Users of unlocked iPhones that are running firmware 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 can upgrade to 1.1.3 over the air directly through the installer.app.

Maybe hacker ingenuity is why one-quarter of all iPhone users are unlocking their devices.

This latest hack is for previously jailbroken iPhones or iPod Touches.

Since iPhones and iPods that are already jailbroken have the installer.app on them, they can take advantage of this hack to update to a jailbroken version of 1.1.3.

A warning, though, as not all third-party apps are supported in 1.1.3 yet. Some may be rendered non-functional. You can read a complete how-to here.

The one negative about this update is that it requires Wi-Fi, and even then takes up to 45 minutes.

Apple and AT&T don’t offer over-the-air updates for the Apple iPhone.

You have to plug the iPhone into your PC, download the application from the Internet, install it via USB cable and then re-verify your device every time you upgrade the firmware.

One reason over-the-air updates are not offered from AT&T is likely because it doesn’t want users downloading 100-Megabyte-plus firmware software over its EDGE network.

I don’t blame them for that.

According to the Associated Press, IBM will be releasing a version of Lotus Notes email for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Hooah! Can Apple take down RIM?

If you’re a mobile professional who’s held off on purchasing an iPhone because it won’t work with your corporate email system, there may be one less reason for you to keep holding out.

The AP is reporting that IBM is set to make Lotus Notes available to the iPhone at its Lotusphere conference in Orlando next week. Of course, some terms and conditions apply.

First, your enterprise has to have a Lotus Domino server to support the application.

Existing users of Lotus Notes Web-access system will be able to use the iPhone version for free with their current license. New users will have to pay $39 per year for the Lotus license. Not a bad deal at all.

IBM is also releasing its Symphony productivity suite for Apple computers. Symphony, similar to Google Apps, includes a word processor, presentation application and spreadsheet program.

If you think these new Apple-compatible applications are indicative of a new love-fest between Big Blue and the big Mac, you might want to remember that Apple used IBM’s PowerPC chips in its computers for a long time.

It appears that Apple’s move to Intel processors didn’t sour the relationship between the two. IBM spokesperson Mike Azzi said the two companies “have a lot in common. We’re going to cross-pollinate.”

I can only imagine that this is going to make a lot of enterprise users very happy, and create more headaches for IT admins as employees drag the iPhone in and demand it be supported for email.

However, this new set of software will likely not put a dent in RIM’s enterprise dominance any time in the near future.

Macworld Keynote facts:

• Number of new hardware products announced: Two. The Time Capsule network backup device and the ultra-thin MacBook Air.
• Number of product upgrades announced: Four. Apple TV, iPod Touch, iPhone, iTunes.
• Number of failed product demos: One. Apple TV couldn’t load photos from Flickr’s servers.
• Number of price drops: One. The AppleTV dropped from $300 to $230.

MacBook Air Notebook:

• Weight of the MacBook Air, in pounds: Three
• Size of the MacBook Air’s screen, in inches: 13.3
• Thickest measurement of the MacBook Air’s slim case, in inches: 0.76
• Number of inches thinner than the thinnest measurement of Sony’s TZ ultra-portable: 0.04
• Base cost with 80GB hard drive and 1.6GHz processor: $1800
• Cost with a 64GB SSD hard drive and a 1.8GHz processor: $3100
• Hours of battery life Apple says the MacBook Air gets per charge: Five
• Number of optical drives in the new notebook: Zero. Instead, MacBook Air users will “borrow” the optical drives of other computers on their wireless network using an application called Remote Disc.
• Cost of an optional external DVD drive: $100

iPhone/iPod Touch:

• Number of iPhones sold since the device became available in June, 2007: 4 million
• Average number of iPhones sold per day: 20,000
• Percentage of the U.S. smartphone market captured by Apple during Q3 2007, its first full quarter shipping the iPhone: 20%
• Number of custom iPhone home screens users can now create, save and switch between: Nine
• New applications added to the iPod Touch: Five — Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather.
• How much iPod Touch users will have to pay for the latest enhancements: $20
• How much iPhone users will have to pay for the same enhancements: $0

iTunes:

• Number of songs sold in the iTunes Store to date: 4 billion
• Number of songs sold on Christmas Day 2007: 20 million, a one-day record for Apple
• Number of TV shows sold through the iTunes Store: 125 million
• Number of movies sold: 7 million, a disappointment according to Jobs.
• Number of major Hollywood studios participating in Apple’s new iTunes movie rental program: 11 — Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, MGM, Lions Gate Films, New Line Cinema, 20th Centeruy Fox, Warner Bros., Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony Pictures
• Cost of iTunes rentals: $4 each for new releases, $3 for older titles
• Cost of iTunes rentals for Hi-Def movies: One dollar more — $5 each for new releases, $4 for older titles
• How long you’ll have to wait after a movie is released on DVD before being able to rent it at iTunes: 30 days
• How long a user with a broadband connection will have to wait before beginning to watch a rented movie, on average: 30 seconds
• How long you can wait before starting to watch a movie rental: 30 days
• How long you have to finish watching a rented movie after you start it: 24 hours
• Number of movies available for rental on iTunes by the end of February 2008: 1,000

AppleTV:

• Number of YouTube videos AppleTV users can watch on their televisions: over 50 million
• New price for the upgraded Apple TV: $230
• Amount of the price drop: $70

Leopard:

• Copies of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 sold since its debut in October, 2007: 5 million
• Percentage of Mac users who have upgraded to Leopard so far: 20%

So there you go, the quick and dirty, way to sum up Macworld. Thanks for stopping by, please drive through…

Doug Rodriquez was able to do so merely by setting up a custom ringtone using a well-documented iTunes workaround.

Rodriquez started getting SIM card error messages sometime thereafter and went looking for some customer support.

Apple basically told him to piss up a rope because they had “determined that (the iPhone) has been subjected to accidental damage or misuse, which is not covered by the warranty or an Apple service contract.”

According to Doug Rodriguez:

I’ve never dropped my iPhone, I’ve never exposed it to water. I’ve never put third-party apps on it or hacked it. It just stopped working and Apple apparently does not believe me…The only thing I’ve ever done is back in September putting one custom ringtone on my iPhone via the “manual transfer” method. Nothing Else.

No word yet on what kind of warranty love using the Apple-sanctioned GarageBand method for installing custom ringtones will get you.

Basically it’s stuff you can use without having to pay for it and without worrying about proprietary software issues.

Most of the criteria for inclusion in the Open Source Living revolve around the nature of the licensing for the product — it has to be freely redistributable, not discriminatory in its licensing, with source code available, etc.

To that end, the programs already listed in the Open Source Living Directory are something of a “who’s who” of open-source success stories: Firefox, OpenOffice, 7-Zip, and so on.

A fair number of Mac-specific open-source programs are also featured: Camino, Vienna, and NeoOffice.

The layout and design of the site are friendly and clean; it doesn’t look like something that was thrown together in an afternoon.

The Open Source Living was originally derived to list free programs regardless of their source or licensing provisions, and so there are still a few programs listed in the Open Source Living catalog that are free without being open source like Irfanview.

Over time, though, they will be dropped in favor of applications that are entirely open and since I’m an Irfanview user I’m curious to see what could eventually replace it.

I like resources like this for two reasons. One, even someone like me can remain unaware for a long time of a well-developed and highly useful open-source project, and it’s a pleasure to stumble across such a thing in a forum where other people have already vetted it for quality.

A listed project that I’m now curious about, Haiku, picks up where BeOS left off, and if done right could be a serious desktop contender. That’s a long way off and won’t come without major hurdles, but my attention has definitely been captured.

Two, it’s a way for newcomers to open source — people who simply don’t know what’s out there — to get introduced to the available applications without having to dig through an installation repository or just stumble around.

They can find out relatively quickly what’s worthwhile, what other people are using and benefiting from, and what applications cover what sort of duties like the difference between OpenOffice or Scribus.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see features like detailed community feedback or comments on each entry, but for now the forums on the site are handling that job.

Side note for the fanboys, Macs are PC’s too – Personal Computer’s. Maybe I should have said Mac verses Windows? Arrrg!

The report also tries to claim that Mac owners are buying more CDs than their PC brethren, but the figures are so close – 32% against 28% – it seems statistically insignificant.

The difference between 50 and 16, though, is big.

Who knows why? Are Mac people more honest? Higher earning? Or are they just too stupid to work out BitTorrent?

The speakers are six and a half feet tall.

The pair weighs in at $19,000 USD, and each cabinet has 12 subwoofers at the back and a combination of eight mid range and seven tweeters at the front.

I almost fell asleep reading the specifications.

Like all high end audio gadgets, there is plenty of nonsense to get any audiophile excited: “spherical enclosure technology”,”carbon fiber” and my personal favorite: “rear-firing 4 inch drivers”.

I almost want to try these out, if only for the perverse pleasure of hooking such monsters up to a tiny Apple iPod Shuffle.

Before, it was the general mobile version of the site, which showed my headlines, weather, Gmail and other content all in a quick glance.

Now it is a simple search box and I have to actively choose to view my content. Why did Google make it more difficult to use?

More and more companies are beginning to design versions of their sites that have versions optimized for the iPhone. I never thought Google would take that route, but it has.

So much for the “real Internet” on the iPhone.

The old version of the Google Mobile home page was just right.

It was fully customizable and let users choose from a wealth of news feeds for the latest headlines, movie times, weather reports, stocks and so on.

For those that wanted a brief rundown on what was going on in the world and in your own neighborhood, it fit the bill. Now it doesn’t. At all.

The new version of the Google home page for the iPhone has a large search box smack in the middle of the page and tabs across the top to access different services.

Those tabs are Home, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, and More. Below them are some more selections for signing in and changing search preferences.

The Home screen is just the search box. I could not find any way to customize this page or add in the content that I was used to seeing here.

The Gmail tab obviously brings you into the Web version of your Gmail.

The Calendar tab shows you the upcoming events in your calendar. The Reader tab shows you all your RSS feeds (assuming you have any and actually use Google’s Reader).

The More tab brings you to a basic menu of other Google mobile services, such as Documents, Google-411, Blogger, etc.

It’s under this More tab that you have access to news and unfortunately it is no longer the customized news you had picked out, but just the generic Google news stories of the day.

If you ask me, Google is trying to make its home page more smartphone like. Quick access to calendar and email accounts are buttons or functions you’d see on smartphones.

The reason I am complaining is because it took something that I had come to rely on, and changed it to something that is less useful to me.

Will others love it? I am sure they will. My experience has been altered for the worse.

Poured in layers, just like jelly, the iPod sits in a bubbly cube, with control via the included dock internals and the project, by Billy Chasen, is made geek-perfect by the inclusion of Lego feet.

Hopefully Billy will go to work on a more recursive meta-project next: An Apple G4 Cube, encased in a cube.

The Metal Jacket weighs in at around 35 grams, versus the 3G Nano’s already featherweight 49 grams. The case is internally cushioned, and is hand made.

You can even dock the iPod with its jacket on. Geektastic!

This model is priced at ¥8,900 ($82) plus shipping, and maker Shimura also has models for the iPod Classic, the Sony PSP and Nintendo’s DS Lite.