Hey everyone, and thanks for joining me for this misleadingly titled article…or is it? NO!
Well technically, I’m going to tell you how you can take a picture with a camera, and have it post straight to your camera roll on the iPod Touch – and of course iPhone. But, the best/worst thing about this little stroke of genius is that it’s JAILBREAK ONLY! Sorry, but you’ve got to take the plunge and jailbreak to do this.
Why is this jailbreak? Well, thanks to the app in question – iBlueNova – you’re able to use your devices built-in Bluetooth to do what hell you want as opposed to what you can do with it normally, which isn’t much – aside from Bluetooth headset communications. It’ll let your device talk to your mobile or cell phone and allow for transfers to and from your device.
OK, here’s how you can take pics and video, record audio anywhere and upload it, scribble over it or post to Facebook etc via your trusty Touch!
1 – Get to Cydia
And head to ‘Search’ in the bottom right. You there? Great. Now search for ‘iBlueNova’ and purchase – yep, purchase. It’s worth it. When that’s downloaded find it on your device and fire it up. In the app menu, flick the switches ‘Enable’ and ‘Visible’ to ON.
2 – Get out your phone
Snap away with your Bluetooth enabled camera phone and take a picture or record a video.
Now, find it in your phones filesystem and choose to send it via Bluetooth – this can be much more difficult than it sounds, as phones provide a multitude of methods to ‘Copy’, ‘Move’, ‘Transfer’, ‘Communicate’ and so on. Finding the Bluetooth file transfer functionality can be tiresome. But get there!
Follow the phone procedure until you’re ready to scan for devices. Do so, and you should be able to see your iPod or iPhone name in there. Select it and hit send.
3 – Back to iBlueNova
The app should’ve been given the nudge by your phone that a file is coming their way. You’ll asked to accept the file, and once you do, the file will be downloaded. Wahoo.
4 – Find this new file
You’ll need a great app now, called ‘iFile’, which allows you to browse your device file system directory right down to the root: both brilliantly useful and hugely dangerous when in the hands of a drunk.
If you don’t have it, head to Cydia once more, and search for it, and purchase it.
Now, assuming you;ve got that all installed before you began this tutorial – sorry – then you’ll be asked by iBlueNova if you’d like to open it in iFile. Choose yes and view it.
Now in this view, you’ll see the small folder shaped icon under the image, hit that and you can save it to your Camera Roll as opposed to the depths of your devices directory – nicely popping it in a folder along with your other pics and screengrabs under the ‘Photos’ app.
5 – Show everybody
So while the file sits in Camera Roll, you can go to the Facebook app for example, and submit the image to show your buddies. Job done!
6 – Other Uses
I personally find this ability particularly useful for sending images straight from my crusty ol’ phone to DropBox, via the dropbox app for iDevices. I can then tart up the image say, blast it through Photoshop/Illutrator or after effects if you’re a video editor, or Audacity for audio editors, and use in my day to day design work. Hurrah!
If you’re an iPod user on the go, say scribbling on Adobe Ideas on a train, why not send that file to your mobile and then mail it to your clients or chums?
What is often overlooked is that images taken on phones are better quality than what the little screens display them as. And let’s face it, iPhone cameras could be a lot better. If you’re thinking about an iPod or iPhone, then perhaps this little app could decide it for you. All we need now is an equivalent for 3G, and we’ve got an iPhone and a massive amount of saved monies.
Ta ta for now.
