iOS (Jailbroken): The iPhone’s Airplane Mode is a great way to conserve battery life, block notifications and temporarily shut your phone down from incoming messages. However, it’s not easy to flip on and off on a whim. iSleepWell is a jailbreak tweak that automatically initiates Aeroplane Mode when you put the phone face down.
Two weeks ago, the popular Mac-only desktop email client Sparrow released the iPhone app, and it is really, really good. It does, however, have one catch: It doesn’t (yet) support push notifications. To that I say: Who cares?
Android: I’ve been known to just set my phone to vibrate because I don’t want the ringer going off in a silent room, and then I wind up missing a call if the phone is on my desk and I’m watching a movie. RingDimmer for Android is a new app that uses your phone’s microphone to automatically detect the noise level where you are, and sets the ringer appropriately so you never miss a call.
iOS (Jailbroken): All notifications make the same sound on iPhones and it’s impossible to distinguish between your alerts. PushTone is a jailbreak tweak that adds the ability to set up custom tones for each app.
What’s your maximum NPH? How many notifications are you exposed to every hour? Let’s take a second to think critically about these constant requests for your attention: What do they mean? Who is making them? Why are they there? Before I wrote the Information Diet, I audited myself and found I was receiving upwards of 10 notifications per hour: one every six minutes.
This morning, Apple announced that the next version of Mac OS X, dubbed Mountain Lion, is scheduled to be available later this year. It’s filled with cool new features, but who wants to wait to get them? Here’s how you can get the best features of Mountain Lion right now.
iOS (Jailbroken): One of the quirks of the iPhone is that apps can access your personal information, including your contacts, without you knowing about it. If this bothers you, ContactPrivacy is a tweak that sends an alert when apps start digging through your address book.
The Notification Center feature of iOS 5 is a powerful tool to keep track of everything happening in your life, but it’s not obvious how to use it to its full extent. We’ll guide you through the basics of getting started with Notification centre and show you how to make it more useful with a few tweaks.
iOS 5: There are plenty of great jailbreak hacks to boost Notification Center’s capabilities, but not much available for those who haven’t jailbroken their iPhones. Launch Center bridges that gap by using a clever workaround to add handy app and settings shortcuts to your notification drawer.
Android: You’ve silenced your phone because you’re in a meeting but don’t want to miss an important call. ViBe creates contact-specific vibrations for calls and SMS — so you don’t have to bother with pulling out your phone anymore to see who’s calling.
