Title is obvious and you’re going to sit there and listen.

Go on iTunes and get the Netflix app. It’s for the iPad but we aren’t going to go beyond your mental capacity to explain this. We’re going to stay safe inside your land. So once you have the app, right click and choose “Show in Finder”. You should see this:

You’ll open Payload and you’ll see the actual Netflix.app

So now, you’ll need to SSH into your phone. Usually, I would use Transmit but I felt like being rebellious – so I used Cyberduck. Here you’ll want to drop the Netflix.app into the /Applications folder.

Now is where you’ll want to hit Go > Open Terminal.app in Cyberduck and type in the following command:

su root

then

Then you’ll want to respring or reboot. Once that’s done, go into Safari, find a movie you can stream and then watch it. It’ll load up the Netflix.app and then you’ll see the video right there.

Is your iPhone acting like a rabid bear that’s been fighting sharks and wolves for his entire lifetime after installing the Firmware 4.0.2 Spoofing app off Cydia? Yes?! Well let’s fix that.

Fix off, you’ll need to make sure you have 1 thing: a brain. Well…that and a text editing tool. Or if on OSX, you can use the .plist editor if you have that installed.

1) SSH into your iPhone and go to this directory: /System/Library/CoreServices/ and get the SystemVersion.plist file out of it.

2) Next you’ll open this file and want to change the ProductBuild Version from 8A400 to 8A306 and then the ProductVersion from 4.0.2 to 4.0.1

3) Reboot just to be safe. Once done, everything should be fine again. Here’s an attached image of what the finished .plist will look like in a Text Editor on OSX.

One app that we who jailbreak have been waiting for since day 1 was an app that lets you record what you see on your iPhone’s screen with complete ease of use. Here’s where the one and only, Ryan Petrich’s app Display Recorder comes in hand. The app brings simplicity, ease of use without any unnecessary nonsense and full compatibility for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch while maintaining similar and likeness in use. Now, on to what the app does and how well it does it, not just talkning about how new and exciting this shiny new app is to me.

The app first starts off with a very very simple UI, which doesn’t confuse the user and have anything there that looks like it might do one thing and does the other, it does it simplistically. The app has a + button in the upper left hand corner for the obvious -- a new recording, and then a Help button on the other side which links to Ryan’s own FAQ with answers to any question you might have regarding the app. While you see this, you will get a list of either any recordings you have made, along with Web server options at the bottom. What this does is truly phenomenal. You can Enable this feature, and you will see a link in place of “Web server disabled” which is your IP address followed by a set of 4 numbers. Go to this link in your browser, and you’ll see a list of all your videos, which you can watch right in your browser and then 2 newer features. There’s Live View, and then there’s Screenshot which shows you exactly what you see on your iPhone. Live View does something great, it allows you to control your iPhone directly from the browser and then you can control the app.

Another great yet familiar features is that once a recording is done, you are presented with two options, Delete Recording and, drum roll please, Upload to YouTube! While it’s a common practice to make videos you make uploadable to YouTube, this features makes that so much easier and less time consuming. While the app doesn’t allow you to watch the video, you can from your browser or you can snatch it off your iPhone from the /Library/DisplayRecorder/ directory and watch it in it’s full glory.

Now on to the not so pretty. For this app, even though still be experimented with, we would all like to have the audio that is being played on our iPhones to be heard in the video as well. Sadly, there is now audio with this app, yet. I have contacted Ryan personally and he told me he is currently experimenting with it but he hasn’t gotten anywhere with it, but we all know he will eventually. Another thing that some users express their dislike with is the fact that you can’t playa video back after you’ve recorded it. Although this isn’t a problem with me at all, I can see how some people wish it existed. All in all, the app is great and has done something I’ve never seen done so well before.

Attached here, are two videos I’ve previously made. One, the Klavika Issues one is a video that has no audio, uploaded directly from the app. The other is a video of me playing The Incident then extracted to my computer and then edited slightly with audio and fades.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNyyfp9wPhQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1oG99wpw1g

This app is currently available on Cydia for $4.99

The game starts off with a pretty easy level, not much to think about besides tilting, jumping and getting to the finish -- if that’s all you care about. There are these achievements that each player is entitled to unlock, adding a goal to the game and making it seems worth your while and not just quick fun. There’s balloons that carry coins, floating away further and further until they eventually reach the top of your screen and disappear forever. You never see them again and if you don’t get them on your first try then you simply suck at life. Sorry.

Another thing that makes this game one of the most impressive and creative is how instead of jumping and worrying about what’s to be expected once you get there in games like Doodle Jump, this game presents you telling the width of what’s falling when it falls, but doesn’t say how long, leading you to possibly get trapped more than Lindsay Lohan (this is a joke, you laugh here) and then making it nearly impossible to get out. But don’t fret, wipe your tears and rejoice, because they have thought about this as well. Shaking your device up and down will make your player surrounded by a green ball of incredible neons, which float you right on up above, but while in the bubble, you cant get any coins, so don’t get ahead of yourself, Skipper.

While you do these little achievements and try to complete the goal, you might see a quick ray of light; this is the gem about to drop. Getting a gem gives you 1 extra live, but if you are as rad as you say you are, you won’t need them. But still -- collect them, it’s an achievement and without it, your life sucks. The game has other trophies as well, but you practically get a trophy for every type of death you have. That said, I have lots of trophies…lots and lots of trophies. I know I’m sad, but this game makes me happy seconds later. As you progress in the game you get to facer paced levels, more balloons, meaning you need to pick up your agility and makes you feel like you’ve actually done something that no one else has done.

Something small that this game has that you don’t see in a lot of apps is incredible music. The melodies that play in the background of the game are not only soothing, but make you feel like Santa Claus came to your house with unicorns, fed you cupcakes and tucked you in at night. A warm fuzzy feeling on the inside is always nice when playing a game. If music was something to look for in a game, while maintaing great gameplay -- this game has done it.

While this post has many jokes, laughs and quick notes, it doesn’t make the game any less awesome than it is. If there is one app you’d want to check out this summer, year, lifetime, make sure it’s this one. I’ve been playing the game for a few hours now, and I simply can’t put it down. It’s simple fun yet something that gives you that feel of accomplishment once you gain something or get to certain point. It’s also able to capture the 8-bit feel that games like Super Quick Hook, Canabalt and the like have, while on a beautiful screen and that just adds to this game so much more. Simple, fun, exciting. This game has done more than just be fun, it’s raised the bar on what you can do with an iPhone if you put your creative juices to work. Infinity and 4/10.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1oG99wpw1g

Get this game on the App Store for $1.99 at the button below.

]]> http://shwn.me/?feed=rss2&p=140 0 http://shwn.me/?p=130 http://shwn.me/?p=130#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:43:46 +0000 Shawn http://shwn.me/?p=130

This whole post is about me and what my life used to be like, so if you don’t think you’ll care or want to bother reading, go ahead and leave. I’ll try and keep it interesting for those of you who stayed here and want to read on.

When I was a little kid, I had lived in a house with my grandma and grandpa, as well as my mother. My mother was and is a childcare provider, so I would always go with her before school and on days I didn’t have school to whatever place she was watching kids at. It started at Open Door at Pershing Hills Elementary School. For those who don’t know Open Door is simply a program where parents can drop their kids off at school before it starts and afterwards for them to go to. Nice place to be, and they don’t bother you much. I had a best friend, Mario, who had a Gameboy Color. And as far as all the other kids go, they had Gameboys aswell, but I did not. For a year or so, I would watch them play Pokémon and I would have to sit and watch. Being so young, I thought everything was exciting in the game, regardless of what was really going on. A year or so passes and I get a Gameboy Color and I’m finally able to sit with them at their table and they welcome me with open arms – I felt like one of the cool kids. They showed me the color codes to alter the color in the games and they let me play their games whenever I wanted to, being the youngest and one of the teacher’s son. I lived 2 or so years playing Pokémon with my friends at that same table at least once every weekday. I loved that life regardless of what people told me. We all eventually grew up, and grew apart, but Mario remained my friend – he went to my school.

Moving ahead a few years, my mom got a job at Kindercare. Here is where the real nostalgia sets in. Kindercare IS my childhood. I had my set of friends, I even dealt with drama that I didn’t need to and I promise you, I was the most popular kid to ever grace that place. The first year I got into the older kids room another girl joined the room, named Kendall. I had liked her form the start and she knew. The worst part was that she knew. She would tease me and tease me until the last year I was at Kindercare, but that’s for later. I had my crew of friends, Eddie, Eli, Rico and Michael. Michael was only there during the school year, so I saw him maybe twice a year…maybe. Eddie, Eli and Rico were only there for the summer, which was cool. They were my best friends. Eli used to be the type of nerd, who sits and does his own thing and doesn’t care but now he’s changed drastically. Smoking, drinking, wearing baggy clothes – he’s only 15. Eddie was my friend who always had my back on anything, no matter what, even if it was personal between me and my mom. He’s changed too – keeps to himself about everything and doesn’t like to talk at all anymore. Rico stayed the same, thankfully. He’s still that bug guy who gets all the latest stuff and loves to brag. As long as he’s sharing it with me, it’s all cool.

While at Kindercare, I pretty much ran what happened, and why it happened. I would play games with people, and even make sure my crew didn’t mess with the new people. There was one day I remember where a new kid had joined and he was mentally handicapped. He had a problem with holding his head up correctly and would drool a lot. As I’m sitting playing the NES with everyone, they keep making remarks about him. Usually, people would just go along with it and be the one to continue, but not me. I was upset with it. Didn’t know the kid at all, nor did I know what his story was, but I told everyone to back off and let him live. He didn’t know any better than that, but they made fun of him like he could stop it.

Then came Kendall. She knew that I liked her an increasingly amount and would never give me a chance. I tried talking to her, she would laugh at me. I tried being a friend, she would push me aside. But she had a friend named Jasmine who I said I liked for a brief (very very brief) period of time. It apparently made Kendall jealous and she admitted she liked me too. It was the beginning of the most confusing period of my life; ever. We got outside and we started talking under the trees by the basketball court and we nothing in common, but we had a connection. It was awkward since she had side swiped me for so many years and now I learnt that she had secretly liked me the entire time. We were a couple for about a year then she broke up with me on the day before my last day. I was “depressed” from then on in. She noticed and felt bad. She said we would stay together, but that never happened – I never saw her again until a few months ago.

Here comes the freshman year of High School. I knew this girl named Amber from 8th grade, but nothing had really flourished until freshman year. She was one of the cutest girls I knew, she thought I was funny, and she knew more about me than anyone else I knew. It’s safe to say that I loved her. You’re probably like “What, you were a kid, you didn’t know”. No. I love Amber so much it was crazy. It wasn’t anything sexual either, I just loved being around her and seeing her and making her smile. It made me sad that she had to move. She moved too far away for anything to continue and I was in the deepest state of depression that it probably changed how I view a lot of things in my life now. Change scares me now; I used to love it. If there was one wish I could have, it would be that Amber would never have left me. There’s some thing that you miss, then there’s people you miss and never forget. She’s one of them.

Back when I was a kid, I didn’t have to worry about my image in High School, or worry about who and what I get myself into. My biggest concern back then was if I didn’t trip that day. No worries, no problems. I grew up. Now I deal with people who I know can’t help me in my own life, and I get myself into things I can’t change. I can’t alter my past to fix my future or change what I’ve done to make it better. Do I miss it? Sure. Do I wish i could go back? Yeah. Can I? No.

You may be sitting and thinking why I bothered to make this post and why it bothers me so much. It bothers me because a large population of people I have respect for online are the designers and developers of those same apps that you’re pirating. The worse part of this is that there are people who think that cracking apps is perfectly fine, and perfectly fine to them. Why? Because you didn’t steal the game directly from the store, the company isn’t losing any sales. Well, let’s jump into a pirates shoes. If you are presented with the option to get what you want for free or buy it, you’d take it for free, wouldn’t you? Well if that taking it for free option is eliminated, what happens? Right, you buy that app or program and that company now has a new customer and you get a better feeling but some people simply don’t care. Safe to say – most are kids or have the mentality of one. If you think I’m joking, go take a look at the Sinful iPhone forums. You can tell from the name that it’s childish, but I want you to look in a conversation topic and tell me how you remember the days where you acted like that.

Themeing, unapproved App Store apps are what I will be jailbreaking for. I promise to everyone who reads this, everyone I will not have a single cracked app on my phone. I used to be on the other side of the fence cracking apps, giving them out and doing it all for the coolness factor that I got from that community. I’ve left that community behind and kicked it out my life. There’s no real life benefit. You sit wasting money on apps and for what? So some 12 year old kid can go to his friends and show how he has a certain app that they don’t have? Right…cool. Themeing opens a new realm of customization to your phone which are demonstrated by themes made by Jonah Cohen, Rickie Sherman, Dustin Schau, and others. You get the best of the crop if you know what your design eye is out for. Unapproved apps are another legit reason. Apple has strict rules in what you can and can’t do on your phone and what devs can make them do. If an idea is neat and intriguing, you might want it, i.e. AirSync and Notified.

I didn’t make this post to make all of my friends who do pirate apps (Ya’ll know who ya’ll are) feel bad about themselves, but I just find it sad that the majority of the community has gone from a respectable group of people to a large amount of ignorant and careless adolescents who want to have the latest and greatest app and not have to do anything to get it in reality. It’s sad.

When I had my iPhone 3GS, there was a short period of time where I considered getting a Droid for a reason that I honestly can’t remember. To keep it simple, I shutter to think what kind of regret and endless pit I would be in if I had bought a Droid or any Android device.

Android is an OS made by Google, one of the most simplistic companies ever, but yet manages to be one fo the most clustered and confusing systems to work or be on. Why? First off, open source. With open source, this mean anyone, from anywhere doing anything could make an app for Android, submit it to the store and have it submitted. The best way to get this point across is to say that Apple is similar to China and Android is America. Now, I know you’re thinking “Well, China sucks and America is pretty awesome” Well, you’re thinking too much into what I’m trying to get across, silly willy. By China, I mean Apple has a set way apps are meant to preform, and they even help you get to that goal by giving developers a great SDK. While with Android, America, you can do whatever you want. The app submitted doesn’t even have to look or feel anything like you’re running Android – which is absolutely atrocious. How do you Android users live with this? You don’t have a look that you’d like to see universally to make everything look uniform? No? Sad.

Next is how Android is so unbelievably clustered. On an iPhone, you have your apps that you want to see, right there. You don’t have one menu, then another menu with more apps in it then have to scroll between them all to see what you have. I can easily manage my apps, skip certain lines if I wanted to, and even now, create Folders. Simple. I know what I’m getting into and know what I’m going to have once I open it.

Finally, but definitely not last on my list of why Android simply can’t win is because it is made by people who have no idea how to do software. By making something open-source it’s like saying “I could make the cookies for you, but I rather give you the ingredients and let it flow from there”. Why do companies do this? Because they think it’s what users want when half of the people are looking for something already packaged and they can come in and make it better or edit it to their liking. Using the cookie analogy, it’s like making you a chocolate chip cookie, and you get your own milk. Apple has given uses everything they need in a smartphone and have even supplied you with all different kinds of milk (apps) in the App Store – and they’re all uniform like the default Apple apps. Not so much for Android.

One day I will probably update this post with more of a rant motion, but I can’t stand writing this much on a subject I find painfully simple. I honestly have no idea why people use Android. If you use Android and truthfully like it more and iOS, make a post in the comments. I don’t unapprove anything unless it’s people trying to get me to use Viagra – this is public.

Nas said it best when he first said “Everybody sounds the same, commercialize the game”. There’s not a single way a person can walk into a city record store, or simply walk down the street in their city and hear people talking about how Lil Wayne is the best rapper, or that Waka Flocka and Gucci Mane are the realest. Simply put – none of them even qualify as decent rappers. Nobody can name one song where Lil Wayne isn’t talking about getting “mad bitches” and one where Gucci and Flocka speak in English and not this muttering nonsense about nothing at all. Remember when rap and hip-hop was simply poetry with nice mellow beats about the hard times and struggles people actually went through? I do; then they all died.

I can go anywhere, the mall, a club, down Pack Street, and hear all the same thing about how Lil Wayne is the coolest and best rapper alive…what? That sentence shouldn’t even be uttered from anyone’s lips. Before I go into other sections, I’ll cover why Lil Wayne is one of the fakest rappers ever. Remember when he had a blue flag on his left side when he started rapping and how he now has red everything? Yeah, that’s right – he switched flags. You simply don’t do that. Go listen to one of Wayne’s tracks about anything, then listen to another and write what they’re about. They have more similarities than half your family tree. It’s insulting to those artists who spend time to actually write decent lyrics then to have garbage like Lil Wayne come over the mic with nonsense and make millions while they are struggling to even keep a real job.

Next, there’s being “real”. As far as I’m concerned, if being “real” makes you a good rapper, then what happened to rap? Rap used to be nothing BUT real. Rap about how you grew up and couldn’t afford anything, then you put your head in the books, learnt what you had to and made it somewhere in life. Now you rap about how you used autotune in your song and how bleach blondes like to blast your music in the corvettes that their parents bought for their Sweet 16. Again – insulting. Gucci and Flocka being considered as real shouldn’t even fly. Why? Because they’re not even rapping about anything. When you say “Nigga, I aint what the fuck you want” am I supposed to be scared through the speakers of my radio or am I supposed to have that song on call whenever I’m about to get swapped in my face? People, modern society, get real, stupidity, idiocy, and being rude completely mixed up. If anyone asked me, being real is having a story you need to tell and instead of writing a book, you express it through a song; rap. Plain stupidity, idiocy and being rude is exactly what 100% of rap you hear on the radio is. 100%.

Now, don’t mind this post filled with anger if you listen to rap and you know what’s good. But honestly, I doubt half of you know what good rap is. There are some mainstream rappers who pass as good rap, such as Kid Cudi, (older) B.o.B., Eminem, Big Boi, Kanye, Andre, Ludacris, and sometimes Drake. Why? Because they aren’t rapping about, steretypically, money, hoes, and power. Trust me, and hold this to yourself, if people in your school or your friends haven’t heard of an artist you’re listening to and you have time to listen to their lyrics and understand without hoping on a bandwagon – you’re listening to something decent. I’m not calling for revolution because it’ll never happen. I’m just saying that rap and hip-hop will never be the way it used to be.

Since this is simply a case and only has one vital purpose of protecting the iPhone, I’ve made this a miniReview, meaning I’ll get right to the point and shouldn’t be a bad read but not spectacular either.

When Apple announced the iPhone 4 at WWDC on June 7th, they also announced cases that they would be making to protect it using a new design engineering. Instead of using the traditional idea of covering the sides and back of the phone, they made it cover the sides and wrap around the top and bottom of the phone itself. Everyone has heard people say “It’s just a $30 dollar rubberband” and the like. Well, when I finish writing this, I want you to find whoever said that to you, and slap their faces off.

First off, when you drop an iPhone, the chances of it dropping on it’s face or back are slim – very slim. However, since Apple added the little rubber part to wrap around the iPhone, it would land on that as opposed to hitting the face or back. If it does hit the face or back, then you didn’t drop it on a flat surface.

Secondly, when you drop the case, the impact, as proven by me and not some crazy pseudoblog claim, is all taken in my the bumper itself. The bumper has a nice glossy coating in between the two parts of rubber to wrap around the phone. I have indeed read claims where people are saying there phone is dinged up from a drop even if they have a bumper attached, while I can say from a real-life test, when dropped from the 2nd floor of a house onto the first floor, onto a hardwood floor, my phone was not damaged in anyway. My bumper is also still in perfect condition. Weird how big blogs say otherwise.

Here is where you go slap their faces off with the power of Thor.

The bumper also has some nice little features, such as built-in buttons. The buttons are made to go over the buttons that the iPhone has. So, don’t think that the bumper is so thin that the buttons on the iPhone actually pop up and can be viewed and pressed easily right through it – Apple thought this out. Another nice perk is that the entire case is NOT rubber. The only part is rubber is the part that you see when looking down on the iPhone from an eagle-eyed view on either the front or back. The rest is a glossy plastic type which is still flexible, in order to let you bend it slightly to install or remove the case. Again, design engineering at it’s finest.

This case is made for the average person when they accidentally drop the phone, to have it be protected and made to look gorgeous. There’s not a single case on the market, that looks as elegant and performs as well as the bumper currently does. As a case, and as a piece of design, the bumper gets the job done and gets it done well. If you’re looking for a case, there is no better one than the bumper. 5/5

One of the first applications I was able to get for my iPhone 4 and it’s glorious Retina Display was Archetype. It’s a simple concept that was able to be expanded upon. It’s a shooting game that using the touchscreen and has no online mode. Sounds like incredible fun so I had to buy it and see how well it plays. Well here I am reviewing it.

The game introduces you to a new way of playing a shooter that I’ve never seen before. It has a new way of controls, as far as iPhone games go. Instead of having a separate button for movement and another for shooting, you essentially use the entire screen in order to turn and move and then you tap anywhere to shoot. You can use the left side of the phone to move around and the right side to know which way to point your gun. You aren’t limited to just one area where the d-pad is either; the game knows when you mean to look around and when you mean to shoot. Easily makes the game a shooting game that anyone can play.

One new thing that this game has is absolutely no single player mode. There is a small training area of the game, but that’s no real gameplay. You run around shooting pieces of cardboard cutouts and try to do get them all before the time runs out. Cool, but not satisfying. There is multiplayer mode – which makes up for this entirely. In multiplayer mode, you can have Friends and buddies to play with, you can become archenemies with other users and still enjoy the game entirely. The goal of each game is fairly simple: kill the other team. I’ve only been able to test out one mode in which my team’s goal was to kill the other team’s players 20 times and once that was done, I gained a few EXP for killing one guy twice (yeah I suck) but it was such fun being able to play on an organized team.

This app also has something other apps have, but they’ve simplified it. Instead of using plus+ or OpenFeint, this game has it’s own type of Friend system where you can see who has requested to be your friend, recent friends you’ve made, search for different users based on their combattag, and then you can send emails to recommend the game to other users via email. It’s a nice little perk to the game and will probably be expanded once Game Center becomes available to average users.

All in all, the game is great, simple, and gives you a feel of how well things can be done on the iphone if properly thought out. The story beforehand is well done and is incredibly deep for a game with no actual story mode. I’ve had countless hours of fun with this game and still continue to play to this very day. With such awesome mechanics put into a game, and incredible art thoughtout, I can’t help but give this game a perfect 5/5. Well done.