Then I came across @aryayush‘s post via Twitter and decided to follow it. But I overlooked one tiny instruction that said click Shift+Update and not Shift+Restore, and though the OS change did happen, since I had restored it, I lost the unlock and had no way to unlock it. The official iPhoneDev tools are still a few days away. I tried all the possible suggestions available on the net, but non worked. Coz apparently Apple says the new OS 3.0 cannot be downgraded. Well, one some site, I don’t remember which, I found a suggestion that at first I thought didn’t make sense.

Try using iTunes 8.0/8.1, put the phone in DFU mode and then restore to 2.0.2. Now I had tried restoring to 2.2/2.2.1 etc and even to 1.1.4. None worked. I thought even this might be no exception. But out of sheer desperation to get the phone working again, I tried it. Yes it worked. Woohoo!

So now, being extra careful, I unlocked 2.0.2 using QuickPWN RC3 and then updated to 2.2.1. Then making sure the unlock was stil lin place, updated to 3.0 7A341. Success met me at last and now I have the iPhone running 3.0 OS. I love the spotlight feature and the copy paste of course. Here are a few screenshots :

Now I wait for the iPhoneDevs to come up with QuickPWN for 3.0…

Happy iPhoning…

Apart from looking way too sexy, the best part about this theme is that it generates its own icons for most of the apps, as you can see in the screenshots below.

Another great thing you can do to accentuate the theme is to use ‘Black Complete Keyboard’ and ‘Black Navigation Bars’ in winterboard to have a better look overall. And of course, Ive used Categories app to sort my Applications, Games etc. as you can see.

It is by far one of the slickest themes Ive come across. If you know of any better, then do let me know.

So the tools we need here are :

1. iPhone/iPod Touch (duh!)
2. iTunes 8 or above.
3. QuickPWN 225 or higher.
4. iPhone Firmware – For 2G iPhone – v2.1 is here & for 3G iPhone click here.

Since I did not take any screenshots  when I did the process, Im going to use screenshots from other web sources. So here we go:

1. Extract the QuickPwn-225-2.zip file to a custom folder.
2. Connect your iPhone to the computer and launch iTunes.
3. Install QuickPwn and launch it
   

   QuickPwn Screen

4. The screen should immediately change to :
5. Now,click the Browse .ipsw button. Locate the firmware file from the downloaded folderand click Open.
6. QuickPwn will check to make sure the ipsw is valid. Click the blue arrow button to continue.You can now select whether to Add Cydia, Add Installer, or Replace Boot Logos. Select the ones you would like to perform then click the clue arrow button. (Since I’m not going to do this process again for my iPhone, Ive used the screenshots below from iClarified.com)
   
7. QuickPwn will now automatically put your iPhone into recovery mode. Once its in recovery mode you will be prompted to: Hold the Home button for 5 seconds, Hold the Home and Power buttons for 10 seconds, then release the Power button and continuing holding the Home button until your iPhone is in DFU mode.Watch the prompts carefully and follow along.

   
   

8. Once QuickPwn detects your iPhone in DFU mode it will begin the jailbreak process.
   
9. Once jailbreaking is complete QuickPwn will inform you that it was successfull.
   
10. Youre ready to go !
11. I did not upgrade to 2.2.1 since some of my old apps wouldn’t work on it.
    
12. Next up is how to install apps on the iPhone after downloading then from the internet on your computer (also includes how to get all the AppStore apps from free!)
13. Stay tuned.
    

A  new year. A new list. I sure have sky high gadget goals as far as 2009 is concerned. I want more of innovative products than cliched glossy looking over priced products. Understandable that the Mumbai terror attacks and the globad economic recession have hhaunted everyone. My wishlist is fairly full of all the technologies that I would want to see. I share it with you in the hope that we have something in common.

1. The Open Alliance System with 14 new inductees include Sony Ericsson, Asustec and Vodafone, which looks ot heat up the competition in the market with Google’s Android powering many new phones. Even Palm is coming up with a potential iPhone and Android killer. Sweet! In the end we consumers will be left with more choices as manufacturers wont stop innovating as they need their products to be the best.

2. I want notebooks with better battery life.  My Dell runs out of juice in 4 hrs.

3. I want manufacturers to stop the megapixel wars on the phones. Anyways the current 8MP phones fail to do better than my 2 year old 6MP Nikon.  Also, CCD sensors  rather than CMOS sensors would be appreciated. I dont understand why they cant get rid of it.

4. The arrival of 3G will make a certain group of people happy. Not just in terms of mobile phones, but also for broadband on the go. It will certainly be a boon for laptop users in India where the number of wi-fi hotspots is limited.

5. Lower internet rates. I pay approximately Rs.1200 pm inclusive of taxes for a 256 kbps unlimited connection. I need cable net since my monthly downloads are pretty high(crossing 50 gb at times). Also, the connection is bound to one computer and transfer requires phone calls and wait time for change of MAC address. Not what the doctor ordered. What is appealing  right now to me is the new unlimited data plans offered by MTNL. Even though it will end up costing me the same, portablity with the connection and the ability to use the  Wifi router more effectively appeals to me.

6. Better customer service from companies like intel. My recent ordeal with them took me more than a month to get hold of a replacement motherboard. All this for buying an intel board for my quad core processor. I would not recomment intel boards to anyone. Service sucks.

7. Windows 7. Yes, Ive tried out their last two pre-release beta builds, the recent one being the 7000 one. It did manage to impress me with the speed and better functioning than Vista, but nothing can be said as of now. Ill write a detailed post on the windows 7  experience soon.

8. Bigger capacity harddrives. Out of all the points mentioned above, this one certainly seems the most concrete. I curently use the WD My Passport Elite 320GB portable drive. Wouldnt it be so convenient to have 1Tb in the 2.5 inch form!

9. Guys at PC World created this :

Palm was under serious pressure to hit a home run at CES today—and boy, did it deliver. Running Palm’s gorgeous (if belated) new platform, dubbed WebOS, the touchscreen Pre could well be Palm’s savior, and perhaps its biggest hit.So, as for the Pre itself (due on Sprint in the first half of this year, no pricing yet): It’s got a big, 3.1-inch 480 by 320 touch display (yes, with multitouch and an accelerometer), weighs in at 4.8 ounces, and comes with a curved, slide-out keypad. Yes, it does Wi-Fi and 3G (EV-DO Rev. A, to be exact), as well as GPS (with turn-by-turn directions courtesy of TeleNav), stereo Bluetooth, 8GB of internal storage, a 3MP camera, a 3.5mm headset jack, and a removable battery.

But the key to the Pre is its OS, and WebOS—previously code-named “Nova”—is one of the hottest mobile platforms I’ve seen yet, rivaling both Android and Apple’s iPhone OS.

At a glance, WebOS doesn’t look all that different from the icon-driven, touch-based Android and iPhone platforms; you’ve got your main, wallpapered home screen, complete with a row of icons along the bottom for your standard e-mail, calendar, and calling features.

But Palm’s done a few key things differently here, starting with the “gesture” area at the bottom or side of the screen (if you’re, say, surfing the Web in landscape mode). For example, if you’re browsing an individual contact in the Pre’s address book, you can flick horizontally in the gesture area to go back to the contact list, or you can flick up for a translucent window shade of applications. Nice.

More importantly, though, is WebOS’s way of letting you handle and sort all your open applications like a deck of cards. If you’re composing an e-mail, for example, you can flick up, call open a new application, and then return to your e-mail at any point. All open applications appear as windows (similar to the windows in the iPhone’s Web browser), and you can flick back and forth, reorder them, and discard them at will.

That’s really cool, and it solves one of the biggest problems that’s dogged the iPhone—namely, that its various applications are all walled off, making it difficult to easily switch from, say, the Web browser to the calendar and back again.

WebOS also introduces a concept dubbed “Synergy,” which all applications can continuously get info from the Web. The best example: WebOS’s unified contact list, which seamlessly displays all your contacts and grab their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and IM handles from Facebook, Gmail, Exchange, you name it.

I’m also happy with Palm’s integrated messaging interface, which combines IM and text chats into a single, threaded conversation.

And then there’s the WebOS “Dashboard”: a flexible space at the bottom of the screen for calling, messaging, and appointment alerts. As you’re working in other applications, you might see the first line of a text message or IM, or the Dashboard might open a bit bigger for a calendar alert, complete with “dismiss” and “snooze” options. When alerts appear, you’re free to keep working in your open application, or you can go ahead and open the alert—and if you want to answer an IM, you can swipe to that “card” in WebOS, and then return to your previous application card. Great stuff.

A few other interesting notes: When you’re sitting at the Pre’s main screen, you can just start typing on the QWERTY keypad to call up a universal search menu; you’ll instantly see any matching contacts, or you can quickly jump to Web results from Google, Google Maps, and Wikipedia.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention “Touchstone,” a little hockey puck of an accessory with a killer feature—wireless charging. Just place the Pre on top of the Touchstone device to power it up. Awesome.

It’s a lot to chew on—indeed, Palm’s press conference is barely an hour old, and already I’m having the same feeling I did after the iPhone’s debut two years ago. The Pre—and WebOS—look red-hot, and the two combined may well guarantee that Palm will live to fight another (and perhaps, many) days.

So, initial thoughts? Like what you see? Will developers take to writing WebOS applications? Fire away.

Source : Yahoo! Tech

Hello, I am a Mac, and I am a PC.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs comes on stage jointly discussing the history and future of the digital revolution on May 30 with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher for seventy-five minutes. PC World has the entire conversation jolted down in text. I like the part where Steve Jobs said:

“When Bill and I first met each other and worked together…generally, we were the youngest guys in the room.” Today, “I’m the oldest guy in the room most of the time.”

Windows Live SkyDrive – Your Internet Hard Drive

One needs to be extremely careful when choosing an online file storage service because you never know how long will a company survive if they offer everything for free.

There’re so many examples to prove that. AOL is shutting down XDrive, OmniDrive disappeared overnight, DivShare blocked their users in Asia as they were not contributing to the bottom line and MediaMax closed abruptly without letting users download their existing files.

Now Microsoft has introduced an upgraded version of Live SkyDrive, a free online file storage service, that looks like a perfect choice at the moment for several reasons.

1. You get 25 GB of free online storage space for your documents, photos, and all other files – the previous limit was 5GB

2. You have the option to download an entire folder on SkyDrive as a local zip file – huge time saver.

3. You can upload files to SkyDrive through Windows Explorer itself through Gladinet – it’s just like mapping a folder on the network drive.

4. SkyDrive is like a social network for files. You can see files that your friends have shared on SkyDrive through your own Live Profile page (similar to Friend updates in Facebook).

5. SkyDrive is Microsoft service and an integral part of their larger Windows Live strategy so you really don’t have to worry about its future existence.

6. Microsoft will soon offer an Online Office suite (like Google Docs) and it’s a no brainer that documents uploaded to SkyDrive will be accessible from Online Office and vice-versa. Thus you indirectly get more storage space for documents.

7. SkyDrive has no real competition. Google and Yahoo do not have a presence in the online file storage market while services like DropBox, Mozy, Box.net, etc. offer only limited space (couple of gigs.) to free users.

The only missing component is the SkyDrive API so I am not sure how hard it is for someone to write an Outlook plugin that will automatically upload the file attachment to SkyDrive and insert the hyperlink in the email message.

This comes at a time when I was looking at Google to satisfy all my web realted needs. Microsoft has the upper hand here right now. Lets see what Google comes up with to challenge the SkyDrive.

Pictures :