NetworkJew » apple

Hack your Iphone/ iTouch into a Vonage Softphone

Network Jew — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:31:25 +0000

Vonage is a great service. Its relatively inexpensive, and they’ve got some great features, like Simu-Ring, email notifications, etc., I had always thought that in order to use the Vonage service one needed to use one of their hardware solutions, or pay extra for a “softphone” – a software based SIP phone, with an additional phone number, and monthly charge. Wouldn’t it be great if you could fire up any SIP software based phone of your choice and still get dial tone from your Vonage account? Well, thanks to a nifty little hack, you can.

The first thing you need is your Vonage web account information. Once you have it, enter the following into your web browser, making sure to replace the parts in bold with your account information.

https://im-config.vonagenetworks.net/config?&login=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&type=1003

You’ll end up with a page full of mostly useless information. however, you want to copy down the following entries as they relate to your account:

ProxyUserName=username
ProxyUserPassword=FAB16g93E7a
ProxyDomain=a.vonim.com
ProxyPort=10000

Now that you’ve got the secret information, you have two choices depending on whether your iPhone is jailbroken or not.

1) If your phone is NOT jailbroken, go the the App Store and grab the free FRING application. Once you’ve set your free Fring account up , go to More then Add-ons
Select SIP, then Other

Fill out the fields as follows:
User ID = ProxyUserName
Password = ProxyUserPassword
Proxy = ProxyDomain:ProxyPort

(mine was a.vonim.com:10000)

Now save those settings and try making a SIP call. you’ll notice that your calls appear to come from your Vonage line. Neat!

2) If you phone is Jailbroken, get on Cydia and install the free SIPHON aaplication. Install it, then go to your iPhones settings menu and open up the settings for Siphon. Enter your username and passsword that you got from the webhack above. For server, enter the Proxydomain:Proxyport. (mine was a.vonim.com:10000) There’s all sorts of other settings you can make if you’re a real SIP guru. Close the settings, fire up Siphon and start dialing.

Be sure whenever using either softphone to include the area code when dialing.

Enable Background Tasks on Iphone 3GS

Network Jew — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:41:04 +0000

If you’re like me, the greatest limiting factor on the Iphone is its inability to run more than one application at a time. In Apple’s infinite wisdom, they apparently decided that battery life and performance were more important than actual usefulness and productivity. One of the best benefits to Jailbreaking your Iphone is the ability to run applications in the background. So the next time you’re listening to Pandora , and you decide you want to check movie times or hit up ebay, you can just send Pandora to the background, where it will continue playing your music until you return to it and close it. Nifty. You should know that this is a HACK – not supported by Apple, and applications for the iPhone are not necessarily written to support being run in the background. That being said, here’s how to make it happen:

1) Jailbreak your Iphone 3GS (if you haven’t, click here for instructions)

2) Once you have Cydia installed, open it, and search for Backgrounder, and install it. Make sure you get the 3.0 version.

3) Close Cydia, reboot your iphone and launch Backgrounder. Once you reboot, its actually already running. Read the “how to use” and the Release Notes, as well as Known Issues.

4) there are no “settings” or configurable options for Backgrounder on the 3GS. To keep a program running in the background, simply hold down the home key until Backgrounding Enabled appears. the app will go away, but if you’re streaming music it will continue to play. OPen and close the app as usual to continue to keep it running. When you’re ready to fully close the app, repeat the enable process- hold down the home key until Backgrounding Disabled appears briefly. The app is now closed.

5) Some things to be aware of:

If you open too many apps simlutaneously you can crash the apps or the iPhone itself. I try to limit to 1 or 2 apps running in the background only.
There’s no easy way to tell what applications are open in the background without using another utillity like SysInfoPlus, which you can also grab through Cydia.
I’ve read that there are issues with apps that use voice control like Skype running in the background.

How to JailBreak the Iphone 3GS

Network Jew — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:01:04 +0000

I decided to wait a week after getting my 3GS to attempt jailbreaking it. I wanted to be sure that I had a good feel for the device’s quirks before throwing any third-party software at it and creating more. That being said, jailbreaking the 3GS turned out to be a pretty simple process. I did it on the mac, but it works just as well on the PC.

Grab the latest version of Itunes before you start and be sure you’re on Iphone 3GS 3.0 software ONLY. I can’t say whether this will work with updates beyond that.

1) go to http://purplera1n.com Click on the link for your OS, and download either the Windows EXE or the Zipped Mac app.

2) Connect your Iphone 3GS via USB to your computer. Cancel any sync activity. Launch the appropriate app for your system.

You shoudl see one of these two windows, depending on your OS:

3) Click “Make it rain”, and let the Jailbreak commence…

Your Iphone should go into Recovery Mode at this point, and after a couple minutes, reboot itself. At that point, you’re done. One my phone, it actually got stuck rebooting. I had to perform a reset by holding power and home at the same time.

4) After it reboots, you should have a new app called Freeze. Run it, and it should install Cydia – the jailbreak software repository.

5) Enjoy your new found freedom.

Some cool things you can do with your jailbroken iPhone 3Gs:

Run background apps
Hide unwanted app icons (stocks, youtube, weather..)
Tether
SSH into (and from) your iphone
Run unix/bsd command line tools with MobileTerminal
Customize the look of your iPhone
Use Qik for live video streaming
Unlock your iPhone for another carrier