Category Archives: iPhone

IOS App – Song Exporter Pro

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Song Exporter Pro showed up in my list of top free apps on the weekend of 30th April 2011. It’s a very neat tool which allows someone to share or “export” the music off the iPod library in the iPhone. (I think it will also work with iPod Touch and iPad, but haven’t tested it).

This is the answer a question I get frequently. How can we copy music from an iPhone to a computer. It used to be never, unless you use some specialized tools to do it. Now, it’s very easy, lauch Song Exporter Pro, select the songs you want to share, and connect to Wifi. Then, go to the computer you want to copy the music to, open the browser and point it to the IP address of the iPhone (it will be listed in the app). You’ll be presented with a nice web page that allows you to easily download the songs.

This is a nice handy tool which allows you to transfer your songs easily to your other computers direct from the iPhone.

DROPBOX – keep files in sync and have a backup copy in the cloud

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I’ve been using this nifty little tool for many months now, and it works like a charm!! I first got introduced to it watching Tekzilla, and I’m now hooked!!

What Dropbox does is that you identify a particular folder in your computer that you want to be kept in sync between computers. For me, this is my desktop, notebook & netbook. Everytime your computer is on the internet, it will keep all the files sync’d in this folder. So, no matter which machine you are on, you have access to all the files in that folder. Update the file any where, and the rest will get the updates too. To make it even more awesome, you can access these files on your iPhone or Android device.

Dropbox installs a small client on to your computer, and gives you 2GB of free space at the start. With some successful referrals, your free space goes up to 10GB!!

I use it to keep my frequently used files in sync between my computers. I’ve read other usage as to keep iTunes libraries in sync between computers, some others use it to keep emails sync’d between computers, and much more. The possibilities are endless.

So, wait no more!! give it a try and use my referral link here =)

how to jailbreak your iPhone and restore it back

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over the past 2 weeks, I attempted to jailbreak my iPhone. The only reason I wanted to do it was that I thought that I needed a mobile hotspot and there are jailbreak apps out there that makes it possible. It’s either this or invest in a dedicated pocket device that varies from $200 to $400. Since it was a much cheaper option to just do a jailbreak, I gave it a try.

After trying for the whole of a Sunday afternoon, it never went through and I gave it a rest. Over the course of the 4hrs I spent, I ran the jailbreak utility BlackRa1n, it would always get the phone to the iTunes restore screen (the one that showed a USB cable and iTunes logo), and never got past that. Overall, I reloaded the iPhone 3.1.2 firmware over and over, and finally I ran out of time and had to restore the phone back to the original state.

So, first rule of thumb, always run an adhoc backup in iTunes before any potentially disruptive change toe the iPhone. Do note, this is not the automatic backup that runs when you connect your phone to iTunes. Let that automated backup run when it does. But make sure you manually run the backup AGAIN after the automated on. This will create a permanent snapshot of the backup in iTunes. The automated one gets overwritten each time it runs.

With everything restored, iTunes slowly sync’d the apps, music, videos, podcast back. Interestingly, photos are not sync’d, but backed up. Which is good, that you’ll get all your photos back after the restore.

Couple of days later, I thought of giving it a try again. Trying to see what I did wrong. The whole process was suppose to be simple, many people have done it, and it’s just not right that a Tech Savvy guy like myself just can’t get it to go through.

So, I just fiddled around and by chance, I got it to run!!

The instructions are easily available if your search around for the complete steps to use BlackRa1n. What I always got stuck at was the “iTunes” screen on the phone. If the jailbreak worked, it should have automatically showed a picture of “Frodo”. What I did different this time, was by chance.

  1. I’m using Windows Vista Home Premium
  2. I stopped iTunes, and killed the process “iTunesHelper.exe”
  3. connected the iPhone 3GS to the notebook (iTunes should not start up at all)
  4. ran BlackRa1n
  5. it detected the phone, and forced it to reboot (this is normal)
  6. phone comes up in recovery mode (iTunes logo shows up)
  7. bam… it’s stuck here again and by chance, I was checking on some security settings on BlackRa1n.exe
  8. launched 2nd instance of BlackRa1n. (the first one was still running and… waiting…)
  9. lo and behold!! “Frodo” appeared, and the first instance of BlackRa1n was able to pick this up and continue the process of jailbreaking
  10. it reboots once more, and returns back to the normal iPhone interface
  11. DONE!

I was pleasantly surprised. At this point, the phone is jailbroken, and the next step was to put in the “App Store” of the jailbroken world, Cydia. It’s a neat little package manager, and pretty much what most people will need to do.

To top it off, the jailbreak was done without having to reset the phone to factory default first. All my existing apps, contacts, calendar entries, etc… were still there and working. So that was good, otherwise I would have to reconfigured everything from scratch.

I tested out several apps that was suppose to enable the iPhone as a mobile hotspot. Most of them work similarly, with the main differences to be the user interface, and here are the key features I found

  • all of them work in adhoc mode wifi, none provides infrastructure mode networks
  • this is usually not an issue, as nearly all computers can work with adhoc mode wifi networks
  • however, if you are planning to use an Android phone as a client, it will not work; as Android does not support connection to adhoc mode wifi (unless you root the Android device and hack it)
  • most of the apps do not initiate the adhoc mode wifi, in fact it requires the pc/notebook to create the adhoc network first, then the iPhone will join in
  • all buy one of these apps behave like that; the exception is MyWi
  • MyWi will create and initiate the adhoc network and even broadcast it
  • in this way, all devices can find the adhoc network that’s available and join it instead
  • I tested out MyWi with the free trial, and I loved the performance; the speed was good
  • it even works with my iPod Touch G1 which was able to stream youtube, etc.
  • sadly, my Android device will not work, which is the main deal breaker for me

With that, I found a part solution to what I need. It’s only a partial solution because not all my devices can work. However, it’s good for the performance was satisfying.

To restore the phone back to the original state, just fire up iTunes, connect the phone to the PC and hit “restore” in iTunes. It will do everything and should leave no trace of the jailbreak.

Will I encourage users to Jailbreak? Only if there’s a good reason for it, and that being that you are a power user, and there’s a specific functionality you want and need that only can be achieved by Jailbreaking.

Facebook update to 3.1.1 for the iPhone – GOOD!

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just checked out the update to the iPhone’s Facebook app… the current version is 3.1.1.

What’s new? my favorite part… Contacts Sync. It’s a step in the direction which was default feature my wife’s HTC Hero. Though the iPhone’s sync is not as comprehensive (yet) as what’s in the Hero, it’s a step in the right direction.

So what the contact will do is compare the contacts in iPhone’s contact list and your friends in Facebook. If it has found matches, it will then download their facebook photos to the iPhone contact (there’s an option to prevent overwriting an existing photo), and it will add a “home page” entry in that contact, which links to the facebook page. Touching that entry will launch the facebook app and bring up your friend’s page in-app.

This is pretty cool, except there were a few misses…. here’s what I’m certain of… when either one of the below matches

  • firstname & lastname
  • email address (if shared with you)
  • possible phone number as well (I don’t have enough information to validate)

I did have a mis-match… a  contact I had in my phone was matched up with someone in facebook with a completely different name, and I’m not even friends with the match. The only data in there was the phone number, and I can’t tell if that happened to have been the criteria of match. Anyhow, certainly a bug if you ask me.

So, how do you perform a sync? First a few things to do prior

  1. sync your contacts to your PC/Google
  2. create a backup copy of your contacts after the sync.. e.g. on Google, go to contacts and export everything
  3. backup is crucial, in case some how the facebook sync screws up your precious contacts
  4. go forth and make sure you have Facebook 3.1.1 installed

Having done the above, here it goes

  1. Launch “Facebook” app on your iPhone
  2. go to the app’s main menu by tapping the top left corner
  3. touch on the “Friends” icon
  4. touch “sync” on the top right of the page
  5. slide “Syncing” to “ON” (notice that “Replace Photos” is “OFF” by default)
  6. you’ll have to agree to proceed on, tap “I Agree” if you do
  7. sync begins… take note though, if you have a lot of contacts and they match… expect this to take more then just a few minutes. Try to keep the phone from going to sleep when doing this, or it will slow down
  8. however, if there’s any interruption, you just need to relaunch the app, and navigate to the sync page; and it should start syncing again from where it left off
    *note* some times I need to relaunch the app a few times before the sync will start on it’s own… haven’t figured out why yet.

I hope future updates can even identify changed contact information and the app can prompt for updates.

have fun!!

iPhone How-to : add other Google calendars to your iPhone Calendar

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this is an extension of the iPhone Calendar how-tos… in this post, I’ll describe the steps you need to perform to add someone else’s Google calendar to your iPhone Calendar app.

If you just want to add your own calendar, you may skip this and go to this post instead.

Now, the steps to add someone else’s calendar is very similar to add your own using the CalDAV method. The only thing that needs to be done prior to the config in the iPhone is that this person must first share the calendar with you.

I’m not going to re-invent the wheel here, so please follow Google’s Instructions on how to share your calendar. I discourage you from making your personal calendar public. To learn more, read another Google’s FAQ entry.

For the calendar to work, so that you can see something on the iPhone, you need to set the permission level to at least “See all event details”. If it’s set to “See only free/busy (hide details)”, you will be able to add the calendar via CalDAV, but nothing will show up in your calendar. If you are allowed to make changes even, then by all means go and set the permission to “Make changes to events”.  The ultimate you-have-it-all permission will be “Make changes AND manage sharing”, which I would think most people would not need.

If you are using Google Apps, and you can’t share beyond “only see free/busy information”, you’ll need to request your Administrator to increase the level of sharing allowed. This Google FAQ entry should help. *NOTE* after the administrator makes the changes, it will take a while before the system is updated and you can increase the level of detail to be shared on your calendar. This worked within 10mins during my testing.

Now, once the sharing is enabled, you can do a quick validation via your Gmail Calendar. See if the other person’s calendar is now showing up in your account as well. If yes, and you are not seeing “free/busy” information only, you are good.

The final step is to add the calendar to your iPhone’s setup. The steps are exactly the same as adding your own calendar via CalDAV (read this post), except in step 3, instead of using your own email address, you use the address of the person who had shared it with you. Follow through the rest of the steps, using your own Gmail login credentials, and you should be set!

At this point, your calendar should now show your own and the new calendar that was shared with you.

An additional tip for you… now that you have multiple entries from different calendars, it will be helpful to be able to visually identify easily which entries belongs to who. Fortunately, there’s a way to do this, but you’ll have to do this in Gmail Calendar’s web interface.

This is a very simple process, first just login to you Gmail Calendar. Next, on the left column of the page, find the calendar that you can see, and click on the little triangle next to it. A box will pop up and it will have several colors for your to choose from. Select the one you like and it’s done. In the iPhone Calendar, all entries belonging to that calendar will now have the color code you just picked.

iPhone How-to : calendar sync with Google Calendar via caldav

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if you’ve read my earlier post, my choice to sync my personal Google calendar with my iPhone 3GS is to use caldav. The other option is activesync (MS Exchange), which I used prior to OS3.0 on my iPhone 3G. To understand why, do read my earlier post here.

This post will specifically guide you, step by step, to be able to get your Google based calendar on your iPhone (with OS3.0+). The calendar app on the iPhone will be the default app, nothing additional you’ll need from the app store.

I will create another post to show you how to add other calendars to your iPhone, e.g. your spouse’s or your kid’s calendars.

  1. first, you’ll need your email address… which would be something like “myemail@gmail.com”
    or “myemail@mysuperdomain.com” if you are on Google Apps
  2. next, you’ll need to compose your own “server string”… it looks something like this
    https://www.google.com:443/calendar/dav/myemail@gmail.com/user
  3. pretty much just simply replace the section “myemail@gmail.com” with your Google based email address, be it with “gmail.com” or “whatever.com”
  4. If you’ve got email setup on your iPhone already, you can just email the “Server string” to yourself, which you can copy and paste later… or just type it out carefully on the phone
  5. next, pick up your iPhone,  go into “Settings” -> “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” -> “Add Account…” -> “Other” -> “Add CalDAV Account”
  6. here’s what you put in
    Server : paste or slowly thumb in the “server string” from above (customized with your own email address of course). When you move to the next field, it’s normal for the “server” to only show “www.google.com”, so don’t worry about it.
    User Name : your full email address, e.g. “myemail@whateverdomain.com”
    Password : the password to the account you put in above
    Description : what ever you’d like to call it, doesn’t matter what you put, it’s for your own identification
  7. click “next” when done
  8. If all went well, you’ll be taken back to the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” screen… if you had a typo in the “Server”, “User Name” or “Password” field.. then you’ll be stuck here. Just fix the typo and try again
  9. Validation…. Launch the “Calendar” app
  10. check and see if your calendar items are showing up, or if you have multiple calendars and it’s hard to validate you can select to see only one calendar
  11. in the “Calendar” app, on the top left, tap the “Calendars” button
  12. you’ll be presented with the list of Calendars you have configured, select the one you want to check
  13. You should now see only the entries belonging to that calendar

have fun =)

iPhone App – 1Password Pro *FREE*

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Yes! the much loved 1Password app available on OSX is now available for the iPhone and it’s free until 1st Dec 2009. So, go grab it now while it’s still free.

I’m sure it’s available at least in the US and Singapore iTunes store.

I installed it today, and found the features to be neat. It saves passwords for websites, and also you can store other personal information, like credit card details.

It has built in pin and master pin to prevent unauthorized access to your private information.

Check it out, 1Password Pro!!

iPhone App Review – Upside Down

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I was just surfing the app store and chanced upon this free app, “Upside Down”.

It’s a rather simple app, but does something really fun! You simply type in any message you like, it will automatically flip the text upside down, click on the “copy” button, and go to your SMS and paste it there.

Send out your message, and your recipient will get the message upside down! It’s a fun annoyance 🙂

Be warned though, this will work if your recipient is using an iPhone. I sent it to a Nokia N82, and only jibberish showed up. I wonder if it will work with Androids, Blackberry or Windows mobile recipients. If anyone gets to try it out, drop me a comment and let me know.

PPTP over cellular network with iPhone 3GS

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ever since I upgraded my iPhone to OS3.0, I’ve been having trouble trying to get PPTP VPN to work. Never had the time to seriously look at it until now.

My VPN end point is a Linksys WRT54GL running with DD-WRT. I know that PPTP service works there as I can connect with my notebook, even with my 3G dongle.

Initial findings pointed towards the support for encryption on the DD-WRT implementation, and it has to be forced to “none” on the iPhone. Even that didn’t work.

With the release of OS 3.1, I started to tether my notebook to the iPhone, and through that, the PPTP will fail. That stumped me! Initially I thought could be due to the NAT implementation to enable tethering.

With trial and errors, I found out that over a WIFI connection, PPTP connection will work. Did I forget to mention that CISCO based IPSEC VPN to my office network works nicely over cellular and WIFI? That really baffled me. So, there’s something that’s in place that only works for IPSEC over cellular.

Finally, I came across some forum postings that lead me to the solution. There are many other people with similar issues in Canada and USA, and for some, they are able to tweak their APN on the phone to a different one and it worked for them. Of course they needed to be on different data subscription etc… for that to work.

I’m in Singapore, and my cellular provider is SingTel. I whipped out my iPhone 3GS and compared it’s APN settings to my 3G dongle for my notebook. Wallah! they are different, even though they are both with SingTel. I swapped in the new APN settings on to the iPhone, and PPTP started to work.

So, for all those in Singapore and on SingTel with similar needs and issues, the solution is to change the APN from “e-ideas” to “internet”. And here’s SingTel’s official instructions. BTW, these instructions are generic for all data devices.

For everyone else, what I realize from this is that some services/ports are controlled by the service provider. So, just by changing the APN won’t work if you don’t have access to the relevant APN.

If you need some guide on how to set your APN on your iPhone, the official Apple guide is found here.

*update 2009 Oct 09* after changing the APN, the “tethering” feature disappears. But if I reset the “Cellular Network” settings, “tethering” comes back. Got to figure out how to enable both.

iPhone Calendar sync with Google – comparison between activesync & caldav

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If you haven’t realized it from my previous post, I am a fan of Google. So, besides syncing my iPhone contacts with Google, I also sync my Calendar.

I don’t have a Mac (YET), and I don’t have a copy of Microsoft Outlook, so I pretty much don’t have anything I can sync with on my Vista Desktop and XP netbook. Without Google, all I can do is backup my calendar to iTunes.

So, prior to OS3.0, I have setup my iPhone to do over-the-air activesync just for my calendar. It worked great and I loved it. What really surprised me that it also took care of subscribed calendars. e.g. My wife shares her Google calendar with me, and that also syncs to my phone; I also subscribe to a public holiday calendar for Singapore, and that syncs to my phone as well.

What impresses me is that once you have more than 1 calendar sync to the phone, all the items will get color coded. E.g. my calendar items will show up with a blue dot, my wife’s an orange dot, etc… On top of that I have permissions (set in Google Calendar) to add/delete/modify my wife’s calendar and I can do all those on the iPhone as well. There’s an option for me to choose which calendar an item is for when creating it.

When I was just surfing around on what’s new and what people are doing, I came across the new feature of the iPhone OS 3.0 and also supported by Google. That feature is caldav sync, as opposed to activesync. So, what’s the differences?

In short, very few differences. I’ll list the few I know

  1. Activesync – just need to setup your main account, and everything that is subscribed to in the Google Calendar interface will show up automatically
  2. Caldav – each calendar must be added for it to show up in iPhone, so this is more tedious.
  3. The advantage here is that activesync and caldav can both be used at the same time! A lot of people will likely sync their calendar with the office calendar via activesync. By using caldav, you can then also add on your personal calendar from Google. Lot’s of feedback I read in forums is that people are really pleased to be able to have both their work and personal calendars in the iPhone AT THE SAME TIME, and still kept separate. This is one of the biggest advantage, the marriage of both protocols.
  4. One thing that is important for me is reminders. In Google Calendar, you can set to receive multiple reminders for an item. E.g. for important events, I like to set pop-up reminders 10hrs, 1hr and 15mins before the event time. The activesync protocol only allows one of the reminders to go through to the phone, however caldav will sync all through. So, my phone will alert me at all the set reminders. Now, this is of a huge advantage for me.

As you probably guess, I’ve dropped activesync totally and now using caldav. Just a note though, when I started using caldav, in my appointments, I can start to specify “second alerts”, which is great! However, if you have more than 2 alerts/reminders for an item, you’ll only see the first and last one. I have items with 3 reminders, and all 3 will pop up in the phone in due time, I just can’t see the settings of the middle one in the phone. But that’s only a minor issue, as I would not change the alerts, but if I need to, just need to log on to Google Calendar to change it.

I’ll just keep things short (relatively) for this post, may post a how-to setup caldav post in the future. The guides I found only managed to get me half way. Had to figure out the rest of it myself by trial and error.