GeekTank

I’ve tried out the nightly snapshots of Firefox Minefield and yes, it is faster than Chrome even with my 12+ plugins.

http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/09/28/firefox-minefield-faster-than-chrome/

Hello,

I’m just going to explain my experience with a vBulletin Big Board and how to get the most out of your hardware by simple tweaks and changes to the software that your site runs. I will break this article down into sections.

What is a big board?

If you’ve had an iPhone since the launch of Apples Application Store, then you most likely have bought the app Mobile Chat. I mean who wouldn’t, just looking at their features mobilech.at/features you’d be silly not to pick the only instant messenger on the iPhone. Granted there are Web App versions, but nothing application wise. Here are some of the features.

MobileChat supports the following protocols:

* AIM/ICQ/.Mac/MobileME
* Windows Live/MSN
* Yahoo Messenger
* GTalk
* Jabber/XMPP

Multiple Accounts

Now all of your accounts can be online at one time. You can connect up to 10 accounts over varying networks simultaneously. That means you can have your 3 AIM accounts, your GTalk account and your 2 MSN accounts all connected from your iPhone.

Buddy Icon Support

Set your buddy icon from a picture in your photo library and see your friend’s icons too. A first for MobileChat!

Profiles & Away Messages

Set your profile and view your friend’s or set a personalized away message.

Many people will purchase this application since its rather cheap, coming in at only $2.99 isn’t going to break your budget.

So you pay $2.99 and can’t wait for it to install so you can login to MSN and message all your friends from your iPhone. However after it installs and you setup your MSN account and try to connect it works! Congratulations you’re one of the luckiest people to have purchased this application and actually have it work out of the box. To this day I have only been able to login to MSN once and talk to a friend. And that wasn’t even after I installed the application.

To much amazement after having issues I wondered if anyone else was having the same issue as me. And yes, lots of people were reporting the same issue. And there was a response by the Twenty08 team that develops Mobile Chat

tumblr.twenty08.com/post/47822232/what-we-did-wrong-and-how-were-going-to-fix-it

Which was a nice relieve to the people who paid for the application but a even bigger relieve to the people who just wanted what was advertise. I mean all money aside, Mobile Chat is something almost every person with an iPhone wanted.

Then even more information start coming out about what the issue was, and each week there was even more problems and updates. Here are some blog posts that I’m talking about, they speak for themselves.

tumblr.twenty08.com/post/45993283/bringing-in-the-big-guns

tumblr.twenty08.com/post/46106023/aim-connectivity-issue

tumblr.twenty08.com/post/47860210/mobilechat-server-2-0

tumblr.twenty08.com/post/48490814/mobilechat-status-update

And even today as I’m writing this article, I still can’t seem to connect to MSN or Gmail Talk.

Now, I didn’t request a refund. Why? It’s pocket change, and I’d rather have the developers keep the money they’ve probably already spent. I just can’t get past the bad taste this whole application gave me. I’m at a lost of words.

Google has created its own repositories for its linux software applications.

www.google.com/linuxrepositories/index.html

At the moment the only software available is Picasa and Google Desktop.

There is now an official http://iphone-dev.org version of QuickPwn that supports the 2.1 firmware released by Apple on friday.

Some of the popular press and blogs have been backing the opposition.

While criticism and competition is fine it should be reported correctly, with all the facts. and certainly minus the FUD. Do you guys think we are “less and less relevant with each passing day” ? We don’t think so, and we certainly prefer our hacks to theirs. Though even if the world deems us irrelevant, the iPhone family of devices is still fun to hack!

By the way we figured out a way to combat iTunes 8 without patches…and we’re waiting to see what Apple tries next. But we think they might want to rethink their priorities. They probably won’t though, and so we get back to the “cat and mouse” game between Apple and the Dev Team and third-party communities.

Here are the new versions of PwnageTool and QuickPwn that support the 2.1 firmware. And as we just mentioned, iTunes was not harmed in the process no patching was required:

The downloads have been released via Bittorrent

PwnageTool 2.1 for Mac OS X via Bittorent – download here
PwnageTool_2.1.dmg = 0b2dcb51e224b12590793e8a758dd80c450e5b64

QuickPwn 1.1 for Mac OS X via Bittorrent – download here
QuickPwn_1.1.dmg = 92487230c66296ec1e414260b5f107e5d351923f

I’ve setup a mirror on an up and coming site I’m developing called iPhone Newbs.

PwnageTool_2.1.dmg
QuickPwn_1.1.dmg

There is a very manual tutorial up at xpwn.co.uk on how to Jailbreak your iPhone with the 2.1 firmware:

T14:19 <+geeb> xpwn.co.uk/2.1JBtut.txt
14:19 <+geeb> 2.1 3g jailbreak tutorial
14:22 < comm> geeb: has it been tested?
14:22 <+geeb> comm
14:22 <+geeb> yes by me
14:22 <+geeb> and others in #xpwn are running it now

The following are the instructions

Download the 2.1 firmware <--http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iPhone/061-5198.20080909.K3294/iPhone1,2_2.1_5F136_Restore.ipsw

install itunes v8 (www.filehippo.com/download_itunes/) <-- all versions of itunes are there

Update the iphone with iTunes and make sure it is activated!

Uninstall iTunes v8

Uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support (From Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel)

Install itunes v7.7.*

Download quickpwn with the correct 2.1 bundle inside it xpwn.co.uk/quickpwn-gui-for-2.1.rar

Run quickpwn…select your iPhone1,2_2.1_5F136_Restore.ipsw

you can select cydia and installer and logos if you wish

When it is finished the phone will reboot…Cydia and Installer will NOT be visible

Download TotalCommander <-- xpwn.co.uk/tcmd704a.exe
Download t-pot addon <-- xpwn.co.uk/T-PoT.1.1.zip

Install TotalCommander and in the left pane navigate to T-PoT.1.1.zip and click on it. It will install t-pot automatically.

Download the mobileinstallation patch <-- www.sendspace.com/file/pcrxy6

Use Totalcommander to install patched mobileinstallation to /System/Library/PrivateFrameWorks/MobileInstallation.framework … clickon the dropdown box top left and select network neighbourhood then t-pot.

Still in TotalCommander delete /private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installation.plist

Reboot the phone and all is good!

Thanks to the #xpwn crew…

Enjoy!

Thanks XPWN!

There is a full list of changes and fixes in the new iPhone 2.1 firware on Apples site, which you can read here:

www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

I’ve also included them below:

General Updates

* Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls.
* Significantly better battery life for most users.
* Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes.
* Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts.
* Faster installation of 3rd party applications.
* Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications.
* Improved performance in text messaging.
* Faster loading and searching of contacts.
* Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display.
* Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages.
* Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts.
* Genius playlist creation.

Security fixes

iPhone Software 2.1 also patch six security vulnerabilities.

* An application may be able to read another application’s files.
* Multiple vulnerabilities in FreeType v2.3.5.
* mDNSResponder is susceptible to DNS cache poisoning and may return forged information.
* Predictable TCP initial sequence numbers generation may lead to TCP spoofing or session hijacking.
* An unauthorized user may bypass the Passcode Lock and launch iPhone applications.
* Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

Other fixes

Some of the other enhancements and observations reported by readers thus far:

* No sign of background push notification or turn-by-turn GPS support.
* The texting memory leak problem seems to be fixed.
* Apps are running a lot faster.
* No scrolling lag, faster launching of SMS app.
* New “3G” logo in the menu bar sans box.
* Updating applications keeps their icons in place on the home screen.
* App syncs still sluggish compared to media syncs.

Apple has just released iTunes 8 and the iTouch and iPhone firmware 2.1!

You will need to download iTunes 8 in order to get the new firmware. And unfortunately it looks as though iTunes 8 has blocked the Pwnge tool. However the iphone-dev team knows about this and will have a patch

blog.iphone-dev.org/post/49689803/countermeasures

Enjoy!

I ran into this article about how you can seamlessly run Windows Applications from within Ubunutu. The author is using VMware, rdesktop (apt-get install rdesktop), and Seamless RDP.

hehe2.net/thedarkside/microsoft/run-windows-apps-100-seamlessly-on-ubuntu/

I went to pick up a Wireless Router from a local computer shop www.a-power.com in hopes of grabbing a WRT54GL or at least a WRT54GS. The main reason being that I could flash the hardware to run DD-WRT www.dd-wrt.com which is a third part open source router firmware.

After asking if they had any in stock, the sales associate got up went over to the wall and grab a box and say “Your lucky, this is the last one, and we’re not getting any more.”. For a second I was worried and asked “Why’s that?”, and he continued on and explained that they’re phasing out the WRT54G and WRT54GL for the WRT54G2 which looks a little more stylish. You can view it here:

www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1175242886869&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

The “Supported Hardware” on DD-WRT’s site shows that the Linksys WRT54G2 is WIP or “Work in progress”.

dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#Linksys_.28all_the_rest_that_is_not_re-engineered_til_today.29

The Netgear Open Source router WGR614L is an alternative to Linksys and is supported by DD-WRT:

www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/GWirelessRouters/WGR614L.aspx

Hopefully someone will be able to provide DD-WRT on Linksys products once again. There is a thread on the DD-WRT forums about WRT54G2 and providing one to a developer to try and get some sort of firmware on it:

www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=206237#206237

There may still be hope!