Subscribe RSS

Archive for October, 2009

Newer Entries »

How to Jail Break your iPod Touch 2G

October 11th, 2009 by Severin Kempf | 8 Comments | Filed in How Tos

Warning: Jailbreak at your own risk! It is quite safe, because it is nearly impossible to brick your iPod, yet you will lose data that you had on your iPod, to save any important data, choose to back-up your iPod when restoring it.

When Jailbreaking, if your iPod won’t turn on, then use the restore in iTunes.

First of all I’d like to clear up a couple things.
JailBreaking is not illegal however things like ROMs are illegal, It is quite safe with no confirmed cases of an iPod Bricking.
and last of all there will be times you think your ipod is bricked, in this case use what I call the 3 Rs, Rese when t, Restore and Respond

Reset your iPod by holding the Power and Home Buttons, if you do not know what they are, you shouldn’t be trying to JailBreak your iPod, at the same time until your iPod seems to shut off in this case keep holding the buttons until the boot logo appears.
Restore on your computer.
And Respond on this post.

Disclaimer: My Daily Tech does not take any Liability to anything that happens while you are Jail Breaking your iPod.

Ok so when your ready to start Scroll down

Ok so first of all, you’ll need to figure out what firmware you have to do this

go on your iPod > Settings > General > About > look down the list until you find version.

Ok so now that you have your firmware version you need to determine if its newer than 3.0 e.g. 3.1.1, it is 3.0, or it is lower than 3.0 e.g. 2.1.1, 1.1.1

Ok well a redsn0w does not work with Firmware Version 3.1.1 so you’ll need to wait for them to update it.

Ok now your ready to start, You must have:

  • redsnow (the o like symbol there is actually a zero)  which can be downloaded from this site http://redsn0w.com/
  • You Current Firmware e.g. 3.0 (which I will be working with) Click here so you can download any of the available firmwares in the second drop down menu
  • an iPod Touch 2G
  • a USB to iPod Cable
  • iTunes (to restore your iPod) doesn’t matter which version.

Ok so

First of all, to make everything easier to find.
Put a New Folder on your desktop named “Pwnage”
Copy redsnow and your firmware to “Pwnage”

If you have firmware 3.1.1 you can either wait for a jailbreak to be released, or downgrade.
To downgrade:

ON COMPUTER:

1. Open iTunes

ON IPOD:

  1. Plug iPod into computer and then turn off.
  2. Make sure that iPod is turned off and plugged in.
  3. Put iPod into DFU mode. (Instructions below)
  4. Hold down power button for 3 seconds.
  5. Without letting go of the power button also hold the home button for 10 seconds.
  6. Let go of power button but keep holding home button until iTunes says it has found an iPod in recovery mode.
  7. You are now in DFU mode.

ON COMPUTER

  1. iTunes will say that it has found an iPod in recovery mode.
  2. iTunes will ask you to restore your iPod. Do not hit restore right away.
  3. Option-click restore on a mac and shift-click restore on a PC.  This will allow you to browse for a IPSW (the firmware).
  4. Navigate to your “Pwnage” folder and select your custom firmware you want to downgrade to e.g. 3.0.
  5. Hit Select
  6. Wait for your iPod to restore with your new… err old, firmware
  7. You now have a downgraded iPod Touch :D

If your iTunes returns an error message after going through the restore process, Such as “Cannot restore iPod Touch”, don’t fret you just didn’t put it into DFU mode. So Try again and follow the Instructions exactly as they say.

JAILBREAKING

ON COMPUTER

  1. Restore your iPod if you haven’t already. DO NOT sync anything with it after restoring.
  2. Open redsn0w
  3. Browse for the  Firmware your iPod is currently running.
  4. Wait for the IPSW to be Confirmed.
  5. Select wether to install Cydia or Icy (cydia and icy are like the installer app, they let you download content such as themes, apps, emultors and more) or both if installing both you may get error 20 when downloading content. Refer to trouble shooting for help.
  6. Make Sure your iPod is plugged into your computer, then shut it off (by holding the sleep/wake button until a slider appears on the screen that says “slide to power off.”) then click next.
  7. Quickly hold down the sleep button for 3 seconds the ipod should display the boot logo then also hold down the home button without letting go of the sleep button for 10 seconds, then let go of sleep and keep holding home button until the screen turns white, then you can let go.
  8. Redsn0w will now upload the 1st, 2nd and 3rd parts. Then reboot after uploading each one which will make the white screen flash.
  9. From here  on redsn0w will do the rest for you. It takes a while so just let it sit. It’s now uploading the ramdisk which will take a while
  10. It will also upload the kernel.
  11. Once the kernel is uploaded your done with the part on your computer.
  12. Just Click Finish. (BTW the finish button is normally at the bottom, it just glitched)

ON IPOD

Your ipod will now have a logo like the one below with a status bar.

and your done.

Trouble Shooting

Error – 20 Redo the redsn0w process and check only the cydia source and not the icy choice.
More trouble shooting items will be posted as problems develop, if you have a problem  leave it in the comments below.

If you liked this post or any others, leave some comment love, refer to friends and subscribe via RSS or Email!

Follow Me on Twitter @SeverinK

© All Text and Images are property of Severin Kempf and My Daily Tech if you would like to use any of the Images or text in this post please contact me via  email @ Sev.mydailytech@gmail.com

Share

Tags: , , ,

Google’s Street View Goes Live in Canada

October 9th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 5 Comments | Filed in Online

Google Street View `Pegman`

Google’s controversial Street View service went live the other day for about 11 areas of Canada, of which included Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa,  and Toronto.

The service, which is already available in cities in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Australia, Japan and several other countries, provides close-up, 360-degree views of city streets as they would be seen by someone driving along them. The images are linked to the company’s Google Maps and Google Earth applications.

Google had a hard time launching the service in Canada due to concerns that they were breaking some privacy law, but they got it all sorted out, and I`m glad it`s finally available to the whole public.

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

Customizing Firefox for Windows 7

October 9th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | No Comments | Filed in How Tos

When you install Firefox on your Windows 7 RTM installation, you’ll find that it isn’t exactly optimised for Windows 7′s Aero interface.

Firefox 3.7 will support Windows 7′s jumplists, and the theme will include more ‘glass’, but if you want to get the nice glassy look that 3.7 will sport right away without having to wait, you can get it right now on Firefox 3.5!

Firefox 3.7 New Theme

And we can get pretty much the exact same theme easily using the extensions I’m going to show you.  Here’s the final result:

Firefox 3.5 modded

Firefox 3.5 modded

So let’s get to work!

Strata40 by SpewBoy
Strata40 is almost a complete clone of the new Strata (as in – the name of the default Firefox theme)  for Firefox 3.7.  It doesn’t include the glass component though, so it sort of looks like it would if you were using Windows Aero Basic.

IMPORTANT: If you don’t do this, the theme won’t look right.  Go to the View menu and then go to Toolbars, and then click on Customize.  You need to switch a couple things around.  Move the stop button from its current position to directly after the address bar, and then put the reload button right after where you just put the stop button.

In this way they’ll combine, so that when a page is loading, it shows a red stop button that you can click to stop the page from loading, but when the page isn’t loading, then it turns into a refresh button.  Saves a ton of space, and looks great at the same time.

StrataGlass by SpewBoy
StrataGlass adds all the aero effects you could want to Strata40!  It is a great add-on, and is a must have for achieving that 3.7 look.  Don`t use StrataGlass with any other theme other than Strata40 because it will just give you an error.

Fission by zeniko
Fission adds the 2px little orange loading bar that runs just below the address bar in 3.7 to Firefox 3.5.  It`s really quite a beautiful little loading bar, and it gives you a neat thing to watch while your pages are loading.

Hide Menubar by yuoo2k
Hide Menubar does exactly what it`s called, and it does a pretty good job of it too!  It works like the way that the new menubar works in Internet Explorer 8: press alt, and then it shows up.

Tabs On Top UserStyle by SpewBoy
This actually isn`t an addon – it`s an UserStyle from userstyles.org.  It works with the addon called Stylish (you`ll need to install Stylish first for it to work).  I tried it in Greasemonkey and it didn`t work.  This adds a bit of a Chrome twang to the whole theme, and it`s easily togglable through the little Stylish logo on the statusbar, so you can switch between tabs on top and tabs underneath as much as you want.  A great little addition to the whole pack of plugins I`ve already provided.

Anyways, I hope that I`ve helped you, and I think that you`ll greatly enjoy your modded Firefox!

Share

Tags: , , , , , ,

Pirate Bay shut down by BREIN, moving to Nuclear Bunker

October 7th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | No Comments | Filed in Piracy

The Pirate Bay was taken down today by anti-piracy agency BREIN.  BREIN recently sued Mininova, who lost the civil dispute and was ordered to remove all of their infringing torrent files in august.

The Pirate Bay has plans to switch to move to an ISP called CyberBunker, which is was a NATO nuclear bunker from the 50s that was sold in the 1990s to the current owner.  It is its own republic and is surrounded on all sides by the Netherlands.  Check out the Republic of CyberBunker’s website for more info about the history of the country.

The nuclear bunker is used as hosting facilities, and it can withstand a nuclear strike as well as an EMP blast, and CyberBunker certainly won’t cave to threats from BREIN!

As the owner of CyberBunker, Sven Kamphuis, said, “I don’t expect BREIN to do pretty much anything at this point. The last conversation we had with them was about some mp3 site they wanted to have shut down somewhere in 2001/2002. It took around 3 hours at 2am at night and the end result was that both parties agreed not to agree.“

The bay has been up and down rather sporatically throughout the day, and it should be online steadily soon.

All-around, this is great news for fans of the Pirate Bay, and great news for torrenters all-around.

Share

Tags: , , , , , ,

Quick Tip: Faster Boot Times

October 2nd, 2009 by Michael Louie | 2 Comments | Filed in How Tos

If your like most people out there who are expieriencing an aging computer. You may want to try this quick tip on how to make your computer boot faster. (This method will apply for XP and Vista. )

Steps:

1.Click Start<Select Run

2.Type in msconfig

3. Wait for the following window to open.

4. Click on the startup tab. Your screen should look like this.

5.As you can see, these are the programs that startup with your computer which cause the delay. You may recognize some of the programs such as if you have a logitech wireless mouse you might see a logitec application in the list. Click the unnecessary programs that you won’t need to start up such as Quicktime or Messenger.

Be careful with what you uncheck. You can google the startup item if you aren’t sure what it is. Don’t ever uncheck important programs such as your wireless mouse’s program or your antivirus program.

6. Click apply then ok and you are done. You will be prompted to restart but that is your choice.

*Note: I am not responsible for any damage or incidents caused by this tutorial. Use at your own risk.*

This is a very basic tip and should not cause any harm usually. Though if you feel unsafe dont try it.

Share

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Windows 7 – Is it worth it?

October 1st, 2009 by Michael Louie | 1 Comment | Filed in Tech

Some people have heard the new name, Windows 7, Codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna. Lately, you might have heard that you can get Windows 7 for free when buying a new PC or You can upgrade to Windows 7 at a discount price. But is this new OS worth it? (note: light review)

So we all know about the lows Vista set with its paranoia over everything and multiple errors / driver issues and benchmarks at all new lows. This of course made many stay back at home with their Xp computers.

But little do people notice the great things about Vista.  With its new Aero feature, improved support for 64 bit and multicore processors, peer to peer file transferring and sharing and etc. These new features would set the path for the next OS to improve on these new programs, features and layouts.

File:Windows 7.png

(screenshot of Windows 7)

This here is the new Windows 7. There are some obvious differences…..obviously. Some parts you may recognize such as the start menu but you notice our classic taskbar looks a little different. This new little gadget is called Aero Peek. Now unlike the previous aero which shows a preview of the window when hovering above it, Aero peek will show you the windows all by hovering over the ONE app. So lets say you have 3 internet explorer windows open. Instead of hovering over one at a time to find which one you are looking for, you can hover over the internet explorer icon in the taskbar and you will see all three in realtime and if you hover over the preview, you can get a large screen preview .     =)

File:Windows 7 Taskbar.png

Another New feature is the Snap In feature. Open two windows drag them on the two sides of the screen and they will adjust to fit perfectly in your monitor ,and don’t worry  the pesky messages that black out your screen just to ask the redundant question of permission are gone.

Now for the features that you won’t notice right away. So first you get improved accessories, boot times and performance on multi-core processors. (yippe for me and my core 2 quad) Your control center has been renovated with extra items such as Clear type and Gadgets. Also, for the sake of XP which kept windows alive in my opinion will have its cousin in Windows 7. Which will be Windows XP Mode which will basically run XP in a virtual machine.  Read more about Windows XP Mode.

To be honest, Windows 7 isn’t going to be as revolutionary as Vista was yet it still improves on the great features of Vista.

I will be definitely upgrading to Windows 7 because of the improved benchmarks and benefits it features.  It has many organizational upgrades too.  I wouldn’t lie to you. Its up to you whether you are going to upgrade but beware….Windows is back.

The planned release of Windows 7 for consumers is set for October 22, 2009.

Watch Windows 7 on Youtube

If you want to, you can read even more here: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/windows7-seven-reasons/

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

Quick Fraction Reducer

October 1st, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 1 Comment | Filed in Apps, Online

If you’re looking for a quick web app to reduce your fractions, here’s one that I find quite helpful:

Fraction Reducer 2.0

Share
Newer Entries »