Hackulous - the development team behind the Apptrackr website and Installous iOS application which have been one of the most popular sources to get pirated paid apps published on Apple's App Store announced closure of there services with immediate effect.

The website now shows the following notice and Installous app displays : "Outdated version. Installous will now terminate" or "API Error. API unavailable." followed by an forced quit.

Hactivating an Apple iPhone can be a tricky business specially when your iPhone 3G/3GS is having the "iPad 6.15" baseband for retaining software unlock. After, repeated failed attempts to have an Apple iPhone 3GS running iOS 4.0 with baseband 6.15 hactivate using custom IPSW and redsn0w the following worked for me.

With all the IPSW firmware versions, various Apple devices and a variety of tools for jailbreaking the whole process becomes very confusing. While working with custom firmwares and jailbreaking one must follow the correct sequence of steps with right tools and software versions, otherwise iTunes throws an error and the device gets locked down in a restore or DFU loop.

One such often encountered error while restoring an custom IPSW file using iTunes is - "An unknown error occurred (Error 1600)." as shown below.

If you are looking for an ultra-portable, wireless 2.1 speaker system having ruggedized industrial design with some excellent audio engineering Boombot REX is for you.

San Francisco startup Boombotix announced the Boombot REX, a Bluetooth ultraportable speaker in a rugged package with Bluetooth control, a microphone, and a built-in clip 2 weeks ago. In less than a week, they are funded 200%. The co-founders who are both techsavvy skiers and cyclists, founded Boombotix to create an alternative to headphones that was easy to transport and could bear any weather condition and everyday pitfalls. “We rethought how the portable speaker should be, and by doing so we focused tremendously on the feel of the product- from the size to the texture to the tuning of the audio so one can actually feel the sound while the device is in the palm of their hand.

The Boombot REX is housed in an rugged ABS shell built to withstand all conditions in a sophisticated package,” says Chris McKleroy, co-founder of Boombotix. REX is has a ruggedized, IP53 water resistant shell that fits in the palm of your hand. Built-in clip allows you to clip the speakers on your jacket, backpack, belt or anything you like, thus you can take it where ever you go with ease. Additionally, the Boombot REX offers Siri-compatible speakerphone functionality; the speaker can be used for phone calls in the harshest locations- without taking your mobile device out of your pocket.

As we approach Thanksgiving, the holiday much anticipated by the Americans, more and more companies give significant discounts on their popular applications and some even go so far as to provide for a complete free offer. And today the picked freebie is named iMobie AppTrans - a specialized Windows Application made to transfer iOS Apps from old iDevice onto the new-bought iPad 4, iPad mini, iPod touch 5, as well as the iPhone 5.

Probably you need to keep a watchful eye on this if you are facing such a problem - “How to move my Apps to the new device along with the intact App data (e.g. game progress, achievements and personal settings). I would definitely hate the idea of starting a game on their new device from the very beginning.”

iTunes do allow you an option to restore App data from existing backup, but it is risking losing all personal data on the half way. And generally it is not worth a full iTunes restore just for moving few Apps. Another advantage of AppTrans is that if you want to add just one (or very few) game onto iPhone/iPad, you don’t have to perform a full sync. These newly added Apps even won’t erase existing ones.

Of course this can be done via iCloud, but once you put one step closer to iCloud, you will find NOT ALL iPhone iPad game saves (records and progress) are available for iCloud backup because only select-few developers even care to associate their games with iCloud. Besides, the task is likely to be long and arduous side backup, especially since it is better to have a stable and fast internet connection to iCloud as transfer tens if not hundreds of megs of applications may be long very long…

Now, AppTrans will make all things easier by providing three intuitive App Transfer modes. You are able to choose to transfer Apps to new iDevice with or without App data, or only copy App data directly from old device to the new one, no data losing. AppTrans is just as what you expected - an easy-to-use yet powerful tool.

Users relying on software carrier unlock ultrasn0w must use sn0wbreeze created custom IPSW firmware to upgrade there iDevice to an upgraded iOS version without updating the baseband which breaks the unlock. However, Apple iTunes prevents users from upgrading or restoring to these custom IPSW files and errors out the process with codes 3194 and 1600 - for which we have shared solution earlier. Here is an step-by-step guide to restore an custom IPSW file to iPhone using iTunes the correct way without any errors.

Apple blocks users from restoring older iOS firmware's, while this is a good security feature and a method to avoid OS fragmentation. This also prevents users from using jailbroken and carrier-unlockable software versions.

This practice makes iOS upgrade difficult for users relying on software unlock like ultrasn0w which is supported on older basebands only, If you are trying to upgrade an Apple device to an non-supported iOS version even when using TinyUmbrella - the iTunes restore process may throw up error 3194 and 1600 as shown below.

Here are solutions to get past these errors and flash custom, snowbreezed IPSW files to your Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod's.

Surprisingly this fall we got three brand new Apple gadgets, the iPhone 5, iPod touch 5 and 'Renanoed' iPod nano 7. Before buying one or more of them, have you thought about how many Apple devices are already in your family? If you and your families have a bunch of iPhones, iPads and iPods, probably you'll get big headache to manage them upon one single computer.

The root cause of this inconvenience is iTunes, an application that takes on almost everything, e.g. iDevice media (and app) management, purchase, and playback jukebox, and much more. Apart from constant updates, slowness, source-consuming, complicated settings and limits, iTunes also leaves the media and app management part far away from desired. We have reviewed the best Apple iTunes alternative PhoneTrans earlier, well it got better and now features an brand new user-interface and supports synchronization of music, Apps, movies, music videos, TV shows, podcasts, ringtones and eBooks.

One frequently met situation is that Adding a single HD movie to iPad may take about half an hour and risk losing all apps along the way. Besides, iTunes will also fill up hard drive with tens of gigabytes of iOS apps that can easily be downloaded from Apple. Syncing apps frequently may also destroy folders and make apps disappear. Another problem is Managing multiple devices on one computer with no way to move music, movies back to PC hard drive.

We reviewed the free version of versatile Apple iOS device manager "PhoneTrans" few days ago, while feature rich the utility did lack some features when compared to paid "PRO" upgrade version like Wi-Fi Transfer without iTunes, simultaneous management support for multiple iOS devices, ability to share files among multiple iOS devices, iTunes Library to iPhone feature and much more.

The good news is, under an EXCLUSIVE GIVEAWAY for megaleecher users, iMobie is providing genuine, free activation key for PhoneTrans Pro worth "$29.99" each to all our readers. To grab your free-copy of of "PhoneTrans Pro" with all the amazing features mentioned below, simply visit the promo-link posted after the jump.

While Apple iOS devices have the most simplest usability, the accompanied "PC Suite" management application Apple iTunes is equally frustrating to use. There are numerous free iTunes alternatives and today we are reviewing yet another application in this niche.

The root cause of all this trouble is "iTunes Library" concept, which ties a user to a single account and computer - forcing them to sync audio, video and other items from a single computer. But there is way out, with free iTunes alternative application - "PhoneTrans" the user gets the power to just drag-and-drop files in & out of there iPhone, iPad and iPod touch just like windows explorer from ANY COMPUTER without worrying about deletion of earlier content as in iTunes Sync.

PhoneTrans fully supports adding, removing, backing-up and recovering of music, movies, music videos, TV shows, podcasts, voice memos, ringtones and eBooks etc. from Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod touch.