Brandon Bohling

First of all, we're giving away four Vapor cases in your choice of colors to four lucky readers. Second, the Vapor case is awesome. The Vapor bolts onto the edge of your iPhone 4 and cradles it in aircraft aluminum, complete with little rubbery grips on the inside to isolate the antenna and provide some shock absorption. It adds just enough width to the phone on the edges to make it a little easier to grip, especially if your hands are larger. The indentation allows for added grip, plus the larger edge makes it slightly more stable if you want to sit your iPhone on its edge.

True, at $79.95 the Vapor is not for everyone. It is a premium case. If you like finely-crafted accessories, you will love it. Apple's case provides similar protection, so if you're on a budget, you can afford to buy a cheaper case. Still, the machined power button and the cutouts for volume, SIM, cable connector and headphones are meticulously cut. There's clearly a lot of thought in the design of this case. If you appreciate great design and want a case that stands out from the rest, the Vapor is for you. You can even get custom engraving and several colors. The downside is that ElementCase, makers of the Vapor, are busy taking pre-orders and aren't currently shipping.**

(**Note: Since this writing, TUAW has learned that ElementCase is, in fact, shipping both current and back orders. Expected order processing time is currently less than two weeks.)

To put your iPhone in the Vapor, you'll need a little hex wrench that comes with the case. There's an optional carbon fiber back plate you can add, but I didn't feel it was necessary. Once the four screws are in place, the case cannot easily be removed. That could be a minus if you tend to use a dock, because you'll have to keep the wrench with you and unscrew those screws every time you want to dock the phone. Still, in my road testing I never felt I needed to remove the case. It made the iPhone feel sturdier, fit better in my hand and provided insulation from my antenna woes.

Details on the giveaway on the next page.

TUAWVapor iPhone case review and giveaway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shared by ebohling
"I've worked with J.D. in the past and he is an amazing individual. I do not know a single person with more energy than J.D. If I could implement/practice a mere 1% of his wisdom I would be a much improved human being." --Brandon Bohling

“Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.” – John Wooden

John Wooden was a living legend.  He was also one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time and he lived a simple life focusing on personal excellence, personal integrity, love, and balance.

When I first heard John Wooden during an interview, what struck me was the simple rules he lived by that helped him make meaning and find happiness.   It was the first time I heard somebody say that success is “peace of mind.”  His way to achieve it was simple too  – give your best where you can.

What I liked most about his approach is his pattern of focusing on what you control, and realizing that the rest is a by-product that may or may not go your way.   For example, you can play your best game, but still lose.  You can build your character, but your reputation may not match.  You can make your best plays, but that doesn’t mean the score will show it.  Rather than chase or focus on the by-products, focus on the “getting there” and playing your best game, from the inside out.

If you want to start with the personal side of Wooden, I recommend watching John Wooden’s Love Letter (4:35).

25 Lessons Learned from John Wooden
Here is my collection of lessons learned from John Wooden:

1. A doer makes mistakes.  If you’re not doing, you’re not learning.   Everybody makes mistakes.  It’s what you do with them that counts.
2. Academics are enduring.  Getting an education is a #1 priority.  Wooden made it a point to his players that they were first and foremost a student (the student part of “student athlete”).  Wooden said, “If you let social activity take precedence over the other two (education and sports), then you’re not going to have any for very long.”   Wooden also said, “Sports are kind of like passion and that’s temporary in many cases, but academics — that’s like true love and that’s enduring.”
3. Agree to disagree, but don’t be disagreeable.  According to Wooden, “We can agree to disagree, but we don’t need to be disagreeable.”
4. Be on time, no profanity, and don’t criticize.  Wooden learned this from his Dad.  He had three rules for the students he coached: 1) never be late (start on time and close on time), 2) not one word of profanity, and 3) never criticize a teammate.
5. It’s not whether you won or lost, it’s if you played your best game.   If you won, but didn’t play your best, then you didn’t really win.  If you lost, but you played your best, then you didn’t really lose.  Wooden said, “Never mention winning.  My idea is that you can lose when you outscore somebody in a game, and you can win when you’re outscored.”
6. Coach for life, not just the game.   Wooden promoted the idea of a “teacher coach.”  Wooden said that as a coach, you “teach” sports.  However, according to Wooden, a coach has to be more concerned about the overall learning, than just the sport or just winning the game.  Wooden said, “It can be done in a way that’s also helping them develop in other ways that will be meaningful forever.”  It’s about building habits and practices that support students for life.   Wooden credits the fact he was a teacher before he became a coach, helped him organize his time better and learn that he has to work with each individual a little differently.
7. Don’t let your limits limit you.   Don’t let limits get in the way.  Wooden — “Don’t let what you cannot do, interfere with what you can do.”
8. Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses.  This is another trio of rules Wooden learned from his Dad — “Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses — you get out there and whatever you’re doing do it to the best of your ability.  No one can do more than that.”
9. Everybody is unique.  As a teacher, Wooden learned early on the importance of paying attention to each individual.  He learned that he had to work with each individual a little differently, and that no two are identical.  They can be alike in many respects, but they aren’t identical.  He learned that each student or player would have different strengths and weaknesses and that he would have to vary his approach to help them unleash their best.
10. Failure is not fatal.  Keep going.  Don’t let setbacks stop you.  Carry your lessons forward, and change your approach.  Wooden said, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
11. Focus on character over reputation.  Your reputation may vary.  It’s your character that counts and it’s what you can control.  Wooden said, “If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success and I don’t think others can judge that, and I think that’s like character and reputation.  Your reputation is what you are perceived to be, and your character is what you actually are, and I think the character is much more important than what you are perceived to be.”
12. It’s the company you keep.   Wooden enjoyed being a teacher and a coach because he felt he was in great company and he was shaping the future.  Wooden would say, “those under your supervision are the future.”  According to Wooden, “A coach is like the teacher who once was asked why she taught; they asked me why I teach and I replied, where could I find such splendid company …”  They aren’t just students or players, they are future doctors, etc.
13. It’s the journey.  It’s the getting there that’s fun.  Wooden said, “Cervantes said, ‘The journey is better than the end.’ And I like that. I think that is — it’s getting there. Sometimes when you get there, there’s almost a letdown, but it’s the getting there that’s fun.”  Wooden would say, ““I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the end result.”
14. Journal for reflection and growth.   According to Wooden, he journaled for all his players, and this is a difference that made the difference.   The journal is how he could focus on little distinctions and really fine tune the practices and drills to be more specific and relevant for each player.  It’s how he personalized the practices.  It’s this personalization and paying attention to strengths and weaknesses that really helped him bring out the best in each player.
15. It’s courage that counts.  Courage is what keeps you going.  Wooden said, “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
16. Keep your emotions in check.   Wooden was strict about keeping his players’ emotions in check.  He didn’t want anybody to be able to tell whether his team had won or lost, just by looking at them.  He didn’t want his team to get overly emotional about their wins, or overly emotional about their losses.  Instead, he wanted a focus on whether they played their best and that only each person would know whether they really gave their best for the situation.
17. Make each day your masterpiece.  Wooden made the most of each day, by design.  Wooden – “Make everyday your masterpiece.”
18. Make the effort to be the best you can on a regular basis.  According to Wooden, “If you make your effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be, not necessarily what you’d want them to be, but they’ll be about what they should, and only you will know whether you could do that … and that’s what I wanted from them more than anything else.”
19. Never try to be better than someone else.  This is another lesson Wooden learned from his Dad – “You should never try to be better than someone else.  Always learn from others and never cease trying to be the best you can be.  That’s under your control.  If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control.”
20. Patience is a part of progress.   Success comes slowly.  Expect change to happen slowly and to have patience along the way.  Wooden said, “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience” and “there is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
21. The score is a by-product.  The score is hopefully a by-product of doing the right things.  Don’t focus on the score, focus on what you’re doing and give your best.  Wooden said, “I wanted the score of a game to be a by-product of these other things, and not the end itself.”
22. The best player is the one who gets closest to reaching their full potential.  According to Wooden, whoever gets the closest to reaching their full potential is the best player.
23. Success is “peace of mind.” Wooden had a simple measure of success – peace of mind.  According to Wooden, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
24. Lead by example.  Wooden said that way back, during his early years of teaching, a specific saying made a great impression on him – “No written word, no spoken plea, can teach our youth what they should be, nor all the books on all the shelves, it’s what the teachers are themselves.”
25. You’re part of a team.    Wooden truly believed that the sum of the whole is more than the parts.  Wooden would say, “A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”

Success Defined
Some people define success in a way that’s perpetually beyond reach.  Wooden defined success in a way that’s within your grasp:

Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

Pyramid of Success
John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success consists of a set of philosophical building blocks for winning at basketball and winning at life.

The building blocks of the pyramid are as follows:

• COMPETITIVE GREATNESS
• POISE, CONFIDENCE
• CONDITION, SKILL, TEAM SPIRIT
• SELF-CONTROL, ALERTNESS, INITIATIVE, INTENTNESS
• INDUSTRIOUSNESS, FRIENDSHIP, LOYALTY, COOPERATION, ENTHUSIASM

12 Lessons in Leadership
Here are John Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership:

• Lesson #1: Good Values Attract Good People
• Lesson #2: Love Is The Most Powerful Four-Letter Word
• Lesson #3: Call Yourself A Teacher
• Lesson #4: Emotion Is Your Enemy
• Lesson #5: It Takes 10 Hands To Make A Basket
• Lesson #6: Little Things Make Big Things Happen
• Lesson #7: Make Each Day Your Masterpiece
• Lesson #8: The Carrot Is Mightier Than A Stick
• Lesson #9: Make Greatness Attainable By All
• Lesson #10: Seek Significant Change
• Lesson #11: Don’t Look At The Scoreboard
• Lesson #12: Adversity Is Your Asset

For more information on Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership, see his book, Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization.

Top 3 Quotes
Here are my top three John Wooden quotes:

1. “Make everyday your masterpiece.”
2. “Be quick but don’t hurry.”
3. “The most important word in our language is love.  The second is balance — keeping things in perspective.”

More Quotes by John Wooden
Here are additional quotes by John Wooden organized by A-Z:

1. “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.“
2. “A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”
3. “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”
4. “Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”
5. “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
6. “Be prepared and be honest.”
7. “Be quick but don’t hurry.”
8. “Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
9. “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
10. “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
11. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
12. “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
13. “Flexibility is the key to stability.”
14. “I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the end result.”
15. “I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.”
16. “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
17. “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
18. “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”
19. “It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
20. “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
21. “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
22. “Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.”
23. “Never mistake activity for achievement.”
24. “Our tendency is to hope that things will turn out the way we want them to, so much of the time, but we don’t do the things that are necessary to make those things become reality.”
25. “Sports are kind of like passion and that’s temporary in many cases, but academics — that’s like true love and that’s enduring.”
26. “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
27. “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
28. “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
29. “Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
30. “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”
31. “The most important word in our language is love.  The second is balance — keeping things in perspective.”
32. “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
33. “There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”
34. “There is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
35. “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”
36. “What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.”
37. “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience.”
38. “Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.”
39. “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
40. “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.“

Catalog of John Wooden’s Resources
Wooden has a large collection of books and videos to draw from.  For simple scanning, I organized Wooden’s collection of resources into the following buckets: Sites, Books, and Videos..

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from John Maxwell
• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins

Shared by ebohling
I am certainly glad Apple takes this approach in their products. In software people often want to get things out the door quickly, which doesn't have to mean crappy. Posterous is a perfect example of providing a great service (software) with a great "core" set of features and building upon them as stated here: http://blog.dustincurtis.com/i-dont-laugh-at-startup-ideas-anymore.

MG Siegler, last week at TechCrunch:

During his keynote address on Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that while Apple may not be the first to release features, they do so in a way that’s the best implementation.

Many people view this as absolute bullshit. But what that implies is that they think Apple simply cannot get features done in time — or that they will not do them for some reason. I have a hard time believing either of those is the case.

Jobs cited the iPhone’s cut, copy, and paste functionality as one example of Apple getting a feature right. I have to agree. For two years, everyone complained (myself included) that Apple didn’t have this functionality. Could Apple have done it sooner? Of course. But would it have been half-baked? Probably. Just look at how it works on other devices — or maybe I should say: look at how poorly it works on other devices compared to the iPhone.

This is the heart of the disconnect. Those who see these claims as “absolute bullshit” are only going to see Apple as getting worse over the next few years. I got a few objections from readers after writing the following last week, regarding iOS 4 and iPhone 4 as “catching up” to Android:

The existence of a front-facing camera may fairly be considered a “catch up” feature on iPhone 4. But the ability to use the front-facing camera to actually make video calls is first on the iPhone. That’s one difference between Apple and HTC. Apple isn’t going to include a hardware feature just for the sake of having it. They only include hardware for which they have compelling software to complete the experience.

The objections were based on Qik and Fring. But here’s David Pogue on the front-facing-camera-equipped HTC Evo:

After two days of fiddling, downloading and uninstalling apps, manually force-quitting programs and waiting for servers to be upgraded, I finally got video calling to work — sort of. Sometimes there was only audio and a black screen, sometimes only a freeze-frame; at best, the video was blocky and the audio delay absurd.

To make video calling work, you have to install an app yourself: either Fring or Qik. But we never did get Fring to work, and Qik requires people you call to press a Talk button when they want to speak. The whole thing is confusing and, to use the technical term, iffy.

Here’s the test. Take some normal people, where by “normal” I mean people who have never heard of TechCrunch or Daring Fireball. Give them brand new still-in-the-box iPhone 4’s and HTC Evos. Now ask them to make a video call to one another. With the iPhone 4, they’re going to be able to do it. The only thing that’s technically confusing about FaceTime is that it only works via Wi-Fi (I think many people have little understanding of the difference between Wi-Fi and 3G data — at least insofar as why a feature would work over one but not the other). Otherwise, FaceTime is as easy to use as making a regular voice call. There is no such thing as a “FaceTime account” you need to create or log in to. It doesn’t require the installation of any third-party apps. All you need to know is that the iPhone 4 can make video calls, and that the feature is called “FaceTime”. And I’ll bet the little instructional card inside the iPhone 4 box will make that perfectly clear.

How many normal people even know that Qik and Fring exist? Are Android users supposed to install both apps, so they can make video calls to people who’ve only installed one or the other?

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Qik or Fring in and of themselves. Nor is it to say that Android doesn’t have its own first-to-do-right features, like, say, the ability to dictate text-to-speech in any text field. It’s about the mindset of the companies that made the phones. Do you include the half-baked stuff, or hold it until it’s fully-baked? Apple wasn’t going to include a front-facing camera until they had software that made it useful in an iPhone-caliber way. HTC is happy to include a front-facing camera and leave its utility (and user experience) in the hands of third-party developers.

Android and iPhone fans will read the preceding paragraph very differently. Android fans will read it and say, “Exactly — give us the hardware and let developers figure out what to do with it.” iPhone fans will read it and say, “I can’t wait to get an iPhone 4.”

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I'm happy with Zenfolio (I use Flickr a bit too), but still would like to look at a couple of these...

Looking for the best way to store and share your photos? You’re not alone! There are many fantastic sites for photo sharing and we’ve rounded up the top twenty. One or more of these are bound to meet your needs and much more.

We’ve rounded up the top twenty absolute best photo storage and sharing sites, including pricing, storage, accepted file types and other core information to make your decision even easier.

Top Twenty, In Order

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Sexy...

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Must buy one of these inexpensive, yet clever iPhone stands...

Filed under: Accessories, iPhone

TUAWMoviePeg iPhone stand is cheap, cool, easy to clean originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shared by ebohling
Looking for a book to read?

There are more books coming out every year than I can read in a lifetime.  One of the ways I filter for great books is, I ask the most effective people I know, which books had a significant impact on how they think, feel, or act.  I like to find the books that really made a difference, not just in theory, but in practice.

Recently, I reached out to several Microsoft leaders, past and present, and up and down the ranks.  The beauty of Microsoft is the extremely high concentration of smart people and  I like to leverage the collective brain.  In this case, I posed a simple question to find out which business books actually made a difference:

“What are the top 3 books that changed your life in terms of business effectiveness?”

I ended up with a really eclectic set ranging from parenting guides to changing the world.  The top 3 business books that showed up multiple times were: Blue Ocean, Good to Great, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  This actually didn’t surprise me.  I’ve been using Blue Ocean at work on a regular basis and Good to Great was a core part of the culture of the Microsoft patterns & practices team (the team I’m on.)

Here are 36 best business books that influenced the Microsoft leaders that I reached out to:

1. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
2. Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
3. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
4. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
5. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
6. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time
7. First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
8. Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
9. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.)
10. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
11. How To Win Friends and Influence People
12. Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance (Essential Knowledge Resource)
13. Jack: Straight from the Gut
14. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading
15. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box
16. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
17. Memoirs of Hadrian
18. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
19. Pasteurs Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation
20. Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
21. The Soul Of A New Machine
22. Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle
23. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
24. The One Minute Manager
25. The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living
26. The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
27. The Art of Leadership
28. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
29. Art of War
30. The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered
31. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series)
32. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials)
33. Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
34. Unleashing the Idea Virus (Hardcover w/Dust Jacket)
35. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
36. Winning with People: Discover the People Principles that Work for You Every Time

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Wow, wow, wow...

For me, one of the greatest kinds of buildings is a lighthouse. I find amazing how much big storms it takes during a year and keeps showing the way to sailors everywhere. There are some photographers that really know how to catch the different feelings of it.

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I'm not going to make a poem out of it, so I just hope you all enjoy my selection. Here are featured the work of some amazing photographers... I recommend you all to check out their work at their portfolios. They'll appreciate it! Show them some love. Cheers! ;p

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Bacon anything seems to be popular these days...

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I spent many all-niters playing this game with friends...

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To jailbreak or not, this may sway...

Originally published in the Smoking Apples Magazine Issue 5. Grab it now—free no strings attached download—if you haven’t already.

First off, your battery can potentially see a quicker drop after jailbreaking. Chill, though… it all depends upon what you choose to install that will actually make the difference on the battery. There’s various extensions that can essentially run full time on the device, so the more you choose to install the more it will take a hit on your battery. In all honestly, I have everything you see listed below and more running on a daily basis and after a day of using my phone every free moment I get I’m usually sitting with a fair amount of battery. There’s some upsides to help the battery and speed, too. Some tweaks exist to remove useless daemons running in the background and to stop some of Apple’s pesky apps like Mail and Safari from backgrounding on their own. There’s also an SBSettings (more info in the post) toggle to change the screen brightness at will (honestly only takes a couple seconds) as well as an SBSettings toggle to kill processes and free memory (a function Apple forced developers to remove from their applications). Speed can be an issue too, but it’s not for me. On both my past 3G and current 3GS I’ve never had an issue with speed. Things seem to run just as fast as they do on the stock iPhone OS. Finally, another big thing is security. The ridiculous rumors that fly about huge exploits on jailbroken phones honestly astounds me as jailbroken phones typically have far less security issues then the stock iPhone OS (if any) as the jailbreak community is quick on patching up any holes that should be their from Apple (which is honestly very rare). The only thing I would recommend is changing your root password for SSH should you choose to install it.

So, here’s a look at some of my most beloved and also some of the most popular applications and extensions on the jailbreak scene.

Themeing

The stock iPhone OS interface certainly is one with rather exquisite beauty and elegance, and in my opinion is unarguably the best or smart phone interface seen to date. Despite the allure it does harness, the iPhone OS interface in no way delivers what could be a truly outstanding and lustful interface. Due to considerably poor interface and icon design choices by the developers of otherwise exceptional applications, an extremely large majority of jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch users have taken it into their own hands to customize their device’s interface with extended elegance through themeing.

Themeing is undoubtedly one of the most desired customizations many users have after jailbreaking their device. Although many choices have appeared over the years, Jay Freeman’s Winterboard has unofficially become the de facto standard for system wide device themeing. You can theme virtually any interface element with WinterBoard (in any application)! WinterBoard is nothing more than an assistant that helps load themed images into the system, but it does so in a way that ensures no images are replaced so you may safely return to the system default at any point. Despite the fact you could completely refresh your device’s interface to dazzle others with sheer lust, themeing was far from its potential until recent months. Several new additions to the scene have helped create an extremely versatile themeing experience.

The long-existing SpringJumps brewed up by Lance Fetters is a delightfully handy extension that allows you to jump to any page on your SpringBoard with the single tap of an icon. One use of this extension can be seen in the screenshot above where I’m using themed SpringJump icons coupled with an 8 icon dock to allow my to navigate the beautiful interface with an action even quicker than a swipe – a tap. Yanik Magnan’s Iconoclasm is a powerful new extension on the scene that allows you to place SpringBoard icons virtually anywhere on your SpringBoard with custom x and y coordinates. You can set the number of icons per page, and where you want them, all on a per page basis. Another rather recent inductee to assist in the jailbreak themeing scene is Infinidock. This slick extension allows you to set literally an infinite amount of items in your dock with smooth scrolling and customizable spacing preferences.

IconHarvester

With themeing of these wonderful devices came forum additions in communities new and old. These design communities really are ‘communities’ in the strongest sense of the word as user contributions can bring posts for a single theme up to several hundred pages simply to ensure everyone has each application themed. Unfortunately, navigating through these posts to find all the icons you need is never a simple task especially when sites completely lack a search function (though a couple tricks with Google do suffice). Luckily, one fellow with startup NanoTech got just as annoyed as the rest of us and developed IconHarvester to automatically browse and download icons from the MacThemes forums providing the most seemless on-device themeing experience possible thus far.

Although it has its fair share of quirks, IconHarvester does a rather spectacular job at digging up all user-contributed icons on those 180 page posts so you don’t have to. This app goes a step further and not only lets you select which icon of the ones it found that you would like to use, but it will also generate icons for any unthemed icons you still bear should the resources be included by the themer.

SBSettings

As a revolutionary successor to the much-admired BossPrefs, SBSettings by the same developer, BigBoss, will quickly become an invaluable tool for any jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch user. With a simple swipe across the status bar, SBSettings gives you access to a number of settings which are otherwise hidden or time-consuming to access.

Whether you should be lying in bed and you’re tired of Safari thinking it knows what’s best for you by throwing itself in landscape, or you need to flip on the WiFi for faster streaming. Perhaps the AutoCorrect is annoying the ducking hell out of you or your case manufacturer put your silent switch in an incredibly hard to access location (*cough*mophie*cough*), SBSettings is not only at your finger tips, it’s a swipe away.

Music Controls

Even on the iPod touch, controlling your tunes is a pretty weak experience considering the iPod touch is assumedly… you know… an iPod. Shake to refresh is more annoying as hell than it is intuitive.

Music Controls by phoenix3200 is a brilliant extension that uses a double height status bar (just like tethering on the iPhone) to give you control over your currently playing music. With Music Controls you can pause / play and skip to previous and following songs with a simple tap… from any app (yup, taglines it is… taglines it is). Music Controls doesn’t stop at just iPod.app either, it harnesses the power for controlling media in well over a dozen applications including Last.fm, RSS Player, and Pandora.

Snow Cover Pro

I think album art on the lockscreen is great, and apparently, so do the EyeDevs, the folks who designed and developed Snow Cover Pro. Snow Cover Pro presents your album art in a classic crystal CD case or vinyl slip case with plenty of other stunning styles available.

Full-Blown SMS Replacement

Avid texter or not, biteSMS is sure to make you hot (uhm, career in taglines, anyone?). biteSMS not only resembles the clean interface of the native Messages application, but hides in exciting new features that are sure to get you… excited.

biteSMS’ QuickReply and QuickCompose provide you with the fastest possible texting experience you’ve ever seen. Incoming texts show up just as seen above. Tap the textarea, keyboard slides up, you’re good to go. It doesn’t matter what app you’re in, or even if you’re on the lockscreen, biteSMS provides a few quick gestures that’ll make composing and sending that text not only blazing fast, but also uninterruptive to whatever you’re doing on your device. biteSMS also features their own network that allows you to send SMS and (in some areas) MMS messages at what may likely be a very reduced rate in your region. iRealSMS, the founders of these quick reply and compose concepts just tossed out their 3.0 release recently with a similar feature lineup but with some competitive differences as well.

ActionMenu and Inspell

Sure, copy and paste finally hit 3.0, but that doesn’t mean it’s as powerful as it could be. ActionMenu brings tons of power to your copy and paste menu by providing additional options such as clipboard history, favorites / templates, web search and send to Twitter (for text clips), and plenty more. Also by Ryan Petrich, the developer of ActionMenu, is Inspell, more powerful spelling correction for the iPhone and iPod touch. Inspell is nested in the copy and paste menu and provides various dictionary correction suggestions for words it notices are misspelled, just like a traditional word processor, web browser and the like.

Firewalls and Analytic Blocking

Several months back there was quite a bit of hysteria after one blogger discovered several analytics companies were gathering what some feel to be very sensitive information through integration with some of your most used applications. Four of the major analytic companies worked cooperatively with Jay Freeman (saurik, iPhone dev team member and Cydia creator) to bring jailbreakers PrivaCy, a set of four toggles to turn off analytics bundled with some applications. Developer Yllier went a step further to bring host-specific filtering with Firewall iP, an extension that allows you to selectively filter to what hosts an app may connect. It’s all completely customizable and can be toggled off at any time with a simple SBSettings toggle.

3G Unrestrictor

As outrage poured out over iPhone users not being able to use popular apps like Slingplayer and Skype over a cellular data network, jailbroken iPhone users sat contently while streaming TV and making Skype calls over their cellular network. 3G Unrestrictor by Kim Striech gives you the power to trick apps (on a per-app basis) to thinking they’re on WiFi. Whether you want Safari and YouTube.app to hand over the high quality videos, maybe you wanna download a 20MB application over 3G, or perhaps you want to stream from your Slingbox while on the go, 3G Unrestrictor brings you that power. Again, if for whatever reason you need to turn 3G Unrestrictor off for a bit, the SBSettings toggle is there.

YourTube

Tired of having to continually waste bandwidth and time as you attempt to get that lolcat video to stream for every friend you show it to? YourTube is here for you! YourTube is exactly what it’s called, it puts power into your hands and allows you download low or high quality YouTube videos (right in the YouTube application!) and keep them on your device so you can watch them any time, internet connection or not. This delight was brewed up by founding dev team member pumpkin and a few buddies.

MewSeek

Longtime jailbreak iPhone developer errrick first brought the community Mewseek for P2P file sharing and now he’s done it again with Mewseek Pro which brings powerful music search to your device using a variety of music search engines. On the OS 2.0 level Mewseek Pro allowed you to import tunes directly into the iPod.app however this function was crippled with the 3.0 update. Though the developer says he’s continuing to work on this function, it still remains useless. Don’t let that stop you though, the next fantastic app lets you listen to your music in all it’s album art glory.

iFile

Also one of my jailbreaking favorites, iFile is an advanced file manager. Similar to App Store options such as iFiles or Air Sharing, iFile allows you to manage all any document; email, drag and drop it, zip – unzip it (okay, might not exactly be drag and drop, but I like Daft Punk). iFile goes further to offer native music playback just as the iPod app does with album art an all. Files can be accessed via a local web address or as a Bonjour server. The iFile developer has claimed that a coming iFile release will integrate with the upcoming iBlueNova which allows for powerful file sharing over bluetooth.

Categories and Categories SB

Categories is a fantastic app / tweak that allows you to stash some of your less used applications into folders to keep that springboard tidy and organized. Categories SB goes a step further and has the folders load right in your SpringBoard for fast an slick access. Stacks by Steven Stroghton-Smith is also a worthy competitor for hiding your apps but keeping quick access to them. Stacks are fairly similar to the stacks you’d see on any Mac system.

Safari Download Manager and AttachmentSaver

Regain power of your device with Safari Download Manager by Dustin Howett and AttachmentSaver from Youssef Francis. These lovely extensions let you save virtually any file off the interwebs or any attachment emailed to you right to the file system. Both extensions go a step further and offer fantastic integration with iFile, you’d almost think these guys were part of the verbatim system.

LockInfo

Recently released LockInfo by David Ashman is also another of my most loved applications and I’m sure Steve Streza would toss in a praising word or two as well [Ed note: There’s some back scratching going on here I’m sure…]. This beauty keeps nearly everything you’d want right on your lockscreen. Don’t worry about missed SMS and push notifications because of silly UI design, LockInfo keeps new mail, push notifications, calendar events, SMS, phone, voicemails and more right on your lockscreen. LockInfo also features plugins for popular todo applications 2Do, Appigo ToDo, and Things as well as weather, Twitter, RSS, and other fancy plugins. LockInfo also supports themeing, and to be honest, I have one of the less-developed themes.

ProSwitcher

Another fairly new contender on the jailbreak scene from Ryan Petrich and chpwn, ProSwitcher combined with the legendary Backgrounder provides a stunning Palm Pre-like interface for multitasking with applications. Although the iPhone and iPod touch weren’t created to have to many apps running in the background, other tweaks can allow you to have Safari, Mail, iPod and the like stop backgrounding on their own to free up some needed memory.

My Setup

Just a few quick words about what I’m running on my device as as you can see above I’ve got some pretty heavy themeing going on. The main theme I’ve got running is a custom mix of iHome and iHome Matte from lauro’s Home [S] eries which actually inclused the work of totushi and his wonderful SilkyMatte where I think Thyraz may have even played a hand too. The Categories[SB] icons are seen themed with kediashubham’s Matte Nano who is actually the designed behind Matte UI which is responsible for nearly all of the rest of the system themeing. One exception to that however is my Matte StatusBar which whipped up by the great dew825. Finally, there’s Thyraz and friends to thank for the slick SBSettings theme, SBMatte. There is some other minor elements themed by the wonderful members of the MacThemes.net forum, whom I must thank as a community for their incredible work. Hopefully I’ve convinced you that jailbreaking is a pretty epic good time, but whether I have or haven’t be sure to let me know in the comments along with any other questions or annoyances you might have.

Shared by ebohling
May need to leverage some of this knowledge in my day job...

I recently jumped in and acquired an Authenticode code signing certificate & key pair. It’s great being able to sign my .NET executables, installers, and even Visual Studio 2010 extensions.

I’m documenting my efforts here in the hope that others would be able to follow the relatively straightforward process – there’s not much magic other than learning to export and work with the certificate mechanisms inside Windows. But I know a lot of devs see it as a black magic art, and really it’s just about time, money, and some quick learning.

Which dialog would you click ‘Yes’ on?

Windows 7 is leaps and bounds ahead of Vista in terms of usability. The improved User Account Control experience is nice. I think that a lot of people are finally becoming more weary of unsigned software, especially installers.

With the net full of stories of mirror servers becoming compromised, or people blinding clicking yes on many dialogs, the assurance of the dialog without the scary orange warning banner is the one I think every software developer would like to offer their customers. It’s the professional thing to do.

So here we are, from start (no cert) to finish (signing a .NET app). It only took about two days to go through the identity verification process, but the time was well worth it – and the rest is easy given the nice signing tools in Windows and Visual Studio.

We’ll be getting a certificate & private key through a trusted root certificate authority (CA) provider, not test signing or self-signing. If you’ve ever purchased an SSL certificate for your web servers, similar process.

For a list of current program members, see this download on the Microsoft site – there are hundreds of businesses and governments in the program.

Some corporate IT departments will have their own internal CA, so although those companies can sign apps for internal use, using them on machines without that CA cert installed will yield the un-trusted publisher dialog.

What is Authenticode?

Authenticode is the name for the code signing system on Windows. There are many tools from Microsoft that are core to code signing and ship in the Windows SDK.

Code signing certificates have an expiration date, but as long as a timestamp server is used when signing, signed apps can still be used and verified. Certificates can also be revoked if ever compromised.

For good measure, here’s a short Wikipedia page on code signing, and the MSDN document “Introduction to Code Signing”.

What code signing is not

Signing is only a way of proving that some person or company is who they say they are. It doesn’t tell you whether there’s a nice person, or in any way validate functionality of an app.

Also, .NET projects have a “Signing” tab, but this is actually a feature called Strong Naming, and is different. Most commercial software products using .NET will be both strong named, plus be code signed.

What all can you use your $99/year key for?

The PKCS12 file the stores your certs and keys can be used by signing tools for a lot of goodness; you don’t need a separate cert and key pairs for most signing operations a technical company will need to do.

• Signing Windows executables
• .NET programs, class libraries, ClickOnce apps
• .MSI installer files
• Adobe AIR apps
• Java JARs
• Microsoft Office/VBA macros
• Mozilla objects and extensions
• Signing Visual Studio extension packages (.vsix files), although SignTool doesn’t directly support this (no SIP module)

Note that only Verisign offers code signing certificates for Windows device drivers through a special program for kernel-mode code signing.

How does Microsoft do code signing?

Obviously the Microsoft corporate keys are extremely secure and private. All signing is performed through a set of intricate systems that accept builds, check conditions, scan for viruses, and who knows what else… and eventually provide the signed binaries.

It’s pretty much a black box to us as engineers, but it works for hundreds of thousands of files.

As a dev, I’ve had more than my share of wild Friday nights trying to get code strong named and signed: there’s a big process and it revolves around a lot of people, smart cards, and it eventually works out.

Step-by-step guide to purchasing a certificate

Here’s my experience with getting a certificate. Different certification companies may have different processes, but in general you can be sure that you will need to do a lot to provide proof and authenticity of your name/company.

You can purchase a personal certificate (independent developer, professional geek) quicker than a corporate certificate given the different proof requirements.

Since the name/company name is what will be shown in the publisher field, you obviously wouldn’t want to get a personal certificate for company use. Also, be aware that the address you provide to a signing company will be embedded inside the certificate.

I purchased my code signing cert through K Software, which is an official reseller of Comodo certificates, a popular Level 2 CA whose certificates are part of the root CA program on computers everywhere. The certificate costs $99 per year. I’ve heard of other companies sometimes offering specials as low as $65 a year, and others such as Verisign asking $499 a year.

Since there is some pain in the process (producing copious amounts of evidence) and waiting for that to be validated, you may want to consider purchasing a multi-year certificate and skip having to renew yearly.

You must use Windows and either Internet Explorer or Firefox to make the initial request. After the entire process is complete and the certificate is issued (days later), you will need to use the same computer and browser to complete the process. You will then export the certificate and private key to a file so you can store it safely somewhere.

What proof will be required

This is a partial list, the authentication process may require other documents. Most verification can be done through fax, mail, or even email.

If you’ve ever purchased an SSL certificate, it’s almost the same exact process.

• Your own domain name:

• The domain’s WHOIS records must match the information you provide in your order.
• If you use Private Registration services, you’ll need proof from the private registration company that you own the domain and your address matches. This can be a pain.