As we come to the end of another year, many of us will reflect back on things we’ve experienced, lessons learned, and just everything the last 12 months brought us. 2011 has been an incredible year filled with tons of important world events as well as a lot of interesting celebrity events and gossip. Sadly, but not surprisingly, “interesting” squashes “important” online, putting celebrity news and gossip far ahead of important world events when we measure our digital voice online. Frugal Dad put together the following infographic, showing what the world found compelling enough to search for, share and talk about on Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
A while back, I ditched Cydia and my jailbreak on my iPhone 4 (Verizon) for the bells and whistles promised by IOS 5. At the time, I thought about all the advantages of my jailbroken IOS and decided that the new features of IOS 5 outweighed the features I was actively using from being jailbroken. Then came Siri and this month, I learned that Siri was soon to be ported to jailbroken iPhones running IOS 5.0.1 and couldn’t wait to jailbreak again. This morning, the untethered IOS 5.0.1 jailbreak AND the Siri port (named Spire) are both available.
How To Jailbreak IOS 5.0.1 Untethered
First, make sure you have one of these supported devices:
- iPhone 4 (GSM – CDMA)
- iPhone 3GS
- iPod touch 4G
- iPod touch 3G
- iPad 1
You’ll also need to make sure you’re on IOS 5.0.1 If not, update your device now, because Apple is sure to release a new version soon to close up some open doors.
Got everything you need? Good, you’re ready to begin. Just follow these steps:
1. BACK UP – You don’t know how many times this has saved me. Do It!
2. Download Redsn0w 0.9.10b1 (Windows – Mac OS X).
3. Unzip the Redsn0w archive you downloaded and run Redsn0w 0.9.10.b1.
4. Click the button to Jailbreak and follow the on-screen instructions.
After a couple minutes and a reboot, you should be jailbroken. Props go out to pod2g for making it possible.
How To Install Siri On iPhone 4
Ryan Petrich and chpwn have released a port of Siri, called Spire, to Cydia. This is about 100MB, so you really should install via Wifi. To find it, just search for Spire in the BigBoss repository.
This is the best port of Siri to date, but it still requires authorization from Apple to run. This means that you have to find and use a proxy in order to use Siri (for now). For more information on how to get a proxy, see this post from cydiahelp.com.
Unbrick Your iPhone
Just like anyone, I can make mistakes. Sure enough, while trying to re-jailbreak my iPhone, I wound up turning it into a paper weight when I did something wrong and it wouldn’t boot up. If this happened to you, don’t worry because there’s hope. Sadly, it will take some time to restore and you may lose some settings, though. If your phone is stuck with error messages or won’t boot, you can start by doing a factory restore. This will reset the phone to the stock or latest IOS install. After this, you need to restore from your latest backup. You did make a backup, right? Once the backup is in place, you’re ready to jailbreak again. Good luck!
It’s almost Christmas, but I didn’t have to wait to see Santa. In fact, he brought his elves to my house to dance. Well, at least that’s what I was able to make a video of thanks to today’s review of ReelDoozy, a pretty unique iPhone app.
What’s All This About?
ReelDoozy is an iPhone app that uses green screen technology to let you super-impose fun video they provide on top of your own video. The result is a video of, say, your own house with Santa dancing around in your living room. This green screen technology has been used for years in the television and film industry but lately, it’s turning up in all sorts of fun apps like this, thanks to the processing power and video capabilities of today’s smart phone line-up.
ReelDoozy Features And Improvement
When the app is fired up, the first thing to do in order to make a video is select a foreground video. This is the video of Santa, or whatever else you choose, that will be super-imposed atop your own video. There are four short clips starring Santa and his elves that are free to use. For most, these will be fine to play with, but the app offers six additional foreground video collections that can be unlocked for an in-app purchase of 99 cents per collection. While playing, I decided to buy the Dancing Pack to aid in the making of my review video below.
After selecting a foreground video, you select a background video or create one on the fly. So far, it’s been pretty basic stuff I had expected from the app, but the next step was a nice touch. With both the foreground and background videos selected, you can choose where to position the foreground subject and even pinch-zoom to re-size him. Better still, you’re given slider controls to adjust the brightness and contrast of the foreground video and can choose to use the foreground audio, the background, or a mix of both. Of course, this stuff is almost necessary if you want the final video to look good at all. I would have really enjoyed some kind of path selection to allow me to move Santa with the floor if my background video moves too much, but it might be a bit much to ask of a free app.
While I’m being greedy, I’d love some more selection in video packs. The dancing and humor scenes are fun, but I’d love the option for a couple scenes in which Santa is placing presents under the tree or filling a stocking. I’ll gladly throw down another buck for that.
Video of Santa Dancing
Sometimes the best part of a review is playing with fun stuff, so I tried to be a little creative and come up with my own videos with Santa and the elves and here’s the result.
Conclusions
When I first saw the press release for this, I thought it looked like a neat way to show the kids that Santa had actually been there. After installing and playing around, I realized it was pretty fun for those of us without kids, too. The price is always right when it’s free, and even the in-app purchase options were well within reason. The one stand-out problem with this app is that is freezes on me when finalizing a video. The video does save, though, so this is a minor inconvenience. In the end, ReelDoozy is a lot of free holiday fun, leaving you little reason to not check it out. If you try it out, I really want to see what videos you come up with, so share the links in the comment section below.
2011 has been a year filled with some incredible phone launches paired with lots of new software features. In a year where 4G became the catch-phrase and high definition video became a must-have, the number of impressive mobile phones to choose from was promising, but also a bit daunting for someone looking to buy. We’ve compared the top phones on the market and narrowed it down to our top five for 2011.
1. iPhone 4S
Why we liked it:
- Siri
- 3.5 inch IPS display
- 8 megapixel camera
- 1080p video recording
There’s no question that Apple has a firm grip on the cell phone market with the their iPhone, the most popular line of phones ever. Even though the screen size is pretty small compared to everything else on our list, it boasts a beautiful display that other manufacturers are still trying to keep up with. The iPhone 4S is finally up to 8 megapixels, which is just par, but also shoots video at 1080p, a big selling point these days. Of course, the feature of the iPhone 4S that no other phone can compete with is Siri, the personal assistant that listens to your voice and responds (usually) intelligently. Although Siri is reportedly not perfect, Apple’s track record of pushing out updates to bring it up to speed will surely make up for any shortcomings.
2. Motorola Droid Razr
Why we liked it:
- Thin and durable
- Verizon LTE speed
- 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display
- 8 megapixel camera
- 1080p video capture
- 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor
Motorola has often hit the market with innovative designs as we saw with the original Razr, and eventually the first Droid. Both were remarkable devices, the Razr for its tiny package that maintained decent features and the Droid for its power and sophistication. The merging of a slim design with a beautiful and fast device is what puts the Droid Razr near the top of our list.
3. Samsung Galaxy S2
Why we liked it:
- 4.52 inch Super AMOLED display
- 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
The Samsung Galaxy S2 offers most of the great features that drove people to buy the Samsung Epic Tough 4G (below), but offers a faster processor and a few other features.
4. Samsung Epic Touch 4G
Why we liked it:
- Super thin
- 4.52 inch Super AMOLED display
- 1.20GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos processor
- 8 megapixel camera
- 4G speed
With 4G speed and a 4.52 inch screen, this phone is great for media on the go. The fact that it’s so thin sets it apart from many other handsets in its class with similar features.
5. HTC Evo 3D
Why we liked it:
- 4.3 inch qHD 3D display
- 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
- 3D camera and video capture
- 4G speed
Honestly, the 3D is the prominent feature that helped the HTC Evo 3D make the cut, and I know many will argue that 3D is just a fad. Regardless, 3D is hot and who wouldn’t want to record and play 3D videos on their cell phone? It’s a pretty cool feature that other phones don’t have… yet.
Coming In 2012
After all the innovation brought by 2011, it’s easy to imagine more of the same in 2012. We should expect more phones that will work on 4G and LTE networks, larger displays like the Samsung Galaxy Note, Quad-Core processors, and likely some real Android competition to Siri. 2012 should be an incredible year for mobile phones. What features do you want to see available?
