Apart from the native stock application for messages there are many applications available on Cydia which are awesome alternatives for your iPhone.  Today we will be talking about a similar alternative application for messaging for your iPhone. According to me, BiteSMS is the best application for messaging but since we are talking about another application similar to biteSMS, its called as SMS+

SMS+ is a Cydia tweak or rather application for your iPhone that overhauls the iOS’ stock Messages application. SMS+ allows you to quick-reply to an incoming SMS message without leaving the app you’re using, or even show up via an Activator gesture. It creates a new window where you can compose a new text message, choosing the number from your existing contacts. It is extremely similar to BiteSMS.

SMS+ also includes a “Later” feature, which you can use to keep a message unread to read it later. You may also choose to make your iPhone “Voice-read” an incoming text message to you, this is one feature that is not available in BiteSMS and should have been there. To top it off, SMS+ adds in a few more extra options right inside the stock Messages application such as ‘Mark All messages as Read’, ‘Delete All Messages’, ‘Timestamp Every Message’, and ‘Show/Hide Conversations’. These features definitely give it an upper hand in the battle against BiteSMS but still there are many features in BiteSMS which this does not incorporate.

While SMS+ packs in a lot of features, a few of them have been available for some time now with various, earlier tweaks that are already available in Cydia most notably, the “quick-reply” feature.

This application is available for $1.99 in the big boss repo.

There are no new icons added to your SpringBoard, and settings can be configured from your main Settings.app.

To download this tweak for free:

1. Open Cydia on your jailbroken iphone.
2. Once the data is loaded, go to search and type in “SBphoto”
3. It’s free in the xSellize, IHR and insanelyi repo.
4. Select it and install it.
5. Respring or reboot your device.
6. You are done to use it.

If you know any other tweaks similar to this one or any other tweak which you might think would be useful to iphone users please let us know.

Note: Blogtechnika will not be responsible if your device gets bricked while using Cydia.

Hello everybody.

Today’s post is no where near relevant to the world of Technology. So, in case you expected the announcement of a new phone or a new Cydia tweak, am sorry to have disappointed you. I firmly believe in keeping my personal life and professional life separate. However, today’s event has forced me to having mix the two. It is an emotional day for me as it has been one complete year since I first posted an article on Blogtechnika. 365 days, 250+ articles posted, it has been an amazing journey. So, invariably it calls out for a lot of smiles and lots of Thank yous.

The biggest thanks goes out to the site Admin Himanshu, for he has been the guiding light and my mentor in the world of Tech reviewing which I so proudly call my own. Thank you so much sir for the faith and undeniable trust.For telling me what’s right and whats wrong and most importantly teaching me how to take one step at a time. Also, a huge thanks to my entire team Bharat, Achint, Prateek, Shreyas, Arpit Roy and  Gaurav Awal. Continuous arguments and endless discussions with you guys has only made me better, stronger and more informed about platforms and Operating Systems which I deemed to be not so good. I could never have asked for a more cooperative, fun to be with and helpful team. Cheers guys for making this one year go away in the blink of an eye. A very special thanks to my brother Vidit for he taught me to take risks. If it was not for him, i’d never have taken a chance with things like rooting, customizing endless ROM’s, playing with kernels and bootloaders which only helped me become a more rounded tech reviewer. And most importantly for always bailing me out when the devices started giving up on me.

A lot of people would probably not know I am mentioning them here because we grew apart due to time, but their role in me developing an interest in writing about technology can never be ignored. My mentor, and till date my best critic and yet one of my biggest motivators, Upasana ma’am. Ma’am you have always been the one i have looked up to when it came to writing spontaneously and crisply. Thank you for always correcting me and helping to improve my language. To, all my friends, who had some great advices to give and came up with various topics of posts which i never could imagine, Prashant for all his enthusiasm about gadgets, Siddhant for always telling me a new ROM to review, Padmaja for reading most of the articles and despite everything encouraging me. Also, it calls that I thank the people I have looked upto in the industry. I doubt they would read this but without them around, I doubt I would have been able to do justice to my work. Jon Rettinger, Noah Kravitz, Jon Quach, Trentton Smith, Stevie Leigh, Aaron Baker, Steve Litchfield, your enthusiasm for technology is infectious. Not to forget, all you readers cause it’s because of you our world goes round. So thank you so much for all your time.

To close it I could not thank enough people who have nothing to do with technology but everything to do with me personally. My wonderful family that served me endless lunches and dinners on my desk when I was working on a difficult post and tolerating my tantrums because a review was not coming down well. To my mom, dad and sister who always have encouraged me and loved me unconditionally and promising me a grand dinner on this emotional occasion. And at last to someone whom I lost long ago, you know who you are, and there is nothing I can ever say to thank you, just that I love you the most and I know you are smiling from far away.

So, that was a huge list of thank you’s. It has been a slightly different post on Blogtechnika, one which probably most people would not like or be interested in, but I guess I am allowed once in an year to express my heartfelt feelings. It has been the best journey of my life so far, and I hope the second year would be even better. I am already super excited especially because we have some great video reviews, tutorials and app reviews lined  up for you. For all your tech needs, please keep visiting us at www.blogtechnika.com

Lets say, given a hypothetical situation, someone “breaks” out of “jail”,  what does it give him? FREEDOM! And that is exactly what happens when we “JAILBREAK” our iphone. It gives us endless possibilities, it increases the productivity and also the fun factor. One of the many advantages of jailbreaking is getting all the Paid Apps For Free. And yes this is just one of the benefits, there are a million others but as of now, lets focus on how to do that!

The first time I got to know about this, I was in seventh heaven. I was just so excited, because when you see all the amazing applications which the app store offers , you just want to have them but who would want to pay a dollar or two or sometimes even five,ten fifteen and so on.

So I jailbroke my iphone, downloaded all the paid apps from various different sites( I will tell you where to download those paid apps from) and tried to put them in my iphone, but everytime I did that, there was an error which said the application couldn’t be copied to my phone. So then I got to know, just jailbreaking isn’t enough, there are a few steps which you have to follow and then its just a walk in the park.

Following are the steps:

1) Open Cydia. Go to “Manage”, Then go to “Sources”. On the top right corner, You will see “Edit”, click that. On the top left corner you will see “Add”.

2) Add the source “cydia.haculo.us/”

3) Once the source is added, open the source (again from the manage section) and you will find various “AppSync” for different ios versions. Download the one for your device. For example, if you are running ios 5.0.1, then download “Appsync for ios 5.0+”

4) Once you do that, you work is done , Now you just need to have the cracked apps, which I will tell you how to download.

The major work is done, All we need to do is download the app which we want. There are various sites from where you can download cracked apps, but I will give you a couple of my favourites.

1) www.apptrackr.org

2) www.iphonecake.com/appcake/

Visit any of the above mentioned sites, search for your application, and download it. It will be downloaded like any other data file which you get from the internet. Once its downloaded, open the app( just double click on it), and it will directly be opened in your iTunes. Then all you have to do is sync your iphone with your itunes and you will be able to see the application there. Download as many as you wish, just see to it you have enough space in your iPhone.

Now the above steps were for downloading apps into your computer and then your phone. You can even download the paid apps directly to your iPhone. The steps are simple.

1) Go to the source hackulo.us(which you just added), and download this app known as “Installous”, once its downloaded, it will show like any other application on your iphone on the springboard.

2) Open installous, and it will be just like another Application store, only you can download paid apps for free

3) Search for your application in installous( it automatically searches the file for you, just enter the name)

4) Download it, Install it.

5)  And there it is,done, time now to enjoy your game.

Hope the post helped you, feel free to drop in comments and let us know if you have any problem.

Smart phones have certainly changed the way we live. They have become an addiction, however sometimes we may just crave for the huge screen when we have gotten so tired of reading the ant sized text on the screen. In that situation have you wondered if you could exchange messages right from your desktop PC or laptop using your beloved iPhone? Well here we have found a way for you. WifiSMS is a cool, free iPhone tweak available in Cydia that lets you send and receive SMS text messages right on your desktop PC. The most important point to note about WifiSMS is that there is no third-party software installations necessary which automatically makes using this extremely safe.

To use this software, follow the following guidelines.

1. Simply install WifiSMS via Cydia.
2. Activate it using the already downloaded SBsettings toggle button.
3. Connect your iPhone to the same WiFi network as your PC.
4. Then go to http://yourIPAddress:8080/
5. Replace your ip Address with your iPhone’s ip address on your PC
6. Your setup is complete; you’re set up to text in an elegant interface set up, right on your favourite desktop PC web browser.

There are no icons added to your SpringBoard and there are no settings to configure with this tweak.

To install this tweak you need to follow the steps given below:

1. Open Cydia on your jailbroken iphone.
2. Let the data load.
3. Once the data is loaded go to search and type in “WifiSMS”.
4. It’s free in the BigBoss repo.
5. Select it
6. Install it.
7. Respring or reboot your device.
8. You are done to use it.

If you know any other tweaks similar to this one or any other tweak which you might think would be useful to iphone users please let us know.

Note: Blogtechnika will not be responsible if your device gets bricked while using Cydia.

While using tabs in Google chrome sometimes we accidently close the tabs but there is an option to reopen the tabs you just closed. This feature wasn’t incorporated in the iphone but the Dev team has never backed out to provide iPhone users with what they want. This is why a new tweak named RestoreTab for Safari was designed by the dev team. RestoreTab for Safari is a Mobile Safari tweak for your iPhone or iPad that lets you restore your most recently closed tab. The tab will be restored completely, including the history of other pages that were visited within that tab.

RestoreTab for Safari is available for $0.99 in the Cydia Store. There are no new icons added to your SpringBoard and no settings to configure with this tweak.

To install this tweak you need to follow the steps given below:

1. Open Cydia on your jailbroken iphone.
2. Let the data load.
3. Once the data is loaded go to search and type in “RestoreTab for safari”.
4. It’s free in the IHR (iHacks Repo), insanelyi repo and sinfuliphone repo.
5. Select it
6. Install it.
7. Respring or reboot your device.
8. You are done to use it.

If you know any other tweaks similar to this one or any other tweak which you might think would be useful to iPhone users please let us know.

Note: Blogtechnika will not be responsible if your device gets bricked while using Cydia.

I recently got my hands on a Nokia Lumia and needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with the device. Yes it is butter smooth and boasts a great hardware but what impressed me the most for the first time was not the hardware. It was indeed the software. Yes, it happens rarely that you come across an OS that works as well as Windows Mango does. It is excellently well integrated with the lush hardware of Nokia and I found the best of both worlds of iOS and Android residing in it. Yes, the two of them are still the market leaders and some way ahead for being the best eating systems on a smart phone but one can definitely see the enormous potential that the windows phone 7 carries. It definitely packs a very powerful punch, and dare I say, it may well be my oPerating system of choice.

One thing lots of people say is the lack of applications on the windows platform, but I beg to differ, I could pretty much find all the essential applications that I was using on my Android smartphone, if not an equivalent in the marketplace. Yes, the choice is limited, but what is available works great, and there is no junk like that on the Android Market Place. The following are the applications that I would recommend getting for your Windows Phone 7.

1) Facebook: Yes, we find life difficult without our favourite social network set. The Facebook application is the native of Microsoft and different to any we have seen so far. It works brilliantly, even though there are a few glaring misses like the lack of desktop like notifications tabs, however that can all be worked around pretty easily.

2) YouTube: Surprisingly, the Lumia I used did not come with a YouTube client built in, but you can download it from the market. Again , it is well customised according to the look of the WP7. Needless to say, it plays videos of your choice really well.

3) AutoPanorama: The camera on Lumia is brilliant, but it does lack the panorama mode. This application let’s you shoot Panorama for free. The only problem is a lack of guide as to till what point did you take your last picture, but it is really smooth and works exceptionally fast the application.

4) AppFlow App Discovery: We all know that Windows Phone 7 is a rather new operating system and new applications are launched just about everyday for it. As a result it is tough to keep a track of all the new apps , but app flow does that for you. You can see what’s new and selling best in the market place.

5) Evernote: Evernote let’s you sync the notes you take on your device to the cloud and use them on your desktop. If you had Evernote on your Android or iOS device then of can use the same I’d and import all your notes easily.

6) Blind Shot: Blind shot lets you take secret photos without letting the whole screen show that you are taking a picture. Highly customisable application, but it only lacks because the shutter sound cannot be shut down.

7) Endomondo Sports Traker: For all the runners and fitness freaks, Endomondo is a great application to keep track of how much distance you have covered by running and in how much time. It also integrates your music player hence letting you play the music while you work out.

8.) Flashlight-x: Flashlight-x is a brilliant application that uses the LED flash behind your device and doubles it as a torch light. Now, you don’t ever have o be scared of the dark with your windows phone with you.

9) FotoChop: FotoChop let’s you add cool effects to your already taken pictures from the device. It has limited options, but works brilliantly and am sure some more would be added.

10) Gchat: Gchat is a client that lets you use Google talk on the move. It is a very basic client without much hassles. It does, just what is needed.

11) gMaps: gMaps is basically Google maps for your Windows device. If you are not satisfied with Nokia maps which I cannot see why you would not be, this is a great alternative. It is the same client as used on the Android devices. There is a paid as well as a free but Ad- enabled version available.

12) iLOL’d: it is a real fun and time pass application that can certainly turn a poor day and give you something to smile about.

13) IMDb: IMDb is the standard client for IMDB. It has the same Windows 7 look like the native applications and works brilliantly. You can catch all the latest from the world of Hollywood and read about the movies you have missed here.

14) Insider: Insider is a fun application that tells you what’s new with Microsofts OS. But the best part is the free wallpapers that you get everyday. You can also download various ringtones from here. A very handy application to have.

15) InstantReddit: It is a very basic client for all the reddit users. Nothing too fancy here. You can log into your account and see your subscribed reddits.

16)Live Cricket: Live Cricket brings you the latest scores from the world of cricket. If you are a cricket addict then this is a great application to keep a trak of your favourite cricket teams performance.

17) Oinc: Oinc let’s you convert currencies on your Windows phone 7 device. It does not have too many customisations and a rather basic client. But it works fairly well.

18) Lyrics Now: Our smartphones have become extremely media centric of late and Lyrics now lets you look at the lyrics of the songs that you are listening to on your device live. This worked well for English songs but no such luck with Hindi songs.

19) Pulse: Pulse is a good news client that lets you follow the RSS feed of various sites. Pulse is very famous over Android and iOS and it does not disappoint on WP 7 platform either.

20) Seesmic: Seesmic brings all your social networking accounts from Facebook and Twitter at one place.

21) Stop Music: It is a very useful application as it can after the specified period switch your music off. It is especially handy if you use your device as a song bank while going o sleep. You do not have to worry about getting up in the morning and finding your device switched off because you forgot to turn the music off.

22) Simple Dropbox Viewer: It lets you view all your files in your Dropbox account. The only drawback is you cannot upload new content from your device. But hopefully there would be a better application for that soon.

23) Tango Video Calls: It lets you place video calls from your device to someone who has a tango account. It primarily uses the front facing camera of your device but if your hand set lacks one, you can also use the back camera.

24) Translator: It is a basic translator that can translate five basic languages including French, German and Spanish to English or vice versa. There are other more comprehensive translators available, but this one definitely seemed to be theist accurate and quickest.

25) YouTube pro: YouTube Pro lets you download various YouTube videos to your device from the videos of the site. There is a paid version also available that is Ad free.

I hope these applications were helpful to you. If you have any other application you would like to tell us. Do let us know.

Applying accents in Microsoft Office is not easy as you will have to right click on the selected text and then select the accents for that letter which can be quite annoying if you have to do this often. Accents is an app that allows users to easily apply accents to the text that they type in to increase their typing speed.

Accents is easy to use. First, download the application from the link given below and install it. Then run the application. The application then automatically adds itself to the system tray and you can access it from there. Now, you can configure various settings of the app like how many times you want to press a key before the accents start showing. To start using the app, open a document, and in that, press any letter which supports an accent 3 times. On the 3rd press, you will see a list of all the accents available for that letter. Keep clicking on the same key till you get the appropriate accent that you want to use.

This application handy for users who have to make use of accents frequently and would like to make their experience more simpler and easier.

Download Accents.

Bringing the very best tweaks to you has become a passion for all of us here at Blogtechnika. Over the past 2 weeks, we have bought for you a list of tweaks that you must check out on a weekend to make your iPhone look even prettier and enhance the functionality. We are back with yet another post.

Graviboard:

GraviBoard is a brand new and fun to have Tweak which makes the icons lose gravity! Turning on the tweak would bring gravity or would remove gravity to the home screen, and is guaranteed to amaze both you and your friends. All the icons on your home screen will fall down or up and the mayhem of icons will begin! One can configure options from the Settings app. You can use your finger to flick the icons anywhere on the screen. To download this tweak you will have to add a repository http://ihacksrepo.com/

Barrel:

Sliding right and left on the iOS screen might get boring after some time. Well, here is a tweak to make the monotonous sliding history. Barrel which can be found under the sinful iphone repo. This tweak adds a 3D effect to the pages on the iOS screen. One can choose between many transitions for example, curl and roll away, flippy, vertical scrolling etc. This tweak will definitely make an impression. It is a must have.

SleepFX:

SleepFX is a very cool new Tweak. This tweak enables your iphone to animate the locking screen. When the device is put to sleep, instead of just blacking out instantly this tweak gives it an animation which makes it turn on and off smartly. You can choose a sound as well, along with a variety of custom animations. The tweak works well, it also has good configuration options through which one can control the speed of the transition, enabling and disabling of sounds and to select the style of locking.

Camerawallpaper:

CameraWallpaper allows the users to replace the static wallpaper with live feed from phone’s camera. This is a killer application. This definitely will make u the coolest kid on the block. Users can also take photos instantly (without the need to launch the Camera app). IPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G user will also be able to switch between front and rear cameras. IPhone 4 users can toggle the flash option too. However there is a drawback being the coolest kid on the block which is the battery usage. If you are installing this tweak be sure to carry your charger along with you, you might need it anytime.

Deepend:

This tweak adds a 3D effect to your phone’s Home screen. Deepend works by altering your wallpaper’s orientation based on movement of the device. It makes use of the gyroscope of one’s iPhone 4 to be able to alter the display orientation of one’s iPhone. To download this tweak to your Phone you’ve to include the repository http://rpetri.ch/repo/. You may then download the tweak at no cost.

I hope our selection of tweaks has helped you make your iPhone at least 5 times better. If you have more tweaks and would like us to cover some other tweaks, do let us know.

Note: Blogtechnika is not responsible if your phone bricks while using these tweaks.

Working on a mac is always worth getting a thrill out of. This is justified by  the various riveting applications available on Mac. Front Row is one such appealing application which makes the viewer access media on hard disk, iPhoto, iTunes etc using a remote control which works in synchronization with the infrared sensor in your mac. There is no need to get disheartened if your Mac does not have the infrared sensor as it can be operated through  the keyboard keys as well. Front Row provides a simplified interface designed to easy use with remote controls. Front Row can be opened from the dock directly and if you haven’t kept the icon there then open it from the applications.

Movies

Bored of keeping your laptop in lap to play movies, here is a more interesting way to enjoy movies keeping your mac at some distance. The movies on your hard disk, DVD, external devices can be accessed with the remote. Enjoy your movie with controls in your hand and fun flavored with pop corn.

TV Shows

If you are busy and cannot turn on TV to watch your favourite shows, here is an amazing alternative for you. As Front Row is another interface for iTunes libraries, you can watch your favourite TV shows on mac by downloading them from iTunes store and directly viewing them here. Front Row can utilize any codec installed in QuickTime, including DIVX XVD, and WMV. Front Row gives you the full information you require about any particular TV show in terms of time and date.

Music

When you are done watching your TV show or movie and now you want to listen to your favourite song without going to music player, Front Row is indeed at your service. Go to music option and play any song you like from your playlist in iTunes. All the songs in iTunes playlist can be viewed in Front Row. And when you have remote in the hand it is an absolute delight to enjoy music and makes you forget about your music system.

Podcasts

If you want to play your favorite podcast on mac, Front Row is an awesome interface. You can download the podcasts from iTunes store and play them here. The iTunes Store puts thousands of free podcast at your fingertips. All you need to do is choose your favorite ones,  download and have fun.

Photos

You can access all the photographs that are there in the iPhoto library. The photos you share on social networking sites can also be seen in Front row. It shows the list in a very attractive way and gives an easy and user friendly interface to switch from one list to another. It shows photos in a very ordered manner like, edited photos, last imports, as per the album name etc. It is an interesting method to view photos with music background compared to the conventional way of viewing photos in iPhoto.

Settings

In the setting option you can view the name of your macbook and SW version. Besides that you can do the settings for screen saver whether you want to keep it on or off. Sound effects can also be changed as per your tastes.

Sources

In this option Front Row shows the source of your media e.g.. it can be hard disk, DVD, etc.

I hope you liked our attempt to give a full insight into Front Row and will be of your use. We would also be covering various other Mac applications on a regular basis so don’t forget to come back. Do leave a comment and we will surely get back to you.

Starting off with the initial versions of this software, Sony Creative Software launched the most stable version of the software 7.0e. Primarily Acid Pro was launched for Windows but it works on Macintosh too. It is widely regarded as the most popular digital audio workstation (DAW) or in simple words it’s a software to fabricate audio. There are many other similar types of software available in the market but this one is surely number 1 due to the awesome features it has.

Talking about the awesome features, following are the 5 most attractive features of the Sony Acid Pro 7.0:-

Beat Mapping

Beats per minute (BPM) as the name suggests is the number of beats per minute. Sony acid pro was the first software to introduce the beat mapping feature or beat mapper. It detects the beats per minute and determines the precise BPM. This feature is manual in the Sony acid pro. When introduced initially ACID became very popular amidst composers, producers and DJ’s in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s who were interested in creating beats, tunes, solos, patches etc. Now the main attraction of this feature was the adaptability of virtually any track to the desired tempo or key signature making it the king of all softwares but Ableton Live has taken this idea further, tempo mapping which offers greater accuracy and lesser user input. To map a song with subtly changing tempo, we have to input the marker points but in Ableton live it is done automatically. On the whole the Beatmapper has proved to be an important tool.

Superior Mixing and Editing

ACID Pro 7 software has a dedicated mixing console for a flexible and efficient recording environment. Supporting features like Specify routing, assign audio effects, and use external effects processors and midi controllers with tracks makes it a powerful audio production console. ACID Pro 7 has an awesome feature named the Chopper tool which helps you to create impressive drum fills, stutters, and DJ-style effects.

Comprehensive MIDI Support

Using functions like MIDI sequencing in ACID Pro 7 software, with real time MIDI processing and precise control over MIDI events is a real treat for professionals. All note and controller data can be recorded and edited on the timeline as easily as audio tracks. Use track envelopes to automate and modify modulation, expression, or other types of MIDI controller data over time. Other features let you record multiple tracks of MIDI, apply real time MIDI quantization, perform filtering and processing, create and edit drum patterns, and step record. ACID Pro 7 also includes over a thousand free MIDI files for music creation.

Innovative Loop-Based Music Creation

ACID Pro software has been the leader in loop-based music creation for nearly ten years. Version 7 has all of the core ACID Pro features: automatic pitch and tempo matching, real-time loop previewing, unlimited tracks, and our signature pick/paint/play interface. ACID Pro 7 software also includes more than 3000 loops and more than 100 effects to enhance the feel of the loops.

Professional Effects and Soft Synth Support

Expand your sound palette with native support for VST instruments, as well as VST and DirectX audio plug-ins. Create resonant sweeps, dramatic fades, EQ changes and add effects with parameter automation. ReWire and ASIO support help you smoothly integrate ACID Pro 7 software with your existing studio.

So, wrapping up on the ACID pro we learn that for the past 10 years Sony has been providing us with a powerful and an action packed audio creation tool. Although there are many others in the market but then with a solid name like Sony there is always a satisfaction about the user friendly part. The software can be purchased at a price of $255.54 or something around Rs. 11k.

Although it’s available for download on torrents but it’s better to get an original copy to avoid hassles.