3/4. I missed it so much! Fortunately I figured out how to get it installed, and it’s pretty simple.

Requirements:

• iTunes with the SHARING option enabled.
• Ulctl by Erica Sudan (it’s in the Installer, under the “Utilities” category)
• BSD Subsysten (It’s in the Installer, under the “System” category)

 

PART A: INSTALLATION

1. Launch Installer and go to the “Multimedia” category. You should find the “FireflyMediaServer” package in it. If you can’t find it, then go to the “Sources” category and install the “Community Sources” package first, and try again.
2. Tap on the “Install” button to

Let’s Jailbreak 1.1.4 using ZiPhone GUI

Apple released firmware 1.1.4 today. There appears nothing new visibly so I guess the changes are bug fixes and perhaps addition in preparation for the much anticipated SDK. Anyhoo…, it’s always nice to have the “latest” so I decided to jailbreak my 1.1.3 iPod touch to 1.1.4. In fact, since I never actually detail how it is done via the ZiPhone GUI method, here goes:

Mar 1 Update: IMPORTANT: The current ZiPhone GUI version 2.5 runs on Intel & PowerPC Mac and Windows PC to jailbreak *most* 8GB iPod touch, *some* 16GB, and won’t work on the 32GB model. Do *NOT* attempt to jailbreak with the ZiPhone method unless your iPod touch is the petite 8GB model. The Official Dev Team GUI method, outlined here, is still the best jailbreaking for all other iPod touch.

PART A (FOR MAC OS X) - DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE FILE

1. First, let’s get a copy of the version 1.1.4 firmware file using the Terminal.app. Yes, no funky Safari or even Firefox. The faithful Terminal.app provides the best error-free download. So launch Terminal, and then copy & paste the following long-line of text into your Terminal (it looks like this.) Hit Enter to start.

   curl http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iPod/SBML/osx/bundles/061-4312.20080226.Btu45/iPod1,1_1.1.4_4A102_Restore.ipsw -o iPod1,1_1.1.4_4A102_Restore.ipsw -#
   If the process aborts for whatever reason, make sure you delete the incomplete file from your Home folder first before you try again.

2. You can Quit the Terminal once the percentage progress indicator shows 100%. The firmware file is now in your Home folder.

 

PART A (FOR WINDOWS) - DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE FILE

So let’s

iSpazio — iPod touch’s Best Kept Secret

I’m sorry.

I know about iSpazio for quite some time now but I kept it to myself. I wanted to avoid being mistaken as promoting a web site for gains. But I’m enjoying iSpazio so much I feel guilty keeping it wrapped.

iSpazio is the “… first Italian resources dedicated to iPhone and iTouch” (I don’t like that name.) Now, I don’t understand the beautiful Italian language (even though I used to visit Milan yearly for a trade show), so I don’t really know a lot of things about iSpazio. Thanks to Google Translate, I still managed to grab all the goodies it has to offer. Anyhow, despite the language barrier, it’s very obvious there’s a group of very dedicated people behind it. Their Apps reviews are superb; somehow they know what’s (really) new and cool! They even have their own repository that contain unique (I have yet come across one that is Italian only; running them in English is fine) and hard to find apps. Their repository can be added to your Installer at:

http://repo.ispazio.net/

(Isn’t it nice of them to be so thoughtful and put up a short and easy to type url?)

If you have a RSS reader, subscribing to their latest and greatest can’t be easier.

I wish they publish an English edition. Google Translate (for Italian to English) is quite good but still loses some essence during translation.

Oh… you’ll soon discover they keep mentioning something about “iSpazio Best Source”. I still don’t know how it works but oh my lord, it’s really the Best. Look for it in the Sources category after you added their abovementioned repository. Wink.

Ah… I feel better now.

Re-attempt Jailbreaking with Official Dev Team GUI Method

In the past three days or so, many users can’t find “OktoPrep” from the Installer. I needed to find out why. Apple today also updated iTunes to 7.6.1. I wondered if it breaks anything for Mac users.

So here I go again, subjecting my iPod touch and myself to the tedious task of jailbreaking to find the answers.

Leopard, iTunes 7.6.1 (yup the latest one)
-After AppSnapp, Installer is version 3.0
-Tweaks (1.1.1) is not in it!
-Found and Installed the “Community Sources” package (ver 3.6). It was previousy installed by default.
-Tweaks (1.1.1) appeared with OKtoPrep inside!
-Installed OKtoPrep.
-Option+Update, no sweat.
-Jailbreak.jar, OK too.

The missing OKtoPrep issue is due to Installer not including the Community Sources by default like it used to. Mystery solved.

Moving on to jailbreak to 1.1.3.
-Whoops. iNdependance 1.4b2 is *not* compatible with iTunes 7.6.1.
-Jailbreaking failed. Sob sob.

Lucky for me I can use ZiPhone GUI 2.4.
-Ah, Jailbroken in 45 sec!
-I love Zibri.

So iTunes 7.6.1 is not a recommended upgrade for Mac users who has to use the Official Dev Team GUI method to jailbreak their 16 or 32 GB iPod touch, or 8GB iPod touch on Tiger and/or a PowerPC Mac.
[Feb 24 Update] iNdependance has been updated to 1.4 beta 5, and compatible with iTunes 7.6.1.

iTunes 7.6.1 is perfectly alright with the ZiPhone GUI Method, except of course the ZiPhone only works for 8GB iPod touch, on Leopard and an Intel Mac.