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.

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

View your work calendar (Outlook) in Google Calendar and vice versa

I like Google Calendar because it is available from anywhere as long as you have Internet access (including on an iPhone ...) and there is no synchronization problem if you use it with several devices: all of them are using the same datastore. One thing I was missing though is that I didn't have my work meetings in it. And doing things the other way around would have been neat: having my personal stuff displayed in my Outlook calendar is usefull when you are planing meetings late in the evening or business trips.

My goal was not to synchronize the calendars (I wouldn't risk to mess-up my Outlook calendar with the synchronization process) but rather to have each calendar displayed within the other one in read-only mode.

Here is how I did it:

1. Setup the Outlook -> Google Calendar export process and schedule it every 15 minutes

The most simple, automated and reliable way of displaying my work calendar in Google Calendar that I found is to export it using SyncMyCal. This is not free ($25), but not too expensive either and it works very well. Also it will work fine behind a company proxy server which requires authentication.

To set this up, install SyncMyCal and go to Settings / Sync operations. Click "add" to create a new operation and apply similar settings to the ones in the following screenshot. Beforehand, create a new calendar in Google Calendar which will host your Outlook Calender - in this example it is called Outlook *hidden* (the hidden part in my company's name).

Then, if you need to setup a proxy server you can do so in Settings/Advanced Settings/Connection.

At this stage you can run a manual sync and it should populate you new Google Calendar with your Outlook appointments.

The last thing is to go to Settings/Advanced Settings/Auto Sync, make sure Auto Sync is enabled and set how often you want it to run (in my case every 15 minutes).

That's it, now as long as your work computer is on it will feed Google Calendar with any change in your Calendar every 15 minutes.

The result in Google Calendar looks like this (the blue events were created in Google Calendar, and the green ones came from Outlook):


2. Setup Outlook (2007) to display Google Calendar appointments

This second step is much simpler as Outlook 2007 can display remote iCal calendars, which is supported by Google Calendar.

To set this up, first go to you Google Calendar settings, on the calendars tab, and click on the name of your main calendar. Under the private address section, click in iCal and copy the URL of the calendar:Then in Outlook 2007, go to Tools/Account Settings, and open the Internet Calendars tab.
Click on New, and enter your Calendar's URL.

If you go to the Calendar view, your Google Calendar should now appear under My Calendars.
To see the meetings from both calendars on one view, thick both of them under My Calendars. If they are displayed side by side, go to the View menu and select View in Overlay Mode.

The result in Outlook 2007:

How to make a non-compatible HP printer work with an Apple Airport Express? (Mac OS X)

I own an HP 3745 printer (same as 3740), which I was able to use remotely with my Airport Express quite easily on my laptop running Windows and Linux (in both cases, create an IP printing port and use the normal driver).

However when I switched to an Apple laptop running Mac OS X it stopped working as the Mac drivers provided by HP don't seem to support network printing too well ... pretty ironic that only the Windows drivers work seamlessly with Apple's Airport Express!

I found a solution with open-source hpijs drivers. Here is how I made it work (follow the different steps in order):

1. Browse http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/hpijs
2. Download and install Ghostscript (find the appropriate version for you OS/system)
3. Download and install Foomatic RIP (find the appropriate version for you OS/system)
4. Download and install HPIJS (find the appropriate version for you OS/system)
5. Go to Print & Fax in the system preferences
6. Add your printer as a Bonjour printer, the computer should automatically select the corresponding Foomatic/HPJIS driver
7. You are done :-)

I assume the same will work with an Airport Extreme or a Time Capsule which are based on the same technology, and it applies to most HP printers (you can find a list of printers supported by the hpijs driver here).

Finally, to date I found only one drawback: the driver lets you select if you want to use the color or the black cartridge, but it is not possible to use both at the same time. This means that if you print color documents the blacks will be printed using a combination of color inks, and therefore they will be more dark grey than black and it will cost you more money.

Activate all the international keyboards/dictionaries on an iPhone version 1.1.4

As opposed to the iPod Touch which comes with a wide-enough selection of on-screen keyboards and dictionaries, the iPhone (1.1.4) is limited to the ones for the countries in which the phone was officially available at the time of the firmware's release (English/UK, English/US, French/France, German/Germany). So thanks to Apple, if you want to input text in another language, you will have to jailbreak your iPhone and tweak it a bit.

Here is how to do it:

A. Activate the international keyboards

To activate all the international keyboards, follow these steps:

1. Download the UIKit.zip file from here.
2. Drop the UIKit file found inside UIKit.zip into /System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework on your iPhone (you can use SCP or SFTP - i.e. your iPhone must be jailbroken with the SSH server installed and running). Maybe it is a good idea to backup the old file beforehand.
   
3. Set the right permissions for hte file (chmod 755) if your SCP/SFTP client doesn't do it automatically.
4. Restart the iPhone.
   

B. Copy dictionaries to have spell check with the newly activated keyboards

Then, you can copy dictionaries if needed. For example, I want to use the French-Canadian keyboard to have a qwerty layout instead of the French azerty one. I am able to do that once step A is completed, however as it is hidden by default Apple didn't include the dictionary files for it, as a consequence there is no spell check when you use it. To solve this, I copied the French dictionary for the French-France keyboard to the French-Canadian keyboard. To do that, you can connect to the iPhone via ssh and type:

# cd /System/Library/KeyboardDictionaries
# cp ./fr_CA-one-letter-words.dat ./fr_CA-one-letter-words.dat.bak
# cp ./fr_CA-two-letter-words.dat ./fr_CA-two-letter-words.dat.bak
# cp ./fr_FR-one-letter-words.dat ./fr_CA-one-letter-words.dat
# cp ./fr_FR-two-letter-words.dat ./fr_CA-two-letter-words.dat
# cp ./fr_FR-stems.dat ./fr_CA-stems.dat
# cp ./fr_FR-unigrams.idx ./fr_CA-unigrams.idx
# cp ./fr_FR-unigrams.dat ./fr_CA-unigrams.dat

References

http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=31937&highlight=keyboard+1.1.4

How to fix the bug which prevents the iPhone from maintaining cookies/sessions (firmware 1.1.4)

When I started using Safari on my iPhone, I realised something was strange: I couldn't maintain a session on gmail or Facebook for more than a few seconds. I actually only could red 1 message and then the site would ask for my login and password again. I suspected something was wrong with the cookies management, but I didn't find anything in the settings menu to help me.

A Google search helped me to solve the problem. It seems like on some iPhone shipped with firmware 1.1.4 there is an issue with the permissions on some folders, including the one containing the cookies. These folders belong to the root user whereas when you use the iPhone you are actually logged in as a user called mobile.

To fix this, you can just open the terminal on you iPhone (it has to be jailbroken and with the Terminal application installed) and type:

chown -R mobile /var/mobile/

This will fix the permissions and cookies should work properly.

How to setup an iPhone for Vodafone Live (Ireland)

Note: this tutorial is based on Mac OS X, but if you understand it you will be able to apply it to a Windows/Linux computer using your own SCP/SFTP client to access the iPhone's filesystem (or use iphonebrowser as an easier way to transfer the files). Moreover, if you know the EDGE setting and the WAP proxy for a different mobile operator, you might also find it usefull as long as you make the appropriate changes during Step 1 (use the right APN) and Step 2 (edit the proxy.pac file to include the IP addres of your operator's proxy server).

This tutorial has been tested with an iPhone version 1.1.4, assumes you have created a folder called "iphone" on your Mac OS desktop and that the IP address of the iPhone is 191.168.1.11. Check the IP address of the iPhone (settings / wifi / arrow going right next to your network name) and replace 192.168.1.11 by that address in the command lines given in the tutorial. The iPhone must also have OpenSSH installed and be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your computer. Finally, the default root password on firmware 1.1.4 is "alpine". You will be requested to type it every time you are copying files to or from the iPhone.

Step 1: On the iPhone go to settings / general / network / EDGE and set the following parameters

APN: live.vodafone.com
login: dublin
password: dublin

Step 2: download the file proxy.pac into the "iphone" folder on your Desktop

Click here to download proxy.pac

Step 3: upload the file proxy.pac to the iPhone

Open a terminal window and type (one single line - you can copy and paste the whole text in italic):

scp ~/Desktop/iphone/proxy.pac root@192.168.1.11:/private/var/mobile/

Step 4: retrieve the file preferences.plist from the iPhone

In the terminal window, type (one single line - you can copy and paste the whole text in italic):

scp root@192.168.1.11:/var/preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist ~/Desktop/iphone/

Step 5: edit the preferences.plist file in the iphone folder

Open the file with Text Editor and add the text in red (the text in blue is already present and helps you find where to add the new parameters, moreover the ip1 in bold is the important bit to locate the right location in the original file):

<key>Interface</key> <dict> <key>DeviceName</key> <string>ip1</string> <key>Hardware</key> <string>com.apple.CommCenter</string> <key>Type</key> <string>com.apple.CommCenter</string> </dict>
<key>Proxies</key> <dict> <key>ProxyAutoConfigEnable</key> <integer>1</integer> <key>ProxyAutoConfigURLString</key> <string>file:///var/mobile/proxy.pac</string> </dict>
<key>com.apple.CommCenter</key> <dict> <key>AllowNetworkAccess</key> <integer>1</integer> <key>Available</key> <integer>1</integer> <key>Setup</key> <dict> <key>apn</key> <string>live.vodafone.com</string> <key>password</key> <string>dublin</string> <key>username</key> <string>dublin</string> </dict> <key>Version</key>

Once the changes have been made, save the file.

Step 6: send the modified file back to the iPhone

In the terminal window, type (one single line - you can copy and paste the whole text in italic):

scp ~/Desktop/iphone/preferences.plist root@192.168.1.11:/var/preferences/SystemConfiguration/

Step 7: restart the iPhone

Hold the power button for a few seconds and confirm you want to shut down the phone. Then turn it back on.

Final step: that's it, you can now make sure Safari works even with the Wi-Fi connection disabled

References

http://ww.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055239822

http://arashpayan.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/02/t-zones-on-114/