New IPhone SDK (build 9M2199a) is avaliable. Download here. It's about 1.2 Gb.

AT&T has developed a software trick that will recognize voice commands without the need for specialized voice recognition software. It is based on a new version of AT&T's WATSON speech recognition engine.

As long as the software used to access Speech Mashups obeys certain web standards, particularly an AJAX framework and JavaScript, the technology can capture voice commands, interpret them at a remote server, and send them back to the device in a language a website or program can understand -- all without installing a dedicated app or plugin.

In a prototype mobile version of the YellowPages website, AT&T in a research video shows an iPhone user entering the business name and location into text fields on the page just by speaking them at the appropriate times. While typing would work in such a case, the company claims that voicing the information is faster and more convenient.

via appleinsider

Pictures look very nice. Indeed a Mac tablet PC, combining notebook and IPhone, multi-touch and other technologies. Too good to be truth.  But.. There are many rumors, that it will be released by the end of this year.

Thanks to Dev Team and the porting work of Jay Freeman as well as the authors of 3Proxy, it is now possible to "tether" your iPhone 3G and use its Internet connection on your laptop.

Warning - Tethering your iPhone is against the iPhone data plan terms. AT&T could slap you with huge fees if you overuse this. I recommend only using it during emergencies.

Here is a basic plan (by the way, this should work for old IPhone also):

• Jailbreak your iPhone 3G
• Install 3Proxy and Terminal
• Create an ad-hoc Wi-fi network using your laptop
• Join the network with your iPhone
• Find the iPhone's IP address
• Open Terminal and run the proxy program
• Open Safari on your iPhone and open a web page
• Configure your browser to use the proxy

Later we'll discuss it with more details.

Step 1: Jailbreak your iPhone

Read the rest of this entry »

News from winpwn.com:

"So planet and i have been working on updating winpwn to allow for 2.0 pwning. Expect a release within the next few days! Again thanks for all the support. Everyone has been very supportive and i can't thank everyone enough"

Well, we're looking forward to see winpwn soon.

After successfull jailbreake of the IPhone/IPhone 3G with firmware 2.0 it is possible to install Cydia installer. And what is more exciting, there are many applications there, including Java.

Related articles:

• Tutorial: install Java on the IPhone

• Tutorial: compile and run Java application on the IPhone

screenshots are from iphoneapps.ru

The development sources for xpwn 0.3, the firmware 2.0 version of our cross-platform jailbreaking library/command-line utility have been pushed onto github. DevTeam tested it on Linux, Windows XP, and Windows Vista for both the iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G thus far, but since it uses the same FirmwareBundles files as PwnageTool, and we know those work for the iPod touch, there ought not be any problems.

Being a suite of command-line utilities, this release is meant primarily for developers. While you can certainly jailbreak (both 3G and first-gen) and unlock (first-gen) with it, it's not really something you want to try without reading the lengthy, detailed README. If you don't have the patience to do that, this release is not for you.

For users this news mean that quite soon there will be a new version of winpwn, supporting 2.0.

Cupertine California—July 21, 2008—Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter ended June 28, 2008.

Apple shipped 2,496,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 41% unit growth and 43% revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 11,011,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 12% unit growth and 7% revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 717,000 compared to 270,000 in the year-ago-quarter.

The Company posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.8%, down from 36.9% in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 42% of the quarter’s revenue.

Not bad at all.

via apple.com

There is not much defference between Safari 1.1.4 and 2.0. But Under the hood, MobileSafari 2.0's performance is hugely improved over 1.1.4. Everything related to web surfing feels faster, web pages consistently load faster on 2.0, both via Wi-Fi and EDGE. This has nothing to do with the new iPhone 3G hardware — this is about dramatic performance improvements on original iPhones upgraded to the 2.0 OS.

Using MobileSafari simply feels faster, especially with web applications. Feel is by nature subjective, but JavaScript benchmarks back this up.

In August last year, Craig Hockenberry posted a few simple benchmarks to compare the iPhone's processing power and JavaScript interpreter against Safari 3 running on a Mac with a 1.83 GHz Core Duo. At that time, the current version of the iPhone OS was 1.0.1. Here are the results of those same benchmarks on original iPhones running the 1.1.4 and new 2.0 OS versions, with Hockenberry’s 1.0.1 results included for comparison:

The last column shows how many times faster the 2.0 version of MobileSafari was versus 1.0.1 and 1.1.4. The same results, charted (smaller bars are faster) can be viewed above.

The results are obvious. WebKit JavaScript performance has improved steadily and significantly in just one year, with a huge jump between 1.1.4 and the new 2.0.0. In side-by-side page loading tests between two original iPhones running 1.1.4 and 2.0.0, the new version consistently finished at least a few seconds faster.

For all the hubbub regarding the new App Store, most “iPhone software” runs in the web browser. But improvements in WebKit performance often help native iPhone app performance, too — a slew of my favorite native iPhone apps have built-in WebKit browsers (e.g., NetNewsWire, Twitterrific, Instapaper, and Cocktails). When WebKit performance improves, any app that uses WebKit improves, and WebKit improved a lot between iPhone 1.1.4 and 2.0.0.

via daringfireball.net

Russian newspaper Vedomosti investigated how much the new IPhone 3G costs in Russia, country where users cannot buy IPhone officially.  The results are impressive.

Several russian web sites offer IPhone 3G 8Gb for $1200. Rumors say that In Moscow it is possible to find one foe $775, but it is not easy. However $1200 is not the limit at all. In some big shopping center in Moscow one can buy IPhone 3G for $3449.

Some analysts report, that there are about 400,000 IPhones in Russia. Every month this number increases by approximately 33,000.

iRinger creates free ringtones for your iPhone from virtually any music or video file you own. Even YouTube videos! iRinger exports ringtones to iTunes, so there is no need to "jailbreak" your iPhone. You will be creating ringtones in seconds. It's that simple. Here is a video tutorial:

Feature:

• FREE
• Three Steps: Import, Preview then Export. Done.
• Convert virtually any audio format into an iPhone ringtone
• Extracts audio out of video
• Choose which section of the audio you want to hear
• Adjust ringtone length, volume, fade in, fade out and loop gap
• Export to iPhone ringtone format and import right into iTunes
• Export to iPhone using SCP/SFTP and skip using iTunes
• Use audio effects: Delay, Flanger, Boost, Reverse, etc.
• Runs on all versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows Vista
• Requires iPhone firmware 1.1.2 or newer, iTunes software 7.5 or newer
• Works with the new iPhone 3G!

Download here: iRinger.exe. Developer's site: www.iringer.net

Here is an advanced video tutorial, it shows how to use some advanced features:

Read the rest of this entry »

With the iPhone 3G not even ten days old, virtually all of the Apple retail store stores open within the United States are without any examples of the device to sell on July 21st.

The shortage is severe enough in the 38 states that claim Apple stores that it's easier to count the locations that do have iPhone 3G units than those that don't.

In California, the only Apple store with any iPhones is the Pleasanton store with only 16GB black examples, while New York City's Fifth Avenue store is the only one in all of New York state known to have any examples left, with just 16GB white models in stock.

Only a single Honolulu store and the Salem, New Hampshire store can also claim to have any units available, and each only lists one model as ready for Monday.

Apple has been continually resupplying its stores with new iPhones - in many cases on a daily basis - but has seen fewer and fewer of its stores touting next-day availability in the several days since the July 11th debut of the handset upgrade.

Whether or not Apple's supply will meet demand in time to prevent a repeat of May's complete stockout is also far from certain. When grilled on an unprecedented spike in preorders, Britain's iPhone carrier O2 said it might take "some weeks" before it could satisfy enough of its customers on a regular basis.

via AppleInsider

Here are the updates:

• JocStrap - Java/Objective-C connection library, version 1.0.2466-17 (was 1.0.2466-15),
• IPhone/Java - examples of Java applications, version 1.0.2474-15 (was 1.0.2357-14)
• Cydia Installer, version 1.0.2473-64 (was 1.0.2460-59)

Not a huge update, but still.

Just in case you don't have Cydia and Java installed on your IPhone, follow these instructions: Tutorial: install Java on the IPhone.

Yesterday there was a release of PWNage 2.0. Now version 2.0.1 is avaliable.

Here is the list of bugfixes:

• It auto-finds the bl39 and bl46 files better, if they’re on your computer
• It creates the ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support/ folder if not present, which should help with some 1600 errors people have been having.
• Many people have reported the PwnageTool not starting up at all (the icon never stops bouncing). This issue should be resolved now.
• The Sparkle AppCast URL is fixed in this version, so automatic updates should work for future releases.

Because of the AppCast URL fix, we recommend that everyone who downloaded PwnageTool 2.0 get this version, if they want to stay up to date automatically.

If PwnageTool 2.0 pwned your phone correctly the first time, you do not need to pwn again with 2.0.1.

The file can be found on BigBoss_’s repository, or at Hackint0sh.

If you choose to download it from other mirrors, you may want to verify that the SHA1 of the file is 10b6c7dc22286e7b70c3d5a92cda7d117426fda9.

Now older IPhone users users can upgrade to firmware 2.0 and IPhone 3G users have a possibility to have jailbreaked IPhones. That is because PwnageTool 2.0 is released today. Download links are: mirror1, mirror2, mirror3.

Just a reminder: this tool jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches. No unlock for Iphone 3G yet. The supported firmware is 2.0 only. Platform is Mac OS.

If you get Error 1600 from iTunes (or if you see in your log a failure to repare x12220000_4_Recovery.ipsw), try: mkdir “~/Library/iTunes/Device Support” ;  if that directory already exists, remove any files in it.  Then re-run PwnageTool.

Reminder: as of right now, there are no apps out for 2.0. Over the next few days some will come out. So do not update yet if you have some favorite 1.1.x apps you are using! 2.0 will not run 1.1.4 apps

UPDATE: version 2.0.1 is avaliable