Chocolate Jetpack

Hipstamatic is a neat iPhone application that allows you to take photos that emulate the unpredictability and quirkiness of old toy and plastic cameras. Which in essence means it makes your more mundane photos a little more visually interesting. It allows you to choose different film types and lenses for different effects, with a few available preloaded with the application, and more available as microtransactions. I won’t weigh in on the microtransactions debate; I’ve been having to deal with that concept in video games for long enough as it is. You can also turn on and off a flash effect.

Above are some examples of photos taken with the app, and yes, I took them all from the comfort of my desk. Expecting me to go outside is asking a bit much, no? Not the best examples for sure, better ones are available from the Hipstamatic App Website. Still, this should be fun to play around with when I have the time.

Now, you may remember me sharing a certain Mario themed wallpaper I made a few days ago. Well on that same day, I encountered Gelaskins, who promise to create skins for iPhones (and a plethora of other devices) using your own designs. Taking this as a sign, I decided to see how my Mario design would look  as an iPhone skin.

It’s finally arrived all the way from Canada eh, taking just over a week, though I’m sure this was not helped by the recent Royal Mail postal strikes. Thoughts and photos after the break.

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Having only recently acquired an iPhone, I wasn’t too familiar with the whole concept of ‘jailbreaking’, except for passing mentions. Phrases pertaining to such things as ‘full potential’ and ‘awesomesauce’ were often thrown around. So when Geohot’s new jailbreak exploit was released, entitled ‘Blackra1n’, for 3.1.x version iPhones, I decided to give it a go. It’s available from Blackra1n.com for both Windows and Macs. Some people have reported some problems and failed starts, but for myself, everything was done in less than a minute. I literally plugged my iPhone in, ran the app, hit ‘Make it Ra1n’ and after a phone reboot or two my phone was set free from its incarceration.

Once jailbroken, you’ll have a Darkra1n app on your iPhone, run that and install Cydia and you’re one step closer to having a plethora of awesome Jailbreak Apps on your iPhone. Cydia is effectively the Appstore for Jailbroken Apps.

Because lists are seemingly the cornerstone of blog posts, my must have apps to get you started are after the break.

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