Like iphone ? Love linux ? Want both of them together ? Then your answer is here. A new project named "iphoneLinux" is going to achieve this. The project is in very infant stage right now. Currently, it provides only a command line interface to interact with the iphone sub-system. You can connect to a terminal over USB connection. The best part of this project is that your iphone becomes a dual boot system (like having windows and linux on the same system). At the boot time you can choose which OS you want to boot into.
For me, the enormous potential in this project is obvious. Speaking at a technical level, currently they have support for access to screen, serial driver, serial over USB driver, Interrupts, MMU, clocks etc. But all the special features of iphone are yet to be brought under the hood. Currently there is no support for wireless networking, touchscreen, sound, accelerometer, baseband etc. Do no slam it down saying that this is useless. It is just about matter of time when they will be supported.
BTW, they are recruiting people for the project. If you are good at kernel hacking and type of guy who figures out things on you own, you can put your head in it. Keep track of their informal blog to get updates about the project.
See this video which shows the boot options and commands in linux terminal.
iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Vietnamese hacker unlocks 3G iphone using hardware method
A quick round up before going into the details. There is no software method to unlock the 3G iphone yet. The iphone-dev team is working hard and getting closer day-by-day. They were successful in replacing the baseband on the 3G iphones, but it seems that the procedure had some problems. They want to release a robust solution as a software method to unlock 3G iphones. See their team blog for updates.
There is a SIM-based solution also to unlock the 3G iphone. Many people call this hardware method, but I would like to call it SIM-based solution as this approach does not involve opening the iphone and playing with the chips/circuits. This is first done by Brazilian hackers. It involves a wafer-thin card that piggybacks on your SIM and fooling the iphone into thinking that it is a test SIM thereby allowing any carrier. But they are selling this solution at a very premium price of $250-$350.
Coming to the main topic of this post, iphonehacks is running an article which says that a vietnamese hacker is able to unlock 3G iphones using a pure hardware method. It involves removing the baseband chip from the motherboard, reading the contents of it, reprogramming the chip with modified data, and then putting it back on the motherboard. Sounds exciting, isn't it ? I feel that he is generous because he charge only $80 for the whole process which takes about an hour.
The above two solutions (SIM-based and hardware method) does not work with the 2.2 firmware on 3G iphones because the firmware upgrades the baseband. This creates one more challenge to the hackers and puts apple ahead in the cat-and-mouse game. The upgrade of baseband with the 2.2 firmware happens only on 3G iphones. I seems that there is no way to downgrade the baseband once it gets upgraded. So, think twice before upgrading your 3G iphones to the latest 2.2 firmware.
There is a SIM-based solution also to unlock the 3G iphone. Many people call this hardware method, but I would like to call it SIM-based solution as this approach does not involve opening the iphone and playing with the chips/circuits. This is first done by Brazilian hackers. It involves a wafer-thin card that piggybacks on your SIM and fooling the iphone into thinking that it is a test SIM thereby allowing any carrier. But they are selling this solution at a very premium price of $250-$350.
Coming to the main topic of this post, iphonehacks is running an article which says that a vietnamese hacker is able to unlock 3G iphones using a pure hardware method. It involves removing the baseband chip from the motherboard, reading the contents of it, reprogramming the chip with modified data, and then putting it back on the motherboard. Sounds exciting, isn't it ? I feel that he is generous because he charge only $80 for the whole process which takes about an hour.
The above two solutions (SIM-based and hardware method) does not work with the 2.2 firmware on 3G iphones because the firmware upgrades the baseband. This creates one more challenge to the hackers and puts apple ahead in the cat-and-mouse game. The upgrade of baseband with the 2.2 firmware happens only on 3G iphones. I seems that there is no way to downgrade the baseband once it gets upgraded. So, think twice before upgrading your 3G iphones to the latest 2.2 firmware.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Voice search app for iphone from google
Before going into the details of the application, it will be interesting to know some funny things that happened with it. Google launched the application on Friday, 14-Nov-2008. But the application did not appear in the apple store even on monday. Apple forgot to add the application to their app store. There are also reports that the delay is because of the apple's strict review process. But this should definitely have been coordinated better for the launch.
Talking about the application, as is obvious from the name, it searches the web based on voice commands. No need to type into those tiny keyboard offered by mobile phones. Just ask the question. Added to this, the application exploits the GPS in the phone to provide location based services. So, you can ask "Where is the nearest Starbucks coffee shop?". Interesting, isn't it ? The results that you get are text results but optimized for mobile phone display. The phone numbers etc stand out explicitly so that you can use them to dail out.
As with other google products, this application is also free. The initial hands-on reports on this application says that the application is awesome and accurate. Accurate both in terms of recognizing the voice and the results. This application cannot be used for any other phone functions like dailing your contacts etc. This application is purely meant for search.
Talking about the application, as is obvious from the name, it searches the web based on voice commands. No need to type into those tiny keyboard offered by mobile phones. Just ask the question. Added to this, the application exploits the GPS in the phone to provide location based services. So, you can ask "Where is the nearest Starbucks coffee shop?". Interesting, isn't it ? The results that you get are text results but optimized for mobile phone display. The phone numbers etc stand out explicitly so that you can use them to dail out.
As with other google products, this application is also free. The initial hands-on reports on this application says that the application is awesome and accurate. Accurate both in terms of recognizing the voice and the results. This application cannot be used for any other phone functions like dailing your contacts etc. This application is purely meant for search.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Forget the touch. Just talk.
There is no doubt that apple, with its touch technology, has raised the bar very high for the mobile phone industry. I am sure many of it competitors are still spending sleepless nights. Other players like HTC & LG had come up with their version of touch technology but definitely not surpassing apple. Ofcourse, apple will always have the early bird advantage.
It seems that people are exploring ways other than touch to impress customers. That is what Microsoft exactly did. They come up with a voice command interface to control the mobile phone. While this is not new to the mobile phone industry, the set of features offered by this new software are much more superior to what was already seen.
Earlier, many mobile phone vendors offered what is commonly known as "voice dialing". To be able to do that, a voice tag has to be associated with a particular contact. Then only one would be able to dial that contact using voice. But now, with Microsoft’s "voice command" software, there is no need to tag each contact. You just say the name. The software identifies the corresponding contact and asks you for confirmation before dialing. If you say “yes” it would dail that number or else if you say “no” it would try to find the next closest match. It uses something called speaker independent phonetic speech recognition and text-to-speech technology.
This is nothing compared to hell lot of others features offered by this software. It can be used for e-mail notifications, spoken caller ID, controlling media player, controlling utilities, calendar lookup etc. It can be used to quickly check the time, date, and battery level also. See this link from Microsoft to see the feature list or even better, see the software in action in this video.
It seems that people are exploring ways other than touch to impress customers. That is what Microsoft exactly did. They come up with a voice command interface to control the mobile phone. While this is not new to the mobile phone industry, the set of features offered by this new software are much more superior to what was already seen.
Earlier, many mobile phone vendors offered what is commonly known as "voice dialing". To be able to do that, a voice tag has to be associated with a particular contact. Then only one would be able to dial that contact using voice. But now, with Microsoft’s "voice command" software, there is no need to tag each contact. You just say the name. The software identifies the corresponding contact and asks you for confirmation before dialing. If you say “yes” it would dail that number or else if you say “no” it would try to find the next closest match. It uses something called speaker independent phonetic speech recognition and text-to-speech technology.
This is nothing compared to hell lot of others features offered by this software. It can be used for e-mail notifications, spoken caller ID, controlling media player, controlling utilities, calendar lookup etc. It can be used to quickly check the time, date, and battery level also. See this link from Microsoft to see the feature list or even better, see the software in action in this video.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Now, hack your ipod
I realize that I have been writing more and more articles about firmware hacking and related stuff. It makes me more and more excited to learn how to play with your gadgets. Especially playing with their core. Now this article is about putting custom firmware on your ipod and many other personal music players. But first let me warn you that doing this will void your warranty.
Rockbox is an open source firmware written for personal music players. It supports wide range of players like apple ipod, iriver, sandisk sansa etc. The latest 3.0 version of the frimware is released in sept-08. The question anyone would ask first is "Why should I upgrade ?". I guess the answer is simple "Because it has loads of features that your vendor would not have provided"
Take apple ipod for example. It supports very limited codecs (file formats). But with this rockbox firmware, your same ipod can play upto 15 different codecs including ogg/vorbis, wma, realaudio-cook format etc. You can have themes for the user interface. Can you believe that you can play "doom" on ipod ? yes, doom. It has plugin support where you can add games, applications. In case of ipods, this firmware is supported for ipods right from the 1st gen ones. So, you can breath new life into your otherwise obsolete ones.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Operate your computer with wii controller
Lifehacker is running an article on how one can operate the computer with a wii controller. This technique exploits the bluetooth capabilties of the wii controller (including the balance board of wii fit). Once you have a wii console, all you need is a PC/laptop with a bluetooth capability. If you do not have on in-built you can purchase an external bluetooh adapter/dongle for almost nothing.
Pairing up of the wii controller with the computer is more or less like pairing any other bluetooth device(Read the lifehacker article for detailed info). Once the device is paired up, you need to use a software named "GlovePIE". This software is used to map the signals given by the wii controller into computer movements like mouse buttons and arrow keys.
What else ? Sit back and control you pc with your wii controller.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Wall-E iphone ringtone
I became a big fan of Wall-E movie. I was scouting for a Wall-E ringtone for my iphone. Though I got a few ringtones from a blog, I was looking for something more. I wanted a ringtone which has Wall-E name and some music associated with it. When I searched more I found an MP3 file which has it. I converted it to iphone ringtone. I want to share it for the sake of other fans.
You can download it from here.
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