The big news this week, at least on the personal side of things, was the release of the Fortress Forever. I have been waiting for it for so long, and so far I’ve played a little over 6 hours.

I didn’t realize it until Monday the 10th, but the mumbler has returned! Art has returned from China with his lovely bride. I was heartbroken while he was gone, and not only didn’t I get his emails and blog updates, but his server was down, so I couldn’t even look at his blogs at all.

Art always refers to me on his blog as “MBM” for “my buddy mike”. I even have my own tag on his blog. One of his blogs is called “Incoherent Mumbling“, also accessible from www.mumblr.com, so I decided that I am going to start referring to him as “the mumbler”. At least sometimes.

Also it turns out that while I was goofing off all weekend, Phil from Thought Sparks has been busy launching his new blog, Tech Fires. Read his announcement for yourself. Phil’s been churning out some really great tutorials lately, so I’m really interested to see what he puts on his new site.

I’m also really interested in one of his widgets, it points to BlogRush. Looks like a syndication widget that gets you syndicated on other blogs as well. Looks pretty neat, I’ll have to go check it out.

In Tech News, one of the bigger stories this week has been the release of the iPhone software unlock, which I think I have covered enough for the week.

Also, last weekend I realized that football season has started again! What was I doing to miss that? I’m not a huge football fan, and as a matter of fact, last year was the first year that I watched more than the Super Bowl in about a decade.

If your curious, I’m a Denver fan, since I lived here for about a decade now, I should probably root for the local team. I also cheer for the Patriots, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.

I also made a few minor changes to the blog, I added my Pownce feed, the MyBlogLog widget, and also some more adsense ads.

I’m looking forward to a more productive week, thanks to all of my readers, and to everyone who commented on the posts this week or provided me with valuable feedback.

Remember, you can reach me on Pownce, if you are on it, as well as my blog log or on email. My email address is “mike” at this domain name (port16.com). Feel free to drop me any thoughts or comments. 

Posted in Pownce, The Mumbler, FPS, Foretress Forever, Hacks, BlogNewsandUpdates 3 Comments »

The iPhone Software Unlock that I posted about yesterday appears to be working great. Engadget is listing all of the countries and providers that have been confirmed so far. Although there are some disputes in the numbers, there are a whole lot of them.

Engadget is also stating that the fix is “Store persistent”, which means that even after the phone is wiped out, the fix stays there. I’m not sure if there has been an apple update since the fix, and I’m curious to see if Apple can get rid of it. 

If they did, I think it would be a matter of days before another fix came out.

Thanks to “the mumbler“ for pointing me to the story.

References:

iPhone now software unlocked in 32 countries and 69 carriers - EnGadget

Posted in Hacks, iPhone, Apple No Comments »

AKA: Why in the world did we base our OS on *nix? Didn’t we want to stay proprietary?

You had to know it was coming, but there is a way to unlock your iPhone using software, for free. Here it is:

iPhone Software Unlock Guide!

I knew that some software apps to do it were almost out, but according to APC Magazine, this is the first. Not sure if this will last past the first update, and Engadget is reporting that there will be a GUI soon.

Still, I think this is a try it at your own risk type of thing. Personally, I think I would wait to see if it works on other’s phones before I tried it on mine. If I had one that is. Feel free to contact me if you want to give me a iPhone to try it on.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, between this and the price drop, the phone is actually starting to be reasonable. Of course, this is bad news for both AT&T, since it takes away from the exclusiveness of their deal, and Apple, since they get a cut of every AT&T/iPhone subscriber. 

References:

iPhone Software Unlock Guide

First Free iPhone unlocking solution released - APC Magazine

Posted in Hacks, iPod, iPhone, Apple No Comments »