Monthly Archives: November 2009

[Pre] Re-Enable Full App Catalog in Europe

The European Update 1.3.1

On Monday European Palm Pre users were just happy to eventually have the 1.3.1 update that has already been provided to U.S. customers two weeks earlier.

Sadly the smiling in our faces didn’t last long. European customers rapidly found out that their App Catalog had been crippled. PreCentral explains why this technically happened, but they cannot explain the marketing logic behind this move.

Luckily there is a strong European community of developers, that Palm should be listening to more carefully, since many of us are iPhone switchers.

The workaround for Europeans

A guy going by the nick Dleira from Switzerland found a way to re-enable many more (all?) applications for European Palm Pre friends aswell. It has been confirmed to be working, but anyway: do this at your own risk. We did not test it yet. This workaround requires root access to your Pre.

Link

» PreCentral Forums: Re-Enable App Catalog in Europe by Dleira

[Pre] Video Recording with Precorder 0.2 Alpha

The long waiting is over. A team around the Precentral’s forum member Prenosicator has released an alpha version of a Palm Pre video recording application. It requires WebOS 1.3.1.

You will not find it in the know homebrew repositories as long as it is in alpha status. Anyway for all of you able to root into your beloved Palm Pre the installation is as simple as drinking beer.

Kudos fly out to Prenosicator and his dev team guys. This is a very nice app, many of us have been waiting for.

Features

Option Description Selections
Audio Format Select what format you would like the audio stream to be saved in. AAC, AMRNB, MP3
Video Format Select what format you would like the video stream to be saved in. Mpeg-4, H.263, H.264/AVC
Container Select what multimedia container the audio/video streams will be in. mp4, 3gp
Media Source Would would you like Precorder to capture. Audio only, Video only, Both
Flash Would you like to use the built in LED for illumination Off, On
  • Options in bold are defaults
  • Recordings land in /media/internal

Installation

  1. root into your Pre (weather via Novaterm or running the terminal installed from within Preware)
  2. go to Pre’s tmp folder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# cd /tmp
  3. download the alpha version of Precorder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# wget http://bit.ly/precorder-bootstrap
  4. install Precorder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# sh precorder-bootstrap

Links

» PreCentral Forums: Introducing Precorder, in Alpha testing form
» WebOS-Internals: Precorder – Version: Alpha 0.2.0

Screenshots

Courtesy of WebOS-Internals.org

[iPhone] Commercial Unlocking Scammers

It is well known, that there are commercial thieves who use freely available programs and ideas by the iPhone Dev Team, GeoHot, Chronic Dev Team and others.

We highly recommend not to buy any unlocking or jailbreaking solution. They are available for free.

We prepped a list of current scammers making a business modell out of other people’s efforts. The links don’t work as we don’t want you to go there.

  • iPhone Unlocking Solutions (http://www.unlock-the-iphone.com)
  • iPhone Unlock UK (http://www.iphoneunlockuk.com)
  • iPhone Unlocking (http://www.iphoneunlocking.com)
  • iPhone Unlock Australia (http://www.iphoneunlockaustralia.com)
  • iPhone Unlock Free Software GUI (http://www.freeiphoneunlock.com/unlock) – installs adware
  • Unlock Ur iPhone Now (http://www.unlockuriphonenow.com)
  • Unlocked iPhone (http://www.unlockediphone.info)
  • Unlock Any iPhone (http://www.unlockanyiphone.net)

iPhone unlocking seems to be a large market. Say any of these companies sold 5,000 unlocks (which is a quite conservative estimation). For an average price of 25US$. This makes 125,000US$ for setting up a stupid internet page with stolen and repackaged content.

[iPhone] T-Mobile Tariffs in Europe Differ Extremely

You ever felt like citizens of T-Mobile’s home country Germany pay a lot more for iPhone tariffs than citizens in countries you spend your vacation time like Netherlands or Austria?

Well, your feeling was right. T-Mobile is flagrant expensive here in Germany. Why? We don’t know. But we know Deutsche Telekom (parent company of T-Mobile) earned €5,5bill in Q3/2009.

Anyway, we prepped a little table with a little comprehension. Let the pictures speak. Prices for 24mth. subscriptions.

Country mins SMS Traffic Price per mth.
Netherlands 150 150 unlimited 30€
Austria 2000 1000 3GB 25€* (50€)
Germany 120 40 5GB 50€

* Special X-mas offer (for the whole 24mths.), otherwise 50€/mth.

Links

» T-Mobile Netherlands
» T-Mobile Austria
» T-Mobile Germany

Screenshots

T-Mobile Netherlands

T-Mobile Austria

T-Mobile Germany

[Pre] WebOS Update 1.3.1 Released in Europe

As of today European GSM Palm Pre customers on the Telefonica networks (O2 Germany, O2 UK, Movistar Spain) can download and install WebOS Update 1.3.1.

After downloading the 134MBytes update it will be validate for about some five minutes. Have your battery loaded, installation will take another 10 minutes.

Now, go and get it. It has eventually some nice improvements in performance.

It also brings back support for iTunes synchronization. Albeit for iTunes 9.01 only. Current version is iTunes 9.02. So the golden rule seems to be better don’t update iTunes too early if you’re having a Palm Pre.

» Palm.com: Features of Update 1.3.1

[MacOS] Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Kernel Patched for Intel Atom Support

Teateam a russian speaking Mac OS developer binary patched the latest Mac OS X 10.6.2 Mach Kernel to eventually reenable support for Intel Atom CPUs. His kernel seems to be running well in 32bit and in 64bit mode. Atom CPUs are now reported as Intel Core Solo or Core Duo.

The patch seems only to consist of modifying a couple of (simply) assembler instructions to permanently set the CPU type. In the meantime Apple has released kernel sources and people are working on adding Atom CPU support in a proper manner.

Congrats Teamteam. That’s what Ilfak made IDA for ;-)

» Tea’s Blog: Kernel 10.2 for Intel Atom 330
» Apple.com: Sources for 10.6.2

[Arts] Christo’s Jeanne-Claude Has Passed Away

Born June 13, 1935 like her later husband Christo. She first met him in Paris in 1958, when he had just fled from the communistic Bulgaria.

While she was eduated in Switzerland and France and finished her academic studies of latin and philosophy in 1952, he was studying arts at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia and in Vienna. In 1964 they moved to New York, where they developed steadily growing ideas.

Wrapping was their topic.

  • In 1961 they wrapped barrels of oil in Cologne.
  • In 1969 they wrapped a part of a coast in Australia.
  • In 1995 they wrapped the german Reichstag (photo here)
  • And in 2005 they made “The Gates” in New York’s Central Park.

It is said Jeanne-Claude and Christo often took separate airplanes. If one airplane crashed and one of them died the other one would be able to maintain their work. Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon passed away on wednesday November 18, 2009 in a Hospital in New York.

[Pre] Update 1.3.1 for GSM to be Released Nov 23, 2009 ?

According to a posting to the german Nexave forums the european Palm Pre 1.3.1 update (for GSM phones) will be released on monday November 23, 2009. The update does not seem to include activation of the GPU.

We recommend to remove custom installed homebrew patches.

Features:

  • Synergy: – Calendar and Contacts synchronization with Yahoo!
  • LinkedIn contacts synchronization
  • Synchronizes Google Contacts “My Contacts” (not all)
  • Manual edit of Internet settings (APN, user name, password, etc.)
  • Option to disable all data connections
  • Bluetooth support to send / receive vCards
  • Backup and restore:
  • No backup of passwords for increased security
  • Disabling of backup service works
  • Backup Browser Favorites
  • iTunes support from version 9.x
  • Available space is immediately updated and displayed when in USB mass storage mode data is added or removed
  • Manual e-mail retrieval works
  • SMS / MMS forwarding, and marking of all communications
  • Highlight / copy of selected areas of SMS and IM messages
  • Browser: File download in browser
  • Highlight / copy of text in the browser
  • Support for Self-Signed Certificates
  • System volume was optimized
  • Optimization of the audible during an incoming call when another call is active
  • AppCatalog: Recommendation for Apps can be forwared via email or SMS
  • Facebook Application
  • Country-Specific Application Offers
  • Initial Registration: password input is now a part of the recovery (because passwords will no longer be backed up) and now entering a security question and answer in the account creation is mandatory. SIM card PIN is requested during the registration process.

via Nexave.de Forums…

[iPhone] The Thing With Adobe Flash

Yesterday we’ve shown you a screenshot of the Adobe Flash download page, when you’re browsing it from a Palm Pre. Now we made this test with an iPhone. Sadly the result is what we’ve expected. Adobe and Apple are obviously in ugly negotiations.

Visiting the http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ from an iPhone you can see this:

Flash Player not available for your device

Apple restricts the use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch.