Magic Tap, a 99-cent iPhone application, lets you send fake calls to yourself on command, just in case you ever need an excuse to get out of an awkward situation such as a horrible blind date, or having “that talk” with your girlfriend. To make this application more realistic, it lets you customize the caller’s name, number and photo I.D. to anyone you choose. However, keep this in mind: setting the caller I.D. to “Shakira” with a steamy photo of the diva probably wouldn’t be too convincing, so you better stick with using Jason Chen’s sexy mug instead. We’ve even provided one for you after the cut. [PC World]
Curvy huh? Obvious now that the iPhone EDGE and the pasty iPhone 3G manufacturing mold can be setup side by side. Injection molded thermoplastic for the win!
In a move of unsurprising proportions, StyleTap announced today that it will be bringing its Palm OS emulator to the iPhone and iPod touch… officially. This basically means that every one of those precious Palm apps you couldn’t live without will now be easily accessible via Apple’s devices, thus seriously threatening the argument for keeping your Treo 600. Gregory Sokoloff, CEO of the company, said that the response to a video posted in February of a demo version of the software convinced them to take the plunge. Palm, now might be a good time to stun us with your new OS.
It was simply inevitable: someone was going to lay the iPhone and BlackBerry Bold down beside one another, and if John Mayer won’t stop sending himself emails long enough to do it, CrackBerry’s sister site will. There’s really nothing here that you couldn’t put together yourself from checking out galleries and videos of each device separately, but feel free to humor your sick mind by glancing over the comparative images in the read link below or examining the vid waiting after the jump.
Our brethren over at Engadget Chinese had the chance to size-up HTC’s new Windows Mobile 6.1 Touch Diamond with Apple’s iPhone this morning in Taiwan. We have to admit, HTC’s CEO was dead-on when he claimed that the Diamond’s “not too big, not too small” after seeing it side-by-side with Microsoft’s left-coast nemesis. Hit the read link for bigger pics.
Quick, what’s the best way to dress up an otherwise dry piece on how companies can register non-traditional trademarks? If you answered “mention Apple and the iPod,” you’re the big winner — and you’ve gotten yourself published in the Wall Street Journal. We’ll be the first to admit that Apple’s January registration of the three-dimensional design of the iPod strains credulity, but the simple fact is that non-traditional trademarks have been around for a while now — we seem to remember a little kerfuffle regarding magenta recently, but we can’t quite recall the exact details. Similarly, Nokia trademarked the 12 notes of its default ringtone back in September (even though they’re part of a larger piece written in 1902 called “Gran Vals”), NBC has a mark on its ding-ding-ding station ID, and Coca-Cola has registrations for basically every bottle design it sells. Still, you can bet Apple legal threw quite a pizza party when this mark was approved — and we can only imagine the kind of buttoned-down corporate lawyer jam that’ll go down if the company succeeds in getting a mark on the design of the iPhone, which it’s currently applied for. Hope you’re ready for some more funktastic control layouts.
Read - WSJ article Read - Apple iPod design trademark
For those that need to be in the know about the very latest supposedly-leaked 3G iPhone shots that hit the web this week, we’ve got you covered — but we’re not convinced, especially of the device on the right. The shots on the left do at least seem to be crafted around those supposed size and shape leaks we saw the other day though, so bonus points there for playing into another current rumor to rack up a small bit of credibility. Still, in our best Rick James voice, Photoshop’s a hell of a tool.
Read - Left four shots appear on Chinese phone forum Read - Shot on the right from AppleInsider
Sure, there are already a handful of options out there for extending the life of your iPhone / iPod battery, but since when have we been ones to gripe about a little competition? Kensington has just introduced a standard and miniature version of its Battery Pack and Charger for iPhone / iPod, which unsurprisingly provides juice to your device’s internal battery and can be recharged simultaneously. As you could likely guess, the only differences between the two contraptions are the size, price and battery life; the 0.22-pound standard model extends play time to up to 100 hours (music) / 6 hours (talk), while the even tinier mini version livens things up for another 30 hours (music) / 3 hours (talk). Each is available now for $69.99 / $49.99.
Vodafone’s just got a tiny, minor, insignificant announcement to make this morning: it’s signed with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten markets, including Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy (so much for Telecom Italia), India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. Expect the phone later this year — that’s all we know for now. Score one (or ten?) for Voda.
Easy come, easy go: looks like that free WiFi for iPhone users could already be turned off, as apparently users are starting to get login screens instead of the free web access they so quickly came to expect. The only real question is whether the whole free iPhone WiFi was simply flipped on early, and will be officially announced at a later time, or AT&T changed its mind about the whole thing. Guess we’ll soon see.
Well here’s an interesting one. French iPhone blog iPhon.fr got these pics from an anonymous and unverified source, and while there’s no way of telling if the shots are legit, they certainly have a truthy ring to them. They follow what we know so far about the shape, size and color of the upcoming 3G iPhone, and while there’s always the possibility of knockoff, a Photoshop job, or some other evil plot to mislead us, we’re certainly not going to discount these shots entirely in the runup to iPhone’s second coming.
See it? No, not the reflective surface or the bastardization of the Intel Inside logo on the back… the other modification to this stock iPhone. Right, that Apple logo is burning white a la your off-the-shelf MacBook. Amazingly, the trick is accomplished without any appreciable increase to the iPhone’s waistline. You can take a chance with the Dutch machine-translation beyond the read link below or wait for the English text to be posted by iPhoneclub.nl later today. Regardless, be sure to check the video after the break. It’s not like you’ll be busting out the dremel to attempt this yourself anyway.
Though the official iPhone AppStore is only months away, developers are still delivering some incredible native applications built under the unofficial “jailbreak” umbrella. The latest is “fring,” an application that lets users make voice calls with Skype or SIP. It also has a built-in instant messaging component for conversing over Yahoo!, AIM, MSN Messenger and Google Talk and ICQ.
Gil Regev, Online Marketing Coordinator for fring, told iPhone Atlas “During this R&D period, we’ll be listening to feedback, so we can fine tune the final version and create a truly kicking user experience for iPhone users, so your feedback (in case you have an iPhone) is really important from us.”
Regev’s comments bring up an interesting point: some developers are now using the jailbreak community as a free beta test-bed for applications that are planned for distribution through the official AppStore. Though there are minor framework differences between the unofficial toolchain and Apple’s own, most applications are easily ported to the official scheme.
In order to use fring, see our guide for putting third-party applications on the iPhone, then use Installer.app to add the fring source (instructions here).
AOL has launched an iPhone-optimized version of its Mobile Search service. Mobile Search has a traditional Web search engine, but also has features specially tailored to search the content of various AOL properties, including Moviefone, MapQuest, AOL CityGuide and others. So, for instance, searching for hotels in a specific location will bring back a list of entries from CityGuide with inline phone numbers. Searching for a movie will bring back results from an iPhone-optimized version of Moviefone, complete with inline times.
AOL Mobile Search for the iPhone also automatically retrieves other iPhone-optimized sites first in search results. For instance, searching for “Facebook” in Mobile Search for the iPhone will bring back m.facebook.com as the top result.
A six-minute video demonstration of the service is available on AOL’s blog, but it’s not viewable on the iPhone.
Security researchers are reporting two purported security issues with the iPhone today.
ETH Zurich reports on a seemingly innocuous flaw wherein the iPhone’s quasi-GPS (cell tower and WiFi triangulation) scheme can be fooled into displaying an incorrect location to the user. The system can be tricked by impersonating known locations (falsifying MAC addresses) and jamming actual, local access points. Researchers write: “These actions created the illusion in localized devices that their locations were different from their actual physical locations.” In a test case, one of the devices was misleadingly induced to show its position as being in New York City, whereas the correct position was Zurich (Switzerland).
Meanwhile Radware reports on a denial of service (DoS) vulnerability in the MobileSafari browser included with iPhone OS 1.1.4. The vulnerability is triggered when a user opens an HTML page with specific JavaScript code. The likely vectors are spam mail or spam SMS. According to researchers “The user will experience an application level DoS which results in crashing the Safari browser and which could go as far as crashing the entire iPhone appliance.” No further details on the flaw are provided.
Those waxing nostalgic for Apple’s Newton can take comfort in a new unofficial third-party application for the iPhone that can recognize handwriting (fingerwriting?) and turn it into typed text. Dubbed “HWPen,” (and described in this “modmyifone” thread) the application was developed by Hanwang.com.cn to allow Chinese character input on the iPhone, but the program works equally well with English input.
In order to install thie HWPen, follow our guide for enabling third-party apps on the iPhone, then use Installer.app to add the source: iphonecake.com/src/all.
To add a source (as also described in our guide), tap “Sources,” button, then tap “Edit” in the upper-right corner, and finally “Add” in the upper-left corner. Enter the URL of the source you would like to add and press “OK.” Installer.app will add the source, and you will be able to find the new application(s) in the normal “Install” menu.
Mac OS X users have been happily “pwning” their iPhones for weeks, Windows users have been shut out until today. The iPhone Dev Team has now worked to produce a Windows-based beta of the Pwnage tool, which is still buggy and doesn’t support pre-release builds of iPhone OS 2.0.
To recap, the Pwnage tool exploits a low-level vulnerability in the iPhone’s boot process to allow the installation of custom OS files. The potential ramifications are huge: pwnage could embody a future-proof method for unlocking and activating iPhones, immune from Apple’s countermeasures.
The most relevant advancement realized via Pwnage thus far is the ability bypass installation roadblocks instated by Apple. This has allowed users to install pre-release versions of the iPhone OS, such as OS 2.0, which normally requires expressed authorization and a special signature from Apple. With a pre-release copy of iPhone OS 2.0 leaked to various file-sharing repositories, many users have made the premature leap. This isn’t yet possible with the beta version of “winpwn,” though that capability should be delivered soon.
For now, winpwn is good for jailbreaking/unlocking firmware files before loading them to the iPhone, and performing other custom modifications to firmware — an exercise with few practical applications so far.
Magic Tap, a 99-cent iPhone application, lets you send fake calls to yourself on command, just in case you ever need an excuse to get out of an awkward situation such as a horrible blind date, or having “that talk” with your girlfriend. To make this application more realistic, it lets you customize the caller’s name, number and photo I.D. to anyone you choose. However, keep this in mind: setting the caller I.D. to “Shakira” with a steamy photo of the diva probably wouldn’t be too convincing, so you better stick with using Jason Chen’s sexy mug instead. We’ve even provided one for you after the cut. [PC World]
