Just went through a bit of trouble with the 1.1.4 firmware. I had to restore to the unadulterated 1.1.4 firmware and then restore from backup to get it to work. I used iJailbreak, which worked just fine. What I don’t show is a failed update, but if that happens to you just restore completely and use the breaker of your choice to crack 1.1.4.
Just found this video of the Franck Muller Crazy Hours watch in action. This is the first time I’ve seen this complication — it’s basically a cute parlor trick using gears — but I finally understand what all the fuss with this watch was. Even if you don’t care about watches, it’s cool to see something different in the horology scene.
Earlier this month, we brought you word that the world of competitive eating would be coming to a console near you. We joked that the Wii would be the ideal console for such a series of games, and as it turns out Major League Eating agreed.
Mastiff Software will be launching a professional eating game on the WiiWare service when it launches on May 12th.
God help us, this means we have to get a Wii.
Major League Eating crammed into WiiWare [Joystiq]
It wouldn’t be a Friday without a top ten list, so here it is, from Asylum.com, the ten worst celebrity tie-in video games of all time.
Spoiler: one involves Spielberg.
10 worst celebrity video games ever [Asylum]
Since the day I got my iPod Touch, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that the iPhone and the Touch are going to become great gaming platforms. Multi-touch aside, the accelerometer is a great tool for controlling a games mechanics, and this video demonstrates just that concept.
Now imagine this applied to racing games, platformers, and even FPS games, and you’ve got me begging for that SDK next week.
[via Gamset Watch]
It’s a sad day for the Internet, as today marks the final day of Netscape Navigator, the first mass market graphical Webrowser and the precursor to our favorite, Firefox.
As of tomorrow, AOL, who owns Netscape, will cease support of the browser entirely tomorrow.
At one time, Netscape was the de facto Internet browser, but due to some nefariousness on the part of Microsoft, Internet Explorer took over. Now, the spiritual successor to Netscape, Firefox, is chipping away at IE’s market dominance.
Still, it’s sad to see an old friend leave forever. So take a moment today to thank Netscape, for without it, the Internet would likely be a much different place than it is today.
FC Barcelona, més que un club, tore apart Levante UD at the weekend, with Cameroon international Samuel Eto’o scoring a hat-trick (that’s three goals for the uninitiated) in the process. After he scored his third goal, Eto’o raced toward the touchline and grabbed a digital camera. What brand of digital camera, you ask? Thanks to today’s Marca, we now know it was a Nikon. It looks to be a D2 or D3, sorta hard to tell.
And how good a photographer is Eto’o?
A big thank you to everybody for filling our tips at crunchgear dot com inbox with wonderful, unique, and newsworthy items. Here are five that we just couldn’t get to this week.
special order
HELLO
I am Phillip Markman from florida and i will like to know if you carry in stock Cafeteria Tables for sale? if yes please do email me back with the price range and the types you have in stock and also i will like to know if you do accept credit card as your payment method.
Thank you and hope to hear from you soon
Verizon is the latest carrier to become convinced that unlimited doesn’t mean unlimited, as its started charging customers of its $59.99 unlimited mobile broadband plan overages if they exceed 5GB in a billing cycle.
So while its going to still call it “unlimited”, customers will get charged a premium of $.49-per-megabyte over 5GB.
We think Verizon needs to call it, oh, the 5GB plan. Or something.
Verizon’s New $59.99 Data Plan has Overage Charges [Mobile Burn]
This is the kind of power I can see being used on Arrakis — Dune — the desert planet. This huge array of mirrors automatically adjusts to face the sun, and concentrates its rays onto a pipeline filled with the spice melange — I mean oil, which heats up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil is then used to vaporize water for steam power, or the heat is transferred (to molten salt!) stored for a rainy day.
Its simplicity is its strength, and the fact that heat energy is easily storeable makes its higher cost (twice that of wind power) worthwhile to pay. There’s more cool technical info in the article if you like that kind of thing.
Solar Without the Panels [Technology Review]
Datel has released Freeloader for the Nintendo Wii (which, incidentally, is a lot more fun when you’ve got a nice buzz going, as I found out last night). The unlicensed disc lets you play Wii games from any region on your console. So, if you’re living in beautiful Leeds and want to play, I don’t know, some U.S. game, now you can. It also functions as a cheat device à la GameShark. That’s what I used in my youth, I don’t know the kiddos use nowadays.
Wii FreeLoader Allows for Region Free Gaming [Next-Gen.biz]
When Apple released the 1.1.4 firmware to the iPhone and iPod Touch-owning public earlier in the week, there was much excitement over who was going to be the first to jailbreak it. Well, it turns out it was easy enough to tweak the 1.1.3 jailbreaking apps to do the job; Apple didn’t really make any new prohibitions to jailbreaking in the update.
Ziphone has released a new version of its jailbreaking app, and it works easily and quickly with iPhones running 1.1.4.
So far, 1.1.4 is a minor upgrade, but it does grant the iPhone Exchange server access as well as a more stable experience.
A version for the iPod Touch, currently nicknamed Zitouch, is being worked on, but was backburnered when 1.1.4 was unexpectedly released.
Ziphone [Download page, props to JEsTer for the tips]
It’s been more than a year since the proposed XM-Sirius merger was announced and we’re no closer now to a combined company than we were then. But there’s hope… maybe! Actually, XM and Sirius just extended the deadline by two months for the deal to go through (or not). Now the satellite radio companies have given the Feds till May 1 for the thumbs up or thumbs down.
So only two more months of teasing to go. Unless they extend the deadline again. All this futzing around must please the shareholders.
XM and Sirius extend merger deadline by 2 months [Reuters via Drudge Report]
Friends, back before 9/11, when I was dopey kid, I bought a plastic shiv at a gun show with my Dad. Why? Because back in the 1980s there was less fluoride in the water and kids generally didn’t bring guns to school. I don’t know. Apparently giving a 13-year-old a shiv back then was OK.
Anyway, this shiv was designed to get past metal detectors, just like these ridiculous looking Lexan knuckle-dusters. While the average person would say “Huh, that’s stupid,” Cleaveland reporter Douchey McUpinarms feels they are the dirty bomb of the West Market, making cole slaw of heads from here to Akron.
Kids and the criminal-minded will use anything to beat your head in. They’ll jab you with a pencil or beat you with a bottle. Just because it’s plastic and it looks like a weapon and you somehow ban it doesn’t make you any safer. Some kid will buy a plastic shiv and stick you and then you’ve got another issue to contend with… and another and another. Education not alarm, people. Education not alarm.
I may or may not participate when the tour comes to NYC. I’m still without axes for my copy of GH3. But I know some of you (Shanee) rock at GH so you better brush up and get ready to rumble. Winners will get prizes that probably aren’t that cool unless it’s free iPods, but I guess iTunes gift cards are okay. If you want to participate then you need to visit the participating stores and sign up.
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PayPal, darling of the Internet, has warned its users to steer clear of Apple’s Safari Web browser because it doesn’t support anti-phishing technologies. (IE 7 and the upcoming Firefox 3.0 do, however.) Specifically, PayPal says Safari’s lack of support for Extended Validation Certificate, a technology that turns the address bar green when visiting a “safe” site. The Apple-created browser also doesn’t warn users when they’re visiting a potentially dangerous site (independent of the green bar trick).
Putting aside the whole “use common sense when you browse the Web” argument, Apple probably should include some form of anti-phishing in Safari; not everyone who browses the Web are as savvy we (I assume you’re all heavy users) are. Even though a joint Microsoft-Stanford study concluded that people wouldn’t notice the green address bar unless properly trained, what’s the harm in including it? Unless, I don’t know, that would open Apple up to some sort of lawsuit along the lines of, “Your anti-phishing technology failed to work properly, leading me to [something bad].”
And as long as we’re on the topic of Web browsers, I’ve started to use the nightly WebKit builds. It’s Safari, but with the latest rendering engine (WebKit) under the hood. Seems snappier than regular Safari. Give it a shot. The icon’s nicer, too.
PayPal warns: Steer clear of Apple’s Safari browser [InfoWorld]
It’s always weird that a business can lose money during a year but still call it a success. Such is the case with MVNO Helio, which saw $327million go down the tubes in 2007. The thing is, that was less than Helio had forecast, as it stated losses in 2007 should be $340-$360 million.
The other good news is that it beat its own estimates in revenue, expecting $140-$170 million, but actually ending up with $171 million. It’s not much, but its the kind of things that point to a healthy growth.
Couple with the recent restructuring and attractive rate plans and value-added services, Helio’s well ahead of its own roadmap for growth. 2008 is looking like it will be good for the MVNO, and 2009 is going to be the make or break point, as that’s the year Helio has likely picked as its time to make a profit.
Helio: $560 Million In The Hole [Alley Insider]
Today is apparently watch day. This is a video of the Franck Muller Crazy Hours watch. The complication cause the hours hand to flip around the face when the hour changes. It tells the right time constantly, but it looks like it doesn’t. This is the first time I’ve seen the complication in action so now we all know how it works.
Now this is a little different. Clarion’s got a new dash-top GPS computer with a 30GB HD that, along with maps for everyplace you’d want to go, has a gyroscope to learn how badly you drive, when you miss turns, and other data so it can customize the routes it displays for your driving style. Very cool.
Clarion launches high-end NAX973HD dashboard GPS with 30GB hard drive [Tech Digest]
Vladimir, one of the coders working on Firefox 3, was having some trouble overcoming a few performance issues in the builds. He did a little investigation, resulting in the chart above and others, and found that Firefox’s display rate appeared to be being throttled by the OS for no particular reason. The problem didn’t affect Safari, and it wasn’t until he dug deep into Webkit’s coding crevasses that he found the solution: a set of special instructions and shortcuts so poorly documented that they may as well be secret. He worked some in (just a few lines) and Firefox exploded out of the gate.
Vlad doesn’t think this code was hidden maliciously, but it seems at least to be a little negligent on Apple’s part to bury these so deep. Of course, I’m not a coder and I don’t know what I’m talking about.
