Tag Archives: England

[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…

[Pre] UK’s O2 Palm Pre Unlocked using RebelSIM?

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A video appeared showing that SIM locked Palm Pre’s from the UK seems to have been unlocked using a proxy SIM solution called RebelSIM. There is no further detailed information about if this is a safe unlock like with the proxy SIMs for the first gen iPhones or i RebelSIM cards use IMSI fake IDs.

In general we suppose to be cautious with proxy SIM solutions. Why? Basically it’s the same with the proxy SIM cards for iPhones (read here).

A software unlock – meaning a binary code modification of the baseband – is almost always the better solution from a technical point of view, but it on the way to being able to patch the baseband many other issues can occur.

So for people who are desperate for a Palm Pre: get yourself the german factory unlocked version and learn to live with a QWERTZ keyboard. It much less hassle imho.

[Pre] Palm Pre Goes Europe

There have been rumors in the last weeks which carrier which offer the Palm Pre in European countries. As of today we know the rumors were true. In Germany, Great Britain, Ireland O2 will be the exclusive distributor of Palm’s new flagship, in Spain the iPhone competitor will be offered by Movistar.

As of now other European carriers seem to be in negotiations with Palm for exclusive distribution. There are no information yet about subscription prices. According to the O2’s german Preregistration site introduction to the german market is planned for october 2009.

» German 02 preregistration for the Palm Pre…

[Stories] Islands in the Northern Sea and Confidential Data

What happened in earlier episodes

By the time one can get the feeling, our fellows from the administration of this island in the northern sea have a very – let’s say “own” – relationship to personal data than we continental europeans. To make things short, here we got a short overview about what happened before:

November 21st, 2007: The HM Revenue and Customs administration misplaces (or loses) a CD containing child benefit data of 7,25 million families (incl. all names, birthdays etc.pp)
December 18th, 2007: The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency assigns a U.S. American company (Pearson Driving Assessments) to edit and handle data of driving learners. The harddrive containing 3 million datasets however gets lost somewhere.
December 23rd, 2007: National Health Services lose or misplace mediums containing some 100,000 sets of patient data from hospitals
August 22nd, 2008: UK’s Home Office loses or misplaces an USB stick containing unencrypted data of about 120,000 criminals, including files of the inquiry.
August 26th, 2008: on eBay hardrives got sold – containing datasets of about a million british bank customers
August 27th, 2008: the Charnwood Borough Council sells a harddrive that has in fact been erased, but not been wiped. Datasets of 35,000 people can be recovered using freely available unerase software.
September 9th, 2008: the National Offender Management Service assigns EDS to edit and handle their employees data. A harddrive containing data of 5,000 employess gets lost or misplaced.
September 26th, 2008: the General Teaching Council loses or misplaces a CD containing data of 11,000 teachers (incl. names etc.)
September 28th, 2008: the Ministry of Defence admits having had a burglery on a military air base. Thus losing 50,000 soldier’s datasets.

The whole globe is really wondering when all this disgrace will eventually stop. Not now, that’s for sure.

No more stories

You say: you can not believe it? We neither. Again the administration from the island have had a – let’s say creeping – issue with precautions for confidential data. This time obviously an MI6 agent sold a camera on eBay for 17UK£.

You can definitely anticipate what the deal was with that specific camera, can’t you? Mr. MI6 used it for getting some nice shots of accused terrorists, fingerprints and such. And of course he forget the thing with the deletion of the SD card.

A 27 year old buyer was quite irritated when downloading his holiday photos of that camera and having to find out that there were some more pictures on it…