Popular Cydia hack AdBlocker free until May 2nd

Cydia hack developer Yllier announced on Twitter that his popular hack AdBlocker would be free until May 2nd 12pm (GMT).

AdBlocker is a popular tweak that, as its name implies, blocks most ads in Safari and other iOS applications. Head on over to Cydia and get your free copy!

[Twitter]

Swype ported to iOS

Swype, the handy keyboard replacement that thrives on other platforms (most notably Android), has been ported to work on jailbroken iOS devices by Andrew Liu (@wyndwarrior). You can get Swype by downloading it from here, and then SSHing it to your device and installing through iFile.app. An easier alternative would be to add the following repo from Cydia and download/install from there: wynd.x10.mx/repo

Andrew does warn that the package is still in beta, and that it won’t work with many apps (Mainly apps from the App Store; although he does say that a fix is coming soon for that).

After you install, be sure to respring your device.

Follow Andrew on Twitter to get the latest updates!

MobileNotifier: Better iPhone alerts

If you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone yet then you should seriously consider doing so if you are like many iPhone owners who are dissatisfied with Apple’s less than spectacular push notification system. MobileNotifier beta v3 is a free redo of iOS’s push notification system coded by Peter Hajas and Kyle Adams. The nice thing about MobileNotifier is that all alerts are unobtrusive and out of the way, they appear at the top of the screen or open app unlike Apple’s notifications that appear smack in the middle of your screen. MobileNotifier’s alerts can also be ignored, you can leave them on the screen without hindering the usability of your iPhone. 

Another feature of MobileNotifier is AlertDashboard. AlertDashboard appears in the unused area above the app switcher (You can access this by double-tapping the home button). Another nice thing about AlertDashboard is that you can also view pending alerts as a line item on the lockscreen of your iPhone.

Although MobileNotifier isn’t perfect, it is perhaps one of the greatest additions to the jailbreak market since WinterBoard.

MobileNotifier Beta v3 Demo

Engadget has found an interesting accessory from a Chinese company called Yosion that turns your iPod Touch into the phone it has always wanted to be.

Powered by an Infineon baseband chip, this adapter not only offers voice calling and text messaging (presumably requiring a jailbroken iPod Touch for the apps; GPRS not possible yet), but it also doubles up as an 800mAh battery and provides 4.5 hours of call time or 120 hours of standby juice.

It’s unknown whether or not it will ever be available stateside, but it could potentially allow users to buy cheaper cell plans without a two year contract or carrier lock-in. Hit the source for a video of it in action.

Update: I dug around a little, and found the Yosion forums, which have a bit of chatter about the accessory if you’re looking for more info. (Google translate is a must-have, unless you speak Chinese.)

[Engadget]

Does Apple Learn From Jailbroken Developers?

Many of the features that are new to iOS4 seem to have originated from jailbroken applications and utilities. Has Apple been adopting the ideas of jailbroken developers and implementing them into firmware updates? Or, are these features that were likely to be implemented at some point anyways? It’s your call.

1. Folders

Folders, which allows you to group similar applications together, is a non-jailbroken copy-cat of Categories, which is available on Cydia for jailbroken devices.

2. Rotation Lock

Double-tap the home button and you’ll find a new Orientation Lock button. By tapping this button, your device is now locked in portrait mode. No more awkward positions when you’re lying in bed — you weren’t the only one. Nevertheless, jailbroken users have had this utility for quite some time through SBSettings/Rotation Inhibitor.

3. Home Screen Wallpapers

You’re 3 years late on this one, Apple.
—

4. Battery Percentage

iOS4 allows you to see the exact percentage of battery life remaining on your device. While this is much more accurate than the battery icon next to it, it’s something jailbroken users have been able to do for years.

via [iPodTouchFans]

Apple iPad Jailbroken

The iPhone Dev Team is at it again. Using the same methods which allowed them to jailbreak the iPhone, these hackers were able to jailbreak the iPad within a day of its launch. The exploit known as “spirit” allowed root access into the iPad’s OS and file system.

The video shows that the jailbreak provides a root shell with what appears to be full access to the iPad file system. The video walks shows connection to the iPad via ssh, exploration of the OS and kernel version information, a view of running processes, moving applications out of the iPad’s applications directory (and then restarting Springboard via the shell to show the results) and finally, rebooting the iPad via the jailbroken root shell.