King of all Ryans Blog

Launch Your iPhone's Camera in Record Time [jailbreak]

2011-01-25T22:10:00.003-05:00

Ever have an awesome photo opportunity pop up and you miss out on it while fumbling to get your camera app open? Yeah, pretty sure everyone has. Here's how to fix it: QuickDo [$7.99 + 3-day trial]!

Now, i'm not going to get into every great function QuickDo has to offer. It does offer a lot; but, where it truly shines, is its app shortcut abilities. QuickDo is able to have app shortcuts ON THE LOCK SCREEN!! New-born baby doing something cute? Home button click, camera icon tap, and your phone is magically unlocked and the camera app is launched and you're now taking a pic! Take a look at the picture below to see the camera shortcut on the lock screen.

These are the shortcuts i have for my most used apps and the apps that, when i need to get to, can get to in a hurry: camera, sms, email, settings and foursquare. I usually switch foursquare out depending on what app i launch the most. And i like to get into settings a lot to turn off vibrate while in silent. It isn't limited to just five shortcuts, too. You can load up more, you just have to scroll to the right in order to access the ones after the first five. And if you set QuickDo up with a shortcut to the camera app, you will be able to take pictures faster than anyone else!

Here's a video of how to set up the other features, as well as the shortcuts.

Free App Alert: Liberty Wings

2011-01-24T12:24:00.003-05:00

Found out about this one and it will soon be on my phone. Game-play footage looks sharp and even changes up the game controls throughout the game to, i'm assuming, keep it fresh. Check out Liberty Wings and download it if you dig it.

FourSquare Infographic of the Day

2011-01-24T11:06:00.005-05:00

I've pretty much stopped checking in on foursquare, but this is pretty cool. Enjoy.

APP BATTLE!! HeyTell vs TalkBox

2011-01-23T11:01:00.005-05:00

We all know about heytell now, but i recently found out about talkbox; very similar to heytell but with an IM interface. I really liked the different interface on talkbox and gave it run with The Queen of all Ryans; THE ULTIMATE TEST!

The Queen also enjoyed the IM interface and it was right quick to add buddies. In heytell, you have to email or text message your friends to get the app. Talkbox lets you add friends by simply inputting a user-name. The only other way, in talkbox, is to shoot them an email or post to your facebook wall or tweet that you use the app. I do prefer the extra option of sending the text message in heytell.

I was fine with it all and was ready to jump over to talkbox and ditch heytell all together. The final test, however, is if The Queen was going to use it or not. Final judgment!! Heytell WINS!! Flawless victory!! The Queen prefers heytell's HUGE 'Hold and Speak' button over talkbox's very small one that is at the bottom of the screen.

So, at the end of the day, nothing changes for little old me. I also don't have to pester my friends to get a different talk messaging app after they just accepted one so very recently. But i figured that, since both are free, you might like the choice. What will you be using?

Fun App: HeyTell

2011-01-23T10:25:00.003-05:00

The Queen of all Ryans (aka my wife) got an iPhone from Santa this past Christmas (16Gb black 3GS ios v 4.1 jailbroken and unlocked on t-mobile family plan). She really doesn't use her iPhone as a fun social game playing device as much as i do. On a good day she really just text messages people, does some lite facebooking and gets violently angry at some birds.

So, with little hope of her getting interested in it, i decided to give her a little heads up on a new app i came across called HeyTell. I was also in need of a larger friend list in the app. I love the ease of use and the interface of the app. The Queen, however, flipped head over heals for this app! She LOVED that she could just send a message to someone QUICK! She pings me the most, too, so this app is perfect for her! Other pro's include, but are not limited to, listen to a message at your convenience; replay that message, either one that you received or sent, over and over; send invites via text message or email to other android/ios friends; play the message from 1 iphone into another iphone that has Talking Carl installed and post that recorded Carl post to facebook. That last one is just pure bonus tho. The day i got this app i got my buddy to get it and he fell in love with it as well because he was trying to play a game on his PC and i was annoyingly texting him, to just install this app on his iphone of course. Then he just had to talk his message and took a fraction of the time to do so.

Get it. Its free and works on ios and android devices as of this post. sure it doesn't work on blackberry, but the only people that own a blackberry are the people that work in big corporations and get it from verizon. So even they will be getting iPhones soon! Might as well just jump on the bandwagon early. :)

New on my iPhone: Squeezy

2011-01-22T16:13:00.002-05:00

The controls are a little tricky, but its fun for me and my kids! The graphics are beautiful as well.

[$0.99]

New #1 IOS Game: Bubble Ball

2011-01-17T20:12:00.009-05:00

Had to pull myself away from Bubble Ball [iTunes] long enough to post about it. Great stuff so far! This game is so great, in fact, that it managed to bump Angry Birds [iTunes] off its "perch" as the number 1 game in the app store. Oh, and it was also designed by a 14-year-old. Check out the trailer below then get it for yourself! This is a free AND universal app. Enjoy!

via Distructoid

*update* I guess I should have waited to keep playing it before I posted such a rave review. While it is fun, the objects were some what frustrating to get control of sometimes. Also, it is a SHORT game. Compared to Angry Birds, it only has one world and only 21 levels to it. So this is probably just a fad for right now with the internet boosting it popularity, but a nice break from Angry Birds.

Bump shares contacts between iPhone, Android

2010-05-23T22:07:00.002-04:00

Pretty epic if you think about it. Two totally different phones, working together for one common goal: bumping.

via TiPb

How to Vectorize any Image

2010-05-18T21:44:00.003-04:00

Tested.com did up a story on how to take any regular image and transform it into vector art. Here is a quote describing what that is and why you want it:

Most of the images you see lying around your computer are bitmapped. In other words, these are images of fixed size, made up of a specific number of pixels. Each pixel is assigned a color value, which is what gives your pictures and photographs such a great level of detail — to an extent. There's only so much you can zoom in on a bitmapped image before pixelation occurs. Vector images, however, are not fixed in size. They're simply geometric shapes, or math equations, that define how a given image should look, and thus, can be scaled to dimensions of infinite size. This is great for making wallpapers, because it means we can adapt our images to any resolution we wish, even for multi-monitor setups.

Full setup and instructions here.

Your iPhone, You're Doing it Wrong: Part 2

2010-05-16T11:29:00.012-04:00

It’s true. You depend on one program to manage and sync all of your photos, apps, movies and contacts and then don't know what the hell to do when you want to do it all over again on another computer. Shame on you!

This will be the final part 2 in the series on how to stop doing that. In first part, we covered the set up. In this second part, we will be covering the programs that can replace iTunes, the ones that I use on a regular basis. It isn't just one program, and that's a good thing. When we have one piece of technology that is so intricately involved with probably too many aspects of our lives, we want options. You want the ability to switch programs for one that has more or less features to another without losing any data as painlessly as possible. Options people; get some.

I use four programs on a regular basis with my jail broken iPhone 3gs. One for managing my music, one for migrating files between my iPhone and pc, one for books (yes, I read) one for contacts and calendars. I'll be going over some photo stuff last since its still in the experimental stages.

The easiest is first, and that’s Sharepod. I’ve tried other applications for managing my music and play lists and this one is, by far, the bestest and easiest! However, I am open to suggestions if there is something better out there. Sharepod is free and a stand-alone application, meaning that you don't have to install anything and possibly worry about admin rights to get this up and running. It has drag and drop capability for adding music to your device AND the play lists that are on it! You can also use this as a media player. There is a bit of light photo integration, but it’s just to view them and back them up and not to drag and drop them somewhere or add more photos to the iPhone. Still, Sharepod is an extremely powerful music manager and gets two thumbs up from me!

Like Sharepod, iPhone USB explorer is also awesome! And, also like Sharepod, iPhone USB explorer is free and stand-alone. It’s just like using windows explorer to navigate around your iPhone, only you don't need to worry about SSH or any IP address issues. It is, however, barebones software. I would like the ability to bookmark directories within the program, like I am able to do with current SSH programs out there. But the ease of use outweighs the extras that are missing. Use this if you want to transfer or backup any data quick and painlessly! I use it to back up all my applications I have installed on my iPhone. With using SSH in the past, I ran into some IP address issues at some free Wi-Fi spots. But iPhone USB explorer doesn’t need SSH permissions or IP address information! Its plug and play, and simple.

For books I use the powerful combination of Stanza the iPhone app and Stanza the desktop program. Stanza is an awesome iPhone eBook app and is free; I highly recommend it. With it, you will have the ability to carry around tons of books in one small convenient package; your iPhone. over time functionality has been added as well as removed from this app. back in the day you were able to dump any eBook into a specific folder on your iPhone, via USB transfer, and the app would be able to read that folder when you launched the app from your iPhone and it would add that book to the app's library. They removed this functionality at apple's request, but then they released the desktop program that can transfer the books from your pc right to the iPhone app's library. Very quick and convenient. You can also add other repositories and your own discretion.

Changing phones can be a pain in the butt. The biggest pain is the migration of all contact information from your old phone to your new one. In preparation for losing my phone (knock on wood), getting a new one or just having to restore the thing to its original virgin state, I began using Google sync for contacts and calendar only. I don’t use it for mail, because we’re going to be setting it up for push and I believe that this way will save some battery life. First things first; back up your contacts and calendar. This might be the first time you’re doing this and you might lose some data. What I did was actually make a backup of all my contact info and then wipe all of it off my iPhone, but you might not be comfortable doing that. Anywho, swing by here to follow the directions for setting up Google as an exchange server and turn it on for contacts and calendar and set 'fetch new data,’ in the mail/calendar settings, for push and your half way there! The other half being the setup and addition of contacts and schedules to your Google contacts and calendar. The first sync you do with your new exchange server will push some of the contacts and calendar information to you Google contacts and calendar, it will push over more info if you never messed with the contact groups on your iPhone. This sync method will only grab your contacts from the iPhone’s ‘my contact’ group. Google contacts does have extremely good search functionality! It will blow away any search functionality that is currently on your iPhone, however. Personally I have all contacts and calendar schedules managed with Google and it works great! I also export the contacts on a somewhat regular basis, from Google, for extra backup security.

***experimental!! Warning!! I am not a pro on what you are about to read yet!! I will update when the process is finalized!! Proceed at your own risk!!***

Right, last bit of business: photos/videos. This is the newer territory for me so I probably shouldn't even be posting about it, but I’ll just post what I have done so far. my end goal with photos is to regularly take the photos off of my iPhone, dump them to my computer and upload them to Picasa (yes, I know, more Google stuff. I just wanted to take the free route instead of using Flickr). I will then use Picasa’s newly updated mobile interface to search through the painfully organized pictures using tags and names in order to get to the picture I want. So far, I have used only 1 of 2 programs to get the photos off the phone: Kodak easy share. The other program, which I haven't tested for moving the pics yet, is Picasa 3. The Kodak software did a great job with transferring all my photos and videos from my camera roll as well as the other photo libraries I had. It even kept the rotation info in the image's exif data, which is the biggest pain in the rear thus the most important part of the transfer. Every other program out there, for pc at least, just brings them over and then you are stuck having to rotate all the photos yourself. I am now in the process of using only Picasa 3 to painfully tag all the photos and then will sync it to the cloud. The final step, of what has turned into a photo debacle, is the iPhone app that will essentially be replacing the photo viewing app on my iPhone. I have searched the web in its entirety 3 times over and have come to the conclusion that Google’s own newly designed Picasa web app... it pains me to say... is the only app worthy of stepping up to the plate for this one. It’s the only "app" that is able to search the tags. A native app would, of course, be better, because it would have caching abilities and a quick slick interface designed specifically for the iPhone, but beggars can't be choosers in this world.

And that's it. I hope you found this a little bit helpful, especially since all the programs I described above are free. Please feel free to ask question, voice concern's or provide alternate suggestions for the programs I have chosen above within the comments below. Good luck! :P

ps: here is the lifehacker post that inspired me to do the photo reorganization.

Your iPhone, You're Doing it Wrong: Part 1

2010-05-16T10:21:00.011-04:00

It’s true. You depend on one program to manage and sync all of your photos, apps, movies and contacts and then don't know what the hell to do when you want to do it all over again on another computer. Shame on you!

This will be a 2 part post on how to stop doing that. The first part will be the set up. You don't need the bloated install of iTunes to do what you want to with your iDevice. The programs that I will be going over work with iPhone and/or iPods. And I will be letting you know what I use on my iPhone 3gs to get around the whole iTunes thing and its library issues. My phone is jailbroken, however. So some things may not be possible to do for you if you do not have a jailbroken device. And I will not be talking about how to do something similar with your device if it is not jailbroken.

A bit of back-story on why I had to get an iTunes replacement; this all started when work, the place that employees me and pays me money, said that I can't have iTunes installed on the laptop that they gave me and that it is now against company policy if I install it on there again. So, since I enjoy getting money and supporting my lovely wife and children, I complied. It was rough, but I did manage to fill the hole in my technology heart that iTunes left.

First things first; UNINSTALL ITUNES!!! The end goal of this is to be able to connect my iPhone to any computer and still have my iPhone be able to communicate back and forth without having to use a program that wasn't even designed for a pc; iTunes. For this to happen, you still do need some things that iTunes puts onto your computer. But that’s the easy part.

To do this, just download the latest and greatest version of iTunes. It actually doesn't matter what version since we aren't going to do a full install of it. It’s just easier to get the latest version since it’s available on apple's site.
Once downloaded, change the name of the file from iTunesSetup.exe to iTunesSetup.zip. You can actually use any compression program; I just use zip because that's what I have. Once you have the name changed, unzip it to a directory of your choice and open that directory. I used to create a new folder and put the zip into that folder and did 'extract to here'. But you can do that in two clicks. Just right-click on the .zip and select 'extract to blah/' where blah is the name of what you want to unzip. This will make a folder on your desktop called blah and everything that is in the .zip will be in the blah folder.

What you want to do now is install only what is needed in order for your iPhone to talk to the programs that we will be covering in the part 2 of this post. Out of all the programs you unzipped, you want to install just Bonjour.msi and AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi. And that’s it! Those TWO programs are all that’s needed!! That pretty amazing since iTunes will tax any pc to its limits when syncing and all you need now are TWO programs to help replace it!

Anywho, the major thing that I don't like are auto updates. So be sure to read the check boxes carefully and be sure to turn off any auto update feature and anything else you may not be comfy with.

And that’s it! You are now half way to being iTunes free!! Take a break now and get some coffee, because that's what I’m going to do right now! :P

Dutch Ovens, Your Days are NUMBERED!!

2010-04-30T21:24:00.002-04:00

Is your marriage/relationship in danger due to your toots in bed? In my opinion, if your significant other can't take your gas, then they can't take you! Leave them!! Or just buy this. :P

via Dvice

Monsters, Inc. 2 Coming....SOON!

2010-04-27T20:49:00.002-04:00

Of course when I say soon, I mean in about 2.5 years. :P

via Netflix

Ackbar Toilet

2010-04-25T11:19:00.004-04:00

I might actually consider purchasing this. :P

source via FoolishGadgets

Day of the Week

2007-11-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

I was mulling about at work today and mentioned something about Dickens and got to looking up Charles Dickens and the fact that he died from a stroke. Just being curious, I was wondering what day of the week his death was on, June 9, 1870.

It was a Tuesday for those of you that were wondering. However, me not being super good with numbers and also extremely lazy when it comes to thinking, it took me a while to find a website that could tell me the day of the week it was when supplied with a date. Most of the ones I found right away only worked with the 1900's.

The one I finally did find that works with any date is a great one. I found out that my two daughters and I were all born on a Wednesday. Is that crazy or what?! Anywho, the coincidences stopped there, but the site is a great site; with morse code translators and fantastic unit conversions.

Feel free to check it out and give a shout out in the comments below to let everyone know what day of the seek you were born on.

HowTo: Make a Glass Beer Bottle into a Cup

2007-11-16T09:30:00.000-05:00

What you need: Your favorite beer bottle, nail polish remover, string, scissors, water and a lighter.

Now you can make your favorite beer bottle, whether it be one of the major brands or some kooky looking microbrew, into a great pen cup for your desk at work. This would also make a great inexpensive present for one of your drinking buddies.

Feel free to submit pictures of your bottles in the comment section below!

[via geeksaresexy] video source

Deal Days: Get upto 50% off of Indi DVD's at Amazon

2007-11-14T22:15:00.001-05:00

Amazon.com is having a great sale on some fairly recent indi titles on DVD. Titles include Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, 28 Days Later and One Hour Photo. Those last two don't really seem to fit into with what is available, but it is nice to see there is a wide selection.

[via TheBargainist] Amazon

Monoface: Time Waster and Freaky Screen Saver

2007-11-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

This time waster is a twofer: you get to waste time and get a great screen saver that will be sure to freak out your cube mate as well as any passer-bys.

The people down at monoface took pictures of 15 people and made different parts of their face interchangeable; eyes, nose, mouth, head/shoulders. You can go over to their site and mix them all around and see what crazy faces you can come up with. You can also download the monoface screen saver. With the screen saver version, it will do the mixing up for you during screen saver mode.

I had fun on the site for a few minutes and am still having fun with the screen saver. Troy's tongue (pictured) is my favorite to put onto any of the faces. What's your favorite?

[via DownloadSquad] monoface

Pancakes in a Can... Need I say more?

2007-11-14T21:20:00.000-05:00

Ladies and gentleman, the wait is finally over! From the people that brought you cheese in a can, whipped cream in a can and any other freaky thing you can think of in a can, comes pancakes in a can.

It doesn't actually sound all that repulsive does it? And it saves you the time and effort of pouring the water and powdered instant batter mix into a bowl and mixing it together for about 2 whole minutes. Now, with Original Batter Blaster you can just shoot that junk into a pan and wait till syrup and butter covered bliss is obtained.

Please, for the love of God, let me know if you have tried this and how it tasted in the comments below!

[via OhGizmo!] Product Page

Firefox Quick Tip: The Mouse Wheel

2007-05-23T21:28:00.001-04:00

No matter how popular Firefox gets and no matter how many people use it on a regular basis, there are still people out there making slow use of something that is literally right at their finger tips; the mouse wheel.

Pop quiz hot shot; how do you open and close tabs in Firefox, and do you even make use of multiple tabs? I still catch people around the office right-clicking on links to open them up in a new tab, or clicking the red "X" button to close a tab (they might even have to select that tab then hit the close button), waisting precious internet time when they could be doing something more useful like testing the work's firewall to see if you can take a look at naked pictures of Caprica Six from Battlestar Galactica.

The correct answer to my pop quiz is by using the mouse wheel and yes. Stop with the right-clicking and just click the mouse wheel on that link and it will magically opne it up in a new tab. This even works in Internet Explorer 7.0! Then, to close down any tab, just do the same thing; mouse wheel click on it. The tab you wish to close doesn't need to be your active tab, you can just wheel click on any tab that is open and it will disappear.

Another nifty mouse wheel trick is nice to have when you have too many tabs open and auto tab scroll comes into play. Just place your courser on the tabs bar and scroll the mouse wheel. You will then be side scrolling from right to left over all of your open tabs. This bypasses the left/right arrows that pop up when you have too many tabs open.

Flashback: Oz + Dark Side of the Moon

2007-05-22T19:48:00.000-04:00

After taking a look at the list of movies that came out this week, I have decided that there is nothing work buying or even taking the time to get it by "other means." If you don't believe me, here is the list of movies released to DVD this week:

I'll admit that I didn't see the Rotten Tomato ratings till I just did this post for the above movies, but I did see the trailers for some of them (Apocalypto is one that sticks out the most) and they are just not my kind of movie.

more after the jump

So, if some of you readers our there are like me, I say just grab something off of the DVD rack in your family room, Vincent's picks at the video store or get inspired to rent something at the video store that is from my up-to-date list of movies I own. Or you can sit back and watch the classic sync up of The Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz:

Either way, you will have something better to do until next week when something good, hopefully, gets released.

Last Chance to Get Bejeweled Deluxe for FREE

2007-05-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

As a Mother's Day special draws to an end, Bejeweled Deluxe is free until tomorrow (May 23). It is a bit tricky to get it for free, but just follow these easy instructions and you will be good to go:

Go to the Popcap website and click BUY NOW
Fill out the required information
Scroll down and click "Click here" and add “FREE4MOMS” in the coupon code field.
Click on “Click here to Redeem” before you continue
The “Item total” should show a price of $0.00
Click continue until you get to the download link
Install and play

It is a good game and a great one to add to the usual Windows game lineup of solitaire and minesweeper. Once downloaded, installed and registered you can enjoy unlimited regular play as well as time trial.

[via ghacks]

Upgrade

2007-05-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

Just upgraded the blogger template and am giving it a test run. Please ignore.

Organize Status Bar: Firefox Add-On Of The Day

2007-03-15T21:21:00.000-04:00

Today's add-on could be a great one for all you Obsessive Compulsive people out there, or for people that just don't like how your status bar icons are arranged. Organize Status Bar is an add-on for Firefox for all platforms that lets you adjust how things are displayed in your status bar. You can move, hide or show the add-on icons in the status bar for what fits your personality. You can now take control over what is going on in that magical little bar down there. And, if you want to start all over again, just hit Reset to Default to put everything back to the way it was before you started.

Unlocker: Download Of The Day

2007-03-14T08:27:00.000-04:00

It never fails. When ever you are attempting to clean out some space on your hard drive, you always run into that one file buried in a sea of files that just doesn't want to be deleted. Sure you can reboot and then delete it. But who has time for that kind of time consuming thing these days?! Well, say good by to that file, the Unlocker way.

With Unlocker, you are able to find out what process is actually using the file that you are trying to dump into the 'ol recycling bin. Now the only hard thing to do is find out where the file is, if it is in a folder that has a ton of files that is. Unlocker is easy to use and completely free to download. And that price is just right for me.

[via TechNibble]