As most people around the world have heard by now, comex released his jailbreak for iOS4 sometime ago. In doing so it makes me wonder how many people jailbreak their phone and why.
Technically, it’s no longer illegal thanks to the EFF, you can read the full article here: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26. But does that mean it’s right? Technically Apple did design software and hardware. So it is their work product and “trade secrets”. Technically when you pay for something you should have full rights. I mean it becomes a seesaw on right and wrong with this.
When you jailbreak the phone you do bypass a lot of the restrictions on the functionality of the equipment. As I mentioned a post about MyWiFi, you can tether your devices to your phone without having to pay AT&T for the privilege of using a function of your phone that is OS provided. You are already paying for the bandwidth (thankfully I am on the unlimited plan). But is that Apple’s fault or AT&T?
Another reason I know for having a jailbroken phone is free software, apps, and games. Before recently, unless there was a lite version of the application you wanted, you were going on just screen shots and users comments. Even the user comments could be shaped by the developers of the software. So how could a person feel comfortable about dropping their hard-earned money on an unknown? Apple has come out with a “try before you buy” section in the iTunes Store which seems like a collection of all the lite and freemium versions that you could have found with a little digging anyways. But does that suit the purpose? I have some indispensable apps (CalenGoo) that I can not live without and it was well worth the $6.99 price. But without having “tested” it, I would never have dropped down the coin.
One of my favorite applications (and one of the main reasons I jailbroke my iPhone) is MyWiFi.
For those that don’t know, this application allows you to tether any wireless device to your iPhone and surf on the 3G network. I know that AT&T has this option now, but why should I have to pay extra for absolutely everything with them? But that is another topic for another day.
This application is so handy while traveling or if you are like me, you have a laptop at work and very splotchy WiFi or no WiFi coverage. I don’t know how I survived without this in the past.
So you are thinking now, sounds great, how do I install this. Well first and foremost, you have to jailbreak your phone. If you have not done it at this point, you need to go to http://jailbreakme.com on your iPhone and follow the instructions. After the jailbreak is complete, you will find an app called Cydia and launch it.
Here is were there is some work required on your end. You will need to add the Repo for ElPelle by going to the manage icon along the bottom row and click on sources. In the upper right corner you will see an edit button, which you will need to press. After pressing, you will find the Add on the left side. (For old hat’s I apologize for the instructions, I just know sometimes people are afraid to ask these questions). When the pop up window comes up you will want to enter http://elpelle6.com/repo and confirm by pressing add source.
It will go out and download the cache of the repo. After the completion of the caching, you will press the search button on the lower right and go through the following instructions:
1.Delete Fix, My3g, Mywi, No trial(Fix new Error) if you have those installed already
2.Download Rock Extensions(includes RockApp)
3Delete Rock Extensions (includes Rockapp)
4.Download Mywi & My3g My Crack
5. Open Mywi & My 3g to Activate(Create Account)
6.Download NO trial
7.Reboot
Personally, I use the USB tethering for my laptop which makes it much easier for me, but you can turn your phone into a hotspot for others to connect through.
If you haven’t heard, AT&T will offer new iPhone users a choice of data plans beginning June 7th. New users will not be able to have an unlimited plan, on these two wonderful choices: 200MB plan for $15/month or 2GB for $25. With all of the applicable overage fees that made most cell phone companies tons of money. Current iPhone user can keep their current unlimited plan or switch to a cheaper tiered data plan.
Since this is pretty common knowledge, I won’t harp on any of that. AT&T, being the good spirited company they are, have provided a calculator to decipher your estimated non wifi data usage. The calculator can be found here: http://www.att.com/standalone/data-calculator/index.html
Unless you have been hiding a hole that does not get any cell service, you have heard about the uproar with Facebook’s new privacy policy.
Simply stated. By signing up with the most popular social networking site, gives them permission to share all of your personal information with third party sites. Unless of course you can chart a course through the unmapped privacy settings.
“To manage your privacy on Facebook, you will need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options,” notes the New York Times
The New York Times piece also has a great graph that shows the extent of the disarray.
They are using their considerable information store they are sitting on to drive deals with external partners. Enter Open Graph. This new API will allow partner site to gain all the information related to you, the owner of that information, and use it to deliver what they feel is relevant information for you.
Mark Zuckerberg laid out his plan to turn the Web into “instantly social experiences.” The building blocks to this super-social Web are Facebook’s new Open Graph and Social Plugins, which include new “like” buttons everywhere on sites outside Facebook.com, auto-login capabilities for those sites without clicking on Facebook Connect, and even a Facebook social bar which includes several of these plugins plus Facebook chat (goodbye, Meebo).
Later in the same article
Facebook wants to developers to create subsets of the Open Graph around interests and things. Yelp might create one around restaurants, Pandora might create one around music, Netflix around movies. Add some “like” buttons and anytime someone likes a restaurant, song, or movie anywhere on the Web with a Facebook like button, that information will flow back into the Open Graph. So that Yelp will know what restaurants you and your friends have liked elsewhere and take that into consideration when giving you recommendations, or Pandora with music, and so on. (Yelp and Pandora are real examples, Netflix isn’t).
There is a lot more to it, but my worry is that I have seen quite a few reports that have Facebook being integrated into the OS. With that much access into and out of your life, where does it stop. Can Facebook decide that it has rights to the data on your phone to?
“It could mean that iPhone users will be able to pull their Facebook contacts and regular address book in to one place, and message friends from their phone using Facebook Chat. There is also speculation that Facebook Connect, the system that allows people to sign on to partner websites using their Facebook ID, could be made available to developers in the iPhone Software Development Kit so that they can add social networking features to their apps.”
