Why 2.0.2, why 2.0.1 is not working?

As I’ve received many reports that version 2.0.1 doesn’t work for some of you – as I’ve noticed in comments and in emails sent to me. But you know what? For most of you 2.0 was working great. So why have I posted 2.0.1 update? It’s simple. Anonymous is a tool, that I gave into your hands. It was made to sent funny emails, surprise your friends who you mail with, jokes, to catch cheating wives/husbands/bf/gf, but of course I did suppose that some people will use it to send death threats, phishing, spam messages, bank frauds and so many more. People call me to help in tracing the original author of the message, because of those serious reasons. Unfortunately I cannot help them, because just for my safety and your privacy I don’t log those email – they are sent and not cached anywhere (at least not by me). Remember that you (not me) sending such an email commit a crime or whatever the status of such an activity is in your country.

Ok, ok, but what was the reason of publishing 2.0.1 if 2.0 works perfectly. Well, one of the emails sent from you, was received by somebody, who has decided to take some actions to trace the original author of this message. Of course in header of this email, was clearly stated that the msg was sent from chris-software.com. As long as I couldn’t (and still can’t and won’t in the near future) provide any more information, he/she tried to check my hosting provider if they can help. In fact, the result was the suspension of the whole chris-software.com domain (with dozen of other services – including Anonymous). I had to move the Anonymous API to somewhere else in order to run my website again. And 2.0.1 is just pointing to the new servers.

If you are willing to help me paying it (it costs $250/mo), I would really appreciate it. Donations

As most of you noticed my services haven’t been working properly recently. Everything because of extremely high popularity of one of my applications – Stranger Chat – my server crashed, 99% of requests finished with 404, 503 or SQL errors. I’d like to announce that since today everything is working again. Best of  YouTube and Stranger Chat – both of them has been optimized. There is nothing to be proud of, that I fixed this problem – it’s my duty and my job, but I will do everything to not let it happen in the future.

It’s been long time since I published Anonymous 1.0. Maybe a year now. Since that time, Anonymous was one of the most controversial applications. It allows you to send fake emails, and if recipient doesn’t know how to read extended headers (99% does not – believe me), he / she thinks it was send from the email account you provided without any password.

Remember, I’m programmer, I create the tool, give it to others and it’s only up to you, what you are going to do with it. I really hope that my app isn’t used to try phishing, stealing bank accounts as much as for joke or to catch cheating wife – or husband .

Anonymous is also one of those apps I received a lot of feedback – either it generally doesn’t work, or it works sometimes, or it works no longer, or it works with one email accounts, and doesn’t with Gmail, Mobile Me and others. I also received many emails asking me about adding Reply-To field, and images.

Taking into consideration all of your ideas and feedback, when I’ve found (at last) a little bit more “free” time I upgraded it. The interface is completely different. Now you enter everything into the table, that looks like the Settings application. Whenever you are expected to provide email address, you can easily pick one from address book on your device. And yes, I added the Reply-To field. What does it mean? Let show it on the example: You receive the email, it says it’s sent from John Smith <johnsmith@example.com>. While answering the message it will be sent to somebody, whose email was provided in Reply-To, not johnsmith@example.com. The API that actually sends emails “lives” now on better – more reliable server. It’s still sends only plain, text messages, sorry no images this time!

Ohh and best of all: it works with many more email servers, GMail, Yahoo, Mobile Me and many many more.

That’s why current version of Anonymous is not 1.01, or 1.1, but  Anonymous 2.0.

And of course, Apple doesn’t like this app, nothing astonishing here, but as usual you will find this application in Cydia in BigBoss Repository.

Few weeks ago I had to move from one server to another. Since January you won’t ever see any messages like “Bandwidth limit exceeded” at the end of every single month. Today, one user reported the problem, that most old articles have missing content – cut off in the half. Fortunately I had the backup from the previous server. Since now, everything works fine again. If you notice any problem at this website, please send me an email and I will respond you as soon as possible.

Polls Online application allows you to create simple online surveys / quizzes / polls and collect answers from iPhone and iPod touch users all over the world.

Create and check regularly your multiple and single choice polls. Ask about anything you are curious about completely anonymously. Just do it in English.

Answer polls created by other users.

** More detailed:

When you start the application a random poll is loaded and displayed. Question and possible answers below. Depending on the poll’s setting it can be either single choice (you can pick one answer – previous will be automatically deselected) or multiple choice (you can pick any answer, even all). When you send your vote (OK button) the results are updated and displayed on your screen. You can always check the results even before voting by pressing the little info button in the bottom, left corner.

If you find current poll interesting you can add it to favorites (star button), to track the results, tap star again to remove it from favorite list. You can quickly check other polls by pressing the reload button in the top right.

If the poll is kinda inappropriate, press the report button (lighting mark), to mark it as inappropriate. Report button allows you to delete the poll if you are the one who created it, either by mistake, or simply you just won’t to remove it.

By swiping your finger, you navigate through different menus like:

1. My polls – displays the list of polls divided into 3 tabs: Created, Voted, and Favourite – as mentioned before.

2. Search – here you can check if the poll about certain topic (like president election, interesting world events and so on) already exists. You can search for the given keywords either in questions or in answers.

3. Stats – here you see how many polls and their votes Polls Online’s users have submitted up-to-date and quickly get the newest, popular or not popular polls.

4. And the last one – “Create a poll” – here you can quickly ask the world about anything. Enter the question first and then specify the answers. By default poll is “single-answer” with the answers Yes/No/Don’t know, but you can of course change it so it suits your expectations. Please add polls only in English so major part of the world will understand them.

Have a lot of fun.

Right now it’s available in BigBoss Repo. During few days it will be also available in iTunes Store in 2 versions free with ads/$0.99 without ads.

Most of you have noticed that during last week of 2009 application was unavailable, not only application, but the whole www.chris-software.com, and Best of YouTube, depends on this server.

The problem is simple. We all can use 50GB of data transfer monthly, whenever this limit has been reached everything stops working till 1st of next month.

I’ve already asked my provider to change those limitations, I’m waiting for their decision and I hope, we won’t have similar surprises this month. Please enjoy the application as long as the database grows and grows everyday (as long as my “data” problems ).

If you haven’t heard about Best of YouTube, please check App Store or Cydia. There is free and paid version (ads/no-ads). The application allows you to watch movies from YouTube that were recommended by other iPhone users and verified by me, to get rid of advertisements, or boring/unethical movies.

Please expect new applications in January and February.

Sorry for the delay. I promised I would try to figure it out few days before, but due to technical problems with my 3G I couldn’t and the fact that it worked on my 2G cannot be enough proof that the application is working well.

I was investigating every single case what is wrong with the application. The application should save/modify/create files under this path:

/var/mobile/Library/SMS/

it’s hard-coded as it should be, but instead it saves the files somewhere else – till now I’ve not found out where, what is strange to me. Next strange thing is that the application was only tested on iPhone 2G and I’ve received a lot of feedback, that it’s not working on 3G and 3GS – I guess iPhone 2G is not popular anymore – that’s why I’ve not received any reports about SMS Switcher on 2G. But to my surprise it was also buggy on my friend’s 2G when I installed SMS Swticher from Cydia.

My last idea was to install the application on my friend’s iPhone 2G in the same way I installed it on mine – via SSH. And to my surprise it finally worked! Manual installation also via SSH on my other friend’s 3G also worked.

So to conclude. (I guess) SMS Switcher works great. Today and yesterday as well. I guess the installation from Cydia changes some privileges or sth like this. Below you can download the built application you can send (via Fugu on Mac OS X or WinSCP on Windows) to your device to /Applications and respring. You should delete first SMS Switcher using Cydia if you have it installed.

SMS Switcher

Updated: application was only tested on my old personal iPhone Classic. I’ve just tested it on 3G and confirm it’s not working as expected. Maybe today or on wednesday I will try to submit and update. I’m extremely sorry, but please believe me, I’ll do everything to make it working as I intended!

Updated: sorry for making you wait so long, but I have some technical problems: I’m trying to figure out, how to debug my application over SSH as long as it permanently lost WiFi (my 3G). I need to find somebody who is willing to borrow me the SIM Card with data plan so I can download it over 3G or to buy new iPhone… I’m quite busy recently.

Hi!

Yesterday I added to Cydia (BigBoss) my new simple but useful application: SMS Switcher, and I’ve been only receiving questions “how does it work?” or statements: “It doesn’t work”.

First I’d like to discuss some technical info. Your SMS/MMS messages (created by Messages application) are stored in one file called sms.db, which you will find in:

/var/mobile/Library/SMS/

My application allows you to create another databases for your messages, so when you create databased MyGirlfriendsMSGs, and ImportantMSGs, when you visit again /var/mobile/Library/SMS/ you should also see the libraries you created, that is MyGirlfriendsMSGs.db and ImportantMSGs.db.

But remember that Messages app uses only sms.db file, and doesn’t focus on other .db files in this directory. That is way I call sms.db file the active library – the library from which messages are read and to which new are saved. You can only have one library active at a time. So when you create new library You can set that you want to activate it straight away, or you can do it always later.

When you activate next library, it’s file – *.db file will rename to sms.db, so now it’s used as a Messages’ database, while the previous original library will rename to [previousActiveLibraryName].db.

You cannot assign your contacts to save messages from/to them to one of the libraries – they will be always saved in your active.

What is the point of such application:

1. if your library is very big – like thousands of messages, opening it takes few seconds out of your life. Either you can delete some messages, or create new library while you always can switch the library to the original one and read your messages. You can always make a copy while creating new library, so now you have the same to files, but you can delete unwanted msgs – the app will respond faster and you have a backup if you delete something important.
2. It saves your privacy. A lot of people read your messages when you left your iPhone unprotected. Not all of them are hackers and not all of them knows this application. So by switching libraries the typical inquisitive person won’t have access to your (very) private data.
3. And the example from the application. If you have two or more girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands/fiancees… (I don’t say it’s good, it isn’t) you can easily switch libraries so one girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/fiancee won’t find out about the other.
4. Think of your own reasons

So again step by step instruction

1. Obvious: install the application from Cydia (search, type SMS Switcher).
2. Obvious again: launch the application – nice icon like messages applications with recycle symbol (two arrows).
3. You should see a list with one database only – it’s a database created by already using Messages app. If it’s not listed it simply means that you have never received any message (make some friends), you have never opened Messages or you have just restored your device and because of above two reasons, this file doesn’t exists – it’s not a problem.
4. So now let’s create new SMS library – just tap the top right [+] button. Enter it’s name – just to remove typical file-naming problems you are only allowed to use letters A, B, C to Z and number 0, 1, 2, 3 to 9. If you want to activate this library straight away (it means that messages will be saved to this library, and read also from this library – and as long as it’s empty, your Messages app will display nothing). Only while creating new library, you can easily import all messages from any existing libraries.
5. You can repeat step 4 to create more libraries. If you already activated one library it will be used for next messages. You can later launch the app again and switch back or switch to another.

OK and BTW: when you start your application, the main SMS library is always called Unnamed.

Please tell me that you get it. If not, use the comments above.

Touch Board, new application (so far in Cydia only, waiting for approval in App Store) is available since yesterday and I’ve just checked if anybody has enough patience to play it. To my surprise, You – Players have just traveled:

14,5 mile

with their fingers!

Diagonal of the iPhone screen is 3.5 inch, playable area is about 3″. That simply means that the players’ve swiped fingers across the screen at least 300′000 times! WOW it’s impressive.

I’m just worried about the speed in highscores. Guys, what have you done to your iPhone or iPod to achieve the speed approximately 50 mph with your finger? Or even 18 mph – so far the 10th best player. If you find a bug in the app please tell me. If not, my Congratulations, but please, don’t damage your device, it’s just a game.

Best regards
Chris