With a few updates following my last post, and me not being up on posting, here is a quick rundown of what’s been going on in the jailbreaking community.

Since my last post, I had informed everyone to go ahead and update to iOS 4. It brought some great OS changes and new features to the iPhone. Multitasking, category containers for apps to name two, but jailbreaking was still a necessity. Then one day, reading through Twitter, I find this link to jailbreak my phone.

http://jailbreakme.com

Navigating to this site from your iDevice would allow you to jailbreak it without the need for special .ipsw files, or even syncing with iTunes. You can jailbreak at lunch while you wait for your food! Incidentally, about two days before it’s release, I had to restore my iPhone and it had updated me to 4.0.1, not something I wanted as I lost all my necessary functionality. This method was great, it was simple (go to site, slide to jailbreak, reboot and go), nothing could be easier. It used an exploit found in the way the iPhone/iPad renders pdf’s. This hole allows external code to be executed, and in this case, allows jailbreaking. Now comes iOS 4.0.2, and the hole has been patched. Good for security, as a site like this could have provided malicious code, bad for jailbreaking as it’s now not able to be done.

So now the current version of the iOS is 4.0.2, will there be a jailbreak for this? Looks unlikely. Today a few in the iPhone Dev / Jailbreaking community have come out to say that they will not release anything until iOS version 4.1, I can’t blame them. They work hard to help people use their phones to the fullest potential. Give us a chance to use these iDevices as they are meant to be used. Good luck to you guys with iOS 4.1, we’ll see you at that update.

After months of waiting, now iPhone/Netflix users can watch on-the-go.

One of the great things with the iPad I own is that I can watch a movie on the iPad while in bed, on the road (not in the car while driving mind you) and just about anywhere the fancy hit. Not that it’s cumbersome, but now I can do it on an even smaller screen. It had been rumored for quite some time that an iPhone version would arrive, and today is the day. It’s quite comparable to the other apps out there that do streaming video, and it won’t be taking the place of my beloved Air Video, but it’s another good addition to the arsenal of mobile entertainment. And I think it’ll keep the kids pretty happy as well.

Initial thoughts after installing this free app, where positive. It looks promising, quite zippy on a WiFi connection (haven’t tried 3G yet), but there are some aesthetic misgivings I have about it. Navigation is simple, and so are the graphics. I think it’s cause I’m spoiled with nice interactive icons and in-app navigation that I was expecting more. But the look does not hurt the app in all. It looks quite good so far, and will probably get a few “upgrades” in the near future.

“Wow”.

Just, “Wow”

So I was just organizing a few boxes that I hadn’t looked in for a few years and I found these inside.

Anyone else remember these? Maybe you were getting your groove on with the built in Media Players, or checking your email, or adding a new contact, or in the UX50′s case; taking photos and videos? Man, these things sure were pretty seet. So what do we have here (from Left to Right):

1. Compaq iPaq 3835
2. Compaq iPaq 3955
3. Sony Clie PEG UX-50
4. Sony Clie PEG TG-50

I remember these things so fondly. Both as a utilitarian tool and a source of entertainment, these devices brought joy, productivity, entertainment, contacts, and an occasional odd gaze way back when (2003 that is).

I found the power adaptors to them as well, and yes they still charge! What’s even better is that they still fire up and function. Although, it would be quite difficult to get them functional under today’s OSes, it’s still a fun little thing I’ll play around with to see if it’s still viable.

Hell, I might build an old Windows XP box just to see if it works. I know, I know XP’s not old. We’ll be think fondly about it soon enough as well.

Office Live and the SkyDrive are not anything new, both as a product as well as a concept.

Personally, I love the idea of Cloud Computing. It’s not only a secure method (read “secure” as not impervious rather, “My-hard-drive-just-crashed-and-I-lost-my-thesis” secure), but with nearly all people connect to the Internet at home, work, schools and everywhere else (just about); why not let large corporate servers take care of your simple documents and spreadsheets?

I keep my simple documents in Google Docs, PDFs in DropBox and miscellaneous stuff in Box.net. Now the reason for that is pretty much due to space limitations. Google Docs just gives me a gig, and DropBox and Box about two gig. Not bad for free, but fills up fast. My PDFs for example, manuals and tech books I like to read, are rather large and voluminous.

Sky Drive has 25GB of space available for free. That’s really a fabulous amount of space, especially if you can store any file type on the “cloud”. I still don’t recommend saving very important or “top secret” file on a cloud, but all others, why not.

So comparing Google Docs to Office Live is straight forward. Google Docs has a clean simple rich text editor style to it. It also does a good job of formatting the finished document for Microsoft Office products. But now is there really a need for Google Docs if I can just use straight up Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote? I don’t see a reason to switch, and there is never a time when a secondary option isn’t welcome. So, no I won’t switch, but I will use it from time to time. All the main Office apps that are necessary for everyone from a major company to a single-man operation like myself to do business with these file formats.

While I won’t be eliminating my other “cloud” accounts, I’m very happy to say that SkyDrive and Office Live, will more than likely come in very handy.

Take a look at some screencaps below to see how it looks for yourself.

[View with PicLens]

Sick of paying for WiFi at Starbucks? Don’t have an AT&T account? No more worries, Starbucks will start offering free WiFi.

Starting July 1st, 2010; Starbucks will be offering 1 click, no registration Wifi in the US. Not too shabby, before I’d have to suffer through a Tully’s now I can surf at another high priced coffee shop (or should it be shoppe?). Either way, it’s a good move on Starbucks part, it’ll keep customers much happier.Good going ‘bucks!

Yesterday, in a small footnote; Safari 5 was introduced to the Internet. So what kind of change are we to expect? Quite a bit, from what we gather.

Safari Reader is first. A way to view content on a page without the ads and frames. You can then print, email, zoom or whatever the article you want to read. Personally, I find that the Internet is too bogged down with advertising. Sure it’s an excellent medium, but sometimes enough is enough. This seems like a pretty great feature.

More HTML5 support. As a web developer, I really like this option. WebKit, CSS3 and HTML5 are still relatively new standards, but they become much more when they are utilized in mainstream websites.

Faster, Faster, FASTER!!! Improved Nitro Engine, 30% faster JAVA. And a new technique known as DNS Prefetching. It makes navigating from a page to another much faster as it looks up the address, before you even click the link.

These are just a few of the promising new features with Safari 5. I’ve always used Firefox, but for testing purposes, I think I’ll give Safari 5 another chance and see how much Apple has progressed in the browser community.

Many users want to have a more fulfilling experience with their iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Sure the current OS is quite good (3.1.3 and 3.2 respectively), but what do you do if you fancy yourself more of a power user?

Here is my tutorial for Jailbreaking your i-Device. It’s very straight forward. A few mouse clicks and you’re ready to explore the jailbroken side of your device.

So where do we begin?

First step is to make sure you are up to date. Now mind you, the only people who should update their phones to 3.1.3 are those that wish to unlock their carrier to use with overseas or domestic carriers with SIM cards. I’ll get into that in a moment.

Have AT&T and are fine with that carrier? OK, proceed.

1. Download the latest iTunes, either from the site or if you already have iTunes, make sure its updated through Apple’s Software Update
2. Plug you device into the USB cable and allow iTunes to back it up. Once the back up is complete, you can go ahead and click on “Check for Updates”
3. If you have a valid update, go ahead and update the firmware. This may take a while depending on your Internet connection. ~300MB for the download.
4. Now that your device is updated, go ahead and download Spirit. This is the application we will use to jailbreak your device. You can find the downloads (PC, Linux and Mac) here.
5. Once downloaded, unzip the file and open it.
6. Double click the icon and you’ll get this super-simple app pop-up:



7. Press “Jailbreak” and sit back and wait. Once the Jailbreak process is complete, your device will reboot, and reconnect to iTunes. Upon completion, you’ll see a new icon called “Cydia”, it looks like this:
   
8. Tap on Cydia. It’ll connect to the Internet, load some updates automatically and close. Re-Open the app, at which time it will ask you what type of user you are, I select “Graphical” as the others don’t apply to me.

Done!

Pretty easy, yes? So now for those of you that need to use a different carrier, or are overseas. Currently the firmware on the iPhone (3G/3Gs) upgrades the baseband to 05.12.01, and at the time of writing this post, there is no unlock for it. Once available I’ll post that too. So for those users, please DO NOT upgrade the firmware to 3.1.3.

Little Note: This article is purely for educational purposes. Use at your own risk, I accept no responsibility to any damages, or anything else that may occur. Sorry, thought I’d get that out there.

So, his Steve-ness has announced the new iPhone 4. It’s definitely a cut above the current versions. Here are some of the key features:

1. New Design – Stainless Steel sides, Glass Front & Back, and 24% slimmer than the previous ones, integrated antennas
2. A4 Processor
3. Front Facing Camera, for WiFi Video Chat called “Face Time”
4. 5MP Camera on Back with LED Flash
5. 960×640 display, 326 pixels per inch: Apple’s Retina Display, great Hi RES graphics
6. Better battery life
7. Gyroscope for 6-axis sensing
8. iMovie coming to the App Store
9. Finally: Built-in Multitasking and Folder creation for organizing apps
10. iAds: Interactive ads that will produce more revenue for developers
11. And it’s all available June 24th. 16GB – $199 | 32GB – $299

As more information becomes available I’ll post it here. Stay Tuned!

Update – Here are links to Apple’s site and the Gallery page. Oh, and check out the Tech Specs page, scroll to the bottom and check out the “Bumpers”.

[View with PicLens]

According to The Mac Security Blog, there are some free applications that have some spyware payloads in them. Please make sure to review the article, along with the list of suspect software, and if you see anything there you use, delete it immediately.

For many years, Mac’s have had a near invincibility to trojans, malware, spyware and viruses. For the most part one could argue it was due to the small percentage of market share. So security through obscurity was the credo. In recent years (most definitely after Apple adopted the Intel processors) the line between Mac and Windows was starting to blur. Security on the Mac was starting to open up due to users installing Windows either through Boot Camp or Virtual Machine alternatives (Parallels, VMWare Fusion or Virtual Box). Now there is nothing wrong with Windows, For decades it has been the pinnacle of business operating systems. Slowly things may be changing. All due to the way people use software. There are nearly no boundaries now. Web based applications, for example, allow users to access content or apps from anywhere there is an Internet connection and regardless of OS.

With a larger market share, it seems Macs are being “targeted”. I say it that way, because Macs are still quite safe both in the OS platform (built on UNIX) and the browsing standpoint (resistant to typical threats because the architecture is different). That doesn’t mean it may not change, those that produce virii or malicious software are always looking for a challenge.

AT&T announced some new changes to their data plan today. And I for one am not too thrilled.

I find it to be yet another method for AT&T to overcharge its’ customers for spotty, unreliable service.

At any rate, here is the new breakdown of the data plans:

• DataPlus/Data/Pro: The current $30 “unlimited” smartphone data plan is being replaced by two new options: $15 per month for 200MB and $25 for 2GB (called “DataPlus” and “DataPro,” respectively)
• Overages: on the $15 plan, you’ll pay $15 for each additional 200MB, but on the $25 plan, you’ll pay $10 for each additional GB
• Tethering: will be offered as an add-on to the DataPro plan for an additional $20 per month, which means you’ll pay a total of $45 a month for 2GB of data shared between your phone and your tethered devices
• So this means that yes, tethering will finally be offered to AT&T users
• iPad Users: who currently have the $30 a month unlimited plan, can keep it, for now. All others will have the above plans come June 7th.

Now this doesn’t necessarily spell doom for iPhone or iPad users. It turns out to be a great deal for people using the Data plans for laptops. But we’ll see how customers take this. In the end, we truly make the decision whether we want to be subjected to this kind of pricing structure or not.