Who needs iCloud save for iOS Games? We have Data Deposit

Just when I was concern about how I can continue a game that I started on another iOS device, Cydia already gave me an answer.  Thanks for jailbreaking, I can now use a free app called Data Deposit to back up iOS Application setting to Dropbox, and then restore the data on another device.  This works great when I transfer Space Invade InfinityGene and PacMan Champion Edition game play that I did on iPad 1 to New iPad.  Once again it proves that jailbreak is not all about pirating software.
 

Still not many games support iOS Cloud Saves

I was glad to find out that Sonic 4 Episode 2 supports Game Center Cloud Save.  The problem, though, is that most games still DON'T support that feature.  This is a shame, because that feature will really enhance gaming experience as many iOS users have multiple devices.

Jailbreaking iPad2

I tried to use "absinthe-win-2.0.1" to jailbreak my iPad 2, but it didn't work.  I tried both running on my MacMini (under Windows 7) and running on S12, and they both failed.  Eventually I found out that I need to use "absinthe-win-2.0.2.zip".  With that, everything is working fine now.

Too many In-App Purchases traps

The more I use apps these days, the more I realized that many apps (particularly games) use In-App Purchase as their main source of income.  However, because of the nature of games, it's pretty to distinguish whether you are dealing with virtual money (currency used in game just for fun) or dealing with real world money (those that charge your credit card directly).  So to me it's pretty important to to turn OFF in-app purchase feature so that at least the iOS will prompt me a message telling you when you are suddenly dealing with real world money.

To turns off "In-App Purchase", simply go to setting [General][Restrictions], and set "In-App Purchase" to off.

Finally, untethered jailbreak for New iPad

After waiting for so many months, untethered jailbreaking for iOS 5.1.1 for almost all iOS device is finally arrive.  I tried it and it's amazingly awesome.  Everything work as expected, plus more.

To jailbreak your device, simply connect your device to your computer, run the application, press one button, and wait for a long long while.  That's it.  I let the machine running, and next morning I saw that everything was done.

Everything you expected from a jailbreak device is there.  But there's one thing that totally surprised me:  I can use WiFi tethering on my New iPad with AT&T grandfathered unlimited dataplan.  All I did was install and run TetherMe.  This is super awesome, particulary when I found out that even those that failed to tether with my old iPad (like my HTC Desire) WORKS with my New iPad with tethering.  Seems like the chipset on the New iPad is different, and thus making WiFi tethering possible.  Now I can use my iPod Touch gen2 and HTC Desire on the road!

The only glitch was that I found that the Setting and Note icon was disappeared.  No problem.  Simply running iWipe Cache and the problem will be gone.

Losing my backslash

I was enjoying my Logitech ZAGG keyboard for my iPad 2 until 2 days ago when I found that the backslash key was popped out from the keyboard.  The keyboard isn't as durable as I expected, that I was a bit disappointed about that.  Sure it's just a backslash key, and I don't seemed to use that key much anyway.  But now that I know the keyboard itself is fragile, I need to pay extra care when using it, and I don't know paying extra care on stuff :-E .

Using some old gear

Once in a while I will dig up some old gear and see if I can find some use case to turn these old gear into something useful again.  Recently I yanked out my iPod Touch gen 2 and my BTi-660 bluetoth headset, and tried to play music from the iPod Touch to the headset.  Result?  It worked OK ... IF the iPod Touch stays on.  Once the iPod Touch screen turned off, suddenly the bluetooth stopped form working.  I blame mostly on the old iPod Touch.  Also, the BTi-660 sound quality is just lame.  I figured it out by comparing the sound quality between playing back through BTi-600 and from playing directly through connect to speaker through headphone jet.  The different was so obvious that it's almost ridiculous.

HKReporter podcast on Instacast

I never realize that using Instacast (an iOS app for listening Podcast) with HKReporter shows is this easy.  All I need is add the podcast and that's all.  The downside is, though, that sometimes the most current shows may not get downloaded properly.  Still the convenience outweighed the problem.

Apple keyboard blues

Once again my Apple Keyboard was suddenly stopped operating with my MacMini.  After a few days of ignoring it (since I was busy on other stuffs), I found time to look into it, and eventually found out the reason: my iPad 1 was paired with the keyboard, and thus the MacMini faired to operate with it.  But then repairing the keyboard back to Windows 7 side of the MacMini took me some time and mostly trail and error.  Eventually it was working after I got internet connection (by tethering wth iPad 1).

Definitely a time wasting process for researching this.

Got USB Tether working

Thanks to some crap AT&T did, there will be a few days which I don't have broadband connection this weekend.  Since I have a grandfathered AT&T iPad dataplan, I always wonder: is there a way to use tether with it?

Thanks to the fact that iPad 1 with A4 CPU is so hack-friendly, I have a few tethering choice.  I wanted to try MyWi 5. but the price $19.99 is a bit steep to me.  I tried iTether the app, but it did NOT work for me.  I think it's mostly because I didn't run the companion app on desktop.  But even if it does work, it probably won't work with my office VPN setting.  There's a subscription based service from the iTether team called Tether.com.  But again, I am worry that it won't work for my VPN to office setting.

Finally, I tried TetherMe and it worked pretty OK with USB Tether.  I could NOT get the WiFi tethering working, but I was OK as long as I got something working.  I did look through Apple support site, and there's not much help.  In fact, I actually could NOT get my Lenovo S12 working with the USB Tether until after I installed latest version of iTune.  So there seems to be some drivers that needs to be installed, and those drivers only exist after I had iTune installed, yet no web site mentioned about it.

I also tried using office VPN on my office laptop, and the performance was pretty damn well.  I was impressed.