Video: Old Technology Dominoes
Where I work we had a bunch of old hardware laying around waiting to be recycled, so we set it up to knock it down. In the video is an old Apple Macbook, several Apple Mac Minis, a Netgear Firewall/Route and a bunch of various sized hard drives.
Top 24 Official and Jailbroken iPhone Apps
Lets face it. There are a lot of incredibly worthless and crappy Apps in the Apple AppStore. Sorting through all the garbage to find the truly useful Apps can be a huge pain in the ass, not to mention expensive. I’ve decided to put together my list of the best iPhone Apps. At the time of this writing I have a Jailbroken iPhone 3G. I will be getting the iPhone 4 next week when it is released. These Apps will still remain my top picks for some time to come. If you currently have a Jailbroken iPhone 3G or 3GS on the 3.x firmware, many of these Apps will be available to you. This is a mix of official Apps and Apps that require a Jailbroken iPhone. Please feel free to add your favorite Apps to the comments section so that others can try some great Apps on their iPhones.
LogMeIn Ignition – $29.99
The LogMeIn Ignition App gives you access to your Mac and Windows computers via a remote desktop-like interface. Even though this App is a bit pricey, it’s well worth it. I’ve been using LogMeIn for years and it’s never failed to save my ass in an emergency.
Pocket Informant – $12.99
Pocket Informant for iPhone is an advanced business-class calendaring App. It has the ability to sync with multiple Google Calendars and display free/busy time in an easy to view way. Hands down the best mobile calendaring App. I’ve been using Pocket Informant since the Windows Mobile days.
MyWi -$9.99 (for Jailbroken iPhone)
MyWi allows you to tether your iPhone to your laptop computer to use the 3G connection from your phone to access the internet. Another awesome feature is that MyWi will also allow you to create your own mobile hotspot on your phone and share the 3G connection wirelessly to several computers. If you were unfortunate enough to get on one of AT&T’s new limited 2GB/mo data plans, I suggest you stay away… far away.
Shozu – $5.99
Shozu allows you to upload photos and post status updates to dozens of social networks, blogs, and FTP sites. You can post photos with geotags to Flickr, update your status and post photos to Facebook, read your Twitter stream and post updates to multiple accounts and much more. I can simultaneously upload a photo to Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and my private FTP in one upload.
Meebo – Free
Meebo is the best IM web client around. If you’ve never tried Meebo on the web, I highly suggest you do. Meebo for the iPhone adds push IM notifications, so you can stay signed into all of your IM networks while on the move. It functions much better than any of the other paid iPhone IM Apps. It’s smart enough to push IMs to your phone when not logged in via the web, and then will switch to web delivery when you log into the web site. Meebo supports multi-protocol IM’ing including all of the major players with the exception of Skype.
OrbLive – $9.99
Orb is truly a Slingbox killer and worth every penny of the $9.99 App price. With Orb installed on your PC or Mac at home you can stream all of your videos, mp3s and photos to your iPhone. If you have a TV Tuner in that PC you can stream live TV broadcasts to your iPhone as well. It’s an amazing App, and even if you don’t want to use it on your iPhone the main Orb server is free and all of your media is accessible via your web browser.
Qik Live – Free
Using Qik you can record and stream live video from your iPhone to Qik.com. Once you’ve shot the video you can share it with other social networks including one click uploading to Youtube.
Air Mouse Pro -$1.99
Air Mouse allows acts as a wireless keyboard and mouse for your computer. I use Air Mouse Pro to control my Media Center PC / Home Theater PC.
aLight – $.99
I know there are a million flashlight Apps for the iPhone. I happen to like this one, and for how much I use it, I find that it’s worth the $.99.
LockInfo – $4.99 after 14-day Free Trial (for Jailbroken iPhone)
LockInfo is a lockscreen heads-up-display. It shows you all if your important information right on the lock screen including Emails, Calendar, Weather, Missed Calls, SMS, Notifications, Twitter stream and more. I am really dreading the iPhone 4 not being jailbroken and not having this functionality.
Universal Search – $2.99 (For Jailbroken iPhone)
Universal Search is a plugin for the iPhone Spotlight search feature. Instead of just being able to search the local data on your phone, with Universal Search you can search over 20 different websites from your home screen.
iNet – $4.99
Every IT guru with an iPhone needs this App. This App give you the ability to perform a network discovery scan, ping hosts on your network, browse Bonjour hosts, portscan, get detailed device info, wake on lan, sleep on lan (macs only), the ability to email scan results and much more.
Other notable Apps:
I’ll list a few other Apps that I use on a regular basis. Some of these will be more common favorites that everybody already may know about, others may not.
AT&T iPhone 4 Upgrade: How to Check if You Are Eligible For Discounted Pricing
Like many people I was excited this week when I found out about all the new features of the upcoming iPhone 4 to be released by Apple on June 24th. And I wondered of course if I was eligible for “new every 2″ pricing from AT&T. See, like the sucker I am I purchased the iPhone 3G about 2.5 months before the iPhone 3GS was released. (Just like I got my first MacBook Pro less than 7 days before the new ones were released a couple weeks back…) I digress, I’m sure many folks are also wondering if you can get the new iPhone 4 at cheaper than full price through AT&T. As I was trying to find the answer to that question, I stumbled upon a trick to find the answer via your phone.
Simply dial: *639# on your iPhone handset. You will receive a message from AT&T about your ability to upgrade or not. This is the only place I got the answer I wanted… logging into my account at attwireless.com did not tell me if I could indeed upgrade or not. Hopefully once the iPhone 4 pre-release ordering begins on June 14th, I’ll still be able to order the 16GB iPhone 4 at $199. Damn, I hope so.
I recently started using Windows 7 (as a Parallels Virtual Machine on my new MacBook Pro) and wanted to move my iTunes database (including my Library and Settings) from my old XP laptop to Windows 7 so I can sync my iPhone and not lose any of my information. Regardless of my less than standard setup, this article will explain how to move your iTunes from Windows XP to Windows 7, while preserving all of your media and settings, including iPhone information.
Overall this process is relatively simple. I would highly suggest having an external USB Hard Drive to perform the transfer with. If you do not have an external USB Hard Drive, you can certainly transfer the files over the network if you are capable of doing such.
First you will need to backup/copy the following folders from your XP computer to your external hard drive:
a. C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes
b. C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes
c. C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes
Once you have copied these folders from your XP machine to your external drive, connect the drive to your Windows 7 system. Be sure to have iTunes installed on your Windows 7 system.
Copy the folders from above, to the following directories on your Windows 7 computer:
a. Copy the folder in a. above and paste to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes
b. Copy the folder in b. above and paste to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\iTunes
c. Copy the folder in c. above and paste to C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes
Once you’ve completed the above steps, launch iTunes on your Windows 7 computer and make sure that your Library and other settings are intact. If everything looks good, you can then connect your iPod or iPhone to sync to your new Windows 7 system.
Good luck!
I am not a huge fan of OSX, but I have to support it for users at my job. I’ve had several people recently ask me how to permanently disable the bouncing icons in the dock/taskbar. The solution is simple. Open a Terminal window and type the following commands:
$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE
$ killall Dock
This will permanently disable the jumping and bouncing icons in the dock bar. To re-enable the bouncing, change the above command’s ‘True’ argument to ‘False’
Have fun with that.
As if their smug, cultish hipster attitude wasn’t enough to inspire a deep sense of loathing, I have come to have more reason to hate on Apple Mac users. I do a lot of work on my laptop in coffee houses, and unfortunately as a PC user, I am many times in the minority. This fact doesn’t bother me too much, it actually gives me some small satisfaction to see all the kool-aid drinking Mac drones sitting there with their carbon copy Macbooks when I whip out my sticker covered PC that actually has some personality.
Follow me on Twitter 
Most Comments