Get it straight from Cydia 1.0 - it should be labeled as an "Important Update".

Have fun, and feel free to let others know what you think of 1.1 in the comments!

Source: Modmyi

We are currently in the organizational stage of the project and there are lots of things left to figure out. We need volunteers - that's one thing we know for sure. Should you have interest, do not hesitate to contact us with what you think you can bring to the organization. Keep checking the site and MobileCamp Montreal's official Twitter account for updates!

Should you decide to update your pre-3.1 device to 3.1, Apple will make it so that not only does it wipe your jailbreak data, but make it nearly impossible for the user to manipulate the device in the future. As it is a highly technical subject, I'll simply direct you to Jay "saurik" Freeman's article which covers everything you need to know about this particular topic.

That being said, there's a hard reality out there. 3.1 is out, and iPhone owners want their devices -- may they be jailbroken or vanilla -- to run the latest firmware. It's absolutely normal, and even encouraged. Nowadays, you need to stay on top of software updates for security purposes, if anything. To that reality, you can add the current problem those people have: you can't jailbreak 3.1. Today, I'm going to enumerate the possibilities that lay before you as a jailbroken iPhone owner who wants to update to 3.1.There are, as of today, numerous options to hack up your device, some are unstable, some are experimental, some are widely recognized as official. Here's a list for easy reference:

• Dev-Team's PwnageTool
• iH8sn0w's iReb
• Chronic Dev's greenp0ison

As of the moment I'm writing these lines, there is one "official" way to jailbreak your device to 3.1... as long as you run MacOS X. The tool which the iPhone Dev-Team released, PwnageTool, is currently only supported on Macintosh platforms. That's a bummer for the rest of us. If you do run a Mac, you're lucky and can jailbreak like you always did.

The other ways are for the rest of us non-Apple fanboys. You'll be happy to know it's surprisingly simple. In order to jailbreak your iPhone with 3.1 on Windows, simply obtain a custom firmware generated by PwnageTool. Be very careful what IPSW you get as you can get fucked (yes, fucked) really easily. Ask your friends, I'm sure one of them has a Mac! Once you have the custom IPSW file, restore your iPhone (hold down the shift key as you click on iTunes' "Restore" button to browse for your custom firmware). Should you have problems (error 1601, 1602, 1604), use ih8sn0w's iReb application to fix it.

Then, when your iPhone will be fully restored using the new firmware, you have nothing else to do, just enjoy. Wasn't that simple? If you're looking to be carrier-independent.... well you can't just yet. We're still waiting on a release of untrasn0w, greenpois0n or whichever will come first.

See Altaf Sayani's great articles about it here and here.

I've been rocking a jailbroken iPhone for a few months now, and I must say I absolutely love it. It feels just like when I switched to Linux: power to the community, freedom of choice and usage, open source spirit... and you're pretty much on your own if shit hits the fan. I've blogged about the best Cydia applications I found in the past (Top 10 Cydia Apps and Top 10 Cydia Apps Redux), but I feel it's time to update that list and share it with you all. "Why?" might you ask. Simple. My needs and interests change regularly. The software source being Cydia, applications can be harder to find than with the centralized Apple App Store. New apps are added to Cydia on a daily basis, and new repositories are created daily, so new stuff is easy to find - good stuff is harder. There are a few tools on the interwebs to help you by attempting to centralize the Cydia apps information (appRater, ModMyi, hackint0sh, iPhoneFreakz, BigBoss, iSpazio), but it's still more challenging than your search-and-tap routine.

Here goes a revamped list of my current essential Cydia apps for your jailbroken iPhone in no particular order. I'm gonna leave out the obvious like Cydia and OpenSSH.

1. WinterBoard: This application allows you to customize pretty much everything you might want to customize on your iPhone. The interesting thing about it is that as a bonus to the default options, you can install plugins that are available for it in Cydia - and there are a lot of them. Themes for the LockScreen, SMS, Applications, SpringBoard, Keyboard, Sounds and much more.
2. SBSettings: Adds a bunch of configuration option such as hiding icons, toggling WiFi/SSH/Bluetooth and more. There are also a bunch of plugins for it. Just the ability to hide the annoying Stocks, Youtube, iTunes, Notes and Calculator icons I never use is really refreshing.
3. StatusNotifier: Adds icons in the top status bar for SMS, emails and calls, near the battery display.
4. FontSwap: This app provides an easy way to swap system fonts. Just select your font from the list provided by the font swap starter pack and select to respring and you will have new fonts! There's also a bunch of add-on fonts available, and new ones pop up everyday.
5. iTypeFastR: iTypeFastR is an app for iPhone, that adds a special keyboard (available as landscape too!). The keyboard allows you to type faster and with less typos, because on average the keys are much larger. This keyboard makes better use of the available room on the screen. Often used letters are bigger then less used ones. On average, you therefore hit bigger buttons. Check this video to see it in action. (Note: iTypeFastR is one of the very few apps in Cydia's App Store. It's free for the first 5000 users, but if you're out of luck, you can buy it here for an acceptable $3.99)
6. PwnPlayer: A full-featured media player that aims to be a replacement for the stock media player. It mimics almost the same interface with the same functionality, plus enables a lot of extra cool features such as filesystem playback, search, lock-screen gesture based playback control, and on-the-fly playlist managing. Check out the features or a video of PwnPlayer in action. The very cool thing about PwnPlayer is that in order to get music on your iPhone, you simply copy it over via SSH! For people for whom this matters, it's one big step towards Linux-only iPhone usage.
7. Icy: Icy is Ripdev's take on the freeware package manager that uses APT repositories to install and remove packages available in another free iPhone installer application, Cydia. The goal was to create a fast, lightweight and more slick solution that is easy and cool to use. And it is much faster and much prettier than Cydia indeed.
8. LogoMe: LogoMe allows you to change your iPhone's boot logo to whatever you want. Just give the app a picture (either in your iPhone or via HTTP) and it'll convert it to the appropriate format and set it as your boot logo just like that.
9. This little python script. Use it to convert your application icons (Apple uses some kind of special PNG format, go figure). You'll need GNU C Compiler (gcc) and libpng (just "png" in the repositories).
10. Kate: I'm not too sure about Kate, but it certainly looks promising. Kate is made by Ripdev, the people who make Icy and a few other quality apps, so it's why I'm putting it on this list even though it's not a free app. Kate is an unique package of little tools for your iPhone that can be installed separately from each other. Each module provides its own set of features aimed to make your use of iPhone more productive and fun. Two important notes before listing some of Kate's awesome modules: it seems to be only installable via Installer and not Cydia or Icy. It appears in all three, but won't run successfully unless installed via Installer. Also, I couldn't get most of Kate's features to work, but I'm guessing that's because I'm running an already heavily modified iPhone and some conflicts are happenning (Smard Dialer with WinterBoard Keypad theme, System Font with FontSwap, µCalendar with WinterBoard, etc). Let me know if you successfully get it to run! You can buy Kate here for 32.09$. Now for some of Kate's modules:
    • Smart Dialer: Favorites list inside of Phone application sure is convenient, but it's not as best as it can be… with Smart Dialer calling your contact has never been easier — simply start typing the name on the numeric keypad and watch Dialer suggest a list of contacts in a snap.
    • µCalendar: Ever wanted to quickly find out what day of the week is a certain date within the month from today? Or, even more, quickly check a list of pending events for today without having to unlock the phone and launching Calendar? µCalendar makes it possible — and it does just that — a quick access to your current agenda. No adding of new events, no previews for five years ahead — why make simple complicated?
    • Privacy: Grinding your teeth every time you're in a middle of showing your latest photo album to friends and an SMS arrives, blocking half of the screen? Or ever had your closest one raise an eyebrow when an unexpected SMS arrives? Well, Privacy is for you! With just one click of a button… er, finger, you'll be able to turn these alerts off, or hide the message text on that pop-up window, or even stop any notifications whatsoever on new SMS arrival. We respect your privacy.
    • System Font: That one is basically everything FontSwap is - but only for font used by the system... It's bundled with Kate. Convenient. Not sure how many third-party fonts are provided though.
    • Reminder: Is basically the same as StatusNotifier. Again, the advantage is that it's bundled with Kate.

A quick note about Ripdev

Ripdev seems to be on a rampage to recode popular applications for jailbroken iPhones. I guess it was inevitable. Letting Cydia have all the "market share" of jailbroken iPhone can't be a good thing in the long run. Competition breeds excellence! Cydia's much ahead though, which is normal considering they pretty much pioneered everything in that field, along with the famous dev-team. I don't get why they competition with third-party applications and not directly with Cydia though. They've already rolled out Icy and their version of Installer, which replace Cydia and their version of Installer. They should just concentrate on building a community to rival Cydia's, in my opinion. But whatever. Maybe they're on to something with their Kali Anti-Piracy system. Here are some examples of applications/features Ripdev have recoded:

1. Hood: Ripdev's SBSettings clone does everything SBSettings does, but it has less features. You can't toggle SSH for example. But there's an included process list/kill, which is a third-party plugin in SBSettings. And it hasn't been updated since December 2008. Shame, it had real potential.
2. System Font: As mentioned above, that's a clone of FontSwap bundled with Kate. It's however limited by lack of community and third-party plugins (fonts) and range of font swapping (it only replaces system fonts).
3. Reminder: Another clone of a popular application, StatusNotifier. Quite similar, can't really tell the difference. Maybe the icons.. Also bundled with Kate.
4. Icy: Obviously! The only competitor to Cydia. However, I think it globally wins. It's prettier and faster than Cydia but there are a few drawbacks. First, you can't choose to modify a package, you only have the option to remove it. The modify option appear only on core packages.
5. FaceLift: From within Kate, this application is a theming engine. It basically renders WinterBoard useless. But again, WinterBoard can rely on thousands of themes already created by its community.

Edit: This post is old and outdated. I'm aware. When it was published, it was accurate. Please refrain from saying "Oh man this doesn't exist anymore". Just read the newer posts instead )

Step 1: Edit your sound file

Since we're looking to replace a SMS tone, the sound file you choose should be short, ideally 3-4 seconds long. Personally, I was annoyed that the iPhone (and many other mobile devices) didn't come with a simple "beep" alert, so I'll be using two simple beep sounds in the example. You can download and/or preview them at the bottom of this post. If the sound you want is part of a longer track, you can easily edit it out with Audacity or any other audio editing application. I'll assume you have your sound file ready. One thing that's important in this step is that your sound file should be saved under the Audio Interchange File Format or AIFF. In order to do so, export your original file as an uncompressed .aiff file. Should be easy enough. If you dont have an AIFF export feature or Audio Converter program, dont worry, you can use iTunes to do the conversion. Import the MP3 file to iTunes. Goto iTunes -> Preferences (for Mac) or Edit -> Preferences (for PC). Navigate to Advanced -> Importing tab and set the “Import Using:” to AIFF then import the file. Once that's completed, locate your sound file and replace the extension from .aiff to .caf (Apple Core Audio Format). At the end of this step, you should be left with a .caf file of a few kilobytes.

Step 2: Package your custom tones (optional)

This is where WinterBoard comes in handy. WinterBoard basically allows you to package your customizations in order to avoid replacing the iPhone's default files. You can replace pretty much anything you might ever need to without modifying a thing and using WinterBoard's nifty little interface to enable/disable your modifications. If you don't have or don't want WinterBoard, skip to step 3. Otherwise, read on!

Making a WinterBoard package is rather easy. You simply have to respect a given structure and place your custom files according to their original locations. There's a great introduction/tutorial on how to make your own WinterBoard theme over at ModMyi if you'd like to know more. Start off by creating a folder on your desktop. Call it whatever you wish your WinterBoard package's name to be; I'll use "pLSounds". Go into that folder and create another folder, name it "UISounds" (case sensitive). Put the .caf file resulting from step 1 into this folder (UISounds). What this will result in is simple. The iPhone's default file structure places every sound file in /System/Library/Audio/UISounds - WinterBoard adds symbolic links in /Library such as "Themes", "Ringtones" and "Wallpapers" pointing to WinterBoard's file repository in /var/stash. In simple words, everything you will put in your package's "UISounds" directory will, once activated, emulate overwriting the iPhone's default "/System/Library/Audio/UISounds" folder, therefore allowing you to use your own custom data. Now, for SMS tones, the iPhone's default files are named like this:

1. /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received1.caf (Tri-tone)
2. /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received2.caf (Chime)
3. /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received3.caf (Glass)
4. /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received4.caf (Horn)
5. /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received5.caf (Bell)
6. /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received6.caf (Electronic)

So in order to be able to use the custom SMS tones you create, you need to respect the default file nomenclature. If you've created two custom tones, name them "sms-received5.caf" and "sms-received6.caf". Once enabled in WinterBoard, they will replace the Bell and Electronic tones in your iPhone's Sound Settings panel.

Step 3: Upload your data

The rest is rather obvious and simple: you've created a WinterBoard package containing your custom SMS tones, now all you need is to send it on your iPhone! In order to do so, you will need to have OpenSSH installed and enabled on your iPhone. OpenSSH allows you to connect securely to your device and perform actions typically available on a BSD platform. To make it easier, we'll transfer the files using the SFTP protocol (SSH File Transfer Protocol or Secure File Transfer Protocol). First you'll need to figure out your iPhone's IP address; this is much easier when you're on a local network you control. To figure out your IP address, either use available applications (such as BossPrefs), check your router's DHCP client table or log in to your iPhone via Terminal and type "ifconfig en0 | grep inet" at the prompt. Connect to it via SFTP and browse to the the appropriate directory (WinterBoard: /Library/Themes - without WinterBoard: /System/Library/Audio/UISounds) and upload your package's directory or your caf files. If you're not using WinterBoard, make sure to create backups of all the files you will overwrite just in case. Voila! You can now close everything, fire up WinterBoard on your iPhone and you should see your package. Enable it and check out the Sound Settings to set your custom SMS tone. Easy huh?

Sources and Downloads

1. How to make your own WinterBoard theme tutorial at ModMyi
2. Amplify UK

You can download the two audio files I've used for my custom SMS tones here in CAF format.

1. Cydia: Obviously. This application is basically a GUI frontend to APT running on the ramdisk. If that didn't make sense to you, well let's just say it's an alternative community-powered App Store. Also has great management tool as well as a nifty Storage display.
2. WinterBoard: This application allows you to customize pretty much everything you might want to customize on your iPhone. The interesting thing about it is that as a bonus to the default options, you can install plugins that are available for it in Cydia - and there are a lot of them. Themes for the LockScreen, SMS, Applications, SpringBoard, Keyboard, Sounds and much more.
3. MakeItMine: Allows you to customize the carrier name that appears in the status bar (at the top) as well as the banner (the clock).
4. OpenSSH: Allows you to SSH to your device as root (so be careful!)
5. SBSettings: Adds a bunch of configuration option such as hiding icons, toggling WiFi/SSH/Bluetooth and more. There are also a bunch of plugins for it. Just the ability to hide the annoying Stocks, Youtube, iTunes, Notes and Calculator icons I never use is really refreshing.
6. Cycorder: Allows you to record videos on your iPhone, which is a seriously neglected feature by Apple.
7. Emoji - Enables the Japanese Emoji keyboard that, for some reason, is disabled with some carriers. Allows you to add emoticons to your SMS/emails. Only compatible with iPhones and other Emoji-capable devices obviously. You can also enable this manually.
8. NoCamSound: Pretty self-explanatory name. Disables the "shutter sound" when you take a picture. WinterBoard plugin.
9. StatusNotifier: Adds icons in the top status bar for SMS, emails and calls, near the battery display.
10. Clippy: System-wide clipboard. Implements copy & paste.

Those who didn't make the cut are Qik, Scrobble, Veency and Netatalk. Why? For Qik, I found it extremely bandwidth intensive when not running on a WiFi network. Streaming over 3G, at least with my carrier, is not really possible. For Scrobble, Veency and Netatalk, the reason is the same for all of them. They are three useful applications, but they're always running in the background, which steadily sucks battery juice. My iPhone, which usually lasts for a whole day without any problem unless I use it intensively, was at 60% after only 3 hours. Not really a good thing. OpenSSH, on the other hand, is also a daemon that runs in the background but, contrary to the other power-eating daemons, you can deactivate it via a useful shortcut in SBSettings, so I only enable it when I need to SSH in.

That about covers it. Worth jailbreaking? I think so.

Basically, jailbreaking your iPhone will give you more customization power and, if you're a Linux enthusiast, will allow you to SSH to your device and explore they filesystem. The great thing about it is that it doesn't affect everything you did before jailbreaking - you can still sync it with iTunes. Here are my favorite applications, the ones that made jailbreaking worth it for me.

1. Cydia: Obviously. This application is basically a GUI frontend to APT running on the ramdisk. If that didn't make sense to you, well let's just say it's an alternative community-powered App Store. Also has great management tool as well as a nifty Storage display.
2. WinterBoard: This application allows you to customize pretty much everything you might want to customize on your iPhone. The interesting thing about it is that as a bonus to the default options, you can install plugins that are available for it in Cydia - and there are a lot of them. Themes for the LockScreen, SMS, Applications, SpringBoard, Keyboard, Sounds and much more.
3. MakeItMine: Allows you to customize the carrier name that appears in the status bar (at the top) as well as the banner (the clock).
4. OpenSSH: Allows you to SSH to your device as root (so be careful!)
5. SBSettings: Adds a bunch of configuration option such as hiding icons, toggling WiFi/SSH/Bluetooth and more. There are also a bunch of plugins for it. Just the ability to hide the annoying Stocks, Youtube, iTunes, Notes and Calculator icons I never use is really refreshing.
6. Qik: Allows you to stream audio and video over the internet - how cool is that?!
7. Cycorder: Allows you to record videos on your iPhone, which is a seriously neglected feature by Apple.
8. Scrobble: Real time scrobbler for Last.fm. There is a Last.fm iPhone application available in the App Store, but it doesn't scrobble songs, just lets you listen to radio. The PC/Mac Last.fm application does scrobble songs when your device is connceted, but I thought real time was more interesting. One amazing option of scrobble is the ability to turn off scrobbling when not on WiFi, which saves bandwidth.
9. Terminal: Obviously, a terminal application that allows you to have a command line tool for your iPhone.
10. Veency: Allows you to VNC directly on your iPhone - basically have graphical remote access, kind of like remote desktop.

Bonus: Netatalk: Lets you browse your iPhone as a shared drive on your Mac.