Turn your iPod Touch into an iPhone

You already know how to hack your iPod Touch, but Lifehacker describes how to make VoiP calls from your iPod Touch in just a few steps, turning it (almost) into a functional iPhone-esque device.

Lion riding a sidecar on the wall of death

Just because.

via Jalopnik

Court: Spamming Not Protected by Constitution

via physorg:

A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation's first felony conviction for illegal spamming on Friday, ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world's top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison.

...

Justice Elizabeth Lacy wrote in a dissent that the law is "unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Original 1980s Nintendo Entertainment System commercial

Know how you're racing around town, frantically trying to find a Nintendo Wii for your spoiled children this Christmas? Your parents likely did the same thing for you twenty years ago when Nintendo released its first ever gaming console, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Check out this vintage commercial for the NES console, feathered hair and all.

The problem with mainstream news media today [picture]

Hack your iPod Touch Part II

A jailbreak for iPod Touch firmware 1.1.2 has been released:

Conceited Software/TouchFree has just released its GUI jailbreak. This is the "final bit" that performs the jailbreak after you run OktoPrep in 1.1.1 and then upgrade to 1.1.2. The Software runs under OS X and Windows, grabs the data off your iPod touch or iPhone, upgrades it with the Jailbreak, installs Installer.app and SSH.app, and reloads it back to your unit. The whole procedure takes about 10 minutes and after, you have a fully updated 1.1.2 jailbroken system.

You will need to downgrade to 1.1.1 if you bought a system with 1.1.2 already installed. This is discussed in the README.txt file in the zip and at the this jailbreakme.com webpage. This procedure is only for iTunes-activated iTunes and iPod touches--"hactivated" iPhones need not apply. That's because once you upgrade to 1.1.2, you'll need to be able to have a phone that's activated before running the program.

More at TUAW

24 hours of air traffic as seen from space

Designer Aaron Koblin acquired a day's worth of FAA traffic and turned that data into some fantastic animations.

Its a beautiful day in Austin...

... But its even nicer in Denver. I caught a flight this evening to Denver to catch game 4 of the World Series on Sunday. My sister and brother in law offered up an extra ticket. I'll post pictures afterward. The weather here is beautiful. I may be the only person at Coors Field wearing Sox gear, but I'm going to brave it anyway.

How To: Configure Your iPhone or iPod Touch for Gmail's IMAP

Google announced today that they're rolling out IMAP support for Gmail users. IMAP allows you to sync your mailbox automatically between devices. For example, if you use your iPhone to assign a different label to a message, that change will be reflected when you view your account from your desktop computer.

I haven't yet configured Gmail's IMAP for my iPod Touch, but it's a safe guess the same method used for the iPhone will work for the Touch:

Video: how to set up IMAP on your iPhone or iPod Touch:






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Wired: Ubuntu's New 'Gutsy Gibbon' Brings Linux out of the Jungle

Wired has a good non-Geeky review of the latest release of Ubuntu today. I'm looking forward to upgrading later tonight:

Other notable changes in Ubuntu 7.10 are the latest GNOME Desktop, which provides much improved drag-and-drop support to the user interface, and Compiz, the whiz-bang 3-D desktop effects package, which is enabled by default.

Ubuntu and the GNOME Desktop team have put considerable effort into improving the user experience for accessing many of Linux's under-the-hood options. A new graphical interface makes it much easier to make adjustments to monitor settings and set up a dual-monitor workstation -- both of which previously required using the command line.

Beyond these key enhancements, Gutsy Gibbon incorporates some of Mac OS X's most useful desktop traits to improve the user experience. New to this release is fast user-switching, a mimic of the same feature in OS X for switching between user accounts without logging out. Another nod to Apple is the improved Spotlight-like applet designed to search the hard drive and act as an application launcher. Printing has also been overhauled, and each print dialog now features a default virtual "PDF printer" which allows any application to output PDF files, something Mac OS X users will recognize.

How to hack your iPod Touch with a jailbreak

As amazing as Apple's iPod Touch is, the applications that come pre-installed on it are a bit boring. After all, man (and woman) cannot live with just Safari and Contacts alone.

That's why I went through a grueling 70-something step process to jailbreak my iPod Touch last week, which allowed me to install a set of iPhone applications as well as a bunch of third-party apps. Now, my iTouch is insanely handy. I run the iPhone's Mail program, which syncs flawlessly with Gmail, and I regularly use Weather, Google Maps, Finder, and a cool app called SendSong which lets me e-mail any song from my iPod's library to anyone in the world. My iPod Touch is now .... useful.

The good news is people wishing to set their iPod Touch free with a jailbreak no longer have to endure tons of overly technical steps and SSH into the iPod's firmware. iJailbreak let's anyone use a one-click GUI to unleash the jailbreak on either a Mac or Windows platform. The program uses a .TIFF vulnerability found in iTouch's firmware, and breaks it wide open for you, allowing you full access to the OS.

Read more at the MacRumors forum and Gizmodo.

Lifehacker reviews Ubuntu Linux 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon' RC1

I get excited this time of year when homebrew developers birth the newest version of Ubuntu Linux. In just two days, Ubuntu 7.10 will be released to the masses. While we're all waiting anxiously for the gold release, Lifehacker has a screenshot tour of Release Candidate 1, which should tide us over until launch day:

Experienced Ubuntu users know what to expect from this Thursday's release of Gutsy Gibbon, the love-it-or-hate-it code name for version 7.10 of the popular Linux distribution. It's not a major "Long Term Support" release, it's not a radical re-thinking of the system, but it is another step toward a Linux system that "just works."

Still, there's a lot that's new (or at least now included by default) and very cool here—native support for dual-monitor setups, integrated Firefox tweaks and extensions, instant printer configuration and, of course, more of the Compiz eye candy that's helping Ubuntu look less like the dowdy younger brother of Windows and Mac. I downloaded, burned and installed the Gutsy release candidate over the weekend and took a few pictures along the way.
...

Finally, here's a short list of the features and additions that have also been announced (or just didn't make for great screenshots):


    * Native support for WPA-protected wifi networks. Even my troublesome Ralink wireless PCI card found its router and connected, and hasn't yet asked for the password again.

    * Printers are surprisingly, actually one-step setup, almost to the point of hidden. I plugged in my HP DeskJet 825c, hit "Print" on an OpenOffice document, and, lo and behold, my printer was available -- without a single pop-up message or hardware "wizard."

    * NTFS-formatted drives are automatically detected and mounted for both reading and writing.

    * The Tomboy note-taking feature now allows synchronization across platforms through WebDAV or SSH.

    * Printing to PDF is now a default option, with the output landing in a "PDF" folder inside your home directory.

    * Power management is supposedly improved as the result of an updated kernel incorporation, although that appears to be up for debate.

    * It might not seem like a revolutionary feature, but users can now change their screen resolutions and refresh rates without having to log out or hack around in terminal.

The New York Times Makes a Solid Case for Ubuntu Linux

The New York Times today helps introduce Ubuntu Linux to the mainstream:

Ubuntu is generally regarded as one of the more consumer-friendly versions of Linux, so the Linux PC experience is similar to what you would get with a Windows-equipped Dell. When you start the machine, the screen looks familiar; preinstalled applications can easily be found and run from an Applications menu at the top left of the screen. A "Places" menu lets you search for files, and a System menu is there for setting preferences and finding help.

And there is a lot more than just an operating system. Ubuntu, like some other Linux distributions, comes with a lot of free software, including OpenOffice, an alternative to the Microsoft Office suite with a full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation program. It also comes with the popular Firefox Web browser as well as an e-mail program, an instant messaging program, a graphic image editor, music player and a photo manager.

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