Cameron’s Blog

The App Store has so many great apps. So many great US centric apps. To tide us over until the Mobile News Network app supports other countries, here is how to hack it to get news from your country, and perhaps city.

1. Download the Mobile News Network app from the App Store, and launch it on your iPhone (or iPod touch).

2. Bring up the “Search” tab - if you cant see it check under “More”.

3. Type in the name of your country (or city) and hit search.

4. Up should pop a screen with all the news items that mention your beloved country.

5 (the cool part). Whenever you go back to the search tab a list of your recent searches will appear. If you don’t search for much, then your country and/or city will be at the top, for easy access.

So I decided to jailbreak my iPod touch when ZiPhone 2.5 and iJailbreak 0.54 got released. I thought it would be simple, Just plug in, hit Jailbreak, and have a jailbroken touch. I obviously did not read the fine print that said that it only worked for iPhones at the moment, and iPod touch support would be added later. Not knowing this, I downloaded ZiPhone, clicked jailbreak only, and watched as my iPod touch reverted to far superior state of repeating BSD root: md0, major 2, minor 0 down my iPod touch’s screen. I restore my iPod and, thinking it is just ZiPhone’s fault, launch up iJailbreak to the same result. So much for the easy jailbreak.

I decide that because I already have a fresh iPod with no music, webclips, or photos on it I might as well try the long way round. The long way involves downgrading to 1.1.1, jailbreaking, upgrading to 1.1.2, rejailbreaking, then either upgrading to prejailbroken 1.1.3 or 1.1.4 firmware. For the first part of this (up to 1.1.2) to I used the instructions at iphone.unlock.no to do this, but any instructions will do, as long as you finish up with a jailbroken 1.1.2 iPod touch.

The next step is to install a package from Installer.app though the ipodtouchmaster repo. Install the one for you and then you will have 1.1.3/1.1.4 Jailbroken.

That would have been my post.

Unfortunatly after that rather longwinded approach I screwed up SpringBoard.app so I had to start again. Daunted by this, I decided to wait until ZiPod ZiPhone 2.6 was released. Now that it is out I decided to give it a whirl, and it works perfectly. It says that you need to use a freshly restored iPod but my one with all my songs on it worked just fine.

For instructions how to jailbreak your iPod touch, click here.