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I finally took the plunge and hacked my iPhone 1.1.1 firmware.  What an ordeal!  The proceedure took close to an hour using iFuntastic 4.6.1.  Another hour later and I’ve perused the latest releases in Installer.app and installed a couple dozen packages.

There are quite a few new packages to be explored.  Some of my favorites are:

Nikotalkie- voice messaging over EDGE & WiFi

Labyrinth- an awesome iPhone rendition of the classic marble game

CrossWalk- NYC cross street calculator & subway map viewr

All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening.

I’m getting pretty stoked about the release of Leopard next Friday.  The 300+ feature list posted on Apple’s site is much more detailed and dreamy than ever before…. 10.4, 10.3, 10.2 10.1, 10.

Apple is changing the price of all DRM-free “iTunes Plus” songs on the iTunes Store from $1.29 to $0.99.  Certainly this is a response to recent announcements from Amazon (DRM free and often less than $0.99) and now Napster’s web portal.

Jobs is quoted in the WSJ as saying: “It’s been very popular with our customers, and we’re making it even more affordable.”

Update: Apple now claims largest DRM-free catalog with 2 million songs.

The constant rumbling of artist and tech company complaints about “the music industry” is getting turned up this month.  Here’s what I’m hearing:

- Amazon’s launch of the high-bitrate, non-DRM’d, MP3 music store is what we’ve all been waiting for.

- Apple locks down iPhone ringtones even tighter with digitally signed audio files.

- Radiohead’s self-published, online release of “In Rainbows.”

- Yahoo’s head music honcho, Ian Rogers (formerly of Nullsoft, WinAMP and Gnutella fame) states that Yahoo! will never go back to using DRM.

- And finally frequent industry malcontent, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails), made a statement about being freed of their recording contract after 18 years.

What next, the month’s only just begun?

Update (dfbills 10.11.07 @ 8:48AM ET)

One day later, I’m starting to see what’s next:

- Madonna signs a $120M deal with Live Nation to sell her next three studio albums, promote concerts, and license Madonna’s name.

- Oasis will release their next album directly to fans via the “pay as you wish” system used by Radiohead.

- Jamiroquai to follow suit after seeing Radiohead on the digital download charts.

Microsoft Live Labs brings us Photosynth Technology Preview.  And what a taste it is the software takes photos, analyzes them for similarities against the system and then displays the photos in a 3D space with relational information.

How cool would it be to take a picture and have it identified immediately?  Even if it does not live up to the marketing hype, it is a great concept.

So today was the launch of the iTunes at Starbucks dealio.  I stopped by with my iPhone and a thirst for latte at 10am for a taste.  Starbucks was roasting hot and I couldn’t get the Starbucks iTunes store to appear.  I did, however, snag the last download card of the day: Bob Dylan’s “Joker Man.”

While it was downloading back at the office, I couldn’t help thinking that it would be infinitely cooler if the download of the day were a “new” artist or an exclusive recording of a well-known one.  As much as I dig Dylan- this track isn’t anything new or particularly special.

LinkedIn will be adding photos tomorrow.  Do I see a small crack in their conservative website?  Stay tuned for my appropriately conservative photo.

News courtesy of TechCrunch

Update 09.30.07: I’m conservative’d.

I’ve often predicted that Google will buy Apple in the near future.  As of today, my prediction has changed.

A bit of quick math has shown me that Apple’s stock has surpassed a price of $138 with 869,640,000 shares reflecting a market capitalization of 120 billion. Meanwhile, Google’s 312,140,000 shares were valued at $515 totalling a market cap of $160 billion.

As of today, it looks more like a merger. 

Quentin at Rogue Amoeba reports that he’s found requests for track ID information being sent out from the Airport Express following the latest firmware update.  Could a display or TV-out be far behind?

I just reinstalled Fink 0.7.1 and found that it does indeed work in Tiger.  Release notes state that not all packages are updated, but most do work.  I’m recompiling now.