After some time on IRC channels with the creator of Theos and several other helpful and knowledgeable folks I’ve managed to bring the barebones version of the Inception Button to Cydia! I’d like to thank Allen of Planet-iPhones for hosting the application. Anyone who is jailbroken should be able to install the Inception Button via the default community sources.

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The iPad was a logical step that hardly anyone saw coming and even fewer people imagined could be successful. Steve Jobs recently revealed that the iPad was the idea in the first place and he rushed to make a phone out of it. The timing of the entire thing was gorgeous – not only was it able to beat the JooJoo to market (which many people thought would be a real contender) it became the clear choice for a tablet. To this day the only other real contenders are Linux or Android tablets or Windows 7 tablets. The Windows 7 tablets are a mess because, as touch friendly as that OS is, it’s not good enough to be thrown on a tablet willy nilly. The Android tablets suffer from the reverse issue – an inappropriate upscaling of a mobile OS.

Some may argue the iPad suffers from this same problem but the truth is the iPad is an entirely different experience than the iPhone. Things will start to get interesting as we see how Chrome OS might adapt on a tablet and what HP can do with WebOS (I predict a change reminiscent of iOS -> iPad OS) to make it work on a tablet.

The iPad 2 will be coming out soon likely with two cameras and the highest resolution screen on a tablet device which will push the market further in Apple’s direction and force some much needed innovation. We’re not far at all from components powerful enough that a MacBook Air-esque device will be able to boot into a more iPad-esque OS (if Apple pulls this off they’ll probably manage it without a noticeable reboot time… very doable with solid state storage) to be used as a more mobile tablet while retaining the full power of OS X either when in a docking station or on your lap as a laptop rather than in your palm as a tablet.

As it stands things are going to get very interesting in the next year and the trend shows no sign of slowing. If it doesn’t go without saying I would definitely recommend waiting until the iPad 2 at the very earliest for those of you in the market for a tablet. If you don’t like the direction Apple is heading the next best thing (disregarding any CES hooplah) is the Color Nook which runs a crippled version of Android but, in my opinion, has the right idea on the hardware front (at least until color e-ink becomes a reality).

I’ll also mention that the software developers of tablet and phone operating systems alike have to do some serious work on the notifications front before Apple plugs their obvious hole. Right now Android does it best with the pull down bar (and I think WebOS did pretty good) but there is a fine balance between user control, automation, intrusiveness, and unobtrusiveness that Apple has been searching for behind the scenes for the last few years (and slowly working towards – multitasking implementation, anyone?) and they’re bound to stumble upon it soon.

Apologies for the rough article, I’m not in a proofreading mood.

MassMailer was created mainly for my younger brother who was looking for a free way to distribute newsletters to readers of his Answers for Pilots blog. I was very pleasantly surprised while working with .NET’s System.Net.Mail libraries – I ended up being able to accomplish more than I thought possible in intuitive ways.

I haven’t done much testing or debugging with the application other than to confirm it actually works and is usable. I encourage you to post problems you find with it here so that I can do my best to fix them and release an updated version.

Features:

• Built-in support for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and Netscape
• Can be configured manually for any SMTP server
• Send mail in HTML or Plain-Text format
• Send mail to a theoretically infinite number of people at a time
• Load email addresses from a text file (see usage)
• Saves server information automatically (see usage)

Problems:

• The only problem I’ve come across is that emails sent seem to get shot down by pretty much any standalone, corporate, or school spam filter

If anyone has any knowledge of the header information generally sent along with emails and would like to work with me to configure my application appropriately please contact me.

Usage and Notes:

• Recipient files must be text files with each email address on a separate line.
• Body files can be text or HTML and will be sent as-is once loaded into the program.
• Upon exit any validated server information is saved to a file in the working directory… This file contains (among other information) the email password you have entered. If this is a problem for you simply hit the “Clear Settings” button before quitting

I hope you enjoy my hard work… Feel free to donate to the site if you have some spare change and keep in mind the requests of donors will always be honored!

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