It’s Just Poison…

Now that the new iPhone has been jailbroken, I’ve been messing around with all the images and icon, trying to customize the hell out of it. The first thing that I found out how to change was the background image for the dock (that metallic looking thing). The next thing that I learned was how to change individual application icons. (Within each app is a file ‘icon.png’, you just edit that)

Well, I came up with a new way to use the dock. I made all the app icons that are store in the dock blank PNG files (essentially no icon), and then made the background file one image with a bunch of stuff going on. All the notifications still appear where the icons were, and so do the text labels. For the text, I just made a black bar at the bottom faded out so that the text could be read.

Here’s a screen shot so you can see what I mean. My Apps at the bottom are: Phone, SMS, Safari, Mail.

I’m sure you could come up with a lot cooler ideas with this, but it should get the ball rolling =)

.: Adam

You know the little slider blocks with the arrows on them on the iPhone? The most common is the one you slide to unlock the phone. I’m going to show you how to make your own custom ones =).

PreReq: Jailbroken iPhone v2.0 (May work on older versions, no clue. I only have a 2.0 iPhone 3g)

PreReq: OpenSSH installed and setup (Use Cydia… has a great set of setup instructions once it’s installed)

Download This Slider PSD Template and use it to make your own sliders. There’s a couple layers in there to help you out for the sizes, tints, and such.

The one on the lock page is called: bottombarknobgray.png
The one on the lock page during Sync is: bottombarknobgreen.png
The one that’s used to turn off the phone is: bottombarknobred.png

When you save them, make sure you save them as 24-bit alpha PNG files. You can just do the Save For Web tool and select the preset.

Now you have to upload them to your phone via SSH here:
(You can get the IP from either the network setup in Settings, or what I do is open the Terminal app and run ‘ifconfig’ =)

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TelephonyUI.framework/bottombarknobgray.png
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TelephonyUI.framework/bottombarknobred.png
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TelephonyUI.framework/bottombarknobgreen.png

Reboot your phone (Hold Lock and Home buttons for around 10 sec to turn off / Hold Lock button to turn on).

You’re done and have some fancy new sliders =)

.: Adam

Apple just released the WordPress app into the App store today. Looks pretty cool so far. Will definately help in my mobile blogging effort

After writing about Candybar and icons, I thought I’d share a quick little tip on how to change an applications icon in os x.

Step 1: Select the icon or application with an icon you like.
Step 2: Press Command+I to bring up the info screen.
Step 3: Click on the little icon in the top-left corner and press Command+C (standard copy command). You should see a little blue halo around the icon when doing this.

Step 4: Select the app you want to change the icon on and press Command+I to bring up the info window on that one.
Step 5: Click on the icon in the top-left and press Command+V (standard paste command). BAM! yer done. =)

.: Adam

If you’re a web/app designer (or just crazy about icons) and you’re on a mac, you need Candybar. This app was originally designed to replace icons on your mac with custom ones. So if you wanted to swap out your finder icon for something a little cooler, this was the GUI tool that made it all easier. In the newest release, they also handle swapping of Dock images (the actual Dock itself). What they also added in this release was icon management. It stores all your icons into folders and groups. Allows for quick browsing and size checks. This is that feature that I love. It makes my life so much easier when looking for an icon that’s “just right” for what I’m working on. It also allows me to download crap-loads of icons and just throw them in Candybar to use later if i need to.

It even has Quickview build right into it. So when you highlight an icon and hit the spacebar, a HUD will popup with all available sizes of that icon.

The other nifty feature that I like a lot is the exporting ability of icons. You can turn an icon into an image, or an image into an icon. It supports: Icon, ICNS, ICO, TIFF, PNG, GIF, JPEG.

And of course it still swaps out application icons and mac icons really well. Here’s a snippit of my dock with a couple custom icons (Finder, Mail, Firefox) and a custom dock image:

That’s all i got to say about that =)

.: Adam

Something that’s always bothered me about OS X is the time in the top right corner. Why is there no date?! Until Leopard, the iCal icon was always stuck on something like June 21st. Now they wised up and have it show the real date. What a concept. So, pre-Leopard, I had to find something that would put the date in the top right corner of my menu bar. The first app I found that worked well was MenuCalendarClock. This thing was perfect! Not only did it put the date, but it also showed the calendar when you clicked on it, and it had your events and ToDo list for that day. They have two different versions: iCal, and Entourage. What else was cool was that you can double click on a date and it opens iCal right to that day.

Now I use a new app called iStats Menu from iSlayer.com (what an awesome name =). It has most of the same features as MenuCalendarClock (the iCal version), but a ton of other non-time/date features. You can put all kinds of stats and graphs in your menu bar to watch your computers activity. If you’re at all interested in what’s going on, you should at least check it out. It is missing a couple features that I liked on iCal, but here’s why I switched:

• The date formatting is more variable
• Better looking icon in the menu bar
• I use the other stats items (RAM, CPU, Network usage)
• Calendar looks nicer
• World clock feature

The items that I lost from switching:

• Clicking on a date to bring up iCal
• Listing of events and To-Do’s

Although I can’t click on a date, there is a link at the bottom to launch iCal (just doesn’t go to a specific date). For the replacement of To-Do’s and events, I now use Anxiety for To-Do’s and this iCal Widget for my events. After separating it, I’m beginning to prefer it this way.

.: Adam

A little while ago, I made a Twitter app for the mac called Whereiam. I had two main goals when I made this thing.

1. Attach a users location to every post.
2. Keep it simple

I think I’ve covered both parts.

Whereiam is a little app that was whipped up to allow quick postings to Twitter that include a link to a map of your location. Location is derived from Wifi Positioning. No GPS required =).

See an example posting here!

As of right now, it’s a OS X app only. It’s main components are in perl, so it should be easy to port to other OS’s later. I’ve only run / tested in on Leopard (10.5.3). Since this derives location based on WiFi, it will not work with wireless broadband cards (HSDPA, EVDO) or Ethernet. It needs WiFi.

Download Whereiam

If someone can get this to work on an iPhone, I’d like a copy. I don’t have an iPhone yet, but would like to host a copy with the original app.

Thanks!

.: Adam

The photobooth app is pretty cool, and handy. But there’s 3 things that bother me about it. The first is I like to control my lighting. When the “flash” kicks off, it washes everything out, and looks like crap. The second is waiting for the count down… just take it! The third is that everything is mirrored. Has a tendency to get irritating when taking photos with text involved.

Well, thankfully there’s a way to solve the first two (from Tekzilla):

Hold down the shift key when you press the take picture button and your picture will be taken without using the flash. If you hold down the option key when you press the take picture button your picture will be taken without using the count-down delay. If you hold down both the shift and options keys, your picture will be taken immediately and without the flash.

As for the mirroring, I still have to resort to Photoshop.

.: Adam

If you were using the Beta 2 version of the RDC client from microsoft and were a little flustered that it expired without a new version to upgrade to, you’re in luck. The new beta is out. And this one doesn’t expire!

Get it here:

Download Remote Desktop Beta 3