IPhone not showing up

my jailbroken 3G has photos on it that I would like to transfer to my iPhoto app, but the device (phone) only shows up for a split second in iPhoto. I then can't import the photos. This just started happening recently.
Does anyone have a solution for me.
Thanks

It may be a faulty USB cable. If you can, try to get another iPhone USB cable to try with it. Or it may be a problem with iPhoto, in which case try importing photos from iTunes (if you can).

tried another cable, that didn't help,
Can't import from iTunes either.