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A friend recently showed me his iPhone. It was no big deal, I had my own in my pocket. But then he showed me the NES games he could play on it. Mine didn’t do that…

So, a couple nights ago I went about unshackling my iphone. The key to unshackling an iPhone lies in using iFuntastic. I used version 4.7.1, although it looks like version 4.8.0 just got released.

iFuntastic guides you through the entire process, which can be reversed, although it took me a little bit of time to get used to the cryptic instructions.

I now have several NES games including donkey kong, galaga, tetris, etc. Gameplay sucks, but who do you know with Galaga on there iPhone? Somethings you just do cuz you can.

Think the table at the cafe is titled, simply use iLevel on your unshackled iPhone to check…

Other amazingly useless applications include: iMoon (moon phases), PigShooter (game), and iFartz (fart generator).

When I showed off my unshackled iPhone to a group of friends (there must have been 10 iPhones in the room), reaction ranged from “you’re gonna end up with a brick” to “and…” to “Wow, I want to do that”.

I love to IM, but sometimes I feel like I am just talking to myself. 

Here is my most recent example:

[12:31] Cory: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118289311361649057.html?mod=home_personal_journal_left

[12:31] Cory: The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years
[12:32] Cory: Crap. now I want one too!!!!
[12:33] Cory: The article also mentions that it synchs seamlessly with both macs and windows., USING iTunes…
[12:34] Cory: Does that mean that iTunes is being used to synch contacts, etc.? It looks like iTunes is becoming much bigger than music player software.
[12:35] Cory: I don’t know if you recall a previous article I sent you. I think by these same authors that mentioned that iTunes installs Bonjour on windows machines and is actually a robust “OS” in its own right…
[12:37] Cory: http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070607/youre-using-itunes-but-are-you-missing-some-of-the-fun/
[12:38] Cory: With parallels, iTunes, AppleTV, Safari, and now the iPhone, Apple products are really integrating into the Windows world…
[12:40] Cory: Interesting:
Walt: This first model is missing some features some other smart phones have, like video recording, instant messaging, and real-time GPS navigation. Do you plan to upgrade iPhones purchased now so they have these features? If so, when?Steve: We don’t talk about future products. I will say that the iPhone is the most sophisticated software platform ever created for a mobile device, and that we think software features are where the action will be in the coming years. Stay tuned.

[12:40] Cory: From:
http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/20070626/jobs-qa/
[12:40] Cory: No IM?
[12:41] Cory: Well, I hope I haven’t bored you to death. Maybe you are already dead. Sorry.   

 

Oh well, I must be one of those people who IMs because they like to hear the sounds of the voices in their heads. 

 Is it true that the iPhone doesn’t have Instant Messaging capabilities?

I just downloaded the Safari 3 beta today and eventually made it around to viewing a YouTube video in a friend’s LiveJournal post. To my surprise, at the end, the video’s familiar Play Again and other navigation features had been transformed, as if inspired by the new Leopard Desktop that was shown off today.

Dock like icons adorned the bottom of the embedded window along with a nice reflective surface and even the bubbly mouse over effect! I thought perhaps it was a secret new player for Safari 3 only using the new h.264 encoded files, but confirmed that it does also look the same in IE and Firefox. But, oddly enough, only in videos embedded in a website.

[youtube]Lu4y47H_lDc[/youtube]

This looks like a sign of bigger things to come from the partnership between Apple and Google. Besides that, Apple isn’t telling you about how much faster Safari 3 is than Safari 2. Especially its Flash support. I’d say it’s easily twice as fast! And don’t even get me started on the INCREDIBLE new page and source search features.

So go download the Safari Beta and check it out for yourself:

Last week I eagerly tore into my new Apple TV and started using it. It is the now main component of my entertainment center, especially since I can’t have both a DVD player and the Apple TV connected at the same time. I rip DVDs using my Dual 2ghz G5 and then stream them over the wireless G.

Other than that, I’ve been getting all of my entertainment from either the iTunes store or from podcasts. NBC Nightly News and CBS provide a light overview of the day’s events, I watch 1 or 2 episodes of the TED and CoolHunting (fascinating!) podcasts, and sprinkle in a few cartoons and animations, plus shorts from PBS, Discovery, National Geographic, and a handful of amateur science podcasts.

As for paid programming, The Daily Show and Colbert are daily requirements, and then Heroes, Lost, and BSG when they’re available. I still haven’t purchased a single movie from the iTunes store and likely won’t until they either make the pricing more reasonable or come up with a rental scheme since I usually only watch most movies once, I can’t justify paying $10 for a low quality, stripped down version of a similarly priced DVD!

I have the HD capable, widescreen TV, the Apple TV, the HDMI cable to get them talking to each other, the surround sound. So what’s missing? There’s no freaking HD content! Even the Apple movie trailers are in a grotesquely compressed, low res format.

Yeah, shocking. So I have done the legwork and pulled together a list of resources for getting a little 720p action from your new honey. If you’re able to find something I haven’t listed here, let me know and I’ll update this post.

BBC in HD
http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/Customer/index.aspx
They’ve got some great, free content over there in QT format.

Technology Evangelist
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/feeds.html
Fun tech geekery in glorious 720p. It’s a podcast!

MariposaHD
http://www.mariposahd.tv/
The world’s first HD internet TV show. Chicks in bikinis. Site may not be wholly SFW.

ItalyGuides.it
http://www.italyguides.it/us/roma/download_audioguide/podcast/hd_apple_tv.htm
These guys are marketing directly to you, you AppleTV owner you.

TrailerCast HD 720p
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=213245269
HD movie trailers! This is a direct link to the podcast in the iTunes store.

Tecnocato
http://www.tecnocato.com/
They’re now producing an HD podcast.

That’s enough to get you going. There are a couple more on similar subjects that I haven’t listed here because I couldn’t find a link to their website, but just do a search in the iTunes store for 720p and you’ll find them.

EDIT

Reader Contributions:

Nasa in HD
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/hd_index.html

I would summarize, but so much would be lost.

Just check it out:

VALLEJO, California (AP) — A cell phone apparently ignited in a man’s pocket and started a fire that burned his hotel room and caused severe burns over half his body, fire department officials said.

Luis Picaso, 59, was in stable condition Monday with second- and third-degree burns to his upper body, back, right arm and right leg, Vallejo Fire Department assistant chief Kurt Henke said.

Firefighters arrived at the residential hotel Saturday night to find Picaso lying on the bathroom floor after a malfunctioning cell phone in his pants pocket set fire to his nylon and polyester clothes, Henke said.

The flames spread to a plastic chair, setting off a sprinkler that held the fire in check, he said.

Authorities declined to name the phone’s manufacturer and model.

The fire and water caused $75,000 (euro57,955) damage to the room and a business on the ground floor, Henke said.

In case you lost count, that was 4 petroleum based products combining to nearly kill this man.  Wow, I have heard that petroleum was flamable, but had no idea how dangerous it was when used to manufacture clothing, a plastic chair and a cell phone…

While I do in fact understand the flamable nature of petroleum, I think only one of two scenarios is plausible.  The first involves a crack pipe that is suspiciously absent from the new story.  The second scenario is that he was secretly testing Apple’s new iPhone (note that authorities “declined to name the phone’s manufacturer and model).
What do you think???

Steve Jobs knows how to work the crowd. At this year’s keynote, he started of by announcing the actual launch of the iTv (branded AppleTV) which was first shown to the public late last year.

Steve Jobs went on to introduce not one, but three killer products, that will revolutionize the industry.

That’s right, the iPod, the iPhone, and some sort of Internet device.

But, it turns out that he is not introducing three individual products but one killer product.

The iPhone. I know, the iPhone already launched last year from Linksys, but this one is different. I am sure the attorneys are already busy working on this.

Basically, it is a subcompact tablet computer (running OS X) combined with a cell phone and an iPOD.

Notice that there is only one button. All other input is through a touch sensitive interface(the entire screen).

From engadget’s take on the iPhone:

Sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device (that’s frickin’ thin, by the way) include a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the sensor when it’s close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quadband GSM radio with EDGE. Perhaps most amazingly, though, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out of the gate. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email. Apple quotes 5 hours of battery life for talk or video, with a full 16 hours in music mode — no word on standby time yet.

It does so many things, that it is somewhat overwhelming. The Apple Store website has an excellent page about the new iPhone.

Unfortunately this product will not ship until June, but I am sure it will revolutionize the way we communicate and share data.

And finally, Apple Computer, Inc. is now Apple, Inc. With the name change, look for new products for the entire home. Maybe an Apple HDTV? Or how about a line of Apple Smart Appliances.

I can hardly wait until June to get my hands on an iPhone.

According to a new report titled Devices That Tell On You: The Nike+iPod Sport Kit and published by a group of University of Washington graduate students, the new Nike+iPod Sport Kit could lead to all sorts of secret surveillance.

Scott Saponas the lead author on the report believes that anyone could monitor someone’s activities by creating an inexpensive network of computers that would monitor the movement of the person with the Nike+iPod Sport Kit transmitter.

Apparently the Nike+iPod Sport Kit transmits up to 60 feet versus the miniscule 10 inch reach of more common RFIDs on many consumer goods.
From the Seattle P-I article:

Anyone passing by with a sensor in his or her shoe — or a sensor planted in, say, a pocket or backpack — could be tracked.

The researchers outlined a scenario in which “Marvin,” a troubled ex-boyfriend, places detectors at remote locations so he could know when “Alice,” who is carrying a sensor, enters or departs a particular place.

This story has been on the local Seattle news station and this morning on CNN. The news story even shows the students testing their theory on the UW campus. It looked scary with the students monitoring, via laptops, the subject’s movement on campus.
Ultimately, if you are thinking about using this technology to surveil or are concerned that someone would use this technology to surveil you, you should really take an honest look at your relationships and those around you. You have bigger issues than whether this is a threat or not.
In order for this to work, one must secretly plant the Nike+Ipod Sport Kit, have the technological know-how to create a small network of receivers, places to discreetly hide the receivers and protect them from the elements, and a way to retrieve the information. While the receivers could be linked up to an open WiFi connection, I doubt that this would be reliable, as I don’t know anyone who’s WiFi doesn’t regularly drop and need a reboot.

Is it possible? Yes.

Is it plausible? I don’t think so. But someone will probably try to use it.

Ultimately, I do not think this will replace traditional stalking anytime soon.

John Hodgman, the PC in the new Mac commercials, was interviewed this week by Engadget. He’s a really funny guy and somehow, even though he’s not the product being advertised, has become the star of those ads. Makes me wonder if there are any people out there thinking, “If I like the PC better in the Mac commercials, will I like a PC better in real life?” or is he just the likable, bumbling fool who you’d have a beer with but never trust with your data?

Here’s an excerpt:

Seth Stevenson over at Slate thinks that the ads have backfired because your, “humor and likability are evident,” and that he’d “much sooner associate with Hodgman than with Long [the guy who plays the 'Mac'].” Are you becoming an icon for diehard PC users?

The villain of any story is often the most compelling character. Justin, who is brilliantly funny, of course must play the hero, and the Luke Skywalkers of the world always catch a certain amount of flack. It’s unfair, but inevitable, and I don’t think it has caused people to buy more PCs anymore than it caused people to root for the empire over the Jedi. The Jedi still are the best. And they don’t get viruses.

How did you maneuver me into a Star Wars discussion? Damn internet.

That is all.

The whole interview is here, and the Slate article is over here.

He’s also got a recurring role on The Daily Show, which is always hilarious.

I love Dave Chappelle.  He is featured here in his own Mac commercial.
Keep in mind this is a Dave Chappelle video, if you are unsure as to whether playing this now is appropriate, it probably isn’t.

[youtube]62-I4ChZhY4[/youtube]

So, you think that you are cool cuz you own a MacBook Pro? Well, there is a lot more to cool than just owning the right machine, you gotta look the part.

The folks over at Life Clever will help with that. They’ll even tell you where to shop and the total look will only set you back about $160.00. And since you just laid out over $2,500 on your laptop, this makes more than just fashion sense.