Twonav for iPhone is now available
CompeGPS Twonav is an awesome piece of GPS navigation software, featuring both onroad and offroad navigation.
The iPhone version is now available on the AppStore and it definitely looks like the best GPS navigation app for iPhone ever.
Oh and it features a well-known FTP server :)
Get it while it's hot, it's really worth the price.
QuickPwn annoyed by iTunes
I finally jailbroke my iPhone. But although the process was supposed to be straightforward with QuickPwn, but it wasn't.
First try, error while in DFU mode. Next try, the firmware was properly installed, but the iPhone froze on the pineapple logo.
Reboot, reboot, reboot, no way to get anything else.
I was able to restart the jailbreak process a few times, but always without getting past the pinapple logo.
During the process, iTunes was annoying. It constantly wanted to run in order to mount the iPhone. I first let it go. On the next tries, I closed it as soon as it raised. But nevertheless, the iPhone remained bricked.
At this point, I restored the original firmware.
Last try: I fed up with iTunes messing up the QuickPwn process and I just blocked it:
chmod 0 /Applications/iTunes.app
Then, guess why... QuickPwn worked peacefully and the jailbroken iPhone properly rebooted and now works like a charm.
Of course, iTunes was allowed to run again afterwards:
chmod 755 /Applications/iTunes.app
This workaround is ugly, but well... The point is: it works.
An iPhone temperature app using... crickets as sensors
Using the iPhone’s built in microphone, sound is captured and put through a “chirp detection” algorithm, which figures out the number of chirps in 13 seconds and adds that to 40 to come up with the temperature in fahrenheit. This last part is based on Dolbear’s Law.
And it's not a joke.
Here's the link to cricketsong
Fix iTerm crash in multi-user mode
iTerm is a great terminal emulator for OSX.
However, there's a nasty bug in recent versions: you can only start it as the user who installed it, else iTerm doesn't start and you get an error that looks like:
Library not loaded:
@executable_path/../Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/A/Sparkle
Referenced from: /Applications/iTerm.app/Contents/MacOS/iTerm
Quick, dirty but working fix: start Terminal and run:
sudo chmod -R 755 /Applications/iTerm.app/Contents
Done.
Java 6 has been ported to MacOS X
It finally happened.
Java 6 has been ported to MacOS X, Tiger and Leopard.
Better, it brings a huge performance boost and JRuby running Java 6 looks even faster than Ruby 1.9.
As long as I don't like the Java language itself, Sun has made a wonderful job on the virtual machine, that keeps being a speed daemon.
Pixelmator 1.0 is available
If you are looking for a simple, yet efficient and cheap alternative to Photoshop, have a look at Pixelmator.
It's not free software, but try the demo in order to see what the software is capable of. Pixelmator is a pleasure to use and unlike Gimp, it has perfect integration with iPhoto and effects based upon Coreimage are slick and fast. If only it had more filters (like Gimp's drop-shadow), it would be perfect.
Here a Pixelmator tutorial you can watch in order to learn how to use the beast.
OpenOffice.Org for OSX
Shortly after the initial announce from Sun, the beast is already ready for action.
A native version of http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.html is now available.
However, there are still some issues, and some are showstoppers (for instance: you can't print). So NeoOffice is still a safe bet for now.
Oh, by the way, Camino 1.5 has also been released.
A fast web browser for OSX
Here's a new project that might be worth keeping an eye on if you are using OSX : Tominated Browser.
The Tominated Browser still lacks a lot of feature, but it's very fast, The HTML engine seems to be a recent version of Webkit and the author seems to focus on creating a light and stable UI.
Although the lack of basic features like tabs and keyboard shortcuts is a showstopper to make it a default browser, this is a project to follow.