iOS 6, the next major release of Apple's mobile operating system slated for unveiling at the WWDC keynote next Monday, will likely bring a few new features already present in the latest build of OS X Mountain Lion.
My personal favorite: The new Do Not Disturb mode in Notification Center that should at least help alleviate that iMessage alert conundrum...
Jukebox is an upcoming Notification Center widget that also does double duty as a Dashboard X widget. Its purpose is to allow you to control your music from literally anywhere, which is primarily attributed to its flexibility as both a Notification Center widget, while at the same time maintaining a spot on your Home screen.
The initial release of Jukebox will only feature integration with the stock Music app, but the developer is hard at work at making it play nice with 3rd party music apps like Spotify and Pandora. Besides this one obvious shortcoming, Jukebox is shaping up to be a top tier Notification Center widget, and by far the best Dashboard X widget yet...
iOS 5's upgraded notification system was a welcomed addition to iOS' repertoire, but as time goes on it's evident that it can be improved even more so.
Developers Joshua Tucker and Conrad Kramer have taken matters into their own hands to improve iOS notifications. The result is a tweak that allows you to view the full body of your notifications from the Lock screen or via banner notifications.
Take a look at the preview video for Reveal inside...
Silencing annoying audible notifications and squashing banner alerts? There's a jailbreak tweak for that.
DoNotDisturb does exactly as its name implies — prevents Notification Center alerts from causing any disturbance.
For a look at how it works in action, watch our full video walkthough...
Don't you just hate it when you're in the middle of playing a game and you accidentally invoke Notification Center?
I've found that in particular, games that require a lot of random swipes suffer the most from this issue.
Thankfully, a new jailbreak tweak has been created to put an end to this nonsense, and it's appropriately titled DisableNC Switch...
Sometimes original ideas are hard to come by, whether you're a jailbreak developer, or an App Store developer.
For that reason I see tons of duplicate apps and tweaks that essentially replicate what has already been available.
With that in mind, even if I don't totally understand the purpose of a specific tweak, I still appreciate one that tries to do something different and original.
This is exactly how I feel about ClipboardEdit. It's a tweak that's certainly original, but I'm not exactly sure how I would use it, or why it would be even be needed...
First there was CydiaBulletin, and then there was the dead on arrival Aptdate. These jailbreak tweaks were conceptualized and/or created to provide notifications whenever an app or tweak had a pending updated waiting in Cydia.
Due to traffic concerns, it's unlikely that either of these tweaks will ever see the light of day. That's unfortunate, but it's the reality of the situation unless the developers can come up with a way that won't put too much stress on the repo servers.
But what about the App Store? This sort of functionality would be useful for pending App Store updates as well, would it not? Thankfully, someone was listening.
Check out our video walkthrough of AppUpdateNotifier, a jailbreak tweak that provides banner notifications when updates are waiting in the App Store...
NCSettings is a free jailbreak tweak that adds an SBSettings inspired set of toggles to iOS 5's Notification Center.
While the description of the tweak may sound run of the mill, it's a beautiful looking widget that has a nifty trick up its sleeve.
Check out our full video walkthrough of NCSettings inside...
ActionSlider is the premium version of WeeCloseApps, and it includes many more actions to execute directly from Notification Center.
With WeeCloseApps all you could do was close and kill running and backgrounded apps, but with ActionSlider you can do things like invoke Siri, take a screenshot, open the App Switcher, and many more...
WeeCloseApps is a jailbreak widget that resides in Notification Center. Its purpose is built solely around closing and killing both running apps and backgrounded apps.
This tweak is basically the free version of another tweak called 'ActionSlider', which we will be covering for your shortly.
Once installed, a slider bar resides in Notification Center, and a slide to the left or to the right yields different actions depending on how you configure the tweak in the Settings app.
Have a look at our video demonstration of WeeCloseApps straight ahead...
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPmebvmDk8Y[/tube]
Notificator has finally hit the Cydia store for the price of $0.99. This is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to create custom banner notifications for various system events.
If you've been anticipating Notificator ever since reading our preview of the tweak, then head over to Cydia's BigBoss repo where you can download it today.
Be sure to let us know what you think about it after giving it a try.
When traveling abroad, there's just some things that you should do that are just no brainers. One of them is knowing the exchange rate between your native currency, and the currency of the country you're travelling to.
In the old days this used to take a little legwork, i.e. reading the newspaper, going to the post office, etc. With the smartphone boom, though, currency conversion is often right at your fingertips.
As is the case with this new jailbreak widget, entitled Currency Convertor. It's a widget that conveniently sits in iOS 5's Notification Center for easy access...