Cydia

It was confirmed earlier today that the next version of Cydia will have an app rating system similar to that of the App Store. The news came in the form of a screenshot that was posted showing the Cydia page for the package Winterboard 0.9.2600-1. Next to the package number was a star, which was taken to be a form of ratings system.

The launch of the App Store eliminated a large part of the need for jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod touch, but a few good reasons still remain. Here's a new one that was released recently. It's called Search 1.0 for iPhone, and it's available to jailbroken phones through Cydia.

Earlier this weekend, the Big Boss repository, one of the larger and more well-known repositories in Cydia and Installer, parted ways with their hosting site, iphone.sleepers.net. The repository owner said in this weekend's announcement that they weren't happy with the partnership, and had officially moved over to http://thebigboss.org/.

The idea of iPhone hacking is nearly as old as the iPhone itself, soon followed by the writing of iPhone apps. Soon after it was realized that there needed to be a way of distributing the various hacks and goodies to other users, and so began the birth of Installer.app and the collaborative open-source distribution system Cydia. Since then Cydia has become the more popular of the two, and it's now how most people get their unsanctioned hacks and apps. But what's up with that name?

ZodTTD has just released mame4iphone v0.5.0, a MAME arcade emulator for the iPhone available to jailbroken iPhones through Cydia. The emulator is a port of the mame4all emulator from ZodTTD user Franxis. The emulator allows users to play ROMs of some of the most popular classic arcade games from the early days.

The latest attempt at a copy/paste solution for the iPhone popped up on Cydia recently in the form of CopierciN. The app is jailbreak only and combines the concept of a text editor and a snippet importer/exporter. Using the app, you can import text from SMS, Notes, or Email. Text can then be opened, edited in the built-in text editor, and then exported as a new SMS, Email, Note, or just a file.

A new version of the NES emulator for the iPhone was recently released through Cydia that now adds accelerometer controls to games. Now, tilting the device from side to side is the equivalent of using the standard controls to move in that direction. It does seem to make it a little more difficult to stop quickly or do precise jumps. You can check out a video of the new NES.app in action at Gizmodo.