Free iPhone Apps Review & Download: iSilo v1.31 for iPhone

 The iSilo application, whose earlier incarnations were much beloved of doctors, lawyers, and others who sought a way to carry HTML reference material on their PDA since time immemorial, was released for the iPhone platform back in August.

As I mentioned when I covered it then, I had been a heavy user of iSilo for PalmOS back in the day, since I cordially disliked the MobiPocket PalmOS application and iSilo was the only other convenient way to get Baen Webscription books onto my Palm, Visor, or Clié.

However, I hadn’t used it since my last Clie bit the dust. There had been other ways to read those books, such as FBReader on my Nokia 770 and Bookshelf on my iPod Touch. When I downloaded the first version available from the store, I was fairly unimpressed, so I decided to put off reviewing it until it got a little better.

That time has come now. With the release of version 1.30-1.31, iSilo has moved considerably closer to ready for prime-time. It has added support for viewing a number of non-iSilo document formats (most notably PDF), and also supports loading documents with WebDAV rather than needing a sync conduit application—an innovation I would like to see in other readers, such as Stanza or Bookshelf.

 

The iSilo document format

In order to convert documents from HTML into iSilo format, you will need to download  the free iSiloX converter program. This program will allow you to convert any single page or collection of linked pages into an iSilo-compatible e-book.

Some websites, such as Munseys, also offer preconverted iSilo-format books for download. (It should be noted, however, that Munseys uses an older version of the iSilo format, which shows up double-spaced on newer iSilo apps, so you will get better results if you convert them yourself.)

iSilo is a format that has been evolving since shortly after the introduction of the original Palm Pilots. At its root, it is intended as a way to take text formatted in HTML and translate it to a form that can be read on a PDA, with as little human intervention as possible along the way.

In this respect, it has a couple of notable advantages over the other HTML conversion document format, MobiPocket. With iSilo, if you have a table of contents for a book in HTML format with links to all the chapters, all you need to do is point iSiloX at the table of contents and tell it to fetch that to a link-depth of 1. It creates the book for you, with the table of contents at the beginning”and links from the table of contents to other parts of the book work just as they would if you were viewing through a web browser.

On the other hand, I have never yet been able to make a MobiPocket-converted file with a built-in table of contents, even when I had that same table of contents HTML file.

This also makes iSilo a natural for mirroring websites. Just feed iSiloX the URL and link depth, and it will produce an archive file that can be browsed just as if it was the actual website. Of course, this was much more useful back in the PalmOS days when the presentation of the web on a portable device was much more limited.

The iSilo iPhone App: User Interface

 Both having names that start with a lower-case “i,” it would seem that iSilo and the iPhone were made for each other. At $9.99 on the App Store, it is half the price of the iSilo client for other platforms (though this price may be raised at any time).

Like other platforms’ iSilo clients, the iPhone version is capable of reading iSilo-format documents. However, unlike the other versions, the lack of hardware buttons on the iPhone leads to some hard choices in the user interface.

Scrolling up and down can be done by dragging and “flicking” just as with other iPhone apps. But there are other functions that can be performed by single, double, or triple-tapping the screen at various points. (They can be edited from within the Options menus.)

Tapping in the very middle of the screen brings up a display of the single-tap commands, then tapping again in the same place switches to the display of double-tap commands (as seen at left), then triple-tap.

Thus, tapping twice in the lower left corner of the screen would move to the previous page in the document, or tapping twice in the middle top would page up. The interface is a bit clunky, with so many different locations and taps to remember—and if you are in the habit from using other applications of just tapping anywhere in the lower part of the screen, iSilo could be a little hard to get used to.

Configuration Menu

Another place where the interface is a little clunky is in the configuration menu (accessed by tapping the “More” icon at the lower right corner of the screen). This will bring up a list of all possible functions—File, Edit, Find, Mark, Go To, and Tools—in one single panel.

Some of the options are a bit unclear. For instance, if you want to change the font, you need to go to the “Edit” section and choose “Options”. (However, changing the font is frequently ineffective; see below.) The options for autoscroll, rotation lock (to prevent the screen from changing orientation if you flip the device on its side), and full screen display are under “Tools,” at the very bottom.

Thus, to engage full-screen mode (getting rid of the title bar at the top and the menu bar at the bottom), you must go into the configuration menu and scroll to the very bottom. (Also, if you attempt to page down with a tap, you will come right back out of it again, since it is turned off by tapping at the bottom of the screen where the menu bar would be.) There is room for improvement here.

Viewing Other File Types

 Unlike other iSilo clients, the iPhone version of iSilo has been blessed with the ability to display several document formats in addition to iSilo—most notably PDF, Word, RTF, unaltered HTML, as well as JPEG and other image formats. No conversion is necessary to load these documents into iSilo. Perhaps the iSilo people figured that these document viewing abilities might make the iPod iSilo more attractive to people who had never used it before.

Most of the PDFs I loaded as a test displayed adequately—at least as well as they would appear in Air Sharing’s viewer. The only failures were a Wowio PDF (which only displayed the first couple of pages and everything else was blank—perhaps this was due to whatever copy protection method Wowio uses) and my 153-megabyte Spycraft 2.0 PDF (iSilo churned gamely away for a couple of minutes trying to load it, then the iPod crashed to the silver-apple screen—but then, I didn’t really expect it to work).

Loading iSilo: “I can do that, WebDAV.”

 Once you have files in a format iSilo can read, it is necessary to load them. As with eReader, iSilo can pull down compatible files from any web server, including one on your own desktop computer. But unlike eReader (or BookShelf, or Stanza), iSilo offers the ability to load files into its memory without needing a webserver or any specialized PC-side conduit at all.

Like Air Sharing, iSilo has its own WebDAV server built in. This means that you can tell iSilo to set itself up as a file server on your wireless network which you can access with a URL. You can then add it to “My Network Places” on your Windows computer, explore to it, and move files into and out of it just as you would any network drive. In short, the app itself is also its own conduit.

This also means that you can use iSilo just as you would Air Sharing—as a network hard drive utility to transfer files from one computer to another without ever wanting or needing to view them on the iPhone.

Loading files in this way is easy and fast, at least for me. It means no having to mess around with a conduit that may not actually work properly. I wish other e-reading apps would offer this function!

Text Display

iSilo books are displayed by default in a Verdana sans serif font. They can be viewed in either portrait or landscape; iSilo has a very smooth accelerometer screen-flip function. The documents look very much as they did in their original HTML format (making allowances for screen size), including italics, bold, links, and even tables.

The font is reminiscent of the fonts available on the old PalmOS devices where iSilo was born. Someone used to reading on those devices might see very little difference in how the document is displayed.

However, these days I tend to prefer reading in a serif font, such as Georgia, for the way it guides the eyes along. iSilo does have a font-setting dialogue under its Options menu, where the font can be changed to any that is available on the iPhone—but for some inexplicable reason, of all the documents I tried to change the font with, the only one where it stuck was the converted HTML Tor e-book of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire (as seen in the screenshot near the top of this review).

I am not sure whether something in the document’s HTML (or in my iSiloX conversion of it) is overriding my font choice, or if it’s something wrong with the iSilo client—but whatever it is, it certainly is annoying.

[Edit: I have since been informed that this has to do with the way that iSilo documents have a specific font family (serif or sans serif) set, and you must choose which font is displayed for each family. You can choose to set a serif font to be displayed for sans serif families, by turning "Set Defaults" on, changing "Family" to "Sans Serif," and then choosing the serif font, such as "Georgia". I tried this, and it worked. Still, it only serves as more evidence of the overall clunkiness of the application and its configuration options.]

One thing I have found while reading documents in iSilo is that sometimes the scrolling can be decidedly sluggish. Sometimes it will not even scroll at all, no matter how much I flick it—and then it comes unstuck and immediately jumps several pages down.

Another mild annoyance has to do with the “soft” scrolling selection from iSiloX—a format conversion option which is supposed to allow scrolling across boundaries between different webpages in the same iSilo file.

I used soft scrolling with Baen Webscription books (which are set up in a one-webpage-per-chapter format) when I was using iSilo on my PalmOS machines so I would not have to click a link to jump to the next chapter, just hit the down button again to scroll across the boundary. However, the iPhone iSilo client does not seem to recognize soft scrolling. (I wonder if it is because of the same API issue that makes BookShelf have to load books in 35K chunks?)

Conclusion

Back in the PalmOS era, iSilo offered an unparalleled ability to convert HTML documents to a form that could be conveniently carried on a Palm. Since it was the only game in town at the time (other options such as Plucker had not yet come along), it was immediately adopted by professions that relied on rapid access to significant amounts of reference material—most notably the legal and medical professions.

To this day, a number of medical and legal reference sites continue to support iSilo, and the lack of an iSilo reader had been cited by doctors or lawyers as an overwhelming reason why they could not switch from their old PDA to an iPhone. Happily for those doctors and lawyers, this has now changed. I would have no compunction at all recommending the iPhone iSilo to people who need to use iSilo professionally (or others who have a bunch of files already in iSilo formats).

However, due to its current clunkiness in comparison to the various other choices available,Now i am searched the iSilo v1.31 for iPhone free share for you! Enjoy it!

Free Download Here

Password:   www.ggiphone.com

9-year old is iPhone’s youngest software author

Most children his age may draw pictures on paper with crayons, but nine-year-old Lim Ding Wen has a very different canvas.

The primary school student from Singapore writes applications for Apple’s iPhone, and his latest project, a painting program called Doodle Kids, has been downloaded over 4,000 times from Apple’s iTunes store in just two week. He states he derives inspiration by creating programs for his sisters, ages 3 and 5, to doodle with.

This whiz-kid has actually completed 20 different programs.in 6 different programming languages (including Javascript and ActionScript), which for a 9-year old is impressive enough. He started on a computer at age 2, and by 7 was actively programming on one.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: his father also works for a tech company writing iPhone applications, and father and son compete to see who has more downloads of their respective apps.

Lim is currently writing another iPhone app – a space race game called Invader Wars.

iPhone IM+ All-in-One Messenger Free Download

A numerous industry awards winner IM+® All-in-One Messenger now comes to iPhone. Get IM+ and it will keep you connected to all your buddies with unmatched reliability of 6 years of technology refinement and support for all major messaging services:
- AIM® / MobileMe®
- MSN® / Windows Live®
- Yahoo®
- ICQ®
- Jabber®
- Gmail™ Talk
- MySpaceIM

Chat with your friends and colleagues on your iPhone or iPod Touch and enjoy simple, easy to use and yet very functional interface.

NEW: IM Push™
This version includes IM Push mode whitch allows users to stay online with IM+ even when the application is switched off. No more sudden disconnects when some one calls you or you have to use other applications. When you exit IM+, optional IM Push™ switches on if you have previously selected this option. In this mode you will remain online in all IM services, and continue receiving IMs as emails pushed to your iPhone mail box. Your replies will be converted to instant messages and will be delivered back to your contact.

FEATURES:
- All popular IM services in one client.
- Easy one-touch navigation between open dialogs, unread messages and in the application.
- IM Push™ mode to stay and communicate online without having IM+ running.
- Landscape mode convenient typing.
- Multi-lingual support: chat in any language supported by your iPhone.
- First-priority support.
- Free and frequent updates with fixes and FREE NEW FEATURES.

Coming soon (as FREE UPDATES) features:
- Sending and receiving photos.
- Sending voice messages.
- Support for avatars.
- Support for other languages in user interface.

LANGUAGES:
English

REQUIREMENTS:
Compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch

Download links:

http://uploading.com/files/FIHE465W/IM+%201.5.ipa.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/174593501/IM__1.5.ipa

The best thing about the 2.2 iPhone software update

When it comes to iPhone software updates, I’m all about the basics. Apple could enable the iPhone to cook my dinner every night, but if it added multimedia messaging in the same update, then that’s the thing that would excite me. Remember last January’s update 1.1.3 for the iPhone Classic? While the quasi-GPS functionality got the most attention, I was much more excited that you could now send a text message to multiple people.

So for the iPhone 2.2 software update that Apple released today, it’s the ability to turn off the auto-correction in the keyboard that excites me the most. It is useful most of the time, but other times the feature drives me crazy. Almost every other cell phone on the planet allows you to do this, so it’s nice to see that the iPhone now does the same. Of course, the other additions are more than welcome–here’s hoping that the Safari Web browser really gets “Improved stability and performance”–but I know what I like.

On a related note, the addition of Google Street View is both cool and creepy in that way that only Google can make you feel. Yet, I think that Apple could have been a little more clear on how you find it. Instead of being accessible through a dedicated button in the Maps application, you first must drop a pin and the map and then select the little person icon to see the view from that location. Once you’re there it works well, but getting there isn’t the most intuitive process.

Software Method to Unlock iPhone 3G Progress Report

The iPhone Dev Team have been working tirelessly since the iPhone has been launched to bring us the latest iPhone hacking tools. They have been successful in jailbreaking and unlocking the 1st generation iPhone and jailbreaking iPhone 3G as well.

However, they still have couple of challenges, the first one is the much awaited software method to unlock iPhone 3G and the more recent one is to jailbreak the 2nd generation iPod Touch.

They have recently published a post on their blog to update us on their progress in unlocking iPhone 3G.

In their blog post, the iPhone Dev Team have also made some observations about iPhone firmware 2.2 which was recently seeded to developers of the iPhone Developer Program by Apple. As

They have revealed the following:

Apple is continuing with their ski-resort theme;  iPhone Firmware 2.2 is nicknamed Timberline. 

Apple has gone back to using expiry dates.  The first beta version of iPhone Firmware 2.2 is due to expire on November 30, 2008.  They had apparently stopped using expiry dates with iPhone firmware 2.1, but for some reason they’ve started using them again.

The iPhone Dev Team have confirmed that iPhone firmware 2.2 is still vulnerableto Pwnage and Quickpwn on everything but iPod Touch 2G.

They have also published an image below to demonstrate that they have been able to jailbreak iPhone firmware 2.2. The screen shot below shows one of the unofficial native iPhone apps Terminal.app running on firmware 2.2 which is being used to display the kernel build information.

As for the update on the much awaited software method to unlock iPhone 3G, they write:

“The 3G iPhone soft unlock and iPod Touch 2G jailbreak are still relatively new challenges (compare them with the timeframe of the iPhone challenges last year).  We’re making slow advances on both fronts, but it’s not the sort of thing that can be easily described in a blog like this. 

But, to maybe show how interlinked these challenges are, this weekend we’ll be trying some hardware based ideas on the iPod Touch 2G jailbreak ”

As you might know, we have already seen the hardware method to unlock iPhone 3G but the iPhone Dev Team have advised users not to use the method. They had raised the following concern about the hardware method in one of their blog posts:

“While a hack could in theory work under this scheme, the errors are recorded by telecom companies, and may be considered tampering in a company’s network. In countries like Germany, as a result, a person could allegedly face up to three years in prison, and in the US, it may fall under legislation designed to combat terrorism.”

The iPhone Dev Team have been able to successfully unlock the 1st generation iPhone even with iPhone firmware updates due to an exploit which can only be prevented by a hardware fix. Apple has fixed the exploit in iPhone 3G which has made it difficult to unlock iPhone 3G.

Based on their track record the iPhone Dev Team should be able to unlock iPhone 3G, the question really remains is when?

Let us know your views.

Step by StSoftware unlock tutorial for noobs

Hi guyys, just now i unlocked my1.1.2 otb iphone using geohot method.

EDITED:
1.After the unlock is done you can again go to 1.1.2 ( it will be still unlocked)
2. No need to downgrade to unlock.. can unlock from jailbreaked 1.1.2 otb
3. Added link for fls file (remove all the -)
http://r-a-p-i-d-s-h-a-r-e-.com/file…04.02.13_G.fls
4. Solution to a known problem… (see at the end of this tutorial)
5. To update to 1.1.2 after unlocking at 1.0.2, simply update it to 1.1.1 or restore to 1.1.1 then install oktoprep and then update to 1.1.2

I will try to make this tutorial as simple as i can..

1. Files needed.

a, Secpack from here http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/ (there is a link named here it is.. click on it..
b. u need the fls file.. u can download it from here.. download ICE04.02.13_G.fls file
http://george.zjlotto.com/index.php/baseband/
if in case the server is down.. mail ur id.. i can forward the file to you..

2.Unlocking steps.
a. Restore/Downgrade your phone to 1.1.2 ( to clean install. You can avoid it if you want)
b. Restore/Downgrade the phone to 1.1.1( this helps to easily downgrade firmware to 1.0.2)
if you some how managed to downgrade your fimware to 1.0.2 then it is great. orelse use the next step.
c. Restore the firmware to 1.0.2. using itunes i strongly recommend you guys using itunes versin 7.5

If you get any problems while you downgrade the firmware to 1.0.2 for example error 1. u need to enter in DFU mode..
well if you donot know how to go in DFU mode follow these steps.
This is how to achieve DFU mode. You can do it on every phone:

* Attach the phone to the pc
* Turn the phone off
* Hold power and home together for *exactly* 10 seconds
* Release power but keep holding home until the pc beeps as a USB device is recognized.
* At no point will the display come on. Now your restore should work.

after going in DFU mode.. click on shift+ restore to 1.0.2 firmware.. i assume all of u guys have the 1.0.2 firmware with u downloaded.

d. after you guys sucessfully downgraded to 1.0.2 firmware.. you need to jailbreak and activate it..
to actuvate and jailbreak.. use apptapp.. u can get it from here http://www.360patches.com/Xmods/AppTappInstaller.exe
and paycay you can get it from here
http://www.360patches.com/Xmods/paycay.rar

first run the apptapp and select the firmware 1.0.2 from the list .. it will jailbreak and install installer in the iphone then you need to run the paycay.. this is jailbrea k and activate your iphone.. which will be on 1.0.2

There here comes the important part.. to unlock iphone.. set the autolock to never

go to installer.. and download community sources, bsd subsystem,openssh,

after doing it.. u need to copy the files which u downloaded in step 2 in ur iphone..
use ssh or pputty or winscp to do it..

u need to change the permission to 755.

Copy those files to any place you want.. i use /usr/mydir u can ssee 3 or 4 files named gunlock, gunlock.c(no need to copy),secpack and ICE.. fls files.

Then u need to go to the directory and type the follwing command..

a. to go to directory where you stored files.. cd /usr/mydir
b. to unload com center

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.CommCenter.plist

c. To unlock then type ./gunlock secpack ICE04.02.13_G.fls
it will take some time.. u can see some thing going on there.. like
./gunlock secpack ICE04.02.13_G.fls
geohot’s 112 otb unlocker…
Waiting for data…
Attempt…
Attempt…
Waiting for erase to finish…
02 00 06 08 06 00 01 00 00 31 A0 00 DE 08 03 00
Address to 0xA0000000 02 00 02 08 06 00 01 00 01 31 A0 00 DB 08 03 00
Wrote: 0×800 0×0
Wrote: 0×800 0×300000
Wrote: 0×400 0×302000
Wrote: 0×0 0×302400
Sending secpack… 02 00 04 02 06 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 13 02 03 00
End Secpack 02 00 05 02 02 00 00 00 07 02 03 00
Erasing: 0xA03D0000-0xA03F0000 02 00 05 08 02 00 00 00 07 08 03 00
Waiting for erase to finish…
02 00 06 08 06 00 01 00 00 3F A0 00 EC 08 03 00
Enjoy your unlocked iPhone…

After this dont forget to load the commceter. again
type this command
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.CommCenter.plist

to make sure whether you did load the commcenter or not.. type it.
launchctl (enter)
list(enter)
if u see the com.apple.CommCenter in the list .. then it means you loaded the commcenter and now you are good to go..

And you guys have a unlocked iphone now..

Problem:
Continuously waiting for phone while restoring to 1.0.2
Solution: For such problem. Do not restore to 1.0.2.
Restore to 1.1.2 then to 1.1.1 then install oktoprep and thenupdate to 1.1.2 and jailbreak it.
add the files to unlock and do unlockin.