July 26th, 2008 Arash
If you’re trying to get T-Zones working on the iPhone 2.0 software, you don’t need to follow the old manual way of doing it. Just go into Cydia and search for ‘TZones Hack’ (without the quotes) and install the BigBoss tweak that comes up. Restart your phone, and you’re good to go.
As usual, the YouTube app still won’t work with this hack.
Posted in Technology, Tutorials | 1 Comment » |
July 19th, 2008 Arash
The new PwnageTool is out, and I’m gonna document my steps to install the 2.0 software on my 1st gen iPhone. Note that this is not an upgrade. The process will wipe your phone, so backup any pictures or notes that you may have on there.
bl39.bin and bl46.bin files.
If iTunes doesn’t immediately recognize your phone, try restarting iTunes. It seems the iTunes Helper is necessary for syncing the iPhone.
Posted in Technology, Tutorials | 12 Comments » |
June 4th, 2008 Arash
I recently received an email from Ryan McFall that he is using FileTree, and he noticed that the FileTree doesn’t actually display everything accurately on Windows. The shortcoming was in the fact that Windows explorer displays all directories first before displaying files in a tree. He fixed the problem, and kindly sent the changes back to me for posting on the website.
I hope this makes FileTree useful for many more people.
Posted in Open Source | No Comments » |
March 2nd, 2008 Arash
I finally upgraded my iPhone from 1.1.1 to 1.1.4, and after dealing with the Installer.app “main script execution failed” error (solution here), I began to setup my EDGE access. The steps are mostly the same as before, with the exception of the location of the preferences.plist file. Previously, it was located in the user partition, but now the file is located in:
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
In addition to the upgrade, I also took the opportunity to install Telesphoreo/Cydia, which is a port of APT to the iPhone by Jay Freeman. There seems to be lots of interesting ports available to install, and a Java VM, which is of particular interest to me. If I make any progress in developing with the new tools, I’ll post any helpful info I find.
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September 23rd, 2007 Arash
I was coding at work, and I needed a tree view of the file system so user’s could select a directory in a utlitiy I was writing. There’s nothing in the Java libraries that does that (as of JDK 1.6), so I figured this would be a cool little swing object to develop and make available for others. I finished it about a month ago, but I didn’t have time to thoroughly document it and make a page for it on my website until now.
I call it FileTree and it extends the Java JTree class. It has the native system icons next to all the files and directories for OS X and Windows. On Linux, because neither the File class or the FileSystemView class return specific icons, some generic icons are used for the folder and file nodes.
I hope this library comes in handy for any Java developers out there, and if you find any bugs, make any improvements or have any interesting feature requests, please let me know about them.
Posted in Open Source | 1 Comment » |
September 17th, 2007 Arash
UPDATE 2 (July 26, 2008): There is a much easier way to set up T-Zones now.
UPDATE: After going through my logs I’ve noticed that there are a lot of Windows users checking out this guide. So I’ve added a step 0 to help them out.
I received my iPhone on Friday and immediately went about actvating and unlocking it, and at the end of the tutorial, there’s a link to a forum discussion on getting t-zones working on your iPhone. After reading through it and placing a call to t-mobile’s customer support (great folks over there!) I finally got it working. Here are the steps needed in an easy to follow format.
I’m going to make a couple of assumptions in this tutorial.
0) Windows users install WinSCP If you’re running Windows, install a file transfer client to move the files between your computer and your iPhone. I recommend WinSCP. If the tutorial makes anymore mention about transferring files between computers, just use WinSCP and connect to the IP of your iPhone. Set the protocol to be SSH/SSH2.
1) Turn off Auto-Lock Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘General’ -> ‘Auto-Lock’ and select ‘Never.’ You can turn it back on after you’re done with this, but for now disable it.
2) Enter APN, username and password Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘General’ -> ‘Network’ -> ‘Edge.’ For the APN field enter wap.voicestream.com. Make sure the username and password fields are empty.
3) Create proxy.pac Thanks to kdub3000 for the file contents. Open TextEdit or your favorite text editor on Linux, and paste in the following code into a new document:
function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
if (isInNet(myIpAddress(), "10.0.0.0", "255.0.0.0"))
return "PROXY 216.155.165.50:8080";
else
return "DIRECT";
}
Save the file to your Desktop as proxy.pac. On OS X, make sure TextEdit doesn’t append a .txt extension to the file.
4) Find the IP address of your iPhone Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Wi-Fi’, and click on the blue dot next to the name of the network your iPhone is currently connected to (the one with the checkbox). Look at the IP address there and remember it or write it down.
5) Upload proxy.pac to the iPhone Now we need to copy proxy.pac to our iPhone’s /private/var/root/ directory. If you know how to do this using a Cyberduck or any other file transfer program, feel free to do so. Otherwise open up a terminal (OS X, go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.app) and enter the following command with the ip address of your iPhone substituted for the $IPHONE_IP:
scp ~/Desktop/proxy.pac root@$IPHONE_IP:/private/var/root/
On my Wi-Fi network, my iPhone’s IP is 192.168.1.52, so I typed this command:
scp ~/Desktop/proxy.pac root@192.168.1.52:/private/var/root/
Hit ‘Enter’ and it will prompt you for your iPhone’s root password. The default is ‘dottie’, without the quotes.
6) Update preferences.plist Now we’ll copy preferences.plist to our local system for editing. It’s located at /private/var/root/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist on your iPhone. Download it to your desktop using your favorite file transfer client, or use this command:
scp root@$IPHONE_IP:/private/var/root/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist ~/Desktop/
Open up the preferences.plist file from your Desktop in your text editor, and look for the area of the file where it has the lines:
<key>DeviceName</key>
<string>ip1<string>
Note that the text inside the string tags should be ip1 (as opposed to en0, ip2 or anything else). Now add the following chunk of xml (in red) to the file in the appropriate place (thanks to syasses):
<key>Interface</key>
<dict>
<key>DeviceName</key>
<string>ip1</string>
<key>Hardware</key>
<string>com.apple.CommCenter</string>
<key>Type</key>
<string>com.apple.CommCenter</string>
</dict>
<key>com.apple.CommCenter</key>
<dict>
<key>AllowNetworkAccess</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>Available</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>Setup</key>
By adding this code to the file, you’re instructing your iPhone to use a proxy (T-Mobile’s t-zones server) for your communications over GPRS. Save the file.
Now upload the file back to your iPhone with the command:
scp ~/Desktop/preferences.plist root@$IPHONE_IP:/private/var/root/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
7) Restart the iPhone Hold down the sleep button for 3 seconds on your iPhone, and then turn it off. Turn it back on, and you should be able to access the Internet through t-zones for just $6!
I tested my GPRS speed at iphonenetworktest.com and I got 154.2 kbps.
Posted in Technology, Tutorials | 114 Comments » |
August 19th, 2007 Arash
As usual, I was browsing around the Internet and I stumbled upon a link to a show from Australia called “The Chaser’s War on Everything.” In this clip they send in a guy dressed as a confused American tourist to a couple locations, then a guy in traditional looking Arab clothes (with fake beard too!) to compare the responses. Let the hilarity ensue.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/video/default.htm?program=chaser&pres=20060623_2200
Posted in Stuff to Watch | No Comments » |
February 25th, 2007 Arash
The episode of Monk that aired last Friday (”Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy“) brought Monk into the digital age with his first experience on a computer. I’m assuming the producers thought this was a golden opportunity for product placement, and they got Dell to fork over the gold. As much as I don’t like product placements, I thought it wasn’t that bad… until Natalie’s daughter said “It’s a Dell! It’s got everything!.” I didn’t think much of it afterwards until I watched that night’s episode of Psych (”Poker? I Barely Know Her“).
Lo and behold there was a shiny new Alienware laptop getting a lot of spotlight in the episode. Alienware used to be a boutique computer company specializing in high end machines for gaming, until Dell bought them. The product placement was much better on this one, but just as obvious. The laptop had a glowing Apple-like alien head on the back of the screen, and a pleasing (artificial) clickity-click sound from the keys.
My assumption is that Dell has a product placement deal with USA Network. I don’t watch any other shows on their channel so I can’t confirm any others, but they wouldn’t surprise me. Have any of you seen other Dell spots on their shows?
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments » |
February 15th, 2007 Arash
There’s been tons of iPhone hype in the air lately, and until it’s actually released, I’m not sure how much of it is justified. Once you get past all the fancy features, you can start to digest the drawbacks of it:
The 2-year contract with Cingular is something most cell phone customers are used to by now, but I still avoid them like the plague. I don’t like this sneaky system of cell phone providers overcharging their customers every month in order to subsidize the free cell phone they receive. I’d like an option where if I bring my own phone, I pay what it actually costs for service, not the typical fee that you pay when locked into a contract and given some piece of junk phone.
The last thing I’ll mention is the artificial differentiation between voice and data plans. Voice is a type of data and the cell phone providers know it also. The only reason they’re marketed as two separate services is because there’s an opportunity to nickel and dime a public that generally doesn’t know the difference. There’s a lot of money to be made for a cellular provider if they simply provided an unrestricted and unlimited data service to its customers. Customers could simply use VoIP for their voice calls and use their phones as portable internet access devices. Genius.
So here’s what I want in a phone:
I’m not holding my breath for all this, but until then I’ll stick with my T509.
Posted in Technology | No Comments » |
January 20th, 2007 Arash
I’m an avid watcher of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but I’ve never really been into The Colbert Report. However, a couple days ago Stephen Colbert and Bill O’Reilly went on each other’s show, and I decided to check it out. Bottom line, Bill O’Reilly just doesn’t get it. He seems convinced that there’s this conspiracy brewing in the country that’s out to get him and everyone like him. Here are links to the videos of the relevant sections of each of their shows for the day:
Stephen Colbert on The Factor (video.google.com)
Bill O’Reilly on The Colbert Report (video.google.com)
Posted in Stuff to Watch | No Comments » |