Why you’re stupid to not get a 3GS! (if eligible and have a 3G)

OK, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about whether or not you should upgrade to the new iPhone 3GS. Well if you are eligible and have a iPhone 3G it would be financially stupid not to!

First of all to be eligible with already owning 3G you must be an “early adopter” and have an average bill of at least $95 (some people say $99).

Now, here’s the reason why!

By using the new Microsoft bing search and following these instructions, thanks to Gizmodo, to get 35% off a 3GS purchase from the AT&T wireless store. UPDATE: Deal expired

By selling you’re own 16GB 3G you could probably get around $300 on ebay which would net you a new 32GB 3GS. If you wait until the 4th Gen iPhone you WILL NOT get that price for your 3G.

Or if you’re not into selling on ebay or don’t want to worry about scams and ripoffs you can do what I did and sell it at Nextworth. The going rate for “light wear” as of this post is $213.

I ended up getting $105 “cash back” from bing and $222 from nextworth for a total of $327. So I MADE MONEY by getting a new 32GB iPhone 3GS with all the sweet upgrades! Especially the better camera and video features!

Even if you only sell yours to nextworth (or some other site) the upgrades and speed improvements are well worth the $90 or so.

The biggest selling point for me is now when the 4th generation comes out I can hopefully play this game again and sell my 3GS. Had I held onto my 3G for another year I would never get the price I just did!

-Adam

The Killzone 2 Prayer

Our Enemies, who Art in Helghast, pwning be thy game, our faction come, ISA’s mission will be done, in cyberspace while logged into the PSN, give us this day of bodycount sessions, and forgive us the noobs as we forgive the nerds that pwn our asses. And lead us not into a lagged session, and deliever us a good level. For us is in the warzone, with clan tags, and with headsets. Forever and ever. Pwn On.

ping.fm public beta

I am posting this quick blog from my iPhone threw the m.ping.fm mobile site. Ping.fm allows you to update all you social networks, micro-blogging and blogs from one location. Sign up for the public beta at http://ping.fm

Why you should jailbreak your iPhone.

If you read any of the tech or apple blogs you must have heard about pwnage or jailbreaking your iPhone.  But what you might not have read is why you should jailbreak your phone.  I just finished jailbreaking my 3G iPhone and will use the experience to explain what it is and some of the benefits you will gain.

First of all, What is Jailbreaking or Pwnage?

Jailbreaking your iPhone involves modifying the phone’s software to bypass some of Apple’s built in limitations that prevent you from adding open source and free applications.  But Apple already has an app store you might ask.  For an application to get onto the App store, it needs to be approved by Apple.  There are rumors that Steve Jobs personally looks at every app to see if it passes his standards.

But what if I Brick my phone so that it never works again?

Jailbreaking you phone only modifies the application layer.  It is like installing software on your computer.  It will not permanently damage your phone.  The worst thing that can happen is cause you to revert back to the original Apple firmware.

OK so its safe, but why would i want to do this to my phone?

There are many reason you might want to jailbreak your phone. Here are a few of them.

Themes

With an application called WinterBoard you can download themes that completely change the look of you iPhone.  This will help distinguish your iPhone from every other one out there.  Let your phone match your own style.  You can also hide icons that the normal iphone software will not let you.  For instance if you never use weather or stocks you can hide those apps from showing up on your home screen.

Gaming

With NES, you can play all your favorite original Nintendo games right on your iPhone.  Also Quake, developers have worked hard to get Quake ported over to the iPhone and it works great.

Features

Jailbreaking the iPhone allows you access new features that are not included with the Phone but should have been.  Like video recording.  Qik is an application that allows you to stream live video to the web using the iPhone’s camera.  New this week to the Boss Prefs, an app only available to the jailbroken iPhone, allows you to disable the Apple Killswitch.  Apple placed in the new 2.0 firmware a back door which allows them to disable any application they want from your phone.  If this bothers you, the only way to stop it is by jailbreaking your phone.

OK, you convinced me, how do I jailbreak my iPhone?

The easiest and quickest way I found to jailbreak the iPhone ver. 2.0.1 is quickpwn by the iphone dev team. UPDATE: (still not available for 2.0.2)  Here’s a link to dowload the latest version. What you will need is a Windows computer, an iPhone or iPod Touch with fw version 2.0.1, a sync cable, and a copy of the unmodified firmwear from apple.  It works with 3G and original iPhones. When your ready to start, just put the downloaded firmwear in the same directory as quickpwn.exe and dbl click the appropriat .bat file to begin.  It will walk you through the process.  Thats all there is to it, then just open up cydia on you iPhone and start downloading free apps.

GPS Nav, If and When

I was recently driving in an area where while I did have a signal it was definitely not 3G and at best 2 bars on EDGE. I went to the Google maps app and threw on GPS only to see my little blue dot moving across an screen of emptiness.

This makes me wonder if and when Apple or a third party releases a Nav GPS app will they include all the map data in the app or will they need to be downloaded over the cellular network? If dl is their answer then I feel bad for anyone travelling outside of a 3G network, which will be pretty much everyone.

My hope is that all the maps will be contain within the app. My Mio GPS has the entire United States on a 2GB SD card which I would gladly give up on my iPhone.

Streaming maps over cell towers will not be able to keep up with driving as you can see from my screenshot. Although, I hope I’m proved wrong so I won’t have to give up gigs of storage.

Is Apple too secretive for their own good?

In the past 10 minutes I’ve read two stories about Apple screwing the pooch on its users and developers. The first one was about how Apple removed a popular free app from their app store called BoxOffice. The poor developer that puts his hard work into creating this app for FREE has no idea why Apple did pulled it and is having an impossible time trying to find out.

The second story was from famed blogger Robert Scoble and has been a reoccurring theme surrounding Apple’s debacle of a launch that is MobileMe. The service deleted ALL of his calendar events in Microsoft Office! He smartly had them backed up but the point is that Apple could have done some real damage there.

These are only two stories out of dozens I’ve unfortunately been reading the past few weeks.

So why is this happening now? Apple used to make sure their products were so polished you could comb your hair in the shine of their logo. Is it Apple’s fault for trying to protect their products so much that they don’t get properly tested? Is it the media’s fault for trying to leak all the hype out of a product weeks or months before its launch?

I don’t know the reasons but I do know that Apple better get their shit together and make amends for these screw ups or their fan base WILL eventually give up on them. Yeah, they could probably crap in some of these fanboys mouth’s and they’d still love them, but everyone has a limit.

I think MobileMe will get its act together but as for Apple’s stance toward third party developers I think they are treating them like lepers with all the NDA bullshit and horrible review process to get apps released and updated.

I know its ALL about the Benjamins but it doesn’t have to APPEAR that way. My dad used to say “Its not what you say, its how you say it” and Apple needs to replace “say” with “do.”

I still love you Apple… for now.

P.S. If my 3G iPhone case cracks like some of those white ones I’ve seen, Apple WILL feel my wrath!

YooperSteez

What an amazing site:

http://www.yoopersteez.com/

JSPIG

WordPress for iPhone

The wordpress app just dropped this morning and I’m am currently writing this post on it. At first glance it seems pretty dead simple. Install, enter your blog info and start blogging. This is also released as an open source app so look forward to more good thing to come (like hopefully a landscape keyboard layout!).

Blogging on the go is gonna be awesome for people like me with short attention spans. I constantly find myself saying “Oh, I should blog about this when I get home” but do I? Usually, no, a bright color distracts me.

You will be able to edit previous posts, add pics (awesome for photo bloggers), and obviously write new posts. The only glitch I found is that the first time I click on the new post button the app crashed back to the home screen, but which app hasn’t done that yet?

Well fellow Flushers; now you have no excuses not to blog your faces off.

I’m adding a pic of my iTunes app screen because that’s where I’m sitting in my underwear as I write this.

All I want by Christmas

Yooper1019′s iPhone Dream List:

Background running apps.

If not then Push apps.

Landscape keyboard in other apps besides Safari.

Copy and Paste. duh!

Setting shortcuts like for wifi and bluetooth. I’d say 3G too but since it’s 600 miles to the closest spot it’ll pry stay off 90% of its life.

A way to distinguish btn apps and safari shortcuts (pissed me off when I thought there was a Digg app on a screen shot but it was a shortcut).

A way to stop images from autoloading in emails (like Gmail does it).

…More to come, my brain is sleepy. Suggestions from fellow flushers? You know how to get ahold of me. Try any one of the 19 ways using our iPhones!

iPhone first impressions

I’ve had my iPhone for five days now, so its time for some first impressions.  First of all, thanks to Dave for peer-pressuring me into getting one at the last minute.  I was not going to get one due to the high monthly cost and the fact that there is no 3G within 6 hours of where I live.  Even though Edge is really slow, it is still great to have Internet wherever I go, unless I’m in the woods.  For example, I was Mountain Biking the other day and had no reception until I got to the “Top of the World” (a mountain near where I live.)  Once I was at the top though I was able to post a twitter with GPS location and a picture.  As a geek and a twitter addict (friend me at http://twitter.com/jeffwolf) this gave me an embarrassing amount of joy.  One of the reasons I like the GPS is that it can show people where I am if I get into trouble biking (as long as I’m able to clime to the top of a nearby mountain to get a signal that is.)

One thing I was originally skeptical about was that you have to pay $.99 to turn a song you purchased into a ringtone.  However, today I discovered an awesome site that allows you to download ringtones for the iPhone for free (http://www.myxertones.com).  If that site doesn’t have what your looking for, and with over 300,000 ringtones it probably does, you can use Garageband to make your own for free.

One thing I was most looking forward to was the Apple App Store.  This new feature to the iPhone/iPod touch 2.0 firmware allows you to download 3rd party applications directly to your iPhone.  This allows almost unlimited expandability to the feature set of the iPhone.  My favorite app so far is called motionX Poker.  This game which costs $4.99 is a 3D dice game that lets you roll the dice by shaking the iPhone.  It is addicting and a lot of fun.  Be warned though, if you let a friend use it, be prepared not to get your phone back for at least a half an hour (I’m talking about you Spigs).  This brings me to another great thing about the iPhone.  The fact that it is fun to show off to friends.  One of my favorite things to do is whip out my light saber app and wave it around making light saber fighting noises.  This along with some Rockstar energy drink led to an all out epic 4 person light saber dual at work today.  Sure, we looked like geeks and idiots waving around our iPhones ducking and blocking attacks in the middle of the office, but that is whats fun about being a nerd because its fun to act like an idiot or get super exited about a nerdy new app with other geeks.

I will continue bringing you new quick and dirty app reviews as I try them out.  For now I’m off to download Sim Stapler, a free app that… you guessed it… simulates a stapler.

Thanks for reading, Jeff