Touching Up VIII: RingtoneFeeder, iPhone TiVo Hack, AT&T News, and Our Oops…

by Eric March on May 2, 2008 at 8:02 pm

I’ve got news for you. Lots of news. In fact, I have a surplus of news! I’m completely overstocked, and I need to clear them out at crazy insane prices! Hell, just take it away! I don’t want it anymore! Seriously, just walk in, grab the whole lot and leave!

Just look at what I’ve got for you: iFob 1.45, Sony’s Millionaire C&D, the iPhoney, Hacking TiVo with an iPHone, TwistedFingers, RingtoneFeeder, RepoName, Dactyl, AT&T’s altruism, MahJongg (the real one), the “missing” ringtone, more vWallpaper love, and our commercial page “oopsie.”

So come on in! Take anything you want with no money down, no interest, and no payments — ever!

Oops!
Those of you who tried to access our commercials page might have been wondering why the pages themselves seemed to be 404. Well, I’ll tell ya: It’s because I’m a dumbass. Evidently after doing them all up, I neglected to press that little “publish” button, so they remained private, unpublished pages, resulting in that nice 404 page you were getting. Neither of us noticed because we’re admins. We can access those pages as if nothing is wrong. Fortunately, we’ve fixed that all up now, and the commercials pages are open to the public — for real this time.

Bam! Weiphone Release Mahjongg
No, not that tile matching game; that’s Mahjongg Solitaire. This is the real Mahjongg, the Chinese tile game you play against opponents (or computer players, in this game). I’m just going to go ahead and admit that I know absolutely nothing about Mahjongg proper except what the tiles mean and which ones are related, and that much I learned from the solitaire variant. Otherwise, I haven’t a clue, so I’m just going to point you to this Wikipedia page for the rules. Not that it’s going to matter if you can’t read Chinese, because … well, you’ll need to. Graphically it has the usual Weiphone style, which is to say that it’s excellent. You can grab WeMJ from the Weiphone repo (http://app.weiphone.com/installer)
(via iPod Touch Fans)

Sony Axe Millionaire
It was probably inevitable, but that doesn’t make it suck any less. Sony, who recently bought Celador’s Millionaire franchise from its current Dutch owner, 2waytraffic, have issued a Cease & Desist order to iPhone and Touch Millionaire author Fabio Caseri. As a result, it has effectively been removed from its Installer repo and is no longer available for public consumption. Although it comes as no surprise — companies chase after IP violations all the time — it does make me wonder if perhaps Sony is planning to bring the franchise to the iPhone and Touch themselves.
(via iPod Touch Fans)

iPhone Hacks TiVo for Network Remote Control
In fact, it’s not really even a hack at all. Thanks to TiVo partnering up with Creston to integrate their Series3 Home Automation framework into their set-top boxes, it turns out there’s no security on the telnet connection to the device. As a result, anyone can use any network connection to tap into the TiVo box and execute remote commands. At its present stage, IR remote codes are entered manually, and have to be done quick to avoid timeouts, so it isn’t very practical, but the potential for much more interesting hacks is there. Check out the video at the Zatz link below.
(Engadget, via Zatz Not Funny!)

The iPhone Goes “Moo”
When it comes to iPhone knockoffs, at least this one wasn’t meant to fool anyone. Well, maybe the infants and toddler’s this German Toggolino Phone is meant for. It seems like such a sign of the times — or maybe my age — when it seems like the days of See & Say have been replaced with iPhone lookalikes that are designed to teach kids words and animal noises. Mind you, if I was two, I’d probably enjoy the heck outta this, too. “Hello? Hello? Farmer Brown? Wait, what do you mean by ‘Auf wiedersehen, sheissekopf?‘”
(via Engadget)

Middle Finger Blue
TwistedFingers was released a week or so ago and I never bothered including it in a TU episode because I’d no idea what it was about and it didn’t look interesting enough to download. (Bad attitude for a blogger, I know.) Fortunately, someone else worked it out for me, so I’ll just go buy that, just because. The object of the game is … well, basically, it’s the old game of Twister. Only with fingers. Each player picks either pink or blue and then takes turns trying to place their fingers on sequentially numbered circles until one player is forced to lift a previously placed finger, at which point the other player wins. Obviously, two players are required for this game. Or two hands, I suppose, whatever floats your boat. TwistedFingers can be found on the iSpazio source (http://repo.ispazio.net)
(via Apple iPhone School)

iFob 1.45 Update
For those of you in an area with a useful population of iPhone users, you may be interested to note that iFob, the social stalking networking app that informs you when other iFob-toting iPhone users are in your area, has been updated to version 1.45. This update adds the option to enable the ability to see yourself on the “near” list, which may help alleviate the crushing loneliness and despair you feel whenever you look to see who’s in your area only to be greeted by a soulless black screen. Grab it form BigBoss (http://thebigboss.org/repo.xml)
(via Apple iPhone School)

Addicted to Ringtones?
Then RingtoneFeeder.com isn’t a cure. It’s an enabler. Utilizing the discovery made a couple months back that ringtones could be delivered straight to your iTunes as podcasts, RingtoneFeeder is, to the best of my knowledge, the first commercial venture to make use of that. RingtoneFeeder supplies original ringtones (sorry, no commercial works for obvious copyright reasons) directly to your iTunes on a subscription basis at a rate of about per week. If that sounds skimpy, you might find some mitigation in the subscription fees, which are an equally skimpy $1.98 per month, or $19.98 per year. Additionally, when subscribing, you are automatically sent the last 5 ringtones released.
(via Apple iPhone School)

Snapture 1.4
My favourite camera app has had another update. The most notable feature is the addition of a selectable delay period when using the self-timer. They’ve also added a direct link to the new snaptured.com community blog. Other internal changes include corrected thumbnails in the camera roll for photos taken with Snapture, a fix for the settings not always being saved, and a slight change in the way the shutter button works for “added stability.” If you have an iPhone and don’t have this app already, do yourself a favour and grab it from the BigBoss source (http://thebigboss.org/repo.xml)
(via Installer)

vWallpaper 0.6, 0.7
Those of you enamored with animated backgrounds, especially if you’re fond of changing them frequently, will love this new update. To start with, the flickering caused when a video loop has (hopefully) been fixed; it will no longer mess with your ringtones; it has implemented a new method of detecting video playback; and finally, you no longer need to restart springboard when you change videos — which makes reviewing vwallpapers _so_ much easier on us bloggers. Additionally, Skrew states that the next version may have the ability to download wallpapers internally. Oh, look! A new version was released as I wrote this, so let’s look at 0.7. The first thing you’ll notice is that you can’t just go and update it willy-nilly. First, you need to completely uninstall your earlier version and reboot your device. Then, install a package called ScrewCommon and reboot your device again. Now install vWallpaper 0.7. This version is even less glitchy, and as Skrew promised, you can now download videos right from the app. There isn’t much to download at the moment, but I expect he’ll have much more soon. Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you; the app refused to play animated wallpapers for me, even after I turned off theme wallpaper in Summerboard. However, as always, this is all available from Skrew’s own source (http://i.danstaface.net).
(via Apple iPhone School)

RepoName 0.0.2
Not much going on with this little (but kinda handy) App repo finder. This version simply makes your searches case insensitive. Otherwise, nothing to see here folks, move along or download it from the DavTeam source (http://davteam.com/repo.xml).
(via Apple iPhone School)

AT&T Get All Warm & Cuddly
The death star seem to be really trying hard to shed its curmudgeonly image. First, they announce that they’re now going to be offering free (check it: free!) WiFi hotspot usage at to all iPhone users via any of its 71,000+ hotspots, including ones located in Barnes & Noble and Starbucks. Did you catch that? Free. A word you never thought you’d see used in the same sentence as AT&T. They must be all flush and giddy from the reports on how well the iPhone is doing for them. But if that wasn’t enough, now they’ve gone and offered a special plan for hearing-impaired iPhone users. Where previously they had to sign up for the same voice plan everyone else did, AT&T are now offering a $40 Text Accessibility Plan that puts emphasis on text messaging, web browsing and visual voicemail, while tacking on a $0.40/min per-use voice call surcharge. Qualified applicants must first fill out their disability certification forms [PDF] before they can jump on the bandwagon, but once they do, they too can enjoy the iPhone without having to pay the premiums for services they’ll never use. Don’t you just wanna hug them about now? AT&T, I mean, not the hearing impaired — though I’m sure they could do with a hug, too.
(via TUAW and MacRumours)

The “Missing” Ring
No, not that ring (MINE!) You know the one. It’s in half of the iPhone commercials, and yet, inexplicably, it doesn’t actually come with the iPhone. What’s up with that? LifeClever knows. Better still, they know where to get it. Those of you with a Mac and iLife ‘08 can find it in /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects/Work - Home/Cell Phone Ringing.aif. Those of you without, you can just download it here. You’re on your own if you want the background music to start playing while you monologue, though.
(LifeClever, via TUAW)

Dactyl 0.2
Now here’s an exciting and engaging game that’s sure to give you tons of entertainment! Okay, really, it’s just whack-a-mole. But with bombs, and a much faster pace than your average rodent bashing variety. Keep defusing bombs (or moles, in the iSpazio skin — don’t ask me how you defuse moles, it’s probably best that we never know) as they turn red or they’ll ’splode in your face. The current update includes sound and the explosion. You can grab it on the ModMyiFone repo. (http://modmyifone.com/installer.xml)
(via iPod Touch Fans)

Oh, look! We’re out of stock! Hope you enjoy the quality merchandise. Now you’ll have to excuse me, as another delivery truck is approaching.

Related Stories:

• July 17, 2008 -- iPhone 2.0 Supports Playback of WAV Voicemail (0)
• June 10, 2008 -- If You Bought Your iPhone After May 27, You Will Receive a Free iPhone 3G (2)
• June 7, 2008 -- AT&T is Dry. No More iPhones in Stock. Ready for 3G iPhone. (0)

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