Flying is always a bit of a conflicted experience for me. On the one hand, I’m off on an adventure; on the other, I have to deal with unpredictable flight schedules, labyrinthine terminals and $9 burritos. But FlightTrack Pro — with its attractive, clean-looking pages offering an abundance of detailed information — makes everything better (except the burrito prices).
There can only be so many good reasons as to why someone would feel compelled to do this, but apparently, some ingenuitive hackers have managed to get Android 2.3 Gingerbread ported to an iPhone 3G.
After several weeks of work, Nick Pack and others have found a way to install the Android OS on an iPhone 3G, using the OpeniBoot software that has been used on previous ports. OpeniBoot is an open source implementation of iBoot for iOS devices, which allows booting of unsigned code, such as Linux kernels, on the device.
Video of the action can be viewed HERE.
There’s a lot more happening in the Cupertino-centric world than the usual porn-unboxing videos and edible iPhones: here are the most bizarre moments involving Apple in 2010 — from severed appendages to exploded iDevices as art and spy evangelists.
We start the day off with bargains on applications for the iPad and iPhone. First up is a new crop of price drops for Apple’s tablet, including “Spirit HD,” a puzzle. A number of iPhone apps are offered for no cost, including “X Invasion 2: Extreme Combat.” The deal spotlight wraps up with the just-announced new MacBook Air computers, including a $999 unit that includes an 11.6-inch screen, 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 64GB of solid state storage.
Along the way, we also take a look at other iPhone applications, as well as a rubber bumper for your iPhone, a 27-inch LED Cinema Display and Apple’s new iLife ’11 software bundle. As always, details on these and many other bargains can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Apple made a lot of changes to iTunes when it introduced version 10. A lot of those changes were cosmetic, but some of them included removing features like ringtone creation. Luckily, you can make your own ringtones out of any song in iTunes 10 using these nine easy steps.
All you need to get started is a copy of iTunes 10 installed on your Mac and your music library.
Cheap Chinese knockoffs of the iPhone 4 are a dime-a-dozen, but this new handset runs Android 2.1, Google’s ever-improving mobile OS.
It’s actually a dual-boot phone. It also runs Windows Mobile 6.5 (yuck!). It has a 3.6-inch capacitive touch-screen with multi-touch controls. It comes with 512MB of RAM and includes a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus.
It costs about $257, which is a bargain. It might be worth looking for one of these on eBay. The ability to run Android is a game-changer for knockoffs. For the first time, the software won’t totally suck.
Sony’s attractive new line of speakers might look like some strange hybrid between a thermos and an iPod dock, but there’s no madness behind the weird engineering of the Sony SRS-V500IP… just smart, practical design.
You see, the thermos or travel-mug-like pod you see above is actually a removable speaker, inside of which is Sony’s Circle Sound Stage System, which blasts 16 watts of stereo in a 360 degree bubble. Use it at home and that sound pod sits in a bundled iPod cradle, but if you want to beef up your car’s stereo, you can remove it, hook it up to your in-car power adapter and position it in your vehicle’s drink tray. Cute.
The Sony SRS-V500IP is available now for just $239.99
Dealing with overheating engines by running cold air over them is fine for old Volkswagen Beetles with almost the horsepower of an electric toothbrush and weird French cars (I know, the word “weird” there is redundant). As engines have become more powerful though, air-cooling has become less attractive — at least, in the automotive world. Computers still lag behind though. Mostly.
Zack Fanning, who handles (surprise) marketing for computer cooling system expert Asetek, asked the outfit’s engineers to mod his Mac Pro with a liquid cooling system. The results are pretty interesting: He’s able to overclock his 2.8 ghz Mac Pro to 3.18 while reducing noise — due to the fan not having to work as hard — by 13 decibels over a strictly air-cooled Mac Pro running at the same speed. Pretty cool.
Want one? While Zack’s is a one-off, lovingly handcrafted custom job, Corsair’s H50 liquid cooling system (actually made for them by Asetek) can be had for about $80; just make sure to check first about compatibility, because the H50’ll only work with later-model Mac Pros.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the third most popular celebrity whose home is “stalked” by UK users with Google Street view.
From across the pond, there are just two other places that nosy Nellies want to take an up-close look at more than Jobs’ house: the White House and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion in Los Angeles. (Just to save you the keystrokes, it’s a futile bunny hunt, no street view is available.)
Depending on your stalkerish inclinations, you can see Jobs’ current residence with his car parked outside, or the Los Altos garage of his parent’s home where Apple was founded.
Bill Gates came in sixth in the survey. Other celebs people wanted to see include David and Victoria Beckham, Jay-Z and Beyonce. Nearly half of the people polled said they also looked for their childhood home and 16% tried to get a glimpse of an ex’s home.
Phone Disk, from Macroplant, is a utility for Mac OS X (and Windows) that runs quietly in the background on your computer until you plug-in an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad using a USB sync cable. Plugging in your favorite iDevice causes Phone Disk to seamlessly mount the iOS file system on that device to your computers file system. Once mounted you can directly access the files on that device using Finder (and Windows explorer) or any other program.
You’ll be interested in this application if you’re an IT Ninja looking for another good troubleshooting utility to carry around or you’re simply curious about the data that resides on your favorite iDevice.
