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Saturday, May 5, 2012

Find Large Files in Other on iTunes, Other Files in iPhone, iPad, iPod and iOS

iTunes Other on iOS device, large unknown files.

Find Other Large Files in iTunes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod with Gawk

After upgrading your device to a new iOS or even after just downloading too many Cydia tweaks or Apps, you notice that when you plug in your device to iTunes you see a whopping amout of hard disk space being taken up as "Other" in iTunes and the only problem is: You have no way of finding out exactly what these large Other files are!

Fret no more, we will explore the world of terminal commands on a jailbroken iOS, this guide will show you how to make an automatic list of all unimportant files larger than 20 megabytes and their location in a sorted list format. Of course you can edit the 20 megabytes part to whichever number you would like.

Note: Below is the default location where the output "files.txt" will be located that you will create using this guide on iOS (your jailbroken device) and below that is the Gawk command we use during our SSH session to compile the list.

Default Directory for files.txt:
/ (root)

Gawk Command:
find / -iname "*" -ls | sort -rn -k 7.1 | gawk 'BEGIN {OFS="\t"} {if ($7 > 20971520) print $7,$11 " " $12 " " $13 " " $14 " " $15 " " $16 " " $17 " " $18 " " $19 " " $20}' > files.txt


Requirements
PuTTY (Installer) (Software)
WinSCP (Software)
OpenSSH (Cydia Package)
Core Utilities (Cydia Package)
Gawk (Cydia Package)
Jailbroken iPhone (Hardware)

    Instructions
  1. First, install PuTTY using the (putty-0.62-installer.exe) installer.
  2. Now open Cydia on your jailbroken iPhone and Queue Core Utilities, OpenSSH and Gawk. (To see them listed, make sure you are in "Developer" mode for Cydia, you can check this in: Cydia > Manage > Settings)
  3. Now you just want to install WinSCP.
  4. Next, open WinSCP and login (user: root, password: alpine) through SSH to your device (iPhone, iPad, etc, you need to enter your device's local ip address, something like 192.168.x.xx), click yes to any security warnings or key dialogs.
  5. After you connect to your device in WinSCP, goto the root directory of your device and then on the toolbar menu in WinSCP click the PuTTY icon (it looks like two terminals).
  6. You should now see the PuTTY terminal window open, it asks you to enter a password, enter alpine.
  7. Next copy the Gawk command in the red box above these instructions and right click in the terminal window to paste it, next hit enter.
  8. That command just executed and you will now find a text document named "files.txt" in the root of the device, give it about 3 minutes to finish processing the list, then download it to your computer and check out the list.
  9. The list will show you the largest items in order, you can edit the Gawk command to change what file size it looks for. (It is in bytes, so 20971520 is 20 megabytes when converted) (As a security measure, you may want to remove OpenSSH after this if you do not know how to use it)


Thursday, May 3, 2012

SiriPort.ru on iPhone 4 or lower and Why You Should Avoid It


You have all seen the latest and supposedly greatest Siri port for the iPhone 4 and older devices, it is called SiriPort, which is obtained by the Russian website SiriPort.ru, I decided to write about this specific port because I wanted to inform possible Siri users to take heed of what you are actually going to do.

com.apple.assistant.plist in /var/mobile/Library/Preferences

SiriPort, once installed makes system modifications that can only be changed back upon a new restore, it includes an IMGSGX535DLDriver, it claims not to use Spire but that is false as it contains SpireInstaller and SpireRemover.


To top that off, you have to install a hacked security certificate from a foreign website, who in the world would install a security certificate from an unknown, unverifiable, or unaccountable source?

A hacked guzzoni.apple.com security certificate.

Siri may be a great feature nabbed by Apple at the last minute before the iPhone4S release, but a feature like this should not make you sacrifice your security and iOS system integrity.

The details you have, the location data, contacts, UDID and any other information; SiriPort.ru can collect it on their web server from you as soon as you give SiriPort a command, this can be a dangerous amount of specific information which could lead to future problems or possibly even privacy invasion.

If you can give up your right to security for an illegal port of a fractional feature, you might have a problem.

The creator of SiriPort.ru goes by the name of "gdimait" you can iMessage him at gdimaits [ at ] yahoo.com, in English you could call him Dmitriy Garitskiy.

The owners of SiriPort.ru not only have weak guides for how to get SiriPort to work correctly, but they also have threads on their forums telling people they can donate to get SiriPort to work. Now this might not have crossed your mind yet, but if so many people are having problems connecting to get an authentication token from their servers and try for days or weeks (this is what the guides say to do), they will eventually either give up or pay up, if they are desperate enough they will do the latter and that right there could be a ploy to get money off of this hacked feature.

SiriPort.ru donations for speedy processing of authentication.

When you install SiriPort from Cydia and then uninstall it later, it leaves many traces behind and changes integral areas of the iOS system, I recommend not using SiriPort.ru unless you are willing to wait months, pay money or sacrifice your security and system stability on your iOS device to a foreign entity unknown to you.


SiriPort.ru may cause Mobile Substrate problems.



SiriPort.ru leaves system files changed and damaged.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Tlert Themes and Skins

New Tlert Skins and Themes for your iPhone, iPad, iPod

Download new Tlert themes and skins.

In an earlier post I mentioned Tlert, a great iOS App that lets you receive, reply and compose text messages and multimedia messages anywhere on the device without interrupting what you are doing or the bother of switching between the Messages App and your currently open App.

Since I have been using Tlert for quite a while, I decided to look for some new themes, intelliborn provides a few, but those were not really my taste and the Tlert forum was dead on ModMyI, so I decided to make and port my own themes and Tlert skin.

Below you will find the download link to colorful bubble themes and a new Tlert exit button skin, I put them in a hierarchy accordingly so all you have to do is drag and drop the "Tlert.app" folder into the "/Applications/" folder on the root of the device. You can preview the themes before adding them, play with the font colors to integrate it with whatever theme you use, these are very clean themes, I threw in a pink one too for any females out there.

Note: Drop the Tlert.app folder to this location:
/Applications/

Requirements
Tlert (App)
iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad (Hardware)




Thursday, April 12, 2012

Change iPhone text sound, new mail sound, and UISounds (System Sounds) on iOS

Change the iPhone UI sounds with Audacity and Cyberduck.


Have you ever wanted to change the iPhone's default system sounds? Like when you check the Mail App and it downloads new mail you usually hear a ding, or perhaps the famous swoosh sound when sending a text, those are both iOS system sounds, or UISounds on your device.

This guide will show you how easy it is to make any of your audio files into a system sound you can upload to your device and use instead of the default ones.

Note: Always make sure to backup your default UISounds, either by renaming the extension to .bak or by saving them on your computer (SentMessage.caf is the swoosh sound after sending a text, new-mail.caf is the ding you hear when downloading new mail).

Default UISounds Directory:
/System/Library/Audio/UISounds/


Requirements
Audacity (Software)
Cyberduck (Software)
QuickTime Player (Only to preview the .caf audio) (Software)
Jailbroken iPhone (Hardware)

    Instructions
  1. Find the audio file you want to use to replace a default system sound.
  2. Now open the file through Audacity.
  3. Export the file as AIFF (Apple) signed 16 bit PCM type and make sure you add .caf to the end of the file name and click save. A warning box will appear, click yes.
  4. Next, open Cyberduck and SSH into your iPhone or device to the default UISounds directory listed above.
  5. Once you are there, find the sound you want to replace, such as SentMessage.caf.
  6. Rename the original (the one on the device we're replacing) SentMessage.caf to SentMessage.caf.bak to backup the original sound.
  7. Finally, rename the sound you exported in Audacity to SentMessage.caf (It's cAsE SeNsItIvE).
  8. Lastly, upload the exported file to the default UISounds directory and respring your device.
  9. Repeat these steps for any other sounds you want to replace and profit.



Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Purple and green color, resolution fix for old school games

How to fix old games running on Windows 7 from schowing up in purple and green colors, Age of Empires, StarCraft, etc.

StarCraft Classic with the blotchy purple and green resolution problems.

Having a newer computer is always a nice asset for gaming, so we like to think, right? There's just one problem... being a cool hipster and all, you want to play some of those retro and old school games you used to play as a kid, the only thing is the game companies do not update those games anymore and you are in a completely upgraded hardware era.

This is for those games that have purple, green or even blue blotchy areas and seem to be distorted due to resolution or graphics problems.

Now, there are probably a few different ways to fix these types of display issues with older games, but the one I am writing about isn't one of those difficult registry tweaks or the kill explorer trick, those are really tedious fixes and require in-depth computer knowledge, which we do not always have the time to research. As much as I'd love to make things difficult, I am not going that route.

The fix is a neat little tool dubbed "DirectDraw Compatibility Tool" created by a Russian programmer named Лёха Galogen, it applies a one time registry entry for the game you want to fix. All you have to do is download the program and run it, it's pretty simple to use, just find the executable of the game...

Example:
C:\Program Files (x86)\StarCraft\StarCraft.exe

Then, click apply, all done. No more blotchy colors or resolution errors, play the game with nice DirectDraw support. This tool works on both 64 bit and 32bit operating systems, the latest version as of 04/03/2012 is 1.01.

Requirements
DirectDraw Compatibility Tool (Software)



Sunday, February 19, 2012

Add music to your iPhone without syncing via PwnTunes

Now you don't have to sync with iTunes to add music to your iDevice!


After having many Apps installed and using more than one computer, something finally hit a nerve and I said, there has to be a solution to this whole syncing problem; my answer was PwnTunes. I don't think I have to get too technical today, but let me explain a few things first...

Lets say you have over 40 or more Apps and you remove or download more at a later date and then have over 60 Apps, lets also say you had some music on your first sync too, but since that date (maybe a month, maybe weeks) you haven't synced with iTunes. Now, it is no longer a casual sync, it is a task, because it will take you anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to verify, sync and import the newly downloaded Apps to iTunes from your device, vice versa.

If you are a busy person and on the move quite often, you really don't have that extra time to dedicate to syncing every few days, do you? I like to go to the gym when I have spare time and I need new music, my music library is always growing and syncing can be bothersome.


PwnTunes also supports importing files such as MP3s to your iPod App by downloading them with Safari Download Manager (a cydia tweak) and moving them to the "My Music" folder with an App such as iFile. The same process can be done for importing images into the Photos App. You can even add music from another computer without having to delete your music library (like with iTunes syncing), did I mention you can export your music files too? Yeah, even your purchased songs.

Next time all you have to do is grab your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and just connect it to your computer with your usb cord or wirelessly through SSH, it's as simple as dragging the new music into a folder when connected and you can listen to it through the iPod App on your device next time you hit the gym, no more lengthy iTunes syncing! You will need to have "PwnTunes" installed, you can find it on Cydia in the BigBoss repository, it is developed and maintained by SpiritOfLogic. With over 800,000 downloads since conception, we have a real keeper here.

PwnTunes is the only tweak and Cydia App that can successfully import your new music files through drag and drop interface, natively from your operating system, who doesn't like the sound of that? No more checking if you synced the right Apps or that you backed up the right things, just drag and drop and open up the iPod App and you're good to go with the new music, nothing else gets changed!


The developer of this wonderful piece of software has been hard at work to make this a reality, with multiple changes, updates, and rewrites all to keep up with the way Apple implements their code. That's a lot of work for these features and it is well worth the one time purchase price of $12.99 USD.

Note: On behalf of PwnTunes, the developer and TechImperial.com would like to give away 3 free product licenses, any three creative tweets between 03/05/12 through 03/31/12 mentioning "@pwntunes #cydia" will be awarded the licenses!

Requirements
PwnTunes (App)
iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad (Hardware)


Slacker Radio Plus Free for a Year!

1 Full year of Slacker Radio Plus


I just came across this deal today, you can pick up a whole year of Slacker Radio Plus for an entire year when you sign up for a trial with Netflix, all you have to do is sign up for the 30 day Netflix trial, don't worry you can cancel within the first month and pay nothing while still getting the deal!

I would like to mention that this deal does not apply to previous Netflix customers or those of you who already used up your trial. The only way around this is by using a new card and e-mail address.

Do keep in mind that if you have problems getting your confirmation e-mail for the Slacker Radio Plus 1 year subscription after successfully signing up for the Netflix trial, you should send an e-mail to TrialPay support about it, you can either do that by logging in and looking at your recently viewed offers or orders and you should be able to send them a message through their website.

Otherwise, send (TrialPay, [receipts]at[trialpay].com) a direct e-mail mentioning the offer they have on the site for Slacker Radio Plus, even link the offer in the e-mail with a copy of the confirmation e-mail of your Netflix trial, they will verify this so only send them this information if you actually did the offer. The subject has to be "Receipt for Netflix" sending a direct e-mail, oh and you must mention the Slacker offer.

Enjoy the entire year of ad-free music streaming, compliments of Slacker, Netflix and TrialPay!

Regularly: $47.88 
Now: $0.00

Link: http://www.trialpay.com/productpage/?c=0692421&tid=RHyyq_d

Note: I updated the link, there was problems with the first one, please report any problems in the comments.