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Erica Sadun has posted a simple, nerdy method for checking the availability of the iPhone 3.0 firmware.  The idea is to grab the XML returned from the iTunes iPhone software check. 


curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version |\
grep -i restore |\
grep ‘_3.’ | open -f


To understand the output, you need to know which model you’re looking for.

iPhone- 1,1
iPhone 3G- 1,2
iPhone 3G S- 2,1

iPod Touch- 1,1
iPod Touch 2G- 2,1

When I see this- I know I’m golden:

iPhone1,2_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw

[via TUAW]

I captured this festive photo at the Wollman Rink on Monday night.  Looks a lot more like summer than an ice skating rink.

These photos were taken on bike trip to the George Washington Bridge.  What a beautiful Sunday!

I got this great error page over at bit.ly today.  Perhaps it is possible to shorten URLs too much?

Sorry to interrupt your show, but there seems to be a problem.

If you’ve been wondering how to disable the Exchange serve PIN requirement, here’s how to remove it. (at least partially)

1. Jailbreak

2. Use PhoneView to download /var/Managed Preferences/mobile/com.apple.springboard.plist

3. Edit the plist file and adjust settings as needed:


<key>PolicyInformation</key>
<dict>
<key>maxFailedAttempts</key>
<integer>5</integer>
<key>maxInactivity</key>
<integer>5</integer>
<key>minLength</key>
<integer>7</integer>
</dict>


4. Use PhoneView upload and overwrite com.apple.springboard.plist

5. Reboot your phone

6. Go into Settings.app and turn autolock and pin off

Note: The KillExchangeLocks application from Cydia does not appear to work.  Some people have pointed to a tightening of Apple’s security policies as the reason.  The app hasn’t been updated since the fall of 2008.

The plist is automatically updated approximately once per day, so I’ll be looking into a cron-based solution soon.

On my system, only the “passcode required” value seems to reset.  I don’t mind a 4-hour lockdown.  It seems like a reasonable amount of security.  This is much better than the 1 minute interval I was stuck with and now I can actually keep my screen from auto-locking when I use SlingPlayer.

Some fun WolframAlpha searches:

When were you born?

Are you self-aware?

Are you Skynet?

Easter eggs?

Oh man- like I need another excuse to keep me form doing my pushups!

We're sorry, but something went wrong.
We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

Wolfram|Alpha, now in soft launch state, is showing sweet HAL references as overload indicators.

A nice new Twitter 404 image. These guys really do it up classy.

iChat occasionally seems to have trouble connecting when I’m traveling.  My simple fix is to enter the IP address of the AIM servers directly into the settings. 

Here are the IP addresses that you can plug in to make iChat work as of 04.06.09:

SSL
—————
Name:  slogin.gslogin.oscar.aol.com
Address: 64.12.161.184

Non-SSL
—————
Name:  login.messaging.aol.com
Address: 64.12.161.153