As you may have noticed, in recent years terrorists have been making occasional attempts to take away the freedom of people in the US and other countries.
The most recent attempt, on Christmas day, involved a man allegedly tried to ignite a bomb.
Thankfully, the authorities are ready to deal with this. They’re not going to let terrorists destroy the freedom that we in the western world cherish.
They’ve decided to retaliate by banning the reading of books and use of electronic items such as iPod Touches, last hours of international inbound flight.
I have to admit that, until now, I thought that the only way to switch off gps / edge data on my iPhone was to switch on “Airplane mode”, which shuts down all data, messaging and calls, then switch “wifi” on to use that.
This works fine if you don’t want to receive any calls.
But sometimes you do, and if you’re using a choppy wifi signal, maybe listening to some online radio, you want to make sure your phone doesn’t slip into 3g or gprs / edge and run up a bill while you’re not looking.
Here’s a link to a very helpful blog post that tells you how to do just that on a jailbroken phone. After the once-off initial setup, a few taps in your “settings” screen is all you need.
O2, the mobile phone carrier which operates in several European countries and, until recently, was the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the UK, has followed AT&T’s example and lashed out at us iPhone data guzzlers.
“apologized to customers for recent network issues including the inability to make or receive calls, or transmit data [……] O2 blames the excessive data demands of the iPhone for crippling the network."”
All of which begs the question: Why are carriers jumping over each other in the rush to sell the iPhone, if it’s apparantly going to cripple their networks? Or are their networks so much, better than those of O2 or AT&T, that it’s not an issue?
I’m going to be optimistic and hope the latter is true.
Now, time to go have that milk and cookies I left out the other night. Looks like Santa wasn’t hungry when he passed through.
After this week’s security scare during which one of those foreign types made a farting noise on a flight, the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) has bravely fought back by placing “unpredictable” extra security measures in place that are intentionally designed to confuse passengers.
These include the banning of iPods and other electronics on US inbound flights. Presumably outbound flights are fine because the mess happens on someone else’s city). Also, passengers may find themselves banned from urinating during the last hour of the flight.
Vonage, the VOIP service, has announced an unlimited international calling bundle for users of it’s new iPhone app.
According to PC World, the company is offering users in sixty countries
an unlimited $24.99-a-month international calling plan for iPhone and BlackBerry users […] The new "Vonage World Mobile" VoIP service competes with a $12.95-a-month service from Skype.
– for jailbroken phones only, of course. Heaven forbid Apple should allow you to do anything cool via bluetooth -
has launched in the Cydia store that lets you use a bluetooth keyboard with an iPhone. Bstack keyboard, according to the developers,
allows you to use a Bluetooth keyboard with the iPhone and iPod Touch. Foldable, travel-friendly keyboards have been supported for at least a half of a decade by all smartphones, except by the iPhone. That is a shame, as the iPhone is a compact computer you already carry around. Combined with a portable keyboard, it can replace your laptop for taking notes or writing emails at meetings or at your favorite coffee shop.
The applicatiom fills this gap. It is based on the open-source BTstack project, a Bluetooth stack designed for embedded devices where resources are scarce.
BTstack Keyboard runs on jailbroken iPhone 3G(S) and all iPod touch devices with Bluetooth support. It is still unclear if it works properly on the iPhone 2G. It is available via the Cydia Store.
It should work with all Bluetooth HID keyboards. So far, we have tried:
* Apple Bluetooth keyboard
* Think Outside Stowaway Universal keyboard
*Palm Wireless keyboard
We had at hand also the Cellulon Laser Projection Keyboard CL800TB. It doesn’t work (well, not yet as it uses a custom protocol over RFCOMM. The iTech Virtual BT Keyboard seems to be the same device.”
Apple is offering a free Snow Patrol song for one day only, kicking off it’s “12 days of Christmas” giveaway. The offer only lasts for twenty-four hours, and there’ll be something different every day for the next twelve.
AT&T has launched a new iPhone app that lets customers report to AT&T when they’re not getting a signal.
Admittedly I’m filling in the gaps here, but it seems obvious that the carrier must have invented some sort of sub-space signal that gets the feedback from the iPhone to AT&T, when their regular data signal isn’t available.
Wolfram Alpa, the search engine that’s not a search engine, but nobody knows what else to call it, because we’re not intelligent enough to understand these things, have blown up their iPhone-friendly search page, and replaced it with an ad for it’s fifty dollar iPhone app.
A firm of personal injury lawyers have brought out an iPhone application that you can keep on your iPhone in case you are ever involved in an incident that you might need to sue someone for.
…connects to the firm’s live 24-hour accident help system and assists a claimant to collect people and vehicle information, capture location details, capture photographs of the accident and accumulate any witness or accident information (assuming, the iPhone wasn’t damaged in the accident).”
…The app, not blessed by Nintendo, plays more than a minute of music from the Super Mario game while using the iPhone/iPod’s accelerometer to take into account any physical movement by the user. In turn, it plays back the same jump sound effect found in Nintendo’s Mario games. The idea is to run the app, then stick it in your pocket and pretend to be everyone’s favorite plumber.”
Anyway, in a cynical attempt to keep you at this page longer, thereby increasingly the likelihood that your attention will be drawn towards the ads, here’s a video demo we found on YouTube.
Popular instant messaging and VOIP application Fring has introduced one-way video chat. It works over wifi, using either Skype or Fring’s own calling network.
One way video chat, in case you don’t understand the concept, is a bit like looking in a mirror, except you don’t see yourself. You see the person to whom you are talking.
So, a one way mirror then. Except with two-way audio.
he images are old images and should not be taken to mean that anything is likely to happen soon. Since the images seem to have provoked unnecessary speculation we’ll probably update the pack later today and remove them”
as it uses a custom protocol over RFCOMM. The iTech Virtual BT Keyboard seems to be the same device.”
