Category Archives: iPhone

Apple, Gizmodo, the “misplaced” iPhone 4G and the law

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John Gruber over at DaringFireball.net has a excellent article talking about the possible legal troubles that either the person who “found” and sold the prototype iPhone 4G and for Gizmodo, who purchased the iPhone.  From what it sounds its now in the hands of either the California District Attorney to pursue criminal charges or for Apple to pursue the case in a civil court.  I guess only time will tell.

Update:
For every point there is a count-point and Giles Bowkett believes John Gruber is a little naive about the law and also a little bias toward Gizmodo being in the wrong.

In any case its always good to hear more than one point of view.  Also as far as I am concerned I am taking these posts as just opinions because I don’t know either person from a hole in the ground.

Android ported to the iPhone

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There is a God!  The Google Android mobile OS has been ported to the iPhone.  While the developer states that it is still a little buggy and only works for the iPhone 2G not the 3G or 3GS it is still a step in the right direction.

Check the official blog for more info and updates

Update(2010-05-10)

The developers of manage to get Android ported to the iPhone 3G.  While it doesnt have sound yet, you can see that this project has taken off.  I am sure that it will not be long before a working 3GS demo is released.  Here is a demo of Android on the 3G

Trace Watch iPhone Plugin (TWiPP)

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Click here for the *UPDATED VERSION*

Ever since I have configured my website to use Google Analytics I have become a bit of a statistics nut.  I find myself checking every free moment I get and while I don’t get a lot of traffic it is always nice to see when someone does visit my site.

The other day I discovered another way to fill my website statistics fix by installing an application called Trace Watch.  Trace Watch is similar to Google Analytics but it gives you real time stats and a few alternate ways to see the data that I have not discovered with Google Analytics.

So I was out and about the other day doing shopping with my wife  and I decided to check my Trace Watch web stats from my iPhone.  While I could connect to the stats site it was a little cumbersome to see just the basic information that I craved; hit counts and visitor counts.  I though it would be nice if there was an iPhone app for this.  I did a few searches of Apple’s App Store which came up empty.  I then did some Google searches to see if there was any available plug-ins and it also came up empty.  So I decided to try my hand at writing one.

I knew that I didn’t want to download and install Apples SDK so I started to look for information about how to create web apps for the iPhone, which lead me to this: iUI.  Its a java-script/CSS library that mimics the iPhone look and behavior.  I also found the Trace Watch API documentation on their site.  So now that I had both pieces to the puzzle I was off and here is the outcome.

Installation is a snap and there isn’t any configuration changes that need to take place in either the plug-in or the Trace Watch application.  This app currently is only made to get some basic information from Trace Watch and will not be a complete iPhone GUI replacement for the main Trace Watch application.

Installation Instructions:

*UPDATED VERSION*

Step 1:

Download the plug-in zip file: Trace Watch iPhone Plugin (289)

Step 2:
Extract the zip file to a temporary directory

Step 3:
Upload the extract directory name “m” to the root of your Trace Watch installation folder (assuming /twatch)

Step 4:
Browse to this site via your iPhone:  http://<yoursite>/twatch/m

Here are some screen shots of the application:

TWIPP

Home Screen

TWIPP

Statistics Screen

EDIT: Both the misspelling of Visitors and the Average Page Views per Visitor has been fixed in the attached zip file.  I will update the screen shots soon

TWIPP

Breakdown of Hits per Hour

More features are coming soon but I wanted to get quick version 0.1 out to get people’s opinions and feedback to see if this was worth continue to pursue.  So please any feedback, good or bad, is appreciated. Either via email at motersho@gmail.com or as a comment on this page.

Also I have not tested this on any other mobile browser so I don’t know how it will behave but I have a feeling it will not work too well seeing that it doesn’t behave very well in Firefox.

Download: Trace Watch iPhone Plugin (206)

Update: (08/01/2010):
The latest version now support multiple websites.

iPhone Virus: iPhone/Privacy.A

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Earlier this week a hacker release an iPhone virus that didn’t do any damaged to your iPhone besides “Rick Rolling” your phone by add a picture of Rick Astley as your iPhone background.  Today someone has taken that relatively harmless code and modified it to steal you personal data.

Mac security vendor Intego calls the code “iPhone/Privacy.A.” It is a malicious tool hackers install on Windows, Mac, Unix or Linux systems, and even on iPhones, using those devices to scan for “jailbroken” iPhones, some of which are vulnerable to the malware.

If it finds a vulnerable iPhone within its range, the malware copies e-mail, contacts, SMS (Short Message Service) messages, calendar entries, photos, music, videos and any data recorded by an iPhone application, according to an advisory from Intego.

This only affects jailbroken phones running an SSH server with the default root password still set.  If you have a jailbroken phone and don’t know how to change the default root password, you can follow my easy step by step guide.

Secure Your iPhone, There’s A New Worm In Town

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If you have jailbroken your iPhone or iTouch you may want to think about changing the devices default root password.  There is new worm going around that only affects jailbroken iPhones and iTouches that have SSH server installed and running.  The worm will search networks for the open iPhone SSH servers running and connect to them as root.  All iPhones/iTouches have the same root password, alpine, which makes this worm possible.  Once the worm connects it doesn’t do anything too harmful, just changes your background to a picture of Rick Astley, also disables the SSH server and then looks for other devices to infect.

Here is a step by step guide on how to change the default root password.

Step 1: Download the Terminal application from Cyndia.

Step 2: Once downloaded start the application and type the following commands.  Remember that the root password is ‘alpine’.

motersho-iPhone:~mobile$ su
Password:
motersho-iPhone:~root# passwd
New Password: [type in a new password]
Retype new password: [retype the password]
motersho-iPhone:~root#

That’s it.  You are now secure.  Plus I have a feeling this will help keep Apple out of your phone.

Keep this in mind, if you upgrade to the next iPhone firmware you may have to redo this.