IPhone SSH Client Roundup

August 19, 2008 by 17 Comments

iPhone and keyboard
Considering an iPhone but not sure if you can live without SSH in your pocket? Have no fear! Hot off the press is this review of four SSH clients for the iPhone: iSSH, pTerm, TouchTerm, and SSH. All four clients have their strengths and weaknesses, and iSSH seems to be the best option so far. Although each of these is an early release, and therefore has its own idiosyncrasies, they’ve got improved features being planned for the next major release. Furthermore, they’re surprisingly inexpensive (none of them are more than five dollars), and so you should give them a shot if you see the need to SSH without being bound to your terminal.

iSSH is the best of the reviewed clients, giving you a good balance of usability and features. It has is share of problems, though, primarily related to the way it handles scrolling, pTerm comes in second, and is almost perfect. Its two rather glaring weaknesses are a too-large font that requires plenty of scrolling, and a lack of Ctrl, ESC, and Tab keys. TouchTerm, which comes in third, is the most configurable of the reviewed SSH clients,but is otherwise irrationally quirky. SSH is even quirkier than TouchTerm, and is a waste of your time and money.

Between the idiosyncrasies of iSSH, pTerm, and TouchTerm, you’re bound to find one that you like. Furthermore, these are initial releases; all three have exciting features on the roadmap (like implementing the ESC key) which should improve their usability.

Should you give one of them a try? For five bucks, it wouldn’t hurt.

[photo: edans]

[via Waxy]

Hybrid Headphone Amplifier

August 6, 2008 by 4 Comments


[Rogers Gomez] has posted up this hybrid tube based headphone amplifier over at DIY Audio. Being a fan of tube amplifiers, but wanting something with lower voltage and lower cost, he put together this little system out of spare parts he had lying around. He wanted it to have as few parts as possible and be able to power his 32 ohm Grado headphones.

He states that he’d built several YAHA amps, and a Szekeres Mosfet follower and was curious how they’d sound together. He was pleasantly surprised with the resulting quality.

There are less than 30 individual components involved in the project. The complete parts list and schematics are available from the site. He notes at the very end, to unplug your headphones when powering up as there is a surge that could damage them. That might be good to know at the beginning just in case you get eager to test it out.

[Thanks, Gio]

Iphone-dev Team Progress Update

August 2, 2008 by 3 Comments


The iphone-dev team hasn’t been resting on their laurels since releasing the iPhone Pwnage Tool 2.0 nearly two weeks ago and decided to update everyone on their progress. Despite the iPhone 2.0 jailbreak, there still isn’t a way to unlock a 3G phone. They’ve managed to do other things like downgrade a 3G to an older baseband firmware, which demonstrates their ability to bypass security checks and run unsigned code on the baseband. A nice side effect of all the downgrade work is that they’ve perfected the percautions they take to prevent bricking. The team has been following threads about using SIM proxy devices for unlocks as well, but concluded that the devices are a kludge at best and reliability can vary wildly depending on the phone’s location. They also pointed out the fine work that RiP Dev has been doing on Installer 4 which will help you install software that isn’t from the AppStore.

IPhone Pwnage Tool 2.0 Released

July 19, 2008 by 17 Comments


Earlier today, the iPhone Dev Team teased that they wouldn’t release their latest Pwnage Tool until Sunday. Since this was yet another in a week long bit of teasing, we were somewhat surprised when a few hours later they posted a rather relaxed Thanks for waiting :) post announcing that Pwnage Tool 2.0 is available. Here’s a direct link to the tool and a mirror courtesy of [_BigBoss_].

According to TUAW, Pwnage Tool 2.0 will activate, jailbreak, and unlock first generation iPhones running any firmware up to and including version 2.0. Unfortunately, it will not unlock an iPhone 3G (at least, not yet). iPhone 3G owners can still use the tool for activation and jailbreaking (so you can run 3rd party apps not supported by Apple and the new iPhone App Store).

So far, skimming through the 1322 comments on their announcement post, I’ve not seen any complaints or death threats about the tool bricking iPhones, but one should still proceed with caution. According to one update to the post, some people either get an error 1600 from iTunes or they notice a “failure to prepare x12220000_4_Recovery.ipsw” in the log. They’ve provided a workaround, however. If this happens to you, simply mkdir ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support or alternately nuke all the files in that already extant folder and re-run Pwnage Tool.

UPDATE: Image is from Engadget’s iPhone review we covered earlier.

Creating Web Applications For The IPhone

July 19, 2008 by 4 Comments

[Dominiek ter Heid] wanted to prototype an application for the iPhone that incorporated GPS. He experimented, and came up with a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a web application that would push GPS information to his iPhone through the use of JavaScript and AJAX. This tutorial will save web hackers who want to play with the iPhone 3G a lot of grief. Using Cocoa Touch, and a CSS/JavaScript pack called IUI, he successfully created a web application that looks native to the iPhone and is able to grab GPS information. The application integrates the GoogleMaps API with the GeoNames database. We look forward to seeing the types of creative applications that this prototype will inspire. What sort of web application would you want to create for the iPhone?

[via digg]

Maximize The IPhone 3G’s Battery Life

July 17, 2008 by 21 Comments


Gizmodo has posted a guide for extending the battery life of your shiny new iPhone 3G. Apple is notorious for pushing products with unimpressive battery life, and the new iPhone is no different. The battery isn’t user-replaceable, which means you can’t keep a spare, and the energy needs of the 3G chipset adds to the problem. Apple provides some useful tips on maximizing battery life for your iPhone. The tips include common sense advice that applies to nearly all electronic devices – turning down the brightness on your LCD screen, turning off radios not in use like Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, and 3G, and setting Auto-lock to a minute or less will keep your devices running smoothly for longer.

We like to carry an extra USB battery like this one; you can also make your own like this one with an Altoids tin.