In the past, people would say you’re crazy for jailbreaking your iPhone, but these days - it’s almost the norm, as it enables more freedom and capability of customization. I’ve had several iPhones before, and nearly every time; I end up Jailbreaking them to play around with cool stuff.

This cool stuff I am talking about, is of course Cydia - the alternative to the App Store for those who have chosen to ‘unlock’ their devices. I really enjoy Cydia, but it can sometimes be a little tricky, and a lot of apps are heavily bloated with advertisements.

I always return to a set of Jailbreak apps, ones that I use every time I break my phone; and they’ve continued to evolve as the industry itself evolves. Some of these are so good, and offer such high customization that I’ve seen people jailbreak their phones, just to use these apps. Crazy!

BioLockdown: Secure Apps With TouchID

This is a magnificent application to have, you can literally manage all of your iPhone settings and apps within your fingerprint. It’s easy to lock apps, lock settings, and the same way unlock them - by using your TouchID.

Basically, every time you want to make a significant change to your configuration, you’d need to provide your fingerprint. It’s perfect for setting up before a night out.

biteSMS: Advanced Messaging App

biteSMS is fairly new to the market, but is already making itself popular by offering a service that you will not find anywhere else. It’s a messaging app that is global to your iPhone, and so you can easily do all of your messaging from any screen within your device.

You can be watching a video, while answering to a text; etc,. etc,. It’s pretty rad, and many of my own friends who’ve got jail-broken phones, use this app for messaging.

CCControls: Control Center Toggle Customization

It’s not the only app on the market that does this function for us, but it’s certainly one of the most nicest and pleasant to work with. CCControls gives you the ability to modify your control center in any way you like. It’s a real personal customization tool; you can change colors, shapes, and plenty of other things - to make it feel like it’s all built only for you.

I’m loving the fact that you can assign different colors to specific buttons, makes it a lot easier to do some tasks, especially when in a hurry.

iCleaner Pro: Clean Up Your Device

iCleaner Pro, developed by Ivano Bilenchi and one of the most popular tools jailbreakers use to remove unnecessary files from their devices, has been updated to match the look and feel of iOS 7. In addition, there are many performance optimizations, improved text search, and more files you can cleanup.

You get a lot of customization options with this, and there are plenty of features that will allow you to clean your device even from the most old files and settings.

TetherMe: Turn Your iPhone Into a Hotspot

It’s not a free app, but I think it’s worth the investment of $5, for the amount of flexibility you get in return. With TetherMe, you’ll be able to connect all of your nearby devices to a one single hotspot that’s hosted by your iPhone device. It’s probably my favorite app, as far as usability goes.

Conclusion

Cydia is a great little app store, full of surprises and unusual things. I honestly think that the fact that they don’t really have any strict rules, in terms of what kinds of apps you can publish and download - is what attracts so many people to jailbreaking.

I used to think that it’s a bad idea, and I’ll lose some value; but from what I can tell, I have only gained value and the list of apps I’m using trough Cydia is starting to grow rapidly.

There is both community and the support available, so I don’t really see the reason not to do it. Are any of these apps on your list of favorites? Would love to find out.

Facebook has been very active in the overall technology community for the past couple of months, major acquisitions like the Oculus Rift have certainly created a huge impact for this company, and are surely to set some long-term foundations as far as trust and dependability goes.

Whether you like it or not, you’re about to see a lot more Facebook ads in apps you use on your smartphones and tablets. That’s the upshot of a long-anticipated announcement by Facebook today of an advertising network that will allow its ads to be distributed throughout mobile apps. [F]

It looks as if Facebook is definitely looking towards making more revenue, and this is the perfect time to consider joining the ranks of marketers and advertisers who’re building their communities and user bases through the Facebook Mobile Install Ads platform. Why not grow the downloads of your applications on the fly, right?

With over 1 billion active mobile devices using the website every single month, one can only imagine how big of an impact that can create for your products, or in this case, your applications. It’s easy to get started, and Facebook offers an extensive introduction on how to setup your first ad campaign.

Facebook is only now starting to experiment with broader mobile advertisements, which are being rolled out over the course of the next couple of months, there is already a huge, untapped into market that will drive a great deal of traffic to your apps.

TheNextWeb reported back in 2013, that there were roughly 8,000 developers using the mobile install ads platform, when we begin to narrow that down by taking into the account all of the active mobile users, we get a better idea of how much potential there is.

Decide on Your Market and Audience

As with all Facebook advertising campaigns, the most strategic part is always going to be the demographics. We want to be targeting only those people who’re going to be genuinely interested in what we have to offer, and thankfully, Facebook makes it easy to customize our campaigns to our specific needs.

The one thing to watch out for, is the fact that we need to run a couple of smaller campaigns to make sure that our predictions are in sync with our goals. We wouldn’t want to invest thousands of dollars into a single campaign, without ever making sure that the market is even interested.

I’d say that a couple of cheap campaigns on few different markets will give you a better perspective on both how the Facebook ads work, and how the market is reacting to your product.

Using Custom Call-to-Action Buttons to Your Advantage

Just a few months ago, Facebook rolled out a major update to the mobile install ads platform, which now enables developers and advertisers to use custom call-to-action buttons for their campaigns. The buttons that you’re now able to use:

• Watch Video
• Listen Now
• Play Game
• Shop Now
• Use App
• Open Link

On top of the good old ‘Install Now’, which is, of course, still available, you get access to all of the above. Which means that you’re able to build campaigns for different kinds of apps, giving you broader exposure.

Always Monitor Your Results

The biggest mistake we can make in this particular situation, is to avoid monitoring our performance results. Although I mentioned that already above, it’s important that we know how well our ads are performing, and combining those performance reports with the feedback we receive at our end, we can make for better future decisions.

Learning the Basics of Facebook Mobile Install Ads

It’s all about investing and taking the time to analyze the performance reports of our campaigns. The Facebook overall growth rate is indicating that this is a very good time to explore this particular way of advertising. If you’ve been thinking about launching a new app, or looking to expand the size of your current one, this might be a good place to begin your journey.

iPhone isn’t just a smartphone, or a high-end mobile device that you can use to build amazing things; it’s also a photography device for many, and when we look at the industry at large, many of the images we share online these days, have in fact been captured with our mobile devices.

Instagram changed the way we perceive photo sharing with friends, family and the public, but guess what? Instagram is only for mobile devices, and so you can image the scope that the industry has managed to consume over time. Apart from default filters that Instagram offers, there isn’t all that many other things to do with your photos.

But, it’s never just about Instagram, or similar sites. Often, artists take professional photos for themselves and their projects, using nothing but their mobile phone, and perhaps a couple of additional gadgets, but we’re not going to get geeky here.

iOS photo editors enable us to play with our pictures at a greater depth, and saves us time from having to upload every single picture to our computers, and doing the editing from there. I’ve used plenty of iPhone photo editors in the past to know which ones are good, and which ones lack even the most basic features.

We’re going to take a look at the top 7 photo editors for iOS devices, and hopefully you’ll be able to find something new and exciting that you would like to try. Lets get to, shall we?

Sktchy

Sktchy makes photo sharing inspiring. Every day artists around the world create amazing portraits inspired by the photos on Sktchy. Drawings, paintings, sculptures — you never know what your photo might inspire an artist to create.

I’ve learned that this is the perfect photo editing / sharing app for artists, I’ve found so much inspiration by browsing peoples crazy views of life, and I highly recommend for you to download and try this free photo app.

Frametastic

You can easily build beautiful collages and organized photo galleries (hence, frames) and share them with your family and friends. I’ve chosen to include this photo editor in this list, because it also offers the ability to apply filters, very similar to Instagram.

FxCamera

Toycam, fisheye, symmetric photos, this app has got it all and it’s so easy to use, you’ll even forget that you’re using it. The really interesting feature that stands out for FxCameris of course the ability to do voice-overs for your photos, you can snap a photo while also doing a voice-over for it, and it’s totally share-able on big social networks like Facebook.

Camera360

This was the best photo editing app in 2013, and still is in the year 2014. Camera360 has been around for long enough to understand the market and realize what the customers want. You can easily apply filters and see both non-filtered and filtered pictures at the same time, instead of switching from one to another, you can see it all happen in real-time.

Photo Wonder

Stands out with a magnificent collage feature, which will make you want to rearrange all of your previous photos in beautiful sets of galleries and collages, has a decent sized filter collection, but nothing overly spectacular. Still, over a 100 million downloads cant be wrong!

Vintage Deco

Like vintage, or retro? This is the app to get, it has recently gotten a lot of attention due to the fact that artists and creatives are making good use of the set of filters that this app brings to the table, and also the stamps and frames that you can put on pictures. If not for editing, then at least get it to have some fun with friends.

LINE Camera

I’m constantly using this photo editing app to edit my photos with the ability to add text and extra images to them. You get access to incredible amounts of fonts and filters, and it’s one of the nicest applications for adding extras on top of your images. Try it out and let us know what you thought!

Free iOS Photo Editors for iPhone in 2014

The market for photo editors on the iOS is for sure growing, and this is only a small percentage of what is out there, available. Not to mention, many of the photo editors that could have made the list, are actually paid applications (unlike this list, free), and have even more extraordinary features integrated within them.

Just like computers, mobile devices also advance at a rapid rate, and so the technology improves, and the things that we can do; improve as well.

Flipboard is your personal magazine. It is the most popular way to catch up on the news, read stories from around the world and browse the articles, videos and photos friends are sharing. To begin, pick a few interests and tap any of the tiles to begin flipping through your personal magazine.

You can get it for your iPhone / iPad, Android, Windows or even BlackBerry devices, and it’s easily one of the best social news magazines in the world. The name originates from a design feature which is called ‘flipping’, which means you’re reading everything like you would on a normal magazine, by flipping pages.

Flipboard announced on March, 5. 2014 that it is acquiring Zite, a competing news-recommendation and content-sharing app currently owned by CNN, and will use that acquisition to create a broad advertising and content partnership with the news giant. [G]

 
In order to broaden your experience of Flipboard, we’ve put together a list of five ways to help you get the most out of Flipboard, and make your reading experiences a little bit more personal, and engaging.

Save Your Stories for Later

You are able to save any article for later reading, currently Flipboard offers two ways of doing this:

• Instapaper
• Pocket

all you have to do is click the menu item whenever viewing content, and you’ll be presented with the option to save stuff for later. This is particularly useful when you feel like you’ve began reading something really good, but don’t have the time to read it right now: because far too often, we just forget about those articles.

You’ll need accounts with either of the services to save content for later.

Dislike the Reading Layout?

I’m not very fond of Flipboard’s default design, and to fix this problem, I’m reading articles on the original sites that they’ve been submitted from. You might not think this is at all going to make any difference at first, but I’ve noticed that it often does make a difference and I tend to explore new areas, that I would have otherwise ignored.

Ignore Crappy News Sources

The one thing I absolutely love about Flipboard is their transparency, and their set of options that they give to the users, which enable for far better freedom and content quality. You’re able to ‘mute’ users / magazines incredibly easy, all you have to do is navigate to their profile and click the menu button, and from there select the option to ignore.

Far too often, a news site is going to start taking different approach to their style of news, and you’ll end up with low quality soap content on your sources list. I’ve ignored well over 50 people / brands in less than a year.

Connect Your Social Media Profiles

Flipboard allows you to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and once you do that, you’re able to update those social sites from within the Flipboard’s own dashboard, what I love about that is that you’re able to discuss the news you’re reading with much larger audience (rather than having to share something separately, and then check separately too) and it makes for better overall experience.

Build Your Flipboard Magazine

I’ve built several, to keep a track of different sources that I am reading. It’s also an alternative to one of the points we already read earlier, it’s a way of saving articles and stuff you like for later reading. You can create a magazine from any page on Flipboard, just look for the ‘+’ button and take it from there.

Flipboard for iPhone: How To Make It Better

It takes a little time to get used to this wonderful magazine app, but the thing I like the most about it, is that after a while you realize how sophisticated it is, yet so easy to use and navigate. It’s clear that the team behind this project has worked hard to iron out all the design kinks over time.

It’s still my favorite way of consuming news, but do you think it can compare with stuff like newsstand apps?

How long has it been since you took a good long look at the iOS human interface guidelines? The release of the iPhone 5? iPhone 4? Earlier? Never? If you’ve not looked at them recently and given your iOS7 app development a top-to-bottom review, your work may be suffering. Don’t worry, though. In this article, we’ll be reviewing the key points of the guidelines, condensed and refined for the developer on the go.

Core Principals

RadDesign.in outlines three themes as the core of iOS 7 development:

Deference. An application’s interface doesn’t compete with the content—it stays out of the way or complements it.

Clarity. Text is easy to read at any size, icons are effective and precise, adornments are subtle, and function drives design.

Depth. Motion and layers work together to create a livelier, more engrossing user experience.

Developers should completely strip away their old UIs and reconsider their apps from the ground up, integrating the new design principals of iOS 7 to create a functional, consistent user experience.

Anatomy

Understanding the UIKit framework and its terminology can go a long way in helping a developer meet Apple’s human interface guidelines in their designs. It’s also important to realize the difference between developer perspective and user perspective in this area, i.e. the difference in perception of ‘views and view controllers’ vs. ‘screens’.

Quick In and Out

iOS 7 design themes place a premium on apps which function as users want them to function, given the ‘use for a minute or two of downtime’ nature of many iOS apps. A quick launch without splashes and start buttons and an equally speedy exit make for the most satisfactory experience.

That also means skipping prolonged setups where possible. Drive Dominion recommends settings which will satisfy 80% of your users, ignoring outliers, and gathering information from other sources when possible.

Functional Layouts

Layouts with more options aren’t always more functional. Tappable controls should be at least 44×44 points, as PossPW suggests. It’s also important to understand how users focus on content. The top left corner is most important, with user attention slacked the further down and to the right they move on their screen. Clever use of size, color, and proper alignment groupings will make it much easier for users to find what they need and access it in busy or distracting environments.

Navigation should be transparent. That is to say, you don’t want end users noticing your navigation; it should be so seamless and convenient that the user moves from content piece to content piece without ever having to consider how to get to their next goal. Similarly, you don’t want users to ever feel trapped in a dead end or modal task with no obvious route back.

Interaction

Certain gestures and methods of interaction are ingrained in iPhone users by now; if your app utilizes functions like the tap, drag, flick, swipe, double tap, pinch, touch and hold, or shake in a way that differs wildly from their standard usage, you can expect unhappy users. Likewise, don’t reinvent the wheel with custom gestures for standard activities. The only noteworthy exceptions to these baselines are games, where custom gestures often supply half the fun.

Style

Consistency between apps improves the user experience in animation, graphics, branding, and other aspects of style as much as in gestures. Gratuitous animations and other ill-considered attempts to ‘stand out’ fall flat in the iOS 7 environment. Refined, unobtrusive, and functional are the keywords for branding and other aspects of style.

Standards

An app communicates with users. Knowing the language of the iOS 7 environment is very important for accurate, precise communication; words and terminology have specific meanings to someone who has used other iOS apps with implications which do not exist outside of that environment. Similarly, there are a multitude of standard UI elements, particularly those from the UIKit, which people have become comfortable with.

Developers must carefully consider the needs of the end user and the goals of the human interface guidelines before introducing custom elements to the experience.

Apple Newsstand was first released three years ago, in 2011. One of the first news outlets around the World to publish their own unique newsstand application was The New York Times, I’m not quite sure that the decision they made was a wrong one, and to be fair - it probably had a lot of influence on other news websites.

In less technical terms, newsstand enables news websites (though, journals work just as well) to have their application listed within the newsstand ‘folder’, not function as a standalone app - which, let’s be honest, at this stage of technological growth would be a serious pain in the neck.

But because we already know all this, we’re here to take a look at some methods and techniques of how we can improve our newsstand application, and make it stand out from the crowd.

Most importantly, we want to increase the engagement rate, and the amount of people reading news trough our app - while word of mouth has little to do with this, an exceptional application is sure to capture the attention of many.

The Cover of Your Magazine

I guess one of the wisest decisions that able made regarding newsstand, was that it enabled publishers to submit their apps with a specific cover icon, but whenever an update of the magazine would be published - the cover would change automatically.

You need to get it right, every time. Yes, people are mostly visiting your news because they like to read what you’re writing about, but being able to capture the extra attention trough a well thought of cover can mean all or nothing.

The best way to go about this is probably by looking at past issues of really popular magazines, and seeing whether they prefer to use minimal or more stylish design types for their covers.

Start Publishing Multimedia

Technology is advancing very quickly, and so are the specifications of smartphones like iPhone itself, allowing the phone to withstand much more multimedia types. The types we’re interested in are,

• music files,
• widgets,
• animations,
• 3D,
• slideshows

What you want to do is blow the user away with your ability to provide new media formats, frequently and without any extra effort on the users part. That is exactly what’s going to make your newsstand app stand out from the crowd.

Good example? I guess New York Times itself is a good example, they’re mostly publishing text content, with the occasional videos here and there. Get on top of that, and start publishing animated content, 3D concepts and more - make it as realistic as possible.

Content That Engages and Calls for Action

I can’t remember exactly where I read this saying, but it went something along the lines of ‘great content doesn’t require a call for action, for it is so good that people want to pass it forward’ - it could be me myself coming up with it right now, but it’s definitely an analogy to live by, when it comes to working with stuff like news and delivering content to people.

You’re competing with possibly ten more applications on that newsstand shelf, and it’s hardly about the looks - give the readers content that will make them want to come back, but never cross the line of producing something for the sake of getting return visitors.

Encourage your writers, build new relationships, maximize the exposure potential. It has been know for a long time, happy workers are far more productive than those who’re being treated badly.

Know Your Market Niche

We’ve learned a lot, on how to build a better newsstand app that will surely capture the attention of both current, and potential readers. But, the last thing I want to say is that on top of all that - if we’re able to understand and know our niche that we work within, we’re already half-way on the road to success.

Big publishers publish all that they can publish, mostly for exposure and the momentum they’re able to gain. You can instead focus on building highly niche developed magazines that deliver high quality content to that special bunch, which is not only going to increase the revenue, but also the engagement rate and the overall quality of the site.

I’ve tried serving tens of niches at a time, from within one website - and honestly, half the categories after a while become dead. I still keep them, in case there is ever something scientific to publish.

With each new iOS version, there are significant amount of changes that are being brought to the table, but not only for the typical consumer, also for developers - who’re the ones building applications, and in fact the future of Apple as we know it.

Guess what, as an iOS developer in New York (or anywhere in the US), you can expect to earn a salary ranging from 100,000$ all the way up to 150,000$ when you become proficient and more experienced. Now, that’s definitely something I’d think twice about, considering that a book from which you can learn iOS app development is going to costly somewhere in the 30$ range.

In this post you’re going to learn about five of the most recognized and admired books that are currently available to the public, for learning iOS application development. I’ve made sure that all of them are beginner friendly, and will advance you to intermediate / advanced level with a couple of weeks. They’re also all fully updated for the new iOS 7.

iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Updated and expanded to cover iOS 7 and Xcode 5, iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide leads you through the essential concepts, tools, and techniques for developing iOS applications.

It’s a top-quality book, with each of the chapters containing meaningful and useful information, nothing feels out of the ordinary and you’re hardly looking up on the web, for solutions to problems you couldn’t find solutions for inside of the book itself. Now, its important to note that there are only two chapters on Objective-C in this book, and so you might find it a little bit difficult at first, but nothing that practice wont be able to even out.

iOS 7 Programming Cookbook

iOS 7 changed the way customers use their phones. Everything is now animated; things are subtly moving around, sometimes without the user noticing these shifts and turns and twists.

What’s important to note here that this is a cookbook, which in other words means that it will be looking mostly at new functionality that has been implemented in iOS 7, and so previous knowledge of Objective-C might be necessary in order to fully understand it. It should be however purchased for future reference, as the author of this book is a great developer himself.

iOS 7 Application Development in 24 Hours

In just 24 sessions of one hour each, learn how to build powerful applications for today’s hottest handheld devices: the iPhone and iPad! Each lesson builds on what you’ve already learned, giving you a rock-solid foundation for real-world success!

It’s not a bad book at all, the fact of the matter is - its built to help you do everything step-by-step, nothing you couldn’t do yourself with other books. Its 900 pages, and inside of it there is everything you could possibly learn about iOS and its development. On-going book series that are worth having in the shelf.

Programming iOS 7

If you’re grounded in the basics of Objective-C and Xcode, this practical guide takes you through the components you need for building your own iOS apps. With examples from real apps and programming situations, you’ll learn how to create views, manipulate view controllers, and use iOS frameworks for adding features such as audio and video.

This is a book to pick-up once you’re at intermediate level, as it will take you to advanced within a few chapters. It has been recognized as one of the best and simplest books on iOS 7 (or any other version) development there is. Has quite an edge, but some say its starting to lose it.

iOS App Development For Dummies

iOS 7 represents the most significant update to Apple’s mobile operating system since the first iPhone was released, and even the most seasoned app developers are looking for information on how to take advantage of the latest iOS 7 features in their app designs.

If none of the above books felt good enough, or practical enough - this one definitely will. Its aimed at those who’re complete strangers to iOS, and want to pick up the pace and their own rate. Its full of documentation and other practical things, will take at most 6 weeks to build a proper app from the ground-up.

Conclusion

Its a great thing to learn - programming. Its also one of the most awarded job industries in the world, and the pay itself is a huge attraction for those who’re still considering to begin their journey. I hope these books were of help to get you in the right direction.

See the Driver Vine App here

The Backstory

I thought speaking to the Government was scary but it actually turns out regular people work there 🙂 Okay, why am I saying this?

I decided to make an app for people taking the UK Driving Theory Test and it turns out, you can license the official question bank from the Driving Standards Agency at www.gov.uk

I got in touch by email and a nice guy called Alan replied and walked me through the process. You have to make sure the app doesn’t use official artwork, attribute the DSA etc.. and..

… you have to pay 13% royalty to the UK Government on any proceeds you make!

After Apple takes 30%, the Queen takes 13%, I probably will be left with enough to put petrol in the car…

.. but I still went on and made the app anyway and it is now live in the App Store.

Watch the video to see behind the scenes on how I got the app up and running.

1) You will see the DSA website where I got the license from
2) The actual stuff which was sent to me (See what I got instead of an API!, It’s like we are back in 1984)
3) How I managed to do the implementation in 2hrs (condensed to 4 mins)

Watch the video above and let me know what you think.

If you want to make your own Quiz/Test/Trivia app, take a look at the Quiz Maker template to give you a jump start

Click here to see all the features of the Quiz Maker Template