Gordidon's Blog

Unboxing: Tile

2014-09-21T10:45:00.000-04:00

Tile is a bluetooth device that helps people keep track of their keys, other devices and even their dogs. The cost of a Tile is $20 and after waiting over a year for the Pre-Order to arrived, now Tile is shipping all order made after June 3rd, 2014 by this fall. If you want more information or wish to order a Tile please go to thetileapp website. Watch the video below for the unboxing.

Unboxing: iPhone 6

2014-09-20T22:23:00.001-04:00

It's been a long time without a Gordidonblog post but since the iPhone 6 has arrived, we have to do one. I woke up at 2:45 am on Friday, September 12 to Pre-Order the most anticipated device of the year. Pre-Orders started at around 3:00 am easter time and I was done with mine at around 3:18 am. After waiting a couple of days, the big day came and on Friday, September 19 at around 7:00 pm my iPhone 6 arrived home. I wanted to share the unboxing of the device, please enjoy the video below.

SmartWatch+ (App Store Version)

2013-12-09T17:10:00.000-05:00

SmartWatch+ is an App for iOS devices, mainly for iPhones that gives more functionality to your Pebble SmartWatch. The app adds the power to see your iPhone's battery life, Stocks, Weather, Calendar, Reminders, Bitcoin, GPS. It also allows you to have HTTP Requests and my favorite is Find My Phone. Please take a look at the video below to appreciate all this features at once

Tennis Pro [Pebble App]

2013-10-31T14:16:00.000-04:00

Tennis Pro for the Tennis lovers like me. I was one of the people begging developers to make this app since I don't know how to program in C. This app is awesome and it makes me want to play more tennis. Check the review in the video below.

How to created a Zeppelin Logo/Banner.

2013-10-16T18:15:00.000-04:00

First of all a Zeppelin is a Logo/Banner of some brand or blog that you put on your iDevice instead of your carrier name. This has become very popular, many Zeppelins are submitted to Cydia everyday. In this post I'm going to show you the basic on how to make a Zeppelin.

You May see my blog's Zeppeling here.

First you would need to have a logo, name or something that you would convert into a Zeppelin. After you have decided on your logo/name, then you should put it in Photoshop or any other program similar to it.

You will need to create two PNG files from your logo with two different sizes. The first image which would be a 40px by 40px is for Retina display. This image can also be bigger, for example my Zeppelin banner in Cydia is 95px in width, but don't change the height. (My Zeppelin in Cydia is call Gordidonblog Banner)

The other image should be around 50% smaller than the previous one, at 20px by 20px if you use the first size. This is for Pre-Retina Displays. Again it could also be little bigger than that, my banner is 45px.

After you have saved this two images, then you should duplicate them 3 more times. You need to have 4 of the same image but with different names. It should look as follow for the Pre-Retina images;

black.png
etched.png
silver.png
silver-alt1.png

and as follow for the Retina images;

black@2x.png
etched@2x.png
silver@2x.png
silver@2x-alt1.png

So when you finished you should have 8 different images of your Zeppelin logo/name. You are now ready to submit your Zepplin to Cydia but before doing that, you need to compress the folder where your Zeppelin is located in order to be able to submit it. How to compress the folder? is very simple hold down the Option key on the keyboard and click on the folder, it should give you the option that says Compress "foldername". Click on that and you are good to go. It should have created a zip file call archive, thats the file you would submit to the repos.

You can submit your Zeppelin by going to the BigBoss website, Modmyi or iPhonemodding to mention a few. If your logo is not approved by any of this repos, please contact me and I will put it on my private repo. Also if you want to have it just in your phone you can use a program call iExplorer or iFile to put the folder of your Zeppelin into your iPhone. You would need to put the your Zeppelin folder into the following path: Library/Zeppelin.

2 People and 1 Fingerprint: Touch ID

2013-10-05T14:16:00.000-04:00

Last week I saw a video of a guy thats was able to register 25 fingerprints with Touch ID even though Apple says that you just can register 5 different fingerprints. His approach was to take 5 fingers while registering "One" fingerprint, meaning that instead of using the same finger to set up Touch ID, he used all of his five fingers. So by doing this he was able to register 25 different fingerprints to use with Touch ID. You can see his concept in the video below.

After seeing this my wife had an awesome idea. She said to me, what about if we can register both of our fingers as "ONE". Let me tell you that we tried it and it worked just find, you can take a look on the video below. This is a great solution because my wife doesn't always use my iPhone, and since there is a 48 hours limit for the fingerprint to stay valid if you don't use Touch ID then even though her fingerprint is not been used, it would be active since I'm using mines everyday.

This is just awesome, we both have our fingerprints register in my Touch ID and she don't have to worry about her fingerprints been disable or not valid.

Speed Test: iPhone 5S Vs.5

2013-10-02T11:11:00.000-04:00

Here is a simple "Speed Test" of the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5.

As you can appreciate in the video above the iPhone 5S is just a bit faster than iPhone 5 in regular day tasks such as using your browser, opening apps and simple stuff like that. When the iPhone 5S overpower the iPhone 5 is in Gaming. When I talk about gaming, I'm not talking about "Candy Crush" (Please...) but heavy duty games such as Infinity Blade II or Motion Tennis. Also in booting time, the iPhone 5S seems to be faster than the iPhone 5.

iPhone 5S Unboxing!!!

2013-10-01T13:10:00.000-04:00

I know this is kind of late but this is my unboxing of the newly released iPhone 5S (Space Gray).

As you can appreciate in the video, the outside of the new iPhone 5S is very identical to that of the iPhone 5 which was released a year ago. As expected the 5S was not going to have a new body as in others such as iPhone 3GS and 4S, they stay basically the same on the outside. The inside even though not shown in this video is where we can find the biggest changes.

We only have 2 changes to the outside of the new iPhone 5S, one is the home button since now the iPhone 5S has the Touch ID (Fingerprint Reader) and it doesn't have the small square in the center of the button anymore so it could read your fingerprint. The other change comes in the Flash on the back of the iDevice as you can see in the video above. The new flash is a bit bigger than that of the iPhone 5. Thats the only 2 differences aside from the color, now we have a Space Gray iPhone 5S as well as a White and a White with Gold.

SafariSwipez from Cydia!!

2013-08-09T14:02:00.000-04:00

This is a nice tweak that allows you to delete tabs on Mobile Safari by swiping up. When you swipe up, the tab will just disappear. You would see a small demo in the video below. This tweak is available for free in Cydia.

Curiosa from Cydia.

2013-06-05T10:24:00.000-04:00

Curiosa is a small tweak that allows you to see notification of other tweaks, themes and/or any other package from Cydia if an update is available. This tweak come from developer Ryan Petrich which in my opinion is one of the best in the community, he is always involve in something new. Curiosa is very simple but it works very smooth.

Curiosa has a couple of settings that you can play with, first it has the Automatic Refresh of the Cydia packages list. The When option is like the name states, when do you want Curiosa to check for new pacakges. You can choose from Hourly, Every Two Hours, Every Six Hours, Daily, Manually or After Respring. I have set it to every Six Hours because I think Hourly and every Two Hours is kind of too much but you can choose your own time.

It also gives the opportunity to choose if you want the Automatic Refreshes to be only on Wifi or using your Cellular Data. This option is kind of neat because eventually if you check every hour it would consume Data and if you don't have an unlimited plan like me, you have to be careful.

The other option that Curiosa provides is for the Manual Refresh, you can use an Activator Event so you could use to Refresh all the packages in Cydia and check for updates. By the way Activator also comes from Mr. Petrich (I'm telling you guys, he is awesome). Another way you could Refresh the list is by going into Curiosa and pressing the Refresh Now button located almost at the end of the page.

One final comment about Curiosa is that you can also provide a Keyword for it to look every time it Refreshes. For example if you haven't install Call Bar because you want a special feature on it, you could put CallBar as a Keyword so every time Curiosa Refreshes and there is an CallBar update, it would notify you, then you would check to see if your feature has been added. Very useful tweak....

Unlike Activator, Curiosa is not available in one of the majors repos. In order to download Curiosa you would need to add Mr. Petrich repo: rpetri.ch/repo/ into your Cydia's sources. If you don't know how to add sources, you can check: Add Sources in Cydia.

Yahoo! Weather is Better + WeatherIcon 6!!

2013-05-02T15:16:00.002-04:00

Lately the Weather apps are coming in bunch. I like to have one that tells me everything about the weather, meaning percentage of rain, snow and how sunny is it going to be. Almost all the Weather apps that I have downloaded do all this but the new Yahoo Weather app is just gorgeous. It's clean and smooth, it has many details that others don't show.

The only bad think about the Yahoo Weather app for iPhone is the icon. The simplest thing to do in this whole app and its the most unattractive part. If you have a jailbroken iPhone you can solve this problem by downloading an awesome new tweak call Yahoo! Weather is Better. This tweak allows you open the Yahoo Weather app by taping on the Apple's Weather icon. Now you can hide that unatractive Yahoo icon and tap on the Apple's Weather app icon to access the Yahoo's app.

If you want to have a much better experience with your Weather app then you should add the following repo from DBA Technologies; http://apt.dba-tech.net/beta/. If you need help adding this source please check my post on How to add sources in cydia. In this repo you would find a tweak that would allow the user to see the current temperature in your Weather icon. The name of this tweak is WeatherIcon 6. Remember that the Apple Weather Icon is a static icon meaning that it does not show the current temperature but with this tweak you would be able to see the current temperature without opening your app.

This is the best combination for your Weather app in a Jailbroken iPhone. Yahoo! Weather is Better and WeatherIcon 6 are on top of my list of best cydia tweaks. Go get it in Cydia, both are free.

Always show Landscapes Videos...

2013-04-28T11:44:00.000-04:00

I like to use my iPhone with Rotation Lock. I don't really like all the rotation screen stuff but I do like to watch videos in Landscape. So with Rotation Lock you are no able to watch your videos Landscape because you have it lock as Portrait. Hey there is a little tweak in Cydia call LandscapeVideos that allow you to have Rotation Lock but watch videos on Landscape automatically. This is just awesome in my opinion, small tweak but great idea.

It has 3 settings to work with. One is to enable the tweak (on/off toggle), the second one is to choose when do you want the videos to play in Landscape, you can choose from Always to only when Rotation Lock is on. The last option is Orientation, this is basically the way you want to see the video, meaning if you want to see the Landscape from the left, the right or just both ways. Hope you enjoy the video.

Auxo Vs. MissionBoard Pro: Multitasking

2013-04-10T14:29:00.000-04:00

Multitasking is very important in any device. If your device does not have or support multitasking then you would have a hard time working with it. Now a days multitasking is everything, time is money and multitasking is your saving account. So in order to save money you'll need to multitask the right way.

Over the years there have been numerous multitasking tweaks in the Cydia store and concepts all over the web trying to fix what Apple is lacking on their App Switcher. I'm going to be talking about Auxo and MissionBoard Pro in this post, since there seems to be the most popular now a days.

Auxo Music's Controls

MissionBoard Pro Music's Controls

If you see closely, Auxo is Apple Switcher in steroids. It my seems as if Auxo is taking what Apple already have and upgraded just a little bit, if thats what you think then that little bit is making it much much better than before. It has a way better music controls than Apple and at the same time making it look native. Users have more space now on the controllers area and it looks cleaner. On the other hand MissionBoard Pro music control looks very good, I love the album cover in the background but it seems too much and it doesn't look as natural as Auxo. The music controls in MissionBoard Pro looks good, don't get me wrong but when there is too much of something is bad as when there is too little, and I think MissionBoard Pro is too much in this case and Apple is too little. Auxo in my point of view is in between.

Both of this tweaks have features were you can turn off or on toggles such as wifi, bluetooth and many more. I have to say that MissionBoard Pro has more space for the users to touch and play around with those toggles than Auxo. Auxo's toggles are more crowded. Saying that, Auxo have the advantage to put more toggles than MissionBoard Pro is able to, this is just a case of taste. Also what I have notice in Auxo is that if you hold your finger for a couple of seconds on top of any toggle, it would take you to the setting page of that specific toggle which is pretty nice and convenience.

MissionBoard Pro's Toggles

Auxo's Toggles

Now lets talk about the most important thing which is the multitasking part. While using MissionBoard Pro the switcher becomes into some kind of cards that you can move around and closed then, users can also see a preview of the open apps, they can touch any card/preview and go into that particular app. It's pretty cool to be able to see a preview of the open app and much more cooler if the preview is big enough to make something out of it. The only thing I would say, it needs a little bit of work in MissionBoard Pro "Switcher" is that when you use the closed icon option with the little X on top of the open app, it looks kind of weird and none natural. It looks like if the button was put there on top of everything and that it doesn't belongs into the card figure.

Auxo's Switcher

MissionBoard Pro's Switcher

Auxo "Switcher" is basically the same as the Apple Switcher but a bit bigger and with a small preview from the open Apps, I would love to see a bigger preview in the future. The cool thing about Auxo is the way you can closed your open apps, you can just swipe down and your app is closed, thats not everything, you can closed more than one App at the same time. This is a very cool animation that can caught many people attention.

I really like MissionBoard Pro cause is something different and very complete, I love the Art Work in the Music Controls and everything. I like Auxo as well because of the closing animation on the switcher, also because it looks so native to the iOS, I like tweaks that look like the phone has come with it from factory. I would recommend both of this options and to tell the truth I didn't know which one to choose. I asked my wife which one she liked the most, I showed her both tweaks and at the end she choose Auxo.

Intro/Ending of Gordidonblog's Videos Review

2013-03-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

In the video below, I will be showing you guys how the intro of my reviews is going to look when I do it on video. Also you can see how is going to look as soon as the review is over. I made this video using Adobe After Effects, iMovie and Final Cut Pro X. I'm learning how to use After Effects and Final Cut Pro X and I will be updating this intro whenever I learn something that would make it look better. For now I think this is a pretty nice.

WifiPass....

2013-03-20T15:30:00.000-04:00

Have you ever go to your sister's house and asked for the Wifi Password but she seems to forget the password and after she spent 3 hours searching for it, then you get the password. Well WifiPass is a pretty nice tweak available in Cydia that saves your Wifi Password in plain text for quick reference.

Lets say you go to your Aunt house this weekend and she gave you the password for her Wifi to be use with your iPhone but you go again the following weekend with you new iPad and she is not there to give you the password. Well use your WifiPass from your iPhone and get the password for your iPad.

It's pretty simple and useful, you just have to use your Wifi setting from within your iDevice, choose the Wifi you want, enter the password and thats all. Then WifiPass would store the password by itself. This is the best way to store Wifi Passwords. If you want to look for the password, open WifiPass and voila, there you go.

If you take a look at the picture above you can appreciate WifiPass; for example, MabelWireless is the name of the Wifi Network and in the line below there is the password, I have blank-out the password for security reasons. But you can appreciate how good this small tweak works.

Free Apps: AppsGonefree!!

2013-03-11T21:31:00.000-04:00

AppsGonefree was first introduced to me by one of my cousins. I was very reluctant to use it at first because I thought this was a waste of time. I have found this App very useful, it has save me a lot of money. I mean don't get me wrong I still paid for Apps but is like everyday you found an App that you like or want and if you paid for every single one, you may just get broke (I may be exaggerating but you get the idea). Another thing is that I don't like to pirate this Apps, I'm a developer in progress and I wouldn't like people pirating my Apps. So like I said AppsGonefree is awesome. You may not find all the Apps that you want but at least you can find some.

This App is very simple but useful like I said before. As soon as you open the App you would see the logo which I presented in the image above and then you would see all the paid Apps that are free for the day or maybe for more than one day (Image below). Also you can go back to previous days and check if those Apps are still free. Trust me this will be the App that you open everyday even before opening your girlfriends messages (maybe I went to far). AppsGonefree is in the Apple store and is free to download.

BackUp Cydia's Tweaks: OpenBackup

2013-03-02T09:19:00.000-05:00

We all know how difficult is to be updating your iDevices after you have Jailbreak it. First of all you need to update it via iTunes, then you need to restore all your data, apps, music and all the good stuff. After all that you have to re-jailbreak your devices and install all the sources and packages from Cydia.

Updating your iDevice from iTunes is very straight forward, restoring your data and apps is easy thanks to iTunes or iCloud, depending which one you use. Re-Jailbreaking it's a 5 minutes process and not difficulties should you encounter. On the other hand, installing sources that are not by default in Cydia and packages is kind of a hassle. Apps from the iTunes store can be install without you having to re-spring your device every time but it's very different installing packages from Cydia. The majority of packages that people install from Cydia, needs a re-spring and this is kind of annoying if you need to install around 20 packages because it would mean that you would have to re-spring approximately 20 times.

I had found a couple of packages that would help me back up all my tweaks, themes and others install from Cydia but they didn't work properly and others are very expensive. Solving my problem was very easy and cheap, I use OpenBackup which is a free tweak that helps you backup all your packages installed from Cydia.

OpenBackup is a very simple tweak and this is why I like it. To backup your packages, you just need to open OpenBackup and press the button that says Backup. This would make a file that would be sync/backup with your iCloud or Computer if you use Backup to your computer. If you ever need to update your iDevice or restore it for any reason, then you can restore all your packages with the same little tweak. Open OpenBackup and press on restore, this will take a couple of minutes and then it would ask you to reboot your device. When the device has finished the reboot process it should have all your tweaks install. Very helpful right, instead of 20 re-springs, just one reboot for 20 packages.

This is a very helpful tweak, there are some other tweaks that works better and are more for power users such as PKGBackup and XBackup. PKGBackup has a couple of more options and settings than OpenBackup such as backing up to Dropbox and backing up your sources but it cost $8. XBackup cost $1.50 and has basically the same features as OpenBackup.

The only feature I would love to see in OpenBackup is Sources Backup. OpenBackup restores all your packages basically without you doing anything but it does not restore all the sources you may have added aside from the defaults one. In my opinion if you just need to backup your packages and hopefully they add backing up sources soon, then OpenBackup is the way to go. It's Free, it does the job and is simple.

Note: I recommend using this kind of tweaks only if you need to restore your device to the same iOS version you already have or if it's a minor update like from 6.1 to 6.1.2. If it's a bigger update like to iOS 7 for example, it's not advice to use this Backup/Restore tweaks because not all the tweaks would be compatible and it would be a total mess. For a big update of iOS is better if you install all your tweaks manually to see which ones are good to be use and which are not.

Installing nitoTV from your iPhone!!

2013-02-12T11:52:00.000-05:00

NitoTV is one of the most exciting things about Jailbreaking your Apple TV. It's kind of the Cydia store of the Apple TV. Since there has been a lot of attention on the latest Jailbreak "Evasi0n" by the Evad3rs, I wanted to take a moment and show you guys how to put nitoTV from your newly jailbroken iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.

If you have your Apple TV already jailbroken then follow the steps below. On the other hand if you don't have it Jailbroken, then you should check the Seas0npass website to jailbreak your Apple TV before applying this steps.

Also if you haven't jailbreak your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch please head to Evasi0n and if you have futher question go to Jailbreakqa.

Step One

Download nitoTV Installer from Cydia. Just search for it and you should find it very easily. It's hosted by thebigboss repo.

Step Two

Make sure that your Apple TV and your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch are in the same Wifi connection.

Step Three

Launch nitoTV Installer from your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and look for your Apple TV.

Step Four

As soon as your Apple TV is recognize, install nitoTV from the Installer on your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. DONE

Although you can install XBMC directly from your nitoTV in your TV, you can also install XBMC from your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch using nitoTV installer to your Apple TV.

There is also a nitoTV Installer version for Mac and Windows that don't required an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch to be jailbroken.

Note: In order to install anything from the NitoTV Installer, you will need your SSH password. If you haven't change the default password then it should be "frontrow" if you change it then use your password. You should always change your SSH password for security purposes when you jailbreak any device.

Same DOCK for All MAC Users!!!!

2012-12-17T14:59:00.001-05:00

This is going to be a small topic since is very simple and there is not much to explain. Some people like to have the Dock of their MAC with certain icons in there (Office, CS6, etc) as well as to have it for every user that uses the computer (Useful for Small/Large Businesses or Schools). This use to be done by copying the profile from the Administrator account to all other account (for information on how to do a profile in a MAC please click here.) but since the released of Mountain Lion things has changed. Some steps are more complicated and some like this one are much more easier.

First we have to start by putting all the icons you really want in the DOCK on the Administrator account. After that is done then we are going to start doing the good part, moving the dock plist into the all user folder.

In order to get the dock plist, we have to click on Go on the Finder menu. Then hold down Option key and you will notice that the Library folder shows up, click on it and then look for the folder with the name Preferences and in that folder you need to find the file: com.apple.dock.plist. When you find that particular file, you need to copy it and then go paste it on All Users.

In order to get to the All User folder, you need to click on your HDD, then click on System folder, Library and User Template. If by any chance the folder is locked, you have to unlock it. Unlocking a folder is as simple as clicking once in the particular folder and then pressing Command + I so it would give you a pop up window. In that windows you need to open the little lock on the lower left corner and change the setting of Everyone to Read & Write. Now you would be able to access the folder User Template. In User Template you will need to access Library and then Preferences. You must paste the com.apple.dock.plist in this Preferences folder and you are all set. Remember to give no access to Everyone once again and lock the folders after you have finished. Now enjoy your new dock setting :p.

Export/Import Contacts (MAC --> Gmail)

2012-11-01T18:45:00.000-04:00

I have notice that a lot of people like to have their contacts in their Google account (Gmail) even though they have an iPhone or any other Apple product and they have their contacts there. I don't see the point of this unless your are getting rid of your iPhone and going to an Android device. Since I have notice this and people are having problems transferring their contacts in this post I will show you how to do this in a painless way. There are many ways to do this but I think the way I will be showing you guys is one of the most simples.

First of all you need to have all your contacts save in your Mac Address book as well as an account with Google in order to do the transfer. Well lest start, when you open your Address book in your Mac the first thing to do is to select all the contacts by pressing Command + A and then click on FILE, you should see an EXPORT option that is going to give you EXPORT Vcard and CONTACTS ARCHIVE options. You should click on EXPORT Vcard so you can save all your contacts in a file on your computer, I recommend saving it into the Desktop since is easier to find it there later on.

Since you have saved all your contact in a Vcard file, now is a good time to go to your Google account (Gmail) and import all your contacts to it. As soon as you log in to Gmail, you should see the word Gmail with a little arrow in the left side of the windows. Click on it and the drop down menu should give you two new options. One of the options should be CONTACTS, click on it and it would take you to your contacts site. In this particular windows you should be seeing an option that says MORE, this option is in the top middle of the window. The MORE option also have a drop down menu with a couple of other options but the option that we need is IMPORT since we want to import all the contacts from our MAC to our Gmail (Google Account).

If you click on the IMPORT option then you should have a window pop up that says something like IMPORT CONTACTS, which give you the option to browse into your computer to get the Vcard file previously saved. Click on the CHOOSE FILE button and find the Vcard file to be imported. After you have done all this you should have all the contacts in your Gmail account.

Hope this has help a lot of you that want to this process. If you guys have more questions about this or other topics please feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks

Backing Up Your Computer!!

2012-10-20T14:47:00.000-04:00

Many people in many occasions have lost their work from their computer or their computer has just gone bad and they start to freak out about this. People don't like to waste time making backups of their files, they want the computer to do it for them. This is the same problem with the Anti viruses, users think because they have an Antivirus they don't need to check for updates and run a scan from time to time but this is a topic for another day. Back to the topic for this post, backups are the most important task a person with very valuable files in their computer must do. This will same your job one day, you can count on that. It doesn't matter if is a PC or a MAC, you need to have a backup in a external location (don't save it in the same computer, no much sense on doing that).
Backing Up your computer is not as bad as you may think. It may take a couple of hours the first time you do it but that depends on how many files are you going to backup. Also after the first backup the others are not going to take that long. I recommend to have an extra external HDD just for backups, I don't like to have other stuff where my backup is located. After you have your HDD you can make the backup with the regular backup choices that Windows 7 or Mac OS X give you. You can also find very useful tools form third parties software to make your backup. It doesn't matter which one you choose, the important thing is that you make your backup.

In this post I'm just going to go over the native backup tools that comes with each OS;

Windows

If you want to make a backup in a PC running Windows then you just need to click on the Start button and type BackUp in the search bar. As soon as you type it, the tool will appear and you are going to click on it. It should say Backup and Restore. Here you are going to select which files you want to backup or if you want to backup the whole computer, remember to connect your external HDD in order to save your files. After the first backup you are going to do basically the same process with the difference that it would take less time since it would backup the files with new changes or the brand new files.

If by any chance your computer goes bad or you deleted a important file from it, you just have to look for your external HDD with your backup. Do the same process as if you were going to make a backup but click on restore and restore the file or the whole backup itself.

Macintosh

Since we are going to be talking of the native tools of backup then we must talk about Time Machine. This tool is very useful to make backups of your mac, it has a very nice UI and its very cool to use. With this tool you will desire to lose a file to see the magic of it working while it recovers it (Just kidding). This is also a very simple tool to use, you just need to go to Spotlight which is located on the top right corner and type in Time Machine. After you have click on Time Machine it would show an icon very similar to a Clock with an arrow counterclockwise, click on it and turn the option ON. Now you should choose the files you are going to be backing up and the destination (External HDD). For future backups just connect your HDD and it would start making it by itself.

In order to recover a file or many files with Time Machine, you need to click on the icon on the top bar that looks like the Clock. It would give you a option that says Enter Time Machine, click on it and restore the file(s) you are missing. Also you can restore the whole computer by restarting the computer and going into recovery mode or by using Migration Assistant, while in recovery mode it would give you the option to restore the computer with your back up.

P.S: I know this is very little information on such a huge topic but in my posts to come I will talk about each one of this methods by themselves. This was just to give some people the heads up of backing up their data.

Serial # of PC from within Windows (CMD)

2012-10-12T18:54:00.001-04:00

I'm a MAC guy and to get the serial number of my MAC is pretty easy; Click on the Apple on the top left corner, then click on About This Mac and finally click on More Info. Well this is pretty standard for any person that uses a MAC but what about a PC guy?, well this is not that standard in the PC environment. In order to get the Serial Number from your computer, you should Click on Start, Type CMD and then Click on CMD, after that you should type the following command; WMIC BIOS GET SERIALNUMBER. It seems simple and it is but people still needs to know the commands and all of that. Anyhow the point is that if you have a PC and are too lazy to go search down into your CPU or the serial number has vanished from the outside of your PC, then you can use this approach to get your Serial Number. Hope this has help. Below are pictures of both methods. Click on read more below to see the pictures.

MAC

Windows

Newsstand in a Folder (StifleStand)

2012-10-11T19:24:00.003-04:00

Newsstand for me is a useless app and since I don't use it, I would love to put it in a folder or away but this hasn't been possible till Mr. Fillipo Bigarella made the app call StifleStand. Fillipo Bigarella is a well known iOS developer from Italy, he has done tweaks such as Springtomize and Springtomize 2, if you haven't use it, go to Cydia and give it a try. Aside from Springtomize, Mr. Bigarella has done a couple of other tweaks, you can also check them in Cydia. Well talking about StifleStand, this app give us the power to hide Newsstand in a folder without your iDevice been jailbroken (It also works on Jailbroken iDevices) . This is a very simple tweak to use, first download the app from Mr. Bigarella website: Fillipobiga.me.

After you have downloaded the app (Windows or Mac) you should run it, if it is Windows is recommended to run it in Administrator mode. When the app opens up, connect your iDevice and you would be able to click the button that says: Hide Newsstand. This would take the Newsstand icon into a folder with the name Magic. This is basically the whole process, the only bad thing about this is that as soon as you put Newsstand in the folder, you won't be able to use it unless you take it out of the folder. I'm guessing this will not be working for now but soon Mr. Bigarella will find a way to fix this. Aside from that the app works perfectly and for me is wonderful since I don't use it at all, for those of you that use it sometimes don't worry, I'm very confident that Mr. Bigarella is going to have this fix as soon as he can.

You can follow Mr. Bigarella in twitter: Fillipobiga

Panorama Direction (iPhone 5)!

2012-10-09T16:02:00.002-04:00

Many people have been asking how to change the direction on the Panorama option in the iPhone 5. Since by default the direction in which you can take a Panoramic picture is from left to right. Now, lets say you need to start from right to left with your new picture. This is very simple to do, in order to do this you should just tap on the arrow presented to you in the Panorama view and it should change from the left side to the right. The illustrations below show how they would like before taping the arrow and after. Hope this has help many of you with this same question.

Normal view (Left to Right)

View after you have tap the arrow to change directions. (Right to Left)

iPhone 5: People Complains!!!!

2012-10-05T14:21:00.002-04:00

There is always rumors and people wanting the new iPhone of the year to have certain features and this and that. Millions of comparison with others devices, the iPhone is missing this and it should have that cause the competition have this and have that. It's tiring just reading this every single day but still the iPhone is always number 1 in the smartphone world. Apple delivers one great phone a year while others delivers hundreds of regulars phone a year. If they make one that is good is fine cause after 99 tries is fair enough to give something good to the customers. One phone out of 100 is a pretty bad ratio though. One out of One sound 100 times better.

One of the things people are saying that the iPhone 5 is lacking even though they resize the screen, is a bigger screen. In my opinion a bigger screen is not a plus for any smartphone. This dilemma about the screen size is ludicrous cause if you want a bigger screen, you should by a tablet or something similar. A smartphone with a huge screen is unattractive as well as not very handy to use. Hey you imagine a person using a kindle or nook as a phone, thats just not even funny.

NFC is another part that people were dying to have and I wonder why do they really wanted this in the new iPhone. NFC is not that widely use and almost nobody have the technology to use it, so why ask for this in the new iPhone, even the none Apple lovers were asking for this. I got to the conclusion that since the iPhone is so popular and they are dying to use NFC on other phones, it would make sense to ask for it to be put on the new iPhone. It make sense because if it comes from Apple, people would pay attention and the technology would become much more popular, then they would be able to use it with their phones. Apple don't need NFC, that technology is not being use widely. They were smart enough to put Passbook in order to handle a major part of what NFC does.

Those complains were before the iPhone 5 was even release. Now that the phone has been released there is the Maps, the body, no Youtube and the problems with WiFi. Complains to Apple products never ends even though people keep showing support and favoritism for their products.

The problem with the new Maps is that sometimes is not accurate, it may take you to a different place. People see this as the end of the world but they have to remember that when Google maps first started they also were not accurate. So stop complaining about this and wait for a new update from Apple, is not like you are going to have to change your phone because of this, update and everything should be fine, if you can't wait for an update download another Maps app from the App Store. To finish up this Maps topic, you also have to look a both version and see at least the improvement in other areas such as turn by turn as well as the graphics compare with Google Maps. The Youtube app was a surprise for a lot of people, but Google has made their own Youtube app which is in the App Store and it seems to be really good even though in my opinion a bit slow at times. No major problems here them :)

The body of the iPhone seems to be scratching more easily than what we expected. This is a down side to the iPhone 5. I have experienced this myself, I had to put a side protector because I notice a few tiny scratches. They should do the iPhone with material similar of the ones used in the Macbook Pros. I have no problems with my Macbook Pro, not scratches at all. Also in the web there are people complaining about slow WiFi speeds, me myself have no complain about this. But for those having the problem, this is going to be fixed with a new update. Hopefully the next update fix the Wifi problems and the Maps too. After that there are no major problems with the iPhone 5 or in that matter iOS 6, people just like to complain but thats just life.

P.S: I just want to say R.I.P Steve Jobs.

Update (10/09/12): One more thing, people are also complaining or for that matter comparing the iPhone 5 camera with that of the Galaxy S 3. People it doesn't matter how many mega pixel your camera have if the manufacture doesn't know how to work with it, it doesn't matter. Thats why even though the Camera of the Galaxy S 3 and the iPhone 5 have the same Mega Pixels, the iPhone looks much better cause Apple knows that the Mega Pixels by itself is worthless. This can be also apply for the screen resolution. The screen resolution of the Galaxy S 3 is 1280x720 and the iPhone 5 is 1136x640 but why is it that the screen of the iPhone 5 is better, because of the pixels per inch. The iPhone 5 pixels per inch is 326 and the Galaxy S 3 is 306. Once again people, resolution, mega pixels and all this are just marketing stuff, if you have a wonderful screen but don't know how to do an app for that particular resolution then whats the point of having a great screen? thats what happens with a lot of developers for Android in my opinion, they don't take advantages of their devices's screens, in the other hand iOS developers take full advantages of this.