Installous Is No More, Hackulous Packs Their Bags and Say Farewell

In a move that honestly surprised me, Hackulous; the team behind the fan favorite sideloading app "Installous" have closed up shop and said their final good-byes. Attempting to run Installous on any iOS device will now yield the error:

 "Outdated Version

Installous will now terminate"

 

Heading over to the Hackulous website; (hackulous.us) will shed some light on the matter, where you're greeted with a solemn and sad message:

Goodnight, sweet prince. We are very sad to announce that Hackulous is shutting down. After many years, our community has become stagnant and our forums are a bit of a ghost town. It has become difficult to keep them online and well-moderated, despite the devotion of our staff. We're incredibly thankful for the support we've had over the years and hope that new, greater communities blossom out of our absence. With lots of love, Hackulous Team

 

However all is not over for the casual jail breaker and self admitted app pirates out there, there remains a number of alternatives to installous that get the job done, some are better some are quite ugly; we'll leave it to you to decide, but a short list are:

1. App VV
2. App Cake
3. V share
4. iFunBox

But this is the end of an era... farewell hackulous. 

Facebook Now Allowing Threaded Replies, To Specific Comments; Messines Ensues

 

Facebook has once again changed, and this time I'm not sure it's for the better; in what seems to be the worst Christmas present ever Facebook now enables you to reply to a specific comment on a photo/post. As you can see in the picture above Comment #2 (the one that starts with "Obviously you have") has one "threaded comment" to it (the "nice one :P :P"). To which I can further reply directly to that comment. or post a comment to the whole original post.

 

This is going to get very messy very soon.. get rid of it Facebook, NOW!



Flickr Giving Away Three Months Flick Pro; Happy Holidays

Tis the season to be greedy, ta nanana nahnaha. Everyone loves free stuff so why not get 3 months of unlimited photo storage, unlimited video storage, viewing of previous photos (past the latest 200) and a bunch of other cool features?
In the holiday spirit Flickr are giving away 3 months of Flick free pro (minus the stats); all you have to do is sign in and claim your gift. Happy Holidays!

Impromptu Lumia 920 Photoshoot

One things about the Lumia 920 that makes it even more special is the amazing design, and eye catching colors (especially if you were smart enough to get in red like me). And when you have a device like the Lumia 920 in red it will definitely steal the show hands down EVERY TIME.

Simplest example comes from earlier this week, a couple of my friends and I went out for sushi; which somehow turned into a Lumia 920 press photo-shoot; and I swear to you not all of these were staged (only the one on the phone/#2 was).

So what do you guys think? Should we be in Nokia's next billboard?

Psst.. check out the full size images on SkyDrive here: https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=8377F11746755992&id=8377F11746755992%21509#cid=8377F11746755992&id=8377F11746755992%21509

(the one below is the only staged one, I promise.)

Video & Gallery: Size Comparison, Lumia 920 Vs. Everything Else

 

 

 

So I decided to compare my brand new beautiful red Lumia 920 vs. the rest of the phones I had lying around, just to convey a feel of the actual size of the device. First off the Lumia really isn't that big; it's weight problems are heavily exaggerated; we like to think it's big boned (and trust me this is the type of phone that will sucker punch you in the jaw if you call it fat).

 

Overall I actually like the build of the 920, its weight is comforting as the feel in your pocket it "re-assuring"; I've seen people lose their iPhones and galaxys without noticing their pockets were a tad lighter. That surely won't be an issue with the 920.

 

First Ever Arabic Lumia 920 Unboxing

It's finally here! last week I promised you guys my first ever Arabic unboxing of a device, debuting on the beautiful Lumia 920, and I'm a man of my word; so without further ado the video:



So whatya guys think? more Arabic videos??

How to Back Up Your Whatsapp Chat History

 



There's no denying it, Whatsapp I one of the greatest applications available to any mobile phone user who doesn't have an unlimited texting plan (or your friends don't have one). Whatsapp has allowed people all over the world to text each other in near real time, on the go, for close to free (I've been using whatsapp for over 5 years now, and have yet to be asked to pay my $1 activation fee- which I would pay in a heartbeat).

With more and more getting mobile data plans Whatsapp has become even more useful, but unfortunately one major set back has been the inability to backup your messages or transfer them to another phone.

In the latest release for Whatsapp for Windows Phone this has been slightly rectified with the option to "email chat history" being added. Although this isn't the optimal solution but emailing the chat history to yourself and archiving does serve as a temporary solution until something more elegant arrives.

In my testing I was able to email my preview 541 messages with a single contact to myself (anything before those was deleted when I reset my phone).

The Chat history sent to your email (or your friends) is listed in a default time stamp chat history, that unfortunately doesn't support transferred media/images. But for now I'm thankful for even this.

 

Screen Ghosting on Lumia 900

 

A recent issue I've been having with my lumia 900 is the screen ghosting seen above, which interestingly only appears when trying to compose an email. Rather than normal screen ghosting (residual images left on the screen between transitions) it appears to be a sort of misplaced keyboard with a lighter opacity, seeing how the ghosted buttons react to touches on the actual active keyboard.

The issue isn't a major one seeing how it's a random occurrence that resolves itself automatically, still it would be interesting to know if this is an isolated incident or if others have faced this issue as well.