Apple Peel: Use ipod touch to make calls (GSM).

Please do not jump to think that you can make GSM calls by installing an application. That is not possible because the communication chip itself is not present on ipod touch. This is hardware + software solution. This solution is not like many other solutions which lets you make VoIP calls using ipod touch. This is a hardware accessory which you have to attach to your ipod touch, install an application, and then use for making GSM calls. There is a catch here that the iphone should be jailbroken for installing the application which is used for texting and making voice calls. Currently it supports only 2G.

As you will be adding new hardware, be ready to have a bulky iphone ;). Do not worry much, it will not look like an outgrowth or like an extra limb. The whole hardware is nicely packaged into a single unit with an extra battery, communication chip and a sim card holder. The product is still at a prototype stage. But the cost looks very promising at $57. Best part, no carrier lock!

source: link

Android on iphone

You like both android and iphone and want both ?
Or are you irritated like me because of stupid restrictions put by apple ? 
Or you just want to try something cool ?

There is a way to install android 2.2 on iphone. The best part is that it becomes dual boot supporting both iphone firmware and android. Iphone 2G, &3G are supported. It seems 3GS is not supported. There are some sites with paid software which claims that they support 3GS, but I am skeptical. I would not go for the paid sites. First the iphone needs to be jailbroken. There are many tutorial out there on the web. Here are few links. link1, link2, link3.

There is a simple automated process by the iphondroid software. This is supposed to be the simplest of all. There is an updated version of this software just yesterday (1st sept 2010) and it is a coveted as single click installation. But as far as I see, there is not windows version of the latest tool.


I am itching to try this. Will update you with my experiment.

Update (3-sept): r13h is the latest version of this tool. But unfortunately the windows version (r13g) does not support 2G. The website mentions that 2G version will be supported in next release. It is not clear to me if there is a windows version of r13h which supports 2G or not because when I try to download the 2G version from main page, it gives me r13f. I still searching where to find windows version of r13h.

Update (6-sept): It seems that there is some problem with the NOR backup utility which protects against bricking the iphone. The release of latest (r13h) windows version for 2G is postponed. I think its worth waiting for the protection.

Update (8-sept): There is going to be a new release (r13i) for 2G this sunday.

Update (13-sept): The new version(r13j) for windows is released. Here is the link. I am going to try soon and will update you with my experience.

Update (14-sept): After many bug fixing finally the r13m version seems to work. I am successful in installing android on my iphone. Though its not fully functional enjoying running android on iphone.See some of my pics.

Put your wii remote to a greater use.

The following is a nice TED talk which demonstrates an wii remote hacking idea which extends the functionality beyond gaming. The speaker developed a freely downloadable software (his website) which uses the infrared sensing capabilities of the wii. In the talk he demonstrates few applications of the basic idea. He shows a infrared pen which uses the screen projection as white board. In another application, with two infrared devices, he creates two touch points which can be used as a multi-touch interface. But the best part is that the infrared device when attached to the head can be used as a head tracking device. The 3D projection keeps changing according to the position of the viewer head.

Milo and Kate : AI Game for the Xbox with kinect

The following video of a TED talk is about a game developed for Microsoft Xbox with Kinect controller. The characters in the game are AI characters. The player has to interact with the character by playing, talking etc with the characters. At the end of the game, the developers say that, no two characters will be the same. Very interesting. This is nice mixture of both AI & Kinect controller.

In the video that author says that people did not believe when there was a video release of the game. I agree that it is really hard to believe. He gives a live demo of it in the TED talk.

Beware of goldrain (goldra1n) scam that claims to unlock iphone4

There has be some articles (this, this) floating on the net that a tool named "goldra1n" can jailbreak and unlock any version of the iphone including the latest iphone 4. First of all, its a paid application. This is the first indicator that this is a scam as the tools developed by the elite iphone hacker groups (like iphone-dev team) are for free.

The goldrain tools is being marketed by a site named www.unlockiphoneus.com. When I last visited this site, it shows that it is suspended. But a new site "http://www.unlock-iphone.us/" popped up in that place. Beware of both these sites and do not get fooled. See the complaints on the site and discussions/updated articles(this, this) damning the tool.

How to find bootrom version of iphone 3GS (new bootrom or old bootrom)

When the hackers released the pwnage(v4.0/4.0.1) jailbreak tool for iOS4, it is mentioned that the 3GS phones with the latest bootrom (iBoot-359.3.2) cannot be jailbroken. Only the old bootroom (iBoot-359.3) can be unlocked for now. So, now the big question is how to find which bootrom does your 3GS phone have.

The iphone week number will help as a thumb rule to find if your 3GS iphone is having old or new bootrom. The 4th and 5th digits of the serial number will tell the week number of the phone. If your iphone week number is <40, then you will definitely have old bootrom. If the week number is >45 then you will definitely have new bootrom. In between, we cannot say for sure.

The sure shot method to determine the bootrom is to use some tool like 'usbview' after putting the iphone in DFU mode (Connect your iPhone to iTunes, turn off, click power+home button for 10 seconds, leave POWER button after 10 seconds, holding HOME button). After putting the phone in DFU you can follow one of the following methods.

method-1
- put the phone in DFU mode
- run the application usbview
- check "config descriptors" and refresh
- in the left panel, click Apple USB device
- in the right panel, find an entry which reads iBoot 359.x.x

method-2
- put the phone in DFU mode
- In windows, got to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager
- Find "Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller" and go to Apple Mobile Device USB Driver.
- Right click and choose properties and go to details
- Select device instance path
- The end of the info string will tell the bootrom version

method-3
See this link to find one more method using forecast(f0recast) tool. This tool will give the final summary if your 3GS phone can be jailbreakable, unlockable. Note that this tool is not yet updated to give suggestions for iOS4. It can accurately tell if your 3GS phone is jailbreakable, unlockable only till 3.1.3 firmware.

Hackers release tools to unlock iphone os 4 (iOS4)

Shortly after the iphone 4 is officially launched with the latest firmware iOS4, hackers released the tools to jailbreak & unlock the latest firmware on the 3G & 3GS phones. Though the hackers found the exploits during the beta of iOS4 & 3.1.3 firmware they did not disclose is because apple would close them in the main release. Note that 3G & 3GS iphones are supported on iOS4 but not 2G iphones. They updated the following tools:
pwnage tool - to jailbreak the new iOS4 firmware (redsnow should follow)
ultrasn0w tool - to unlock the baseband

The good news is that the updated ultrasnow tool (v0.93) can unlock all the basebands till the latest one (5.13.04). The new firmware updates that baseband (responsible for gsm communication) to the latest one but the latest ultrasnow tool can unlock it so that the phone can be used on other networks. So, even if you accidentally updated your iphone firmware to 3.1.3 version (which also updates the baseband to 5.12.01) which rendered the phone not usable on other networks this latest tools will be your savior. The users with jailbroken phones on 3.1.3 firmware can also use ultrasnow without upgrading to iOS4.

The bad news is that the pwnage tool cannot *yet* jailbreak the 3GS iphones with the new bootroms (iBoot-359.3.2). The iphone week number will help as a thumb rule to find if your 3GS iphone is having old or new bootrom. The 4th and 5th digits of the serial number will tell the week number of the phone. If your iphone week number is <40, then you will definitely have old bootrom. If the week number is >45 then you will definitely have new bootrom. In between, we cannot say for sure. The sure shot method to determine the bootrom is to use some tool like 'usbview' and put the iphone in DFU mode.

Tutorials:
jailbreaking 3G(mac, windows), 3GS oldbootrom(mac, windows)
unlock of 3G and 3GS

update(5-July): If you have the 3.1.2 SHSH blobs stored (not 3.1.3 shsh blobs), there is a way you can jailbreak the 3GS phone with new firmware. See this tutorial.This tutorial is not yet for the faint hearted. These steps were released for the advanced users as the tool development will take some time.

iphone OS 4 vs android 2.2

The following is a nice link comparing the two latest OS. The highlights of the latest iphone 4 are the following.

• Front facing camera for video conferencing
• A4 CPU (used in the ipads)
• Multitasking capability
• Higher resolution display
• 5 megapixel camera (with flash) which can record HD video
• Second microphone for noise cancellation
• Thinnest smartphone with a glass body
• Folders to group applications

Combining two or more boradband internet connections

The other day my cousin asked me how to combine two internet connections and use both of them at the same time. As per my old knowledge, even if two ethernet cards are available on the PC, an application cannot directly use both the IPs, do load balancing, and pump up the overall speed. This is because a TCP cannot cannot be shared over two different IPs. Once a TCP connection is established, lets us say by a browser, it cannot switch to the other one on the same PC.

Having said to my cousin that this is not possible by default I explored and found some interesting stuff which proves me wrong (I am happy that I am wrong). I guess the technical word for the above is "Link Aggregation". This is also called LAN or NIC Teaming, multi-link trunking etc. Having said this, let me also say that you cannot achieve this with just having two ethernet cards and two internet connections. The LAN cards should be capable of providing this support and the OS should have corresponding drivers. I am not sure what kind of ethernet cards are capable of doing it. But read on...

There are ready made products to uncomplicate things for you, but they are a bit pricey as of now. They are called dual-wan routers. If I understand correctly, they do NAT translation internally and achieve load balancing and high-availability (failover support).

Links to related discussions: link1, link2, link3

Android OS on iphone

One of the members of the iphone dev team, planetbeing, ported Android OS (from google) to the iphone. Binaries are available for both 2G and 3G phones (not 3GS). The best part is that the iphone becomes a dual boot. You do not need to completely remove your iphone firmware. However, there are some issues like bugs, performance issues, and power consumption issues. So, in the current state, this is not for the faint hearted. Here is the step-by-step guide to install Android on iphone from pcworld.

Fixing 169.254.x.x problem with network bridge

You may get 169.254.x.x because of the Automatic Private IP Address (APIPA) feature of windows. The windows OS may assign a private IP if the network card is setup to get IP from a DHCP server and is not able to do so. This can be a generic problem and the solution will be specific to the problem. The above info should give you some pointer to explore further. One of the most common problems is that a firewall on you machine may be preventing your machine from getting the IP from the DHCP server.

The problem that we are going to solve today is when this problem may happen because of network bridge. A network bridge is typically used to share the internet between two network devices. One of it could be a wireless device and the other a wired device. The exact problem that I am facing is as follows:

I have a network bridge between my wireless device and my ethernet card. When I connect to internet using LAN cable between the ethernet port of my PC and router, I could share the internet on my LAN with the devices connected to my wireless. Also, if I do not have the network bridge, I can connect to the internet over my wireless. But while having the network bridge, if I try to connect to the internet over wireless, I am not able to do so. I get the 169.254.x.x IP which is not in the range of my router's IP. The fix is as follows:

1. Open the command window (from Run->cmd.exe or programs)
2. Issue the command "netsh bridge show adapter"
3. See the id of the adapter that is not working
4. If the "compatibility mode" is not enabled, you should force it
5. Issue the command "netsh bridge set adapter id forcecompatmode=enable" (Replace "id" with the number of adapter id)
6. Run the command "netsh bridge show adapter" and verify that it is enabled.
7. Issue the command "ipconfig /renew" to renew the IP and then issue "ipconfig".
8. You should see an IP that is in the range of your router's IP address.
9. Enjoy!

Source: Microsoft Knowledgebase

Fix for DFU or Recovery mode problem after unlocking iphone 3GS on 3.1.2 with redsn0w or blackra1n

Currently, there are two alternatives for unlocking 3GS running 3.1.2 firmware. The tools are
redsn0w(0.9.2): Only for jailbreaking
blackra1n(RC3): For jailbreaking + unlocking
blacksn0w: Only for unlocking

The two alternatives are
1. Use redsn0w to jailbreak followed by blacksn0w to unlock
2. Use blackra1n only

Now coming to the problems, various users reported that unlocking with blackrain followed by installation of some software (like SBSettings) from cydia lead to a condition where the phone is constantly in a recover mode loop after every reboot (reboot loop). I did not face this issue first hand as I did not install any software from cydia after unlock. I tried both the redsnow & blackrain approaches on different 3GS iphones. (Update: See the comments to this post which suggests a fix)

While the above condition might be true in some cases, I think that most people are missing one important point. If they jailbreak latest(>week45) 3GS iphones on 3.1.2 firmware using tethering (via USB), they have to use tethered boot also. This point is clearly mentioned in the redsnow software at the step after loading the 3.1.2 firmware.

They should use the same software everytime they have to reboot their 3GS iphone. After the unlock they would see the normal screen with the applications. But after reboot, it will go into recovery mode (screen showing itunes and USB cable). This is not DFU mode but people are using this term interchangeably with recovery mode. So, lets us ignore the terminology for time being and focus on how to fix it.

blackra1n:
1. Boot the phone. It will show screen showing itunes logo and a USB cable.
2. Just run the blackra1n software and click "Make it ra1n".
3. It will show a screen showing geohot's face.
4. Just wait, it will come out of it and will show the normal screen with icons.

redsn0w:
1. Boot the phone. It will show screen showing itunes logo and a USB cable.
2. Launch redsn0w and select the 3.1.2 firmware and click next.
3. It will show a warning screen. Click yes or no, depending on your iphone week number.
4. If you had already jailbroken, it will just show two options
5. Select "just boot tethered right now" and click next.
6. It shows a screen asking to hold the power & home button, but it is not needed. Do not do anything.
7. It shows the same recovery mode screen for some time and then will come out of it.


Happy unlocking!

Trendalyzer (Motion Chart Gadget): Nice trends analysis tool by visualization

The other day I was seeing this nice presentation by Hans Rosling where he is presenting the different statistics of the developing world and how they changed over time. See his other talks on various topics.



I was largely impressed by the tool that he used in the presentation. It has a great visual appeal. It can represent different dimensions at the same time in the 2-D chart. Other than the regular X,Y axis it uses color, size, time to represent the other dimensions. The way one can drill down further into the statistics in a visual manner is very nice.

The software tool is developed by him and his colleagues at his non-profit organization "Gapminder". It was initially called Trendalyzer. Then google later bought this tool when the google founder saw this TED talk and was impressed by the software. Now, this software is available as a free gadget in spreadsheet in online google docs. Here is a tutorial on how to use this tool in google spreadsheet. Here is one more tutorial.

Cubestormer: rubik cube solving robot

Here is a robot that can solve rubik cube in less than 12 seconds. This robot is built from lego mindstorm kits. The speed at which it solves the cube is pretty amazing. I think having 4 arms to hold and twist the cube is really smart idea that will help in solving the cube quickly overcoming the mechanical speed limitations.



I have worked with lego mindstorm kit when I was doing my masters. It was great fun. We could replace the default firmware on the controller with a firmware which can be programmed in C/C++ language. I forgot the details, but I think we used the legOS firmware and a cross compiler for esterel. It was a simple project. We did a light seeking robot and a line tracing robot. I will write about it some other time.

Avatar iphone ringtones (and mp3 also)

I love the soundtrack of avatar movie. I generated some ringtones for my iphone. I would like to share these with others. I have both mp3 & iphone ringtone versions. Enjoy!

Mp3 Ringtone

Iphone Ringtone

Tutorial to unlock 2G iphone running 3.1.2 firmware on windows (link)

Here is the link to the article that was published last week from iclarified.

I had been waiting for this article for a long time. Though apple released 3.1.2 firmware long back the windows users are not blessed with the latest version of redsnow. The mac version of pwnage came almost two months back. Here is the link if you are interested.

I am currently having unlocked 3.0 firmware. There are some connection issues and call related issues. I am not very happy with 3.0 firmware. So, I want to upgrade to 3.1.2 firmware which reportedly fixed these issues.

3G: This is the tutorial for unlocking 3G phones having 3.1.2 firmware.

How does Firefox make money ?

Firefox makes money from the in-built search bar in the browser. It gets paid for every sponsored link displayed in the search results when the search bar in the browser is used. See the second question in this link for confirmation. I am bit surprised to see that it made around $50 million in 2005 from this. Also see the blog of chairman of mozilla about 2008 financial results. The revenues are around $80million.

They really deserve it. It is really good business revenue model by being open source at the same time. No wonder how they managed to continuously come up with nice products and features. On the other hand, I appreciate Wikipedia also a lot. It has a very small team which manages the infrastucture. The organization is run entirely on donations. But I sometimes feel pity when they request for money. I could easily make $100 million a year if they place one ad per page. I appreciate their noble intentions.

Today I installed firefox 3.6 after spending a long time with my 3.0. I feel that it had lot of improvements especially the speed. I feel that there is a noticeable difference in the speed. Mozilla claims that there is 3 times improvement in the speed but I cannot quantify that. The responsiveness is also better. However, its consumes 300-400MB of main memory. Overall, I liked the new 3.6 browser.

Fix for itunes not grouping the same albums together

Sometimes it happens that even though a set of files has the same album name, they are not grouped together. This becomes a bigger problem when they are transferred into the iphone/ipod. In the iphone, they will be presented under different albums and hence with different covers. So, the nice cover flow feature of the iphone becomes ugly. Stupidly, even though the same album is shown with different covers, the list of songs under each cover will be the same. For me, this is an irritating problem.

After some googling, I found that itunes does not use just the album name to group the songs. It uses other fields like artist name, album art etc to group it. So, the fix is to have the same artist name, album artist name for the entire album. Even the album art does matter. If you want to be religious about the artist name do not want to change it, you still have a way. You can group them under a single compilation. See the discussions here, here, and here to get more details about the fix.

You can use itunes to change the properties of the music files. But, if you manage your own mp3 without itunes, it may be a good idea to use a tool to do batch edit of ID3 tag names. I use a software named "Media Monkey" to do this. Its a nice and feature rich tool. You can apply tags to set of files at the same time. Previously I used to use "ID3 TagIT". When you use a different tool other than itunes, you should remember that you should delete the files from itunes and reload them. Removing form the playlist is not enough, it should be removed from the music library also. Or else, if you place the files in the playlist, it will still retain the old tags. (I faced this problem first hand ;) )

Fix (Summary):
- Make sure that the artist name is the same
- Make sure that the album artist name is the same
- Make sure that the album art is the same
- Optionally, Try to group them as single compilation
- If you are not using itunes to change tags, remember to remove songs from itunes library (not playlist) and reload

Uninstalling/Removing Groove Monitor (Folder Sync)

What is groove monitor ? First of all, dont worry. Its not a malware or spyware. It comes with microsoft office 2007. You will start noticing a "Folder Sync" button in the explorer. It is a collaboration tool that helps people working in teams. One can create groove workspace which is used to share files between people working together. Once you update files on your machine, the latest version of it can be seen by your teammates. See this link from Microsoft for more info.

Not everyone who works with office 2007 will want to share documents. I do not understand why this feature is being forced on people. This gets installed by default when upgrading to office 2007. Nothing comes for free. The corresponding process (groovemonitor.exe) occupies 30K of memory. Moreover it creates panic in the users. First time I started seeing the "Folder Sync" on the explorer, I was suspecting that its a malware/spyware.

I searched on how to remove this from running. There are many sites which suggested to disable it in the startup programs by running 'msconfig'. But that solution did not work for me. The process kept on coming back and the "Folder Sych" button did not go away. Some sites even suggested to remove the exe file which I think is not a good solution. Finally, I found a neat way to remove it.

1. In control panel, go to "add or remove programs"
2. Choose "Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007" in the list
3. Click "Change". (Do not click "Remove")
4. Three options will be presented.
5. Choose "Add or remove features" and click "Continue"
6. A list of features will be presented
7. Click on box beside "Microsoft office groove" and select "Not available"
8. A small red cross will appear on this feature.
9. Click "Continue" and let the office 2007 uninstall the feature for you.