The following 5 Cydia Apps can be used on either an iPhone or an iPod Touch (I am currently running the 3.1.2 OS on my iPhone). Luckily, I happen to have an iPhone 3G and Eric just happens to have an iPod Touch 2G. After careful consideration and a few debates, we narrowed down the Cydia apps on both devices to the 5 we just couldn’t live without.

Please note that you must first jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch to gain access to Cydia apps.

1. iBlacklist (iPhone only) – is actually the main reason I ended up jailbreaking my iPhone. Some spammer had gotten a hold of my phone number and was sending me chain mail text messages and picture messages. After searching and searching for a simple solution I ended up deciding that iBlacklist was the best option (apparently AT&T will block numbers for $5 a month). iBlacklist allows you to block numbers from calling, texting, or picture messaging you. The app you download from Cydia allows you to block 5 different numbers before asking for a small contribution (so 5 numbers for free as opposed to AT&T’s $5 a month). This app has done exactly what I needed it to do and not one piece of spam has gotten through.

2. Lock Calendar – displays your calendar events for a set time period on your lock screen. I still don’t understand why Apple doesn’t do this by default. Having to open up the calendar app just to view the days events is just annoying. Having them displayed on the lock screen utilizes the free space that’s already there and I don’t even have to unlock my phone to know that I’m already late for class. To access the options for this app, simply go to your Settings app and scroll down to the Lock Calendar section. You can completely customize the number of events shown, number of weeks ahead it will look at, as well as the font style and color for the events.

The picture on the left shows you how Lock Calendar looks on the lock screen.

The picture in the middle shows you where the settings are located for Lock Calendar (simply click the ’settings’ app and you should see Lock Calendar down there.

The picture on the right shows Lock Calendars settings. I would definitely recommend making the ‘Max Interval’ two weeks.

3. Categories – allows you to categorize all your apps using folders. Want to keep all your games in one place? and all your Cydia apps in one place? Categories  allows you to create a folder  on one of your 9 available home screens and then allows you to put apps within that folder.  When you add an app to a category, it will no longer show up on the home screen, but instead in the category of your choosing.  Eric was able to reduce his number of home screens from 6 to 3.  The ‘Search’ feature (left most home screen) will find apps placed in categories, not just those on your home screens.  Of course the category name and icon is completely customizable.  In fact there are hundreds of icons you can use to ensure it fits with your theme.

The picture on the left shows the settings page for the Categories app.

The picture in the middle shows a few of the possible folder icons you can set for each of your Categories.

The picture on the right shows the apps placed in a ‘Social’ category. Basically there is a folder on one of the home screens named ‘Social’ and when clicked this is what opens.

4. WinterBoard -  allows you to personalize your iPhone in more ways than Steve Jobs wants you to. Do you like that black background screen? What about those app icons? WinterBoard lets you change the home screen background and designate a theme (of your choosing). Luckily Cydia keeps quite a number of themes you can try out.

The picture on the left is one of my home screens. I have used the WinterBoard app to change my background to show wood shelves.

The picture on the right is one of Eric’s home screens. He has installed a theme and changed his background.

5. AptBackup – allows you to easily backup all the Cydia apps in your collection. You no longer have to worry about losing all your Cydia apps when updating your iPhone or iPod Touch. This app is quite simple: just open the app and press ‘Backup’. The app creates a list of your Cydia apps and stores it with other settings and files that iTunes backs up when you do a backup within iTunes. If you were to need to restore for some reason, just restore from your iTunes backup file and then install AptBackup again through Cydia and click ‘Restore’. Note – you should only click ‘Restore’ after performing a restore in iTunes.  Clicking ‘Restore’ when not needed can cause unexpected results (as Eric learned when showing me this app).

This picture shows you the extent of AptBackup. However simple this app is, the time you save by not having to download each individual app again is the reason I have it on my iPhone.

So, what Cydia apps can’t you live without?

If you switch from Windows or Linux to Mac, one of the things you will notice is Mac OS X doesn’t have a utility to help uninstall applications. To try and make things simple, Apple didn’t include an uninstaller, instead all you have to do is delete the application files. The only problem with this is as applications began to get more complex, not all the files were located in the same place. Sure you can try and manually search for the files but there’s no way you’ll find all of them.

If you don’t like deleting only some of the application files, you should give AppCleaner a try. AppCleaner is a FREE program designed to find and delete all the files associated with an application. Below is a screenshot of the program in action.

Of course there are lots of other programs that will help you uninstall your applications. However, there are a few reasons I use AppCleaner instead of those other programs. First off, AppCleaner is completely FREE. There isn’t a free version and a paid version, or some crappy trial version, just the real thing. Secondly, the interface is clean and simple. All you have to do is drag and drop the application you want to remove and your done.

AppCleaner is even smart enough to recognize when you place an application in the Trash Bin and it will then offer to properly delete it. AppCleaner will uninstall more than just applications, including widgets and preference panes. Lastly, AppCleaner can protect your most important applications from being deleted. And of course a list of all deleted applications are kept in a log file so you can look back at what you’ve successfully uninstalled.

Ever since iTunes allowed the cover flow option in iTunes I’ve wanted an easy way of getting all of my album art together. Luckily I found this program for Mac users.

Fetch Art is a little utility program that does what the name implies: fetch your album art. It essentially uses Amazons XML interface to find the album art to match the info already in your iTunes library. The program is controlled through the iTunes script menu. It allows you to preview album art it finds so that you can make sure it’s the correct picture. Here’s a little screenshot:

thanks to Macupdate.com for the picture

Click here to download

Have you ever been reading an email or surfing the net and come across a word you wanted to lookup, but didn’t because it takes too much time?  Even with Dictionary widgets and websites like Dictionary.com it still takes too long to have to copy and paste the word or wait on the internet.

So, I have the solution for you Mac users out there.  This quick little tip will allow you to lookup the definition of any word in any Mac native program (Coco).  The best part is the Dictionary application does NOT need to be open or even running in the background.

All you need to do is hold down Control+Command+D with your mouse hovering over the word you wish to lookup.  You can even continue to hold down the keyboard shortcut and move the mouse from one word to another.  The dictionary description will automatically update for each word.

If you are not sure what programs this will work with, here is a small list: Safari, Mail, TextEdit, Text Wrangler, Comic Life, iWeb and some other native Mac programs.

However, this shortcut will NOT work with programs that are not written in Coco.  So even your favorite programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Camino and Flock wont work with this shortcut.

Are you a college student like me who has a different schedule every day?

While I’m usually pretty good about setting my alarm clock for the right time, it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.  I have come across a nice piece of software every student Mac owner should have.

Aurora is an alarm clock that runs on your Mac. It even integrates with iTunes on your Mac. You can set an alarm that goes off at a different time for every day if you want.

Want to sleep in on the weekend, but afraid you might forget to set your alarm for that 8am class on Monday? Aurora solves that problem. But what if your Mac is asleep? Or the volume is muted? Aurora will wake your computer and even unmute it if it has to.

Aurora even has a fade in option to ease you out of that deep sleep if you’re into that sort of thing.

Thanks to versiontracker.com for the images.

The newest version of Aurora costs 15 EUR at the project’s homepage. Of course there is a 14 day trial period before you have to buy a license.  There is even a 20% (3 EUR) student discount.

However, if you would like to try an older version of Aurora for free, here is the download link.