Tech Jawa > iPhone

Well, thanks to comex‘s new jailbreak for all current iOS devices including the iPhone 4, I’ve got a new list of my top 10 jailbroken apps and modifications to iOS!

10. MobileVolumeSound – is a very simple modification to iOS, it simply adds the familiar “bloop” sounds from OS X when you’re turning the volume up or down. Just a nice little addition that gives your jailbroken iDevice a bit of charm. Works out of the box on iOS 4 and iPhone 4!

09. PDF Loading Warner – is a little utility to prevent hijackers from taking control of your device. Comex’s jailbreak used a PDF font exploit to jailbreak your device, but attackers could use that same vunerability to take CONTROL of your device. This is a must install for those “just in case” scenarios. It will simply pop up and ask if you really want to laod a PDF, so no websites can try to load them without you noticing.

08. Winterboard – is clearly one of everybody’s favorites. Seems to work with iOS4 and iPhone 4 without much issue. The old themes based on summerboard aren’t really worth it anymore, especially if you have an iPhone 4, but if you’re graphic savvy you can make some of your own themes. Right now I’m using Winterboard to change #02 in my list (biteSMS) to the standard retina display’s Messages.app icon. Possibilities are really endless though, so keep an eye out for some iPhone 4 based themes!

07. Notifier – is a modification of an old favorite, StatusNotifier. It uses the same technique but actually works on iOS 3.X and 4.X. You may want to install the package called “Status Notifier Fix” instead though, it will include this and the required libraries to run, as well as a Winterboard theme to make the notifier icons used the ones that were originally packaged with StatusNotifier. For those of you unfamiliar with StatusNotifier, it puts icons next to your battery to alert you of new IMs, SMSs, MMSs, emails, missed calls, and voicemails! Please note however, Notifier has not been updated with iPhone 4 graphics, so they’ll look a bit “old school” until there is an update.

06. Installous – is a shady subject for sure… But lets face it, it lets you try out apps before dropping big money into them. Like $30 for the LogMeIn app. Add the repository of http://cydia.hackulo.us/ and install this package. You’ll be quite satisfied. As of right now they’re currently looking for graphic designers to help assist in a redesign and update for iPhone 4 displays as well!

05. LockInfo – is actually a bit pricey for an app, but the things that it does is fairly amazing. It’s not 100% ready for iOS 4 just yet, it works but there’s still some bugs in it. I personally use this to keep myself informed of new emails on my lock screen, the current weather, new notifications, and I keep a an event list of my calendars visible for the next 2 weeks. It really helps me stay organized and helps me stay up to date on work-based tasks also.

04. SBSettings – was something I found it hard to live without when I purchased my iPhone 4, it’s something you take for granted and should be one of the first things you install. Thanks to BigBoss for keeping this updated and ready to go for iOS 4!

03. Cyntact – by saurik, who is the author and maintainer of Cydia. It’s $0.99, but I always recommend this one, as it helps support Cydia’s developer which can’t be a bad thing at all, but also for the simple fact that its an amazing modifaction to iOS which shows your contact pictures next to their names in the contact list, phone list, and even works in third party apps as well. It’s been updated for iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 with support for high resolution pictures as well!

02. biteSMS – is an amazing SMS tool with amazing popup notifications, and SMS management. It has a large number of settings. It’s been updated for iOS 4, with high resolution graphics for the iPhone 4 as well. You really need to check it out to see for yourself!

01. Infinifolders – written by chpwn is $1.99, but its absolutely well worth it. It’s something Apple should have done from that start, it allows you to have more than 12 apps per folder, it allows you to scroll through them vertically. Having one “Games” and one “Utilities” folder really helps clean up your Springboard

A few days ago, one of our authors (Sean Harper) suggested to me that he wanted to make an iPhone app and mobile version of the site. Unfortunately however, he never got the chance, as I found a very quick and efficient way to make a mobile version of our site. It also functions closely to a native iPhone app as well!

Above is a quick overview of what you’ll get if you go to our page on your iPhone. It’s clearly a mobile version of our site, and should be extremely easy to navigate, as we’ve implemented a special menu shown here:

If you have an iPhone, be sure to add our page to your home screen. You’ll be greeted with a fancy Jawa icon, and be sucked into the app all the time, I promise.

If you’re on another type of smartphone, try checking the site out and let us know how it looks in the comments. Screenshots are also welcome!

WARNING: This guide is NOT for those who are uncomfortable using SSH to manipulate databases on their iPhones!

Will you mess something up? No… probably not, but you can’t come crying to us if you do!

Now, if you’re like me at all, you LOVE Google Calendar, and you use Google Mobile Sync… The sync is great, as it does contacts, gmail, and calendars… However it does not sync over your calendar colors. This is due to two things: There is no place in the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to include colors, and Apple has a terrible bug in their iPhone not allowing any custom/manual colors by default. Even if you use iCal to sync your calendars you’ll have noticed by now that the colors are NOT the same in iCal and on your iPhone.

If you have a lot of calendars, this can become mentally straining trying to memorize two different sets of colors. Not anymore! I’ve figured out how to manually chose those colors on your jailbroken iPhone!

First thing is first, you need to find out what colors you will need. You need RGB vales for this, NOT hexadecimal color codes. I just opened my Google Calendar, took a screenshot, and used a color dropper tool from any random photo manipulation tool to get my RGB values, and I jotted them down on a piece of scrap paper.

At this point you should also make sure SQLite3 is installed on your iPhone, just load up Cydia and search for it, if you’ve got a green check next to it, you’re all set, if not install it, and reboot if required.

Next up you’ll need to SSH into your iPhone. Use your favorite SSH tool to get in, and log in as root. Once you’re in you’ll want to issue these commands.

iPhone:~ root# cd /var/mobile/Library/Calendar/
iPhone:/var/mobile/Library/Calendar root# sqlite3 Calendar.sqlitedb
SQLite version 3.6.12
Enter “.help” for instructions
sqlite> select title,color_r,color_g,color_b from Calendar;
Default|-1|-1|-1
Personal|15|77|140
Work|181|0|13
School|229|98|0
Facebook|103|10|108
Tech Jawa|229|98|0
Tech Jawa Live|181|0|13
Holidays|47|141|0

Once you issue the above commands, you should see your calendar names and their current colors in RGB format. From here we’ll need to update the database to make changes. I made my changes to match my Google Calendar colors exactly, and here’s the commands that I entered, you should do the same, but replace the color values with your own, and obviously replace the titles with the titles of your calendars.

sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=102, color_g=140, color_b=217 where title=’Personal’;
sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=217, color_g=102, color_b=102 where title =’Work’;
sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=101, color_g=173, color_b=137 where title=’School’;
sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=51, color_g=102, color_b=204 where title=’Facebook’;
sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=242, color_g=166, color_b=64 where title=’Tech Jawa’;
sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=140, color_g=102, color_b=217 where title=’Tech Jawa TV’;
sqlite> update Calendar set color_r=221, color_g=85, color_b=17 where title=’Holidays’;
sqlite> select title,color_r,color_g,color_b from Calendar;
Default|-1|-1|-1
Personal|102|140|217
Work|217|102|102
School|101|173|137
Facebook|51|102|204
Tech Jawa|242|166|64
Tech Jawa TV|140|102|217
Holidays|221|85|17

That last command is just to verify your results, and you should be good to go, just open up the Calendar app (or re-open it, if you already had it open) and you should notice your changes. These changes also carry over to calendar based apps from Cydia such as “LockCalendar” and “LockInfo” as well.

Here’s my final results, compare them to the image at the top of the post of my Google Calendar colors.

Just in the case that you screw something up, here’s the original color values if you want them back.

181,0,13 – Red
229,98,0 – Orange
47,141,0 – Green
15,77,140 – Blue
103,10,108 Purple