"I knew that!", says the navigator.

Let’s face it: we’re all waiting for the day when our iPhones and iPod touches start identifying the hunk beside that bar or that chick walking on the street by just taking her photo with a camera. While that won’t be possible in the near future (though the Twitter app above allows a bit of room for that), there’s of course the augmented reality (AR) apps in the up-and-coming iPhone OS 3.1, slated to arrive this September.

To put it simply in the context of the iPhone, it combines the usage of the camera, the all-new magnetometer (a.k.a compass), GPS and an Internet connection to give you real-time information on what you see. For instance, you can point at one location and that will give you the nearest road. There are many uses for it, and the possibility is endless.

According to the LA Times post here:

Apple told Acrossair, developer of the Nearest Tube train finder, that the app will be approved for distribution after Apple releases version 3.1 of the iPhone software, which the developer expects will land in early September.

Augmented reality apps can only be used by iPhone 3GS users, though. Boo.

You can also read this title as ‘Top 5 Excuses to Jailbreak Your iPhone’! :-)

This is the Quickpwn mascott. I guess it is a ninja pineapple... get it? pineAPPLE :P

Now, I have to do an obligatory disclaimer… you could damage your phone, void your warranty, and maybe even increase your risk of cancer if you jailbreak your iPhone! But as promised, here’s my top 5 list for all you crazy bastards that like living on the edge of life and death enough to jail-break! Haha. I hope you detect the sarcasm there. Jail-breaking has become very simple and fairly safe. I have jail broken my iPhone 4 or 5 times now using Quickpwn on two different PCs and once on a laptop with absolutely no problems at all. And if your wondering, all but one of those times I redid my iPhone it was simply to get a fresh start after accumulating a ton of junk. The one other time was because out of the blue one day I could not get Cydia* to download anything new. I racked my brain and finally just restored my phone and redid the jailbreak.

[*Cydia is the app you get most all of your jailbroken apps from. It's kind of like the iTunes store, but for jailbroken apps]

If you think it is worthwhile for me to do a jail-breaking / getting started tutorial let me know, if I have enough interest I’ll make one.

Anyhoo… on to the Top 5 list! Just remember, these are in no particular order… I only count down to trick your brain into creating a feeling of suspense for your reading pleasure :-P

#5 – Cycorder – FREE

This was my original motivation to jailbreak. When I got my iPhone I didn’t research it much. I was so sure this cool like peice of modern engineering magic had to have a video recording application… saddly I was dissappointed. This app is the answer. As far as cell phones go the quality is pretty nice. it wont replace your camcorder, but it definately does the job when you need to capture video in a pinch! This alone is a great reason to jailbreak! Here’s a sample video:

Note: This sample is done in ideal lighting conditions, you may notice bluring and noise to greater degree if the enviroment is dim or it is dark. But overall this surpasses most cell phone video quality that I’ve seen.

#4 – Intelliscreen – $10.00

Paying for jail-broken apps just seemed wrong to me at first, because jail-breaking feels like your doing something subversive… hell, it’s called JAIL-BREAKING! haha. But I’ve come to realize that its not wrong at all! In fact these guys work as hard as any programmer with an app store release, sometimes harder, so they deserve your cash sometimes too. That said, $10 bucks is a bit pricey compared to most apps, but once you try Intelliscreen your hooked!

These are the three main screens from Intelliscreen on my iPhone. I have blurred out personal info in places.

Okay, so basically this app gives you interactive access to your SMS/text messages, e-mail messages, calendar, news, weather and more all from your lock screen! Thats right, you just hit the home button and blammo, you see all your useful info right there! Whats more is that you can press the home button again at this point and a speed dial screen appears where you can call anyone on your favorite caller list! At first I was worried about accidental dialing happening in my pocket if I used this app, but it is designed very well and I have never had an accidental call or anything wacky.

Here is a folder I created for all of my utility type apps.

#3 – Categories – FREE

If you happen to be an app junkie like me, and you probably are if your reading this blog, you know how overwhelming all those icons spanning across five, ten or even more springboard pages can be. This app, which is simply and appropriately called ‘Categories’, allows you to fix just that… it lets you categorize all your apps into nice tidy folders. You can even select from quite a few differnt folder icons. This app is indispensable, I don’t know how I’d know whats what on my iPhone without it!
One word of caution, sometimes this app is a bit buggy and crashes on you. I recommend organizing one folder at a time, then exiting and allowing it to re-spring, and then doing the next folder. Occasionally it is reported that Categories can crash and mess up your folder organization. If this happens this link may prove helpful: http://www.modmyi.com/forums/native-iphone-ipod-touch-app-discussion/24785-categories-app-bug-reports.html. For what it’s worth I have not had any problems since the last update of Categories, so I think most of the bugs have been ironed out.

This is my springboard 'look', warts and all! :P

#2 – Winterboard / Themes / Visual Customizations – FREE (almost always)

Lots of slashes on this title. That’s because theming and general customization is a big part of the fun of jailbreaking and I didn’t feel any one theme or customization app deserved all the credit. Out of the box there is very limited room to customize your experience on the iPhone, and this was another thing that disappointed me when I bought mine (in addition to the inability to record video). Winterboard is a popular theme engine, and most of the themes I’ve encountered work with / rely on this app. What is cool about Winterboard is that you can mix different theme elements. For example, say you install a certain complete theme, and maybe it looks cool overall but the keyboard and dialer skins both look like crap. You can then find and install a skin you like better for those two specific things, and within Winterboard you can ’stack’, or ‘order’, the new keyboard and dialer skins above your main theme, so they will override those items in your theme. Also you can get custom lock screens, sounds, video wallpaper (which kind of slows down your phone, but looks neat), and of course all sorts of great looking complete themes!

I prefer to keep things pretty basic these days, as themes can add overhead to your iPhone’s already scarce memory, affecting performance slightly. Right now I have my iPhone ‘themed’ as you see in the image to the right. Now, this isn’t actually a single complete theme, it is really just one app that combines the ‘Five Icon Dock’ with a custom ‘flow’ style skin (I beleive it’s called Dock Flow) [bottom of the above pic], and then a custom background I downloaded using the ‘Backgrounds’ app (‘Backgrounds’ is a free Appstore app). Other than that I am just using Categories from #3 of this list and some randomly colored folder icons. This is an example of how you can make a fairly complete looking theme that is actually pretty basic and not much of a resource hog.

You wont be in the dark with this app! Lame... I know... But I'm a Dead fan! ha

#1 – Flashlight – FREE

I know what your thinking… “What?!?! I know this mofo did not just put a flashlight app as a top jail-break app, there are countless FREE flashlight apps in the Appstore”! Yes, I did, and I know. What sucks about the Appstore flashlight apps is that none of them can change your iPhone’s display brightness. Apple does not approve any flashlight apps that do this. This one, however, will automatically set your display to maximum brightness (and return it to normal when your done), which results in a flashlight app that is actually useful! I don’t know if it’s possible for me to really drive home

Just give it a try and put it right on your first page of springboard where you’ll quickly and easily find it in a jam. After you use it a few times and get used to going to your iPhone for a quick light source you will find yourself using this app all the time! Here’s some handy uses for this app:

• Lay it in the bottom of a PC case while your working inside (just don’t drop that heatsink on it)
• Sneak to bed at 4AM with minimal disturbance to your lady friend (or guy friend, whatever the case)
• Signal friends as to your location at a dark concert
• Find something you just dropped under your desk

You get the idea… it’s a flashlight :-)

———————————————

There you have it, these are some of the apps that make me very appreciative of all the guys and gals that spent countless hours and probably bricked a few iPhones figuring this stuff out and making it so relatively safe and easy for the rest of us. You really do need to understand that all this is possible only because of people who have a passion for doing this stuff, for hacking around with hardware/software and figuring out how to do what didn’t seem possible. So please, if you have questions or problems, just be friendly and people in the community will help you. This is very safe in my opinion, but at the same time I want to make sure I scare you just enough that you don’t assume that there is no risk at all and jump into this haphazardly, as there are some basic instructions you must be capable of following properly for both the jail-breaking process and for using some of the apps properly. It may also confort you to know that a jail-break can be undone at any time simply by restoring your iPhone in iTunes.

And again, for more info on jail-breaking your iPhone, and the tools needed, visit these guys: http://www.quickpwn.com/

Happy jail-breaking!

This is simply a list of my top 5 favorite iPhone apps. Now, I’ve used a lot of iPhone apps, both free and paid, but with that said, I couldn’t have possibly tried them all. So if you see this list and you find it odd that I prefer app X to app Y, leave a comment, maybe I am not aware of app Y! These are in no particular order, but I will list them in trendy count-down style so I can build a false sense of suspense :-P

#5 – WiFi Touchpad – $2.99

WiFi Touchpad works a lot like your Laptops touchpad, but it goes beyond that!

This app is a god send! I have a PC in my living room connected to my entertainment center, and this app allows me to easily ditch the keyboard / mouse combo. Not only does it function as a very low latency laptop-style touchpad pointing device, but it also features:

• Landscape touchpad, great for wide screen TVs
• Landscape keyboard. Although a little cramped, it is very cool that it offers most all the keys you would need for interfacing with your computer.
• A mode that allows you to type all of the text you want right on the iPhone (using the familiar iPhone keypad) and then send it to your computer all at once. This is useful if your just typing text for an email or IM or whatever, even a web address.
• Can work with multiple iPhones / computer systems.
• The receiver app is VERY small and unobtrusive. It doesn’t run at boot by default, so toss a shortcut in your startup folder!
• Works on Mac or PC (although I have only used it with a PC)

Oddly, some comments knock this app for having a lag between touch pad movement and when it responds on the screen. Being a musician who fools around with lots of MIDI I know latency when I encounter it, and the latency (lag) with this app is very small! It feels just as, or damn close, to the responsiveness of any laptop touchpad. If it lags for you it is likely your network that is the problem.

My only complaint is that double-taps on the pad (without using the actual button) takes some getting used to, as the taps have to be timed fairly consistently, but this happens naturally after you use it for a bit.

I also tried VLC Remote, but I could not get it to work. WiFi TouchPad required no additional configuration on my network. Just install the iPhone app, and then the receiver app on your computer and your in business! Zero configuration hassle!

#4 – Beejive IM – $15.99

Okay, I must admit, I don’t like the idea of paying $16 for an iPhone app… but this app is well made and I believe it’s well worth the money. Now, if you’ve tried other IM applications on the iPhone you know the dilemma here; no 3rd party apps on the iPhone can run in the background (without jailbreaking), so how does one receive messages when the app isn’t running in the foreground? Answer: YOU DONT. This app gets around that by keeping you connected on their servers for a length of time you can specify, and when you get an IM while the app is not open you will instead receive an email (if you configured this) that lets you launch the app and check your messages. This sounds a bit hokey, but in practice it is very satisfactory.

I signed up for a new yahoo email account specifically for this app to use so that I know any message in this account is a new IM or network notification, or something from Beejive. Yahoo also supports Push technology, so it’s pretty much instant. So far i’m still not getting any spam in my inbox, so this is working out well :-)

Other than that it is a very well designed IM application that supports most all major IM networks (AIM, Yahoo, Google, MSN, MySpace, ICQ…). Now, I have had some issues with myspace support, but luckily I don’t use it regularly and just tried it for the heck of it, but you may want to consider this if you are a fan of MySpace IM.

If you need to be able to receive IMs while your doing other things this is the only thing close to an elegant solution that I have found, so it get my vote for best IM app despite the relatively hefty price tag!

#3 Tweetie – $2.99

[this post was updated after 13 year olds over ran Twinkle]

Ok, I have finally seen the light with Twitter. I have to appologize for ever beleiving Twinkle was up to par and I am now quite happy that those annoying youngins’ drove me away from that app [see update below].

Tweetie is just a pleasure to use. It really makes Twitter everything that it should be! I love being able to save my searches. For example, I have a search for ‘#php’, one for ‘#iphone #app’, another for ‘#iphone #dev’, etc. I also love how Tweetie incorporates Instapaper. If you don’t know about Instapaper (I didn’t) it is one of those things that is so simple it can easily be written off as useless. All it does is let you save a list of things you want to read later. Kind of like book marks, but if you’ve tried to do this with your bookmarks you know how quickly it can all get out of hand! Once you save something to instapaper you can retrieve the articles later from any device with a browser. This is a very useful tool that I use many times daily.

It also has the ability to find other users in your area, but somehow this feature doesn’t seem as exciting to me as I thought it was with Twinkle (but this is only due to me just now ‘getting’ the whole Twitter thing I think).

I could go on and on about Tweetie, but basically every feature it has is useful and nothing seems to be fluff. Tweetie is an iPhone app and a Twitter app that was done right!

#2 – ShapeWriter Free – FREE

This app is one you grow to love. But once you learn it you will love it! In concept this is similar to the Notes app that comes bundled with your iPhone, but with one huge difference; you ‘type’ not by hitting keys, but simply by ’sliding’ a thumb from letter to letter to spell the words. The software is smart enough to know either exactly what you were trying to spell or it will display a small group of selections that will most likely contain the word you intended to spell. And worst case, you can still peck at the keys. The beauty of this app is that after a while you can write out sentences with one thumb much faster than you can with two thumbs in the traditional maner. This is the fastest way I have found to get spur of the moment thoughts and whatnot on to the iPhone before you loose it! If you have ever tried to jot down a complex idea on your phone in the traditional way, you know that you quickly find yourself thinking more about typing on on the damn little keyboard than concentrating on what your writing about! And, yes, I even prefer this to a landscape keyboard. Try it and give it a chance, ShapeWriter will probably become one of your most used apps!

#1 – WinAdmin – $11.99

WinAdmin lets you access your Windows PC via the iPhone!

Okay, I know… I know… another app on the list that’s over $10 bucks! The good news here is that, unlike Beejive, there are cheaper and free alternatives that seem work equally well (maybe even better). I believe one free alternative is called RDP Lite. I just happen to like this one, but it may have something to do with the fact that I’ve already invested $12 bucks in it, ha!

What this app does is allow you to connect remotely to your Windows PC (maybe other platforms that support RDP?) and you can do anything you would normally do on your computer, but… remotely! There are some limitations, like watching a video, which works in theory but really bogs down and practically locks up the connection (atleast in my experience).

You can use this app to (read: Things I’ve done with):

• Check on torrents your downloading at home, and make sure Peer Guardian hasn’t crashed again ;-)
• Do some lite PhotoShop work for a website, then upload the graphic to the server
• Reboot or fix something on a Windows server without making a trip to the office
• Fix the parents PC without a trip across town (or country, whatever the case)
• Pull up docs and other info that are stored on a home or work PC when your out and about
• Impress your friends by telling them you put Windows on your iPhone! :-P
• Countless other uses… use your imagination!

Okay, there you have it, my Top 5 iPhone Apps! If you have any objections to my choices please comment and I’ll seriously consider revising this list if there an app that does basically the same thing as one of these, but better.

Stay tuned! I am going to follow this up with a Top 5 iPhone Apps Worth Jail-breaking For… or something to that effect.

Happy iPhone-ing!