Some thoughts about Google Buzz (And a bit of anti-buzz from Boris ;-))

This Google Buzz thing looks pretty good and I am all in for a better way to organising all the c**p coming from on Facebook account and only look at what is interesting. I also think geo-based social networking could be fun (dirty mind maybe, but I am thinking of blind-dating at a put with Google Buzz :-)).

BUT GOOGLE GIVE US SOME PRIVACY!

I don't mind using my real name when posting to people I have selected as contacts (ala Facebook). However in Buzz when you make a public post you have to use your real name and give a link to your profile, which includes all your previous activity and locations.

This means:

- Google's algorithm might decide that your post about a great night out yesterday is cool, and show it to your boss with your real name in front of it (even if you never decided to share content with him, as long as a few colleagues add comments to the post the algorithm will identify your connection with him)

- Anyone googling your name will straight away see the history of everything you have posted on Buzz (beware of what you are writing it will follow you forever)

- If you use the mobile version, it seems like you always have to share publicly. This means if I post from my phone, everybody can see my name and location. Post from home and you are giving away your address to the whole world. And with the location base service all your neighbours will see the buzz ... ie keep in mind you are actually doing the same as walking down the street with a name tag and shooting what you think.

I will probably use Buzz for sharing privately, but long life to anonymous tweeter if I want to post publicly.

And Google: one simple say to waive all my concerns: allow people to use a nickname for public posts.

How to backup SMS text messages on an iPhone?

Connect to the jailbroken via SFTP and backup the content of the following folder: /private/var/mobile/Library/SMS/

More about it in French here.

Interesting iPhone application

Here: http://www.iphonedownloadblog.com/install-cracked-ipa-files-directly-from-the-iphone/

Here is what they say:

I’ve been very reluctant to post about hacks and cracks lately as I think you guys use these cracks for the wrong reasons. I talked to a lot of developers within the last few weeks and I can understand where they’re coming from and more importantly, why they don’t want to see their applications hacked and made available for free all over the Internet (mostly for financial reasons).

However, I do believe in freedom of information. I also believe that some of you will carefully use what I’m going to talk about. I said it before and I’ll say it again; if you install a cracked application on your iPhone and you like this application, please buy it from the App Store. It is the fair way to do it. Most of these apps are under $5 anyways, so if you can afford a $200 phone, I’m sure you can afford a few $.99 apps every once in a while.

This being said, I’m going to show you how you can install cracked iPhone ipa games and applications directly from your iPhone (a la App Store). We already covered the lenghthy and painful method of “manually” adding ipa files to your iPhone. This one is much more pleasant.

I am not sure of the prerequisites for this new method. You might have to perform the steps covered in this tutorial (ie. create extra folder, set the proper permission, etc…) for it to work. Since I already performed all these tricks on my iPhone, I may have a built-in advantage on you. So try this method, and if it doesn’t work, try this first.

Please do not send me angry emails and do not post insulting comments if it doesn’t work and messes up your iPhone. You are doing this at your own risks. Ok? Understood?

Alright, here is how to install cracked ipa files directly from your iPhone:

1. Make sure you are on a jailbroken iPhone. If you don’t know how to do this, check out one of these posts.
2. Go to Cydia and uninstall the Safari Download Plugin if you had previously installed it
3. Still in Cydia, add this source: http://cydia.hackulo.us
4. Still in Cydia, install “Installous” and “AppShare”
5. Quit Cydia
6. Reboot your iPhone

You will now have 2 new icons on your spingboard: a green one and a blue one. The blue one is AppShare. Open it and you will see the different sources of cracked ipa. Choose one (Appulo.us and the Monkey’s Ball don’t seem to work - at least for me). Browse for an application. Click “install”. Done!

Some people are already reporting that it crashes when trying to install an ipa. That might be the permission and the extra folders issue I was mentioning above. This might be a fix for crashes during install. Again, I’m just reporting the raw info here. I didn’t develop this so I’m not sure how everything works. Please let us know in the comments.

List of useful Mac OS X applications

Adium [freeware]
This is a multi-protocol instant messaging client, very well integrated to OSX. Check the website for the supported IM protocols, but most likely it has the ones you need (including AIM, MSN, Jabber/GTalk and Yahoo).

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 [commercial - €90]
Good photo editing software for amateurs and enthusiasts.

Adobe Reader [freeware]
To open PDF files.

aMule [freeware]
emule (edonkey) clone for Mac OS.

Azureus [freeware]
Java-based bittorrent client.

FacebookSync [freeware]
Import Facebook contact details to the Mac OS address book. Alternative download link here.

Filezilla [freeware]
FTP client.

Firefox [freeware]
No need to introduce the leading multi-platform and open-source web browser.

Flickr Uploader [freeware]
Easily upload your pictures to Flickr to share them online.

Flip4Mac WMV plug-in [freeware]
Play Windows Media video files in Quicktime and all Quicktime-based applications (including Frontrow).

Fluid [freeware]
Webkit-based (Safari) site specific browser. It will let you turn web applications (like gmail or gtalk) into a native Mac OS application with it's own icon, window ... and supports scripting to make the application interact with the system (example: display new e-mail notification in growl or in the dock).

Growl

Perrian

Photomatix [commercial - $99]
Generate High Dynamic Range (HDR) pictures from multiple shots with different exposure compensation.

Safari AdBlock [freeware]

Remove ads (pictures, flash0 from webpages in Safari, based on an online URL list.

Spanning Sync [commercial - $25/year]
(enter the coupon code 3TFDVT at registration for a $5 discount)
Synchronize Mac OS' address book and ICal (and by therefore your iPhone) with GMail contacts and Google Calendar.

XiaoCidian [freeware]
This is a Chinese language add-on for the Apple dictionary application. It can be used to display instant translation by typing ctrl+cmd+d from some applications including Safari (first, select a word or put the mouse pointer on it).

Usefull Mac tutorials

• Enable Apache webserver with PHP on Mac OS 10.5 Leopard
• Install Apache FOP on Mac OS
• Get started with LaTeX on a Mac
• Add extra dictionaries to the Mac OS dictionary application
• Quick on-screen dictionary lookup in Safari
• Encode MP3s with LAME encoder from iTunes

IPhone 2.0 synchronization - MDCrashReportTool closed unexpectedly

I was getting the following message when synchronizing my iPhone with firmware 2.0 to iTunes: "MDCrashReportTool closed unexpectedly". This is cause by a bug in Apple's crash reporting tool which make it crash when retrieving bug reports from the iPhone (pretty ironic ;-)). 

To avoid the issue, you can open a Mac OS terminal widow, and type the following command (one line):

sudo chmod a-x /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/Resources/AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app/Contents/Resources/MDCrashReportTool

This simply prevents the tool from running. Note this is a workaround and not a fix, and it will completely disables the bug reporting functionality (but it was crashing anyway ...).

List of usefull iPhone applications

Here are the applications I have installed on my iPhone.

- weDict is a dictionary application, with translation dictionaries available from/to English for several languages.

- iChinese is a program that teaches you how to write Chinese characters by drawing them in the screen 

- Terminal lets you type command lines

- SSH installs an SSH server to remotely access your iPhone

- BossPref is a second Settings application that lets you configure new things (including enabling/disabling SSH).