My wfe’s iPhone stolen: Anyone know how to have Find My iPhone “auto refresh” the location?
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Not Cool, Theft, Users Helping Users, You Bet I'm Pissed, iPhone
Well, this evening the Bride of Macenstein’s iPhone was stolen. While I was of course pissed, I was also thrilled at the prospect of using Find My iPhone to find the thing. We’re in a relatively wussy, crime free town, so I figured it would be kids who took her bag and it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Long story short, we tracked the iPhone down to a restaurant, but were of course unable to actually go around shaking down the help and patrons, even with the police helping. Since Find My iPhone really only gives a ballpark location, the cops said there wasn’t much they could do. And while I am now 90% positive it is one of the kids who works at the place who has it, I can’t prove it, and with us and the cops walking around (and one of the cops telling two of the more unsavory employees that I was able to track the iPhone to this location) whoever had the iPhone apparently turned it off, and my location updates stopped.
So, my question is, does anyone know of a way to have Find My iPhone, via the app, or via MobileMe, do some sort of “autorefresh” of the location search, so if they ever DO turn on the iPhone, briefly to wipe it or such, I can get a new bead on the location? Right now it appears I have to relaunch the app on the iPhone to get it to update locations, and the same with the MobileMe page. (Can I make an autorefresh Safari url automator action somehow? Will it keep me logged in to MobileMe if it runs every 30 seconds?) Any ideas would be helpful, thanks.
Update: I got my autorefresh script going, so we’ll see…
- The Doc
Ok, I Jailbroke my iPhone. So now what?
So last night, around midnight, I decided to Jailbreak my iPhone – the main impetus being I wanted to check out xGPS. Of course the first attempt using QuickPWN didn’t work for some reason, so I had to restore my iPhone, then try again, experiencing success sometime around 1:30 AM. Since then I have had only a little free time to poke around Cydia, the Winterboard and such, but from what I have seen, there appears to be almost as bad a ratio of “crap to gold” amongst Jailbroken apps as there is on iTunes. I’m kind of an impatient fellow, so please forgive me as I attempt to cut to the front of the line here and pull from your collective experiences in the Jailbreaking world.
Above: Surely there has got to be something cooler to do with a Jailbroken iPhone than throwing Domo behind my apps and changing my battery to orange…
Now that I have jailbroken this bad boy, what should I be doing with it? Thus far I have skimmed through a couple themes, all of them god-awful. I have discovered I can skin my battery to be anything from Zelda hearts to an Energizer battery, and I have discovered the joys of the Categories app, and now have all 9 pages worth of my apps neatly tucked away into a page and a half of folders. But what else should I be checking out? What are the actually WELL DESIGNED themes? Can I get custom SMS sounds on here? What are the killer apps that I can’t get on iTunes? Leave me your hints in the comments, and hopefully we’ll all learn something (but mainly me).
Anyone know how to program for the iPhone? I have an idea…
Hello faithful readers. Like just about everyone on the planet, I have come up with an idea for (what I feel is) an incredibly important iPhone application that I would love to see made. No, it is not another Sudoku game or tip calculator – at the risk of sounding melodramatic, I feel my app could potentially save lives.
Unfortunately, I don’t yet have my C and C++ skills up and running yet, so I am looking for a brainy reader to come to my rescue. The app in question would rely heavily on accessing information from a website and then plotting that information on a Google Maps display based on the iPhone’s current location (GPS) or Zip code (sort of like a restaurant or movie finder app, but slightly more involved).
What’s in it for you?
Not much, other than that you would be making the world a better, safer place (for iPhone users, anyway). As I envision it, this app would be given away on iTunes for free as a public service, although on the odd chance we decide to sell it, I would split any profits 65%-35% in your favor. I would handle any graphics and marketing needs the app would require, and all programming would be done by you, our most brilliant of readers.
If you are at all interested, please shoot me an e-mail and let me know your credentials, iPhone programming experience, and availability. If you personally don’t know how to program for the iPhone but know someone who does, please pass this along to them. Thanks!
-The Doc
Mo’ Apps, Mo’ Problems. Whose iPhone 2.0 migration has gone smoothly?
Filed under: Not Cool, Users Helping Users, iPhone, whining
Not mine, I’ll tell you that much.
While I love the iPhone, and the Apps, I do not love the “rickety” feeling my gen 1 iPhone has now, as if I must handle it with kid gloves or risk crashing it. Not that it matters, kid gloves or not, it crashes. And don’t get me started on those hour-long syncs…
Mo’ Apps, Mo’ Problems
At first the migration seemed to go well. I upgraded my firmware Friday morning, downloaded/bought a few apps, played some games – everything was going swell. Then sporadically, once in a while using an app, or surfing the web, the iPhone would either quit that application, kicking me back to the home screen, or reboot entirely. This only happened maybe twice on Friday, 3 or 4 times on Saturday, but by Sunday I had about 6 such scenarios, leading up to a real scare Sunday night. That was when I had my first “unrecoverable” crash. Read more
What’s your favorite keyboard shortcut combination?
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, OS X, Opinion, Rumors, Slow News Day, Users Helping Users, video
As someone who has more or less raised laziness to an art form, I am obviously a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts. This afternoon, it occurred to me that my current all time favorite must be hitting the “U” key in Adobe After Effects. This simple button press (when a layer is selected) brings up all the current properties that you have applied keyframes to in a layer, and I would say it has saved me something like 2 years of “expanding layer properties” time over the course of my life – 2 years which I have subsequently wasted on Xbox, but still, 2 years.
Ahhh… good old “U”. My favorite timesaver.
Probably a close runner up to the U key is the cmnd+ctrl+shift+4 combo that allows you to take a screen capture of a region of your screen (or, with an additional “space bar” press, a window) and then copy that to your clipboard for pasting into your favorite app (in fact, I used that combo to take the above picture of my favorite combo). I use this almost daily in running Macenstein and Son of Macenstein, and it’s a great time saver.
So then I got to thinking – there must be some more insanely useful keyboard shortcuts out there that my readers find as indispensable as my trusty “U”, so why not find out what they are, and help spread some knowledge. So, tell us, what are your favorite keyboard shortcuts? What do you use on a daily basis for time saving/ impressing your friends in either OS X or a specific application? (I’ll thank you all to leave out good ‘ol “command Z” and the classic tag team of “command C” and “command V” for copy and paste). Let us know in the comments.
Attention Boston! Ellen Feiss needs a job
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Celebrity Mac Chick, Users Helping Users
My my, where does the time go? It seems like only 2002 that a 14-year old Ellen Feiss launched Apple’s historic “Switch” ad campaign, and now she’s a soon-to-be college graduate, looking for a job!
When interviewing Ellen about her immortalization in song, it came up that she was graduating college and looking for a job in the Boston area. I of course pointed out that a certain brand new gigantic Apple Store might be hiring (after all, I have a feeling Ellen would quickly become their top salesperson, if not draw simply to have people autograph their MacBooks), but Ellen apparently has higher aspirations (as if there could be anything nobler than selling Apple products).
“I’m interested in something in the arts, new media or film sector,” says Ellen, “but anything (appropriate) is welcome for consideration.”
Not that we want to turn Macenstein into Craigslist (well, aside from the insanely successful aspect of it) but we’re always happy to help out icons of the Mac community when possible. So attention Boston-area Macenstein readers. If you or someone you know is hiring, drop Ellen a line at hireellen08@gmail.com, and please, keep the stalking down to a minimum.
Damn you, port forwarding!
Filed under: Users Helping Users, WTF, You Bet I'm Pissed, whining
Anyone out there a wiz with port forwarding that would have a clue as to how to guide me through setting up Roxio’s Streamer? I am using Verizon FiOS and their Actiontec router.
Not they they can trouble shoot every router, but Roxio’s joke of a Streamer help section lists only this support page
http://kb.roxio.com/content/kb/Toast/000060T?set-locale=en
as far as I can tell I have opened Port 10080, but get a Safari error page when attempting to access my stream.
Thanks for any help.
-The Doc
Help reunite an old woman with her iPod
Without your help, Evan could be as sad and drunk as the man in this stock photo. Won’t you please help?
We here at Macenstein are not exactly what you would consider “nice people”, or “caring people”, or people “with souls”, but even our hard exterior can be melted worn down by constant nagging, and so to that end, we present the case of poor Mrs. Lugh, mother of Evan Lugh, a sometimes Macenstein contributor who is using his powers of guilt to strong-arm us into doing one good deed before we die.
Evan writes: “my mum/mom has a rare heart condition. A major drug company is willing to freely give out a drug which can help give her life back, and the lives of thousands who also suffer from this condition. The company, NICE is asking for a petition to be signed. The more people that sign, obviously the more likely they are to help.”
Truly a touching story… a boy’s love for his mother. Who (besides me) wouldn’t do everything in their power to help? Well, luckily there is an angle here that was able to touch even my frozen heart, and thus warrant this post. You see, Read more
I’m older than I’ve ever been and now I’m even older… So what shall I ask for to fill the void?
Filed under: Cynicism, Opinion, Slow News Day, Users Helping Users
My birthday is approaching in 2 weeks, and for some reason, despite being the most materialistic person I know, I can’t think of much to ask for. So i am looking to you, faithful Macenstein readers, for suggestions. Give me some suggestions, up to $500, that you would want if you could have your choice of anything. Tech gifts, gadgets, (Apple ones in particular) are always good, but I’m open to anything… high-tech, low tech, no tech. What are you currently drooling over that I should also be drooling over? Thanks!
[Apple cake images here, here, and here]
Tips/How To: Use the Mac to ground your kids
Ahhh report card season. There can be no prouder moment in a parent’s life than when they open that report card and see that their little babies are excelling in their studies 
thanks to countless hours of hard work, studying, determination, and of course, amazing genetics. And of course there can be no greater sense of shame, disappointment, and out-right “how can I have been so blind?”-rage when you find out your little angel has spent most of their time not studying, but chatting online with friends.
This brings us to a question posed to us by faithful Macenstein reader DK, who writes:
“Hey Doc, I wish to stop my son from chatting with friends on his Mac for 3 weeks as punishment for his last report card. Is there an easy way to do this, so that it is reversible? He has an iMac, connected via Ethernet. His account is the only account on the system, and he is an admin, so I don’t think I want to mess with trying to convert him to a limited account. I guess we should have done that from the start. If possible I’d like to be able to still use iChat on MY laptop as well. Any suggestions?”
Hmmm… well, yes, if he were on a restricted account this would be easier. The main thing to realize here is if he really wants to, odds are he can find a way around most blocking measures. It all depends on how computer savvy he is (or his friends are). Hopefully his bad grades are a sign he isn’t overly motivated. Here are some suggestions… Read more
