How would you like to be able to invoke a Google search from anywhere on your iDevice?
InstaURL is a new jailbreak tweak by William Vabrinskas that lets you perform a Web search from anywhere on your iDevice using an Activator action. You are not limited to Google, there are more searching options in the Settings of InstaURL; Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You can invoke any Activator action that you want to. Just select the Activator option that you want to use, invoke it, and type what you want to search the Web for. It's that simple. The settings of InstaURL can be seen below:
InstaURL is very handy if you want to perform a Web search very quickly if you want to prove someone wrong. Granted, there will be the people who would rather unlock their devices and open Safari for themselves, this is a really cool way to show off that your iDevice is jailbroken.
Thanks for the cool jailbreak tweak, William!
Name: InstaURL
Price: 99¢
Version: 1.0
Repo: Modmyi
Developer: william_veb
Editor's Rating: / 4.5/5
I talked to William via email to ask a little more about the tweak and William himself:
Anthony: In about a paragraph can you tell us a little about yourself?
William: My name is William Vabrinskas. I am 20 years old, and currently studying pharmacy at St. John's University. I became interested in programming my freshman year of college when a friend showed me a website that made fake Windows error message images. We then made a bet that I could actually make the error messages functional using Visual Basic. I started learning Visual Basic by taking code off-line and learning how they worked. I spent hours debugging simple code and eventually made a functioning program. I made a functional web browser, which had some unique functions but, unfortunately never was completed. I then ventured into Objective-C programming when I bought books on open source programming for the iPhone. It didn't take long for me to get into the swing of things and make my first tweak called 'Media Controller Brightness.' I had originally wanted to name it LockControls after I added Wi-Fi and location toggles. Soon after that, I developed many simple tweaks like 'Remove Picture Frame Button' and 'SMSConfirmation.' Now a junior in college, I can't seem to stay away from developing and I enjoy every minute of it. I love helping out the jailbreak community.
Anthony: What gave you the idea to make InstaURL?
William: Well originally I wanted to make a tweak that would allow you to dial from anywhere but then i found out after days of work that iOS doesn't allow external applications to make calls. If they could any app could run a collect call in the background on mute and that would not be good. But I ran into the idea of InstaURL when I needed quick access to Safari from anywhere on my phone.
Anthony: What was the hardest part about making InstaURL?
William: I'd say the hardest part of making this tweak was programming the URL text box to search 'one-worded' search entries. It would always see the 'one-worded' searches as acceptable URL's and try to load it as a website. Surprisingly this took a chunk of my time to figure out a fix to this problem.
Anthony: Is InstaURL fully compatible with iOS 5?
William: InstaURL has not been fully tested on iOS 5, considering I have an iPhone 4 and can't deal with a tethered jailbreak because I restart my phone constantly, also I'm too broke to purchase any other iDevice to jailbreak. =) But I haven't gotten any compatibility issue emails yet.
Anthony: What do you recommend that people use InstalURL for?
William: InstaURL is for those who need instant access to Safari's URL bar from anywhere. You can conveniently search and browse from anywhere on your iPhone. Since I've developed it I can't imagine not having it.
The Giveaway!
William was generous enough to offer to giveaway FIVE copies of InstaURL to the wonderful Modmyi readers!
Here's how to win:
Follow me @BouchardAnthony
Follow ModMyi @Modmyi
Retweet this article with your Cydia number in the tweet; if you do not have the Cydia number in your tweet, you will be disqualified from the drawing. Within the tweet you must also mention @BouchardAnthony so that I can easily see who has entered the drawing. If you don't mention me, you will also be disqualified. The tweet must include the following text, "I entered a contest to win InstaURL for iPhone!"
Winners will be announced on Saturday, November 26. Good luck to all of you that enter!
Sources: William Vabrinskas
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