We don’t always have time to write out a full-fledged CTA review, but we still want to keep our readers in the loop with all things Cocoa Touch…

In an effort to still squeeze a little blogging into our already jam-packed lives, we’ll be doing updates via twitter. We’ve been on twitter for over a month now, but haven’t actually set it up to push live updates to the site until now.

iPhone OS 3.0 appears to be working out pretty well – news did come out today about a vulnerability in the SMS program that allows a hacker to enable such things as GPS location, the microphone and other creepy stuff… It appears as though Apple already has a fix in the works… will probably roll out that as well as some hot new features in 3.1

So far you can expect new voice control compatibility with bluetooth connections… finally voice-dailing for people who have expensive cars. (Not me) If you edit a video you took with your 3GS – it won’t kill whatever you cut… it offers to create a new version…

Other things of note in 3.1 – the phone vibrates when moving icons… ummm, I’m actually not excited about that. I think it’s just a waste of my battery. I already see the icons dance, why vibrate my phone? Boot times are quicker – which means that Apple has actually taken some time to optimize the OS a bit… kind of like Snow Leopard – due out this September.

Lastly, this one is cool… Apple has actually opened up the video APIs so that a developer could write an app that will give you more editing abilities than just trimming in Apple’s editor. Practical, no – but if someone writes the software, I could create a whole movie with my iPhone.

For our unlock followers – as always stay away from everything new until you’ve checked with our friends on the Dev Team.

Set up a twitter account for Cocoa Touch Apps… If I see something cool with iPhones – it auto updates the blog… @cocoatouchapps

Quick update here – Not much to it, but if you jailbreak, you’ll like it.

Go to blog.iphone-dev.com and download Redsn0w. You have to manually update to 3.0 via iTunes at this point, but if you’re like me, you don’t have a lot of jailbreak apps, just a couple themes that are easy to reapply.

After updating to 3.0 – just run Redsn0w on your PC or mac, it’ll do the whole jailbreak thing for you.

After jailbreaking, add http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com to your repositories in either Cydia or ICY, sorry ICY – but we still prefer Cydia.

Then search for ultrasn0w in the packages and install it.

Reboot.

You’re now unlocked and jailbroken. I’m selling my 3G to get a 3GS… I’ll let you know what it’s like once I have it.

P.S. This will get your phone running on OS 3.0 – but you will have to redo everything in your jailbreak… wait for the dev team to send out an update on that process if you don’t want to lose your hard work.

CTA is not responsible for any damage you do to your phone… sure we can fix it for you, but we’re not always cheap.

Hey all – we’re working on a full fledged review of iPhone OS 3.0.  Bare with us, because we have a lot of stuff to cover.  We’ll tell you everything that you can expect, everything Apple talked about, and everything didn’t seem to mention.  It’s a must read.

Also, we changed our permalink structure… makes it look a little less random.  If you have favorites saved, they’ll still work… it just looks nicer with the new setup.  Thanks for your support… check back soon for a full walkthrough of 3.0!

CTA RATING:

I’ve never been a big fan of just sitting around and watching the weather channel… there’s something about the combination of cheesy elevator music and bad graphics that makes me want to puke.  Even still, I’ve come to accept the fact that the built-in iPhone OS weather application isn’t really up to par (Yahoo! apps aren’t my favorite).  So I went through the store and tried to find the best weather application out there that really reflects accuracy.  I tried several and even stuck with Weatherbug (Link opens iTunes) for a while but eventually settled on The Weather Channel’s app because it seemed to give me the best accuracy.

Take a look at the gallery to see all of the features, but a few that stick out in my mind are: hour by hour weather, 10 day forecast, live radar, severe weather warnings, and local weather videos.  Those features make this my favorite weather app because I always know what’s going on.

I was out driving not to long ago and the sky became pretty dark around two in the afternoon, so I pulled up the app and sure enough there was a severe weather warning waiting for me.  I was able to look at the map, see a tornado and change my route accordingly.  Yeah, that’s cool.  Last but not least, it’s free.  So give it a try and feel free to let us know what you think.

I’m sure that many of you out there are into changing it up a bit.  When the first generation iPhones were still running 1.1.2 – 1.1.4, I was devoted to an application called Customize.  It handled all of the legwork and I was able to just photoshop a picture and place it in the right place.  Until “thespicychicken” gets that up and running on the latest firmware, we’re left to fend for ourselves.

If you’re interested in “theming” your iPhone or iPod touch – and your device is jailbroken – then just follow a couple easy steps and you’ll be rid of the plain old, boring look that your device has suffered and into a shiny new set of icons and even different layouts if you’d like.

First, via Cydia, you need to download “Winterboard.”  This application, written by Saurik, acts as the replacement for Summerboard from the first Cocoa Touch OS.  When you open Winterboard, there are a few themes and options in there.  Go ahead and check them out by tapping them and hitting the home button.  That will cause your device to “Re-Spring” and apply the changes you’ve made to the “Springboard.”  The Springboard is User Interface that you’re using every day.  

If the default themes aren’t to your liking, there are over a thousand themes available through Cydia.  Everything from App icons to Sound themes… even complete system themes.  You can preview each theme before installing it.  After installing a theme through Cydia, just go back to Winterboard and enable that theme.

Unfortunately, our knowledge doesn’t go beyond that at this point.  If you want to learn how to create your own themes for Cydia, please be sure to check out modmyi.com.  We’ll be sure to do a full write-up about Customize.app when it comes out.  Until then, happy theming.

So yeah… remember our post about the game Mafia Live!?  I’ve been browsing around and it appears to be accepted practice to spread your family codes around online.  I’ve found lists and lists of them all over the place.  So, I thought I’d start one for all of the CTA readers that we have out there.

Here’s mine:   649-998-556

Feel free to add me to your family.  I’m at level 33 and growing.  Be sure to leave your family code in the comments so other people can add you too!

A short update for all of the jailbreakers out there.  xGPS is currently working on a public distribution of their updated app that will allow jailbreakers to use it for turn-by-turn navigation.  A pleasant monotone voice is waiting to give you directions and should be around by February 20th.  Right now, you’ll find a version with out the “vocalization” feature… but given that time, you will be able to download and listen to a computer animated voice to fulfill all of your iPhone navigation fantasies.  We’ll be giving this a go when it’s available… if you have any thoughts about it, be sure to let us know in the comments.

via Gizmodo

Here’s a clip I came across this morning. Thought I would share it. I hope that I’m not the stereotypical iPhone user as implied by this video from college humor. If you find yourself in this category, take a good look at yourself and realize it’s just a phone. What am I saying?! It’s not just a phone it is a part of my life! I could live without it, but why?