It’s really a great couch device. Watching TV, I find myself reaching for it all the time. I look stuff up as it comes to me without the need to wait for the laptop to power up. Because by that time I’ve totally forgotten what it was I was going to look up in the first place. It’s pretty handy.

When my wife first heard about the iPad she didn’t really know what good it would be for people. Then she borrowed mine to see what it was about. She is now in love with it as well. It really is the kind of device that comes alive in the real world. You can read all the reviews you want (like this one) but you really can’t fathom the true usefulness of this thing until you actually get your hands on one.

I’ve only had it for about a month so I know I will discover other great things I can do with it as time goes by, but so far I’m hooked.

Oh, and this review was written on the iPad.

This has been, as always, suriehl

I was hesitant to jailbreak my production phone. I have an older 2G model that I jailbroke one afternoon with my friend Victor, but my production phone? You can tell that I work in IT where it sometimes takes months to roll out a software package. Jailbreaking more than a week ago took a little skill, not so any more. Let’s dive into that murky realm of illegitimate software and hacked apps to see what will benefit you and what is safe.

Jailbreaking your phone is safe. You will not brick your phone. Should I repeat that? Jailbreaking just opens up a small portion of your OS to be able to make changes and install apps that Apple deems not worthy of you. And better yet we had a court decision stating that jailbreaking a device that you own is not illegal in itself.

Let’s walk through this, Jailbreaking:

Back up your phone!

Take your phone to http://jailbreakme.com with the safari browser. Once it loads you will see a slider bar to jailbreak your phone. Slide it. Feels good, doesn’t it? Once it finishes loading it will tell you it is complete and leave you with an empty, if not blue, screen. You are jailbroken. Pat yourself on your little hacker back, you are now a rebel, a legal rebel, but a rebel just the same.

You will have a new app on your phone called Cydia, which is the jailbroken version of the app store. Go ahead and launch Cydia and let it load.

Now the first app you will need to install is called MobileTerminal. Once it installs reboot your phone and launch the app. You are going to change your root password on your phone.

Launch mobile terminal and type “su root” it will ask you for a password. The current one is “alpine.” Now type passwd and enter YOUR new password twice for verification. Once you are done, you are done. Close the app.

Apps:

There are a lot of apps out there some of them are dangerous and put out there to infiltrate your phone. Let’s try to avoid those. First rule of being safe for installing apps on anything; your PC, your iPhone or your Mac is to start with the well-known stuff. They have been vetted by other users.

The first app I installed was call ed Cylay. It is a security app that does what mobileme was supposed to do. In the event that you lose your iPhone it will give you the location and let you lock it, message it, keep it from rebooting, take a picture and wipe it. Here’s a screenshot of the portal you can use.

Cylay Portal

Winterboard is probably the most popular app in the Cydia market. It allows you to customize your phone with themes. Pretty simple stuff, you can modify your theme or download other packages. Our friend Rob said he used a steampunk theme, no surprise there, he’s our resident steampunk.

iBlacklist allows you to control your call handling for specific phone numbers. Got the man on your back? Have iBlacklist send him directly to a busy signal. Why the mighty iPhone can’t do this on it’s own is beyond me. AT&T must have Steve jobs by the balls.

My favorite app from the Cydia market is called Lockinfo. It turns your lock screen into a screen that has your favorite information. Right now I have my configured to show the weather (which can be expanded) and the status of my email, sms, missed calls and calendar.

That’s where I am advising you to start. It’s pretty easy to setup and should be safe. Some of the apps cost money on Cydia so Caveat Emptor, as they say. If you need to un-jailbreak your phone for any reason just do a simple restore to your phone.

Enjoy!  -Snarky

At about 11:30 p.m. I was standing outside in the driveway, enjoying the night air, when I hear a low humming noise. It was almost inaudible, more of a pulsing in my ears. As I am looking around, trying to figure out what the sound was I am suddenly blinded by this very bright light from directly overhead. Soon the light dims and I am shown a spectacular light show. I pulled out my phone and took a series of pictures as this “show” went on for what seemed like five minutes. I took many shots and though the time seems to slip by quickly, and like I said, seemed to last about five minutes, when it was over I went inside, excited beyond belief, wanting to share this story with my wife. I found that everyone was asleep. It was 4 a.m. though my watch said that it was 11:45. Where did those five hours go. Where, if anywhere, did I go? Why was I allowed to take all of these pictures? Do you believe? I do now.

Below are some of the pictures I took last night.

All pictures were taken from my iPhone using the KaleidoVid app. The pictures are of my screensaver in a dark room. Click on the thumbnail then click again on the picture for a larger image.

Features listed on the site are:

• Futuristic black umbrella with LED light-up shaft
• Stay dry on your walk to the noodle shop
• Push the button to light up the shaft with LEDs
• Look both ways and watch out for replicants
• Choice of white LED shaft or blue LED shaft
• Batteries Included (Uses 3 x LR44 Button Batteries)

Be the coolest, most visible geek on your block for only $24.99

Student and one of the developers, Kyle Binder, stated;

“We literally print the cells directly onto the wound. We can put specific cells where they need to go.”"You have to give a lot of credit to the cells. When you put them into the wound, they know what to do,” Binder said.

The spraying method even places stem cells right where they are needed the most. These cells can even regrow hair folicles.

Tests on mice have shown recovery times of up to three weeks faster than those not treated. Pigs are next on the list since their skin more closely resembles ours. Another instance of Star Trek brought to reality.

For more information go to:
Planet Green

Picture from the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Sources:

Thai Panda

Treehugger