Carl Hutzler’s Blog

According to Apple (and engadget.com) they have sold 1.4 million iPhones so far. But the interesting thing is that 250,000 of them are NOT registered for use on AT&T’s network. That is a lot of unlocked iPhones!

Are they all being used in the States on T-Mobile or are people buying them and shipping them overseas to places where Apple has yet to launch the iPhone? Likely the latter is my guess.

I wonder how much an iPhone costs Apple to make. I wonder if they lose money if they fail to get the rev-share from AT&T?

As I rambled on about a few weeks ago, I really want to see the iPhone/iPod Touch devices open up for third party applications. And while Steve J said he was working on an API for developers to allow applications (and not just via Safari) which is good, I wondered what was possible today.

So last night, I took my wife’s new shiny iPod Touch and ran a little application/applescript called iJailbreak. This application helps open up root access and SSH/SFTP access to the iPod Touch. Once you have access, you can install files on the device.

First thing you have to do is point the iPod Touch’s web browser at a specific URL which has a special TIF image file. This file was created to exploit some sort of buffer overflow error in Safari. Once you do this, you can run iJailBreak.

After iJailBreak is complete you have access to an installer of a bunch of open source packagaes. I installed SSH and SFTP and was immediately able to access the filesystem over the iPod’s wifi connection. From there you can install other apps that come with the default installer like games, new skins, VNC client, etc.

But the holy grail in this little effort was to install the version of Mail that the iPhone comes with. After all, if you can’t do Mail on a wireless device, what have you? I found some links to the iPhone applications v.1.1.1 (if I had an iPhone I could have pulled the apps off of that device using similar methods). Once you have these apps along with the GMM Framework and a mobile mail preference bundle you can SFTP them to the Touch and ensure you make the Mail.app executible. And Viola!

I also installed the Calendar, Gmaps, Notes, Stocks, and Weather apps as well just for completeness. Oh, and I backed up the old version of Calendar from the Touch just in case I needed that version someday….but from what I can tell, I can revert the whole iPod back to the original factory firmware fairly easily through iTunes in case I need to someday.

So we now have an iPod Touch that can:

• Email
• Connect to my VPN or any of my customer VPNs
• Screen Sharing via a VNC client
• SSH/SFTP to any machine I have an account on
• Google Maps
• Ability to enter iCal events (not just view them)

…and even an OSX like finder a few other nice things. Not bad. Please let me keep it, Steve :-)

First things first!
This is a tutorial on how to rip DVDs you own and not how to steal movies!

That said, there is a legitimate need to be able to take DVDs you own and turn them into files that can be streamed/played, installed on your iPod or iPhone, or used with an AppleTV or other media device. This is a tutorial on how I do it for one of my clients along with a script I customized to make the whole process easy.

The set-up I have for one of my clients is a central Mac Mini server (headless - no keyboard/monitor/mouse) which we use for the iTunes server. It runs iTunes all the time and does not do much of anything else. We have a number of AppleTV’s on the network and each of them is paired with the iTunes library on the Mac Mini server. This set-up allows my client to play/stream any music or movies in the iTunes library on any AppleTV. This works well for their purposes.

The issue I needed to solve for my client was to make it easy to rip all of their media/content into iTunes. Automating the music ripping was easy as iTunes has built in preferences for automating the ripping of music. Just go to iTunes preferences and tell it to rip a music CD when one is inserted in the Mac Mini and when complete, eject it. Done.

But what about DVD movies? Read more

I am thinking in two years or so, maybe three, we will not have a need for two different types of memory in computer systems. A company called Fusion-IO is now offering a 640GB solid state flash memory drive. This drive needs no power to retain its memory/state and offers 800 MB/s read and 600MB/s write rates which is many times faster than today’s HDDs and is actually close to today’s RAM speeds (DRAM). Plus it is likely a lot more power friendly than a hard drive (think laptops). From a size perspective, it looks like it could be squeezed into a 2.5″ HDD sized enclosure for laptops and perhaps smaller.

So no more separate storage for permanent storage and temporary storage. The new stuff will be both fast and permanent in nature. So one size will fit all. Goodbye hard drives….

• Think about zero load time for operating systems and applications (they are already in RAM)
• No more “sleeping” a machine. Just turn it off and it will “wake up” where you left it.
• Power for laptops should get a big kick once we get rid of HDDs and get OLED screens
• Size of laptops (and weight to an extent) should get smaller.

Oh, but pricing is still a bit steep. You get all this 640GB goodness for just $19,000! What a deal ;-) But they also sell 80GB versions for $2400. Yes, that is still pricey considering I can get am 80GB 2.5″ HDD for a laptop for just $60 or so. But give it a couple of years.

Gizmodo Article on Flash Hard Drives

So I have a Sprint phone these days (Moto V3m) and I added a Phone as Modem option to my plan which allows me to tether my laptop to the phone via USB or Bluetooth and get an Internet connection (EVDO ~400-500 kbps). All this for $40 on top of the normal voice plan. Not cheap, but not terrible.

Anyway, if I want to, my Mac Book Pro can share the internet connection established through the phone with users on the Mac’s wifi port (or wired ethernet). So I can essentially re-broadcast my EVDO internet connection to people near my Mac laptop either via the Wifi or ethernet connection. I have used this a few times in a meeting or while driving in the car (not me driving) and even on vacation once. Basically if other people need a connection, I can share mine.

And I can see using it more as my wife just got an iPod Touch with wifi built in. And Jake has one of those wifi Nintendo DS units. But to be honest, its kind of a pain to lug around a laptop to do this little function.

Tonight I stumbled upon what may be the answer, the CTR-350 by Cradlepoint. This little “Cellular Travel Router” connects to compatible phones via a USB cable and automagically makes the phone connect as a modem. Then the CTR-350 re-broadcasts the internet connection on 802.11b/g. It will even charge the phone for you which is good as the EVDO runs the battery down quickly.

So for $149 you get a drop dead simple device. Plug and play. No software, no configurations, no drivers. No nothing.

I might just buy one of these if it will work with my Moto V3m (says it will work with the VZW V3c so maybe mine will work too?).

I blogged about this a few weeks back but wanted to update everyone that IK did a press release on Monday announcing their service. The release has some nice information in it for all you independent artists trying to make a few bucks.

INDIEKAZOO: New Service Takes on Goliath in the MP3 World

OK, maybe this is not earth shattering news by itself, but it gets a little better.

• The music is $0.10 less per song than iTunes and the albums seem to be about $1 less than iTunes.
• The music is DRM free. No more pain in the ass restrictions on what I can do with my music
• The MP3 files are encoded at 256 kbps which should translate into very high quality listening
• Files work on just about any device that can play music as it is just a regular MP3 file.

I do not buy much of anything on iTunes mostly because I can usually find the CD for the same price at BestBuy or Target and I hate the DRM crud. No, I don’t steel or provide illegal music, but the DRM stuff is just annoying and inconvenient especially on iTunes video files. With Amazon providing high quality, DRM free, MP3 (as opposed to Apples AC3) format, for LESS money, the choice is clear for me.

The only downside I can see is that Amazon only has two major labels right now - EMI and Universal among many other smaller labels.

Note: There is a small “downloader” application which Amazon recommends installing. They have a Mac and Windows version. I don’t think you need this but it does sound convenient as it will auto add the music into iTunes for you.

A bit off topic, if you are looking for one of the best pure “rock ‘n’ roll” albums out there, spend $9 on this one and you will not be disappointed. Its one of my favorite all time albums.

Ryan Adams: Gold $8.99

link: Gizmodo

First there was the Jawbone headset which I tried a few weeks ago. It does a fantastic job of isolating noise in the background allowing you to hear your cell phone (or VOIP) call more clearly as well as allowing the person you are talking to to hear you clearly. You just have to try it to see how well it works. Their website has a demo that does NOT exaggerate how well the device works. Trust me, I tried one.

But the issue with the Jawbone is is it is huge and makes you look like some sort of Star trek character. So in comes the nXZEN NX6000. It is tiny at about the size of a quarter and if you believe the geeks at Gizmodo, it wins hands down. It is also about as expensive as the Jawbone at $130, but if you need noise reduction as I do in my Jeep Wrangler, then this might be the ticket.

I just saw a review of the iPod touch by Walt Mossberg and it got me to thinking a bit more why I am not quite ready to buy an iPhone or iPod Touch…

Walt Mossberg Article on iPod Touch:

“The Touch is missing some Internet-oriented features from the iPhone that would work well over Wi-Fi. It lacks the iPhone’s email, mapping, stock tracking and weather programs.

Apple says the Touch was meant mainly to present typical iPod features, not to replicate the iPhone, and it included the Web browser only so users could get onto Wi-Fi to use the mobile music store in certain places that required a log-in screen.

But it seems ridiculous to me to sell a powerful device with Wi-Fi and a huge screen, and to leave out things like an email program, even though you can use Web-based email programs. I assume Apple was concerned that the less costly Touch might compete too much with the iPhone if it had these features. In fact, if somebody can jam a voice-over-Internet capability into the iPod Touch, it might be more of a threat to the iPhone, which is tethered to a single cellphone carrier, AT&T.”

Basically, I hope someday Apple opens the iPhone/iPod Touch and allows it to become a general purpose computing device. I would be first in line to buy one.

My main frustration with cell phones and the carriers today is that they lock you into a specific set of services and applications which they want you to use. I understand why this is the case ($$), but I don’t like it. I don’t like it because these services/ applications are expensive and usually incomplete for my needs. But now Apple is doing the same thing…locking us into a single carrier for five years and locking us into a small number of applications they provide. And from the news today, it seems that Apple is now going to go after the hackers who have figured out how to unlock the iPhone and/or install 3rd party apps.

I just find it interesting to see how this great new piece of hardware and amazing UI is being crippled in specific ways which do not benefit the customer. I hope this changes over time.

So what do I do right now since I can’t do what I want on a cell phone?

Well, I do have a cell phone and it is in fact my only phone (no more land line). I never use it for anything else but voice calls…no SMS, no Pictures, no Video, no Music player, no Games, nothing. Because these things are all very expensive, incompatible with other systems I use, and in most cases the UI is horrific.

BUT I do use one feature besides voice calls! Read more