Company hopes that Apple's customers will voice their frustrations and demand Flash

Adobe's Flash supports a large portion of the internet's rich content. And it will soon be coming to almost all smart phones, opening a world of internet possibilities. All the smart phones, that is, except one of the most popular smart phones on the market -- Apple's iPhone.

Apple remains cold and aloof about the topic of Flash. While the iPhone could easily support hardware-accelerated Flash, CEO Steve Jobs has stated in interviews that Flash is irrelevant and not something that iPhone customers have demanded. He insists the iPhone is the perfect internet phone -- even if it can't run Flash.

Adobe seems to be hoping to push Apple's customers to demand the feature with a new humorously passive aggressive browser failure message.

On the iPhone customers trying to use Flash now get a message stating:

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.

Before the message merely read:

To view this content upgrade your browser and flash plug-in.

Will the new message inspire users to complain to Apple, or will it merely annoy iPhone users, making Adobe look bad? It should be interesting to see how Apple's customers react to the new, more pointed error message.

Worm is first known iPhone worm, originated in Australia, may be spreading overseas

Rick Astley, an English singer-songwriter and musician, first became famous for his 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up". The music industry in the 1990s gave up on Astley, but Astley didn't give up on it. He managed to recapture attention in 2007 thanks to one of the most infamous viral video crazes. Links popped up all around the internet to Astley's hit and the term "rickrolling", originally referring to tricking people into watching the video, became a common colloquialism.

Now an internet worm is achieving what Apple has been unable to do -- punish those with jailbroken iPhones (phones freed of Apple's app restrictions). Sophos, a leading security firm, appears to be the first to have investigated the amusing virus. The virus, which "rickrolls" users, changing their wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley. It appears to do little else other than spreading to other jailbroken iPhones in the user's contact list.

The worm can infect any jailbroken iPhone with SSH installed and an unchanged default password. The password on jailbroken iPhones defaults to "alpine". Users can change this by installing the MobileTerminal app, available from the Cydia undergound app store, and typing the command passwd.

Apple's hardware team can't seem to keep their close platform closed

Apple has a big headache. That headache is iPhone unlockers and jailbreakers. With iPhone jailbreaking, the powerful handsets are no longer constrained to only run the apps that Apple allows. And with unlocking, users can jump onto other networks, leaving Apple's partner AT&T and its patchy 3G network behind.

Apple has long and unsuccessfully waged war with the unlockers. It has tried to brick their iPhones. It has tried to release new firmware versions to try to lock them out. But ultimately, time and time again, Apple's best hardware and software engineers are finding themselves outwitted and befuddled by the persistent hackers.

Leading the crew is George Hotz, a 20-year-old New Jersey native who goes by the aliases geohot, million75, or mil online. When he was just a teen, he became the first to develop a procedure to jailbreak the iPhone allowing its use on other networks. The move netted him a hot car, extra iPhones, money, and fame. Now slightly older and a month out of his teenage years, Hotz continues to be among the most prolific iPhone unlockers, consistently outsmarting Apple.

Now Hotz has released his latest masterpiece, blacksn0w, a free unlocking utility that works with the latest iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS hardware (the latest 05.11.07 baseband, which locked out previous hacks). The unlock works with a new version of Hotz's popular purplera1n jailbreak hack, dubbed blackra1n. Together the hacks can both free the phone from the AT&T network and Apple's app restrictions.

According to eBay CEO John Donahoe, shoppers have already spent about $400 million on the popular commerce site using the company’s free iPhone application.

The number pales in comparison with eBay’s total sales figure ($59.7 billion last year), but it’s fairly significant considering the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small market share – about 15% of the smartphone segment – and mobile payment transactions are still new to many. Who would have predicted around half a billion dollar in sales a year would be recorded through the eBay iPhone app when it debuted on the App Store last year?

According to this report by the Financial Times, some wealthy people have used the mobile app to buy a Lamborghini, a Bentley and a $150,000 boat. And if Mobile Marketer heard Donahoe right when he talked numbers at a summit in Las Vegas, the Lamborghini went for $350,000. Talk about being at ease with making purchases from mobile devices.

Most likely, these are the high-profile exceptions to the rule and most people use the app to buy books, clothing and electronics much like regular eBay shoppers do. In total, approximately 4.6 million iPhone owners have downloaded and installed the app to date.

According to eBay CEO John Donahoe, shoppers have already spent about $400 million on the popular commerce site using the company’s free iPhone application.

The number pales in comparison with eBay’s total sales figure ($59.7 billion last year), but it’s fairly significant considering the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small market share – about 15% of the smartphone segment – and mobile payment transactions are still new to many. Who would have predicted around half a billion dollar in sales a year would be recorded through the eBay iPhone app when it debuted on the App Store last year?

According to this report by the Financial Times, some wealthy people have used the mobile app to buy a Lamborghini, a Bentley and a $150,000 boat. And if Mobile Marketer heard Donahoe right when he talked numbers at a summit in Las Vegas, the Lamborghini went for $350,000. Talk about being at ease with making purchases from mobile devices.

Most likely, these are the high-profile exceptions to the rule and most people use the app to buy books, clothing and electronics much like regular eBay shoppers do. In total, approximately 4.6 million iPhone owners have downloaded and installed the app to date.

If you are running your blog from your own hosted website, most likely you will be using WordPress Platform. WordPress is great by itself, the majority of WordPress’ usefulness comes from its plugins and themes. Some of the best and most creative features come from plugins, and because plugins are so easy to create and install, there are literally thousands of WordPress plugins.

If you’re new to WordPress Platform, you will have difficulties in finding the appropriate plugin . Sometimes there are ten plugins doing the same thing, which makes it difficult to find the plugin which works the best. Or, you just simply don’t know that a plugin exists. That’s why I’m here to help. Here is the list of Top 10 Popular Wordpress Plugins for your site.

• All in One SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
• cformsII – contact form – cforms II is the most customizable, flexible & powerful ajax supporting contact form plugin (& comment form).
• WordPress.com Stats – You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system.
• Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.
• Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• WP Super Cache – A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.
• Wordpress Automatic upgrade – Wordpress automatic upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the Wordpress installation to the latest one.
• WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog.
• WP Ajax Edit Comments – Allows users and admin’s to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admin’s can edit all comments.
• WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

t is probably a safe bet to assume anyone with a car and an iPhone has said, “man, I wish this thing could start my car.” Maybe you’ve been walking to your car on a frigid night or a scorching day, but you’ve wondered about it, haven’t you? Maybe you remember this early post from your favorite remote control blog. Viper, a leader in car security and remote starters, must have been paying attention — because they just turned that spoof into reality with Viper SmartStart for the iPhone.

SmartStart is a free iPhone app that allows you to start your car from basically anywhere via your wireless service. Now hold your horses (or Vipers) — it’s not just going to magically start your car. There is the $300 Viper SmartStart Module that you are going to have to have professionally installed in your car, as well as an annual $30 subscription to get that gear on the cell network. The first year of the service is free, so I suppose that helps. Kind of reminds me of OnStar.

Pricing aside, the SmartStart system seems pretty cool. It’s certainly the most impressive remote start system I’ve seen. First, the app can be used to start any of your cars that have the module installed — which has to be pretty helpful for car collectors and large families. You can also unlock any of your cars — from anywhere — which would definitely come in handy if you were to, say, locking yourself out of the car when you are away from home.

Apple said Thursday that it will let iPhone application developers offer their users the option to buy additional content or features within a free app on its App Store.

App developers said they received an email notice from Apple informing them that the in-app purchase feature was now available for free apps and that it would “simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses in App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app.” A spokeswoman for Apple confirmed the news.

The in-app purchase feature, which was first introduced in March, allows developers to offer fresh content for purchase within an app such as new levels in a game, additional books in an e-book app, or expanded capability in productivity apps. The caveat, however, was that the feature was only available for paid apps, which meant that developers had to charge at least 99 cents.

Developers say that the latest announcement helps in two ways. First, it makes it much easier for them to make a business out of free apps. Until now, developers sold ads within their free apps or tried to convert users to a paid version with more content.

The battery inside the iPhone is soldered to the units communication board, making it difficult for the end user to easily replace. Let our experienced repair technicians replace the battery for you.

If your iPhone battery is just not lasting as long as it used to, taking forever to reach a full charge, or maybe the iPhone has been left uncharged for a long period of time and no matter how much you charge the battery it still has poor performance.

If this is the case you need a new Apple iPhone battery let us fit a brand new genuine Li-Ion 3.7v 1400mAh capacity battery.

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After rejections, one Apple executive is trying hard to win customers -- and developers -- back

Apple's app store practices have bordered on schizophrenia, with it frequently accepting applications only to later reject them and rejecting others only to later accept them. Worse yet, frequently rejections seem to follow no consistent pattern, with some apps being rejected for containing some sort of forbidden content, while others with that same content get accepted.

These inconsistencies have led to customers growing dissatisfied with the iPhone -- or in some cases even leaving it. They have also led to a growing discontent among developers, some of whom have also jumped ship. And it has even brought down a government investigation concerning Apple's role in rejecting the Google Voice app.

However, there is one man who hopes to fix the system. Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller is trying to right the iPhone App Store and is personally taking a hand in trying to win back customers, developers, and placate government investigators.

Jailbroken iPhone users with SSH and a default password are the target

The iPhone is one of the most popular smartphones on the market. By most accounts, the iPhone is the most likely of all smartphones to be used on the internet to access files on the go. There are also a growing number of iPhone users who are jailbreaking the devices to use unauthorized Apple software or to use the devices on other carrier networks.

Over the last few weeks, a worm targeted specifically at iPhones which are jailbroken and have SSH installed with the default password was found. The original worm was nothing more than an irritation and would change the background image of the iPhone to a picture of washed up pop star Rick Astley. Embarrassing for sure, but hardly what most would consider malicious.

A similar worm targeting jailbroken iPhones with SSH and the default password -- alpine -- is making its rounds in the Netherlands. The new worm is different from the first in that the latest is clearly malicious and has a financial motive behind it for the worm maker. BBC News reports that security firm F-Secure discovered the worm and that it targets users of Dutch online bank ING. The worm infects the iPhone and redirects the user to a fake login page.

Mikko Hypponen from F-Secure told BBC News, "It's the second iPhone worm ever and the first that's clearly malicious - there's a clear financial motive behind it."

There are alot of social networking plugins for Wordpress CMS. But here are my top 5 favorite Social WordPress Plugins…

1. SimpleTwitter – It allows Wordpress blog owners to add Twitter messages to their templates. Once installed, the plug-in is used by adding the following call in a template.
2. ShareThis – This WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple to use, and unobtrusive way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more.
3. Stumble Reviews – Add the reviews that appear on StumbleUpon for a given page to be displayed on that page.
4. Digg Digg – Integrate Digg Button into Wordpress Content, Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg button.
5. Social Bookmarking RELOADED – Add the social bookmarks service’s icons to your articles in your blogs in order to submit them easily. Plugin based on Apostolos Dountsis one.

The Amazon store now has more than 360,000 books that you can download and read on your Kindle e-book reader.

Read Kindle Books without the Kindle Reader

If you don’t have the Kindle device, you can still enjoy any of these Kindle books on your Windows computer using the free Kindle for PC application. Amazon is also working on a Mac version of Kindle Desktop but until that happens, you can download the free Kindle app from iTunes store and read books on the move using your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Find and Download Free Books for Kindle

While most eBooks available on the Amazon Kindle store are paid, here are some simple ways by which you can find and download free books for reading on your Kindle Reader or your Kindle Desktop application.

# 1. Google Books on your Kindle

Project Gutenberg, Google Books and FeedBooks are some popular sites that offer a large collection of public domain books in the standard ePUB format.

The Kindle for PC application cannot read ePUB files directly but you can use the excellent Stanza program (from Amazon itself) to convert these public domain books from .epub into .mobi format that you can then import into Kindle Desktop for reading*. That means you now have millions of out-of-copyright books for your Kindle for free.

You can also use Stanza to convert PDFs, HTML web pages and other Office documents into .mobi format for reading inside the Kindle App but I see little reason why would anyone want to do so since the reading experience is not all that great.

# 2. Find Free Kindle Books on Amazon.com

Before your proceed, please log-in to your Amazon account, choose “Manage your Kindle” and change the country associated with your Kindle account to “United States”. This is important because most “free” content on the Kindle Bookstore is currently restricted to North America.

OK, now let’s explore ways to find free Kindle books:

# 2.1 Big Deals – This is more of an official listing of Kindle books that are currently available as a free download on Amazon.com to Kindle users. You should also check the Bestsellers category on Kindle Store as it again lists quite a good number of free titles.

# 2.2 Sort by Price – When you search for a Kindle book (or any other item) on Amazon.com, it displays search results by relevance.

If you change this default sort order from “Relevance” to “Price: Low to High”, you’ll get a list of all Kindle books that match your search keywords and are available as a free download. For instance, here’s a list of Kindle books that are related to “India” but cost exactly $0.00.

# 2.3 Listmania - This is another resource where you can discover Kindle books that are available for free.
Listmania Lists are basically a list of products compiled by Amazon users. You can use search phrases like “free kindle books”, “kindle freebie”, “penny kindle book”, etc. to discover lists that may free books you are looking for. For instance, here’s one Listmania List of 27 classic books for Kindle that are absolutely free and here’s another one that also includes copyrighted books.

# 2.4 Use Google – Here’s an unofficial method to help you find Kindle books that are available for free on Amazon.com.

You can use the following search query in Google to search the Amazon store for free Kindle books – just replace the search-phrase in green with the name of the book, author, book category, etc.

intitle:kindle site:amazon.com "you save * (100%)" search-phrase

For instance, here’s a list of free Kindle books related to Abraham Lincoln while here’s a list of Kindle books on Shakespeare that are again free.

Note: Kindle Pricing for International users

If the cost of a Kindle book is mentioned as $0.00 on the Amazon Store, it will still show up as $2.00 for you if the country associated with your Kindle is something other than United States. This is because Amazon charges a $2 roaming fee for “international downloads”.

You can either temporarily change your Kindle country to US or use the “Transfer via Computer” option when buying a book and you won’t be charged that extra $2 fees. Thanks Dhamini Ratnam.

A hard disk drive (HDD), commonly referred to as a hard drive or hard disk, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Strictly speaking, “drive” refers to a device distinct from its medium, such as a tape drive and its tape, or a floppy disk drive and its floppy disk. Early HDDs had removable media; however, an HDD today is typically a sealed unit with fixed media…

The iPhone has finally reached China, or should I say, the iPhone has finally officially reached China. There were plenty of unlocked iPhones invading China's GSM Networks, but only Friday was it on the China Unicom network.

The first shipments manufactured for China Unicom, however, are missing wi-fi. It wasn't until May, after manufacturing of the device had begun, that Beijing lifted the existing wi-fi ban on devices.

This will create problems for China Unicom, which has reportedly contracted with Apple for 5 million iPhones. China Unicom hopes to have wi-fi in the next batch of iphones it receives from Apple, saying: "We are talking with Apple and expect the problem to be solved by the end of this year."

Until then, though, what? China Unicom also is at a price disadvantage: unlocked grey import iPhones (with wi-fi, no less) cost around 5,700 yuan ($835) in China’s street markets, while China Unicom charges from 4,999 yuan ($730) to 6,999 yuan ($1,025) for the high-end, 32 GB iPhone 3GS.

Hmmm. An unlocked iPhone for less money, or official iPhone, tied to one carrier, for more money. Which would you choose? To be honest, even with the wi-fi feature, the fact that the unlocked iPhone goes for less creates an issue for Apple, as well as China Unicom.

In other countries, unlocked iPhones go for more, and far more than a locked version. This backwards set-up in China may prove to be difficult to overcome.

Read Kindle Books without the Kindle Reader

If you don’t have the Kindle device, you can still enjoy any of these Kindle books on your Windows computer using the free Kindle for PC application. Amazon is also working on a Mac version of Kindle Desktop but until that happens, you can download the free Kindle app from iTunes store and read books on the move using your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Find and Download Free Books for Kindle

While most eBooks available on the Amazon Kindle store are paid, here are some simple ways by which you can find and download free books for reading on your Kindle Reader or your Kindle Desktop application.

# 1. Google Books on your Kindle

Project Gutenberg, Google Books and FeedBooks are some popular sites that offer a large collection of public domain books in the standard ePUB format.

The Kindle for PC application cannot read ePUB files directly but you can use the excellent Stanza program (from Amazon itself) to convert these public domain books from .epub into .mobi format that you can then import into Kindle Desktop for reading*. That means you now have millions of out-of-copyright books for your Kindle for free.

You can also use Stanza to convert PDFs, HTML web pages and other Office documents into .mobi format for reading inside the Kindle App but I see little reason why would anyone want to do so since the reading experience is not all that great.

# 2. Find Free Kindle Books on Amazon.com

Before your proceed, please log-in to your Amazon account, choose “Manage your Kindle” and change the country associated with your Kindle account to “United States”. This is important because most “free” content on the Kindle Bookstore is currently restricted to North America.

OK, now let’s explore ways to find free Kindle books:

# 2.1 Big Deals – This is more of an official listing of Kindle books that are currently available as a free download on Amazon.com to Kindle users. You should also check the Bestsellers category on Kindle Store as it again lists quite a good number of free titles.

Read more: http://petnol.blogspot.com/2009/12/download-free-books-for-your-kindle.html#ixzz0buzKAgQQ
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

# 2.2 Sort by Price – When you search for a Kindle book (or any other item) on Amazon.com, it displays search results by relevance.

If you change this default sort order from “Relevance” to “Price: Low to High”, you’ll get a list of all Kindle books that match your search keywords and are available as a free download. For instance, here’s a list of Kindle books that are related to “India” but cost exactly $0.00.

# 2.3 Listmania - This is another resource where you can discover Kindle books that are available for free.
Listmania Lists are basically a list of products compiled by Amazon users. You can use search phrases like “free kindle books”, “kindle freebie”, “penny kindle book”, etc. to discover lists that may free books you are looking for. For instance, here’s one Listmania List of 27 classic books for Kindle that are absolutely free and here’s another one that also includes copyrighted books.

# 2.4 Use Google – Here’s an unofficial method to help you find Kindle books that are available for free on Amazon.com.

You can use the following search query in Google to search the Amazon store for free Kindle books – just replace the search-phrase in green with the name of the book, author, book category, etc.

intitle:kindle site:amazon.com "you save * (100%)" search-phrase

For instance, here’s a list of free Kindle books related to Abraham Lincoln while here’s a list of Kindle books on Shakespeare that are again free.

Note: Kindle Pricing for International users

If the cost of a Kindle book is mentioned as $0.00 on the Amazon Store, it will still show up as $2.00 for you if the country associated with your Kindle is something other than United States. This is because Amazon charges a $2 roaming fee for “international downloads”.

You can either temporarily change your Kindle country to US or use the “Transfer via Computer” option when buying a book and you won’t be charged that extra $2 fees. Thanks Dhamini Ratnam.

Read more: http://petnol.blogspot.com/2009/12/download-free-books-for-your-kindle.html#ixzz0buzD61Nk
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Good news for Nokia users who carry an N-Series or E-Series mobile phone. You can now download the Google Mobile app for your Nokia phone and search Google using simple voice commands as demonstrated in the following video.

Speak your queries instead of typing them


Google Voice Search app is location aware so you don’t have to mention the name of your city or locality when using location specific queries like “nearest pizza restaurant or “medicine shops”.

The Google voice search app is integrated with Google Suggest but in addition to regular search queries, the voice app can also auto-suggest websites so you reach your favorites sites more quickly as you no longer have to type the full address of a domain.

In addition to Nokia S60 phones, Google Mobile App with Voice Search is available for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android based mobile devices.

The Google Voice Search application for Nokia is available for English as well as the Chinese Language. More details on the Google India blog and Google China blog