Mark McSpadden

I have an iphone. I have an iphone on tmobile’s voice and data network. I have an iphone on my home wifi network. I have an iphone.

How it all started

I was browsing through my feeds yesterday and came across this story about an open source effort to unlock the iPhone. As a very happy TMobile customer, I had never considered the iPhone within my reach, but now with an open source unlock and 4GB iPhones reduced to $299, I had to give this thing a whirl.

So I head over to my local Mac store, inquire about the refund policy (14 days, 10% restocking fee if opened), buy my 4GM iphone and then head home to do some more reading. After a little bit, I decide to eat the $30 bucks and unwrap the beautiful piece of machinery. (I’m a nerd, just the hours spent on the effort are worth that small price.)

The Resources

By the time I write this, there may be an installer available, but in case there’s not:

Mac OS X 10.4 and iTunes version 7.4

• iFuntastic_3.03
• iActivator
• Installer.app

Tutorial: http://iphone.unlock.no/

The hoop jumping

I am definitely not saying this will work for you. It did for me. If you brick your phone it’s your fault. (I’m not even sure you can brick your phone, you should be able to easily restore it, but disclaimers are cool and I wanted one.)

First I connected my iPhone to my Mac, itunes came up, I canceled out of the activation. Next I fired up iFuntastic and choose the “Restore” option. This is really nice since you start clean and it gives you a file to revert back to should things go crazy. I then tried to use the “Unshackle” feature, but was unsuccessful.

I then decided to try iActivator. It worked great and after following all their instructions, I had an activated iPhone.

Now that my iPhone was activated, I could add the Installer.app to it. After I followed all those instructions, I was ready to start unlocking. I hit the tutorial about half way through step 2 (obviously I used the mac Installer.app instead of ibrickr) and used Installer to install the 3 required packages.

Next I download the required files (oops, those are at the start of Step 2) and moved them to my iphone. I moved them not using the suggested method, but instead did something else. I first joined my iphone to my wireless network. Then I used ssh to login to my iPhone and test that piece of the puzzle. Then I used a mac program called sshfs that basically mounts a drive for you via ssh. After the drive was mounted, I just did a ‘drag and drop’ for the files and folders specified in the tutorial.

I then ran all the tutorial commands, without issue, and at the end, that’s right, an iPhone on Tmobile’s network. Pretty sweet.

Still in trial mode

I still have 13 days to evaluate this setup to see if it’s actually feasible to maintain against the firmware and itunes updates. I’ll be sure and keep you posted!

I was reading Jim Bruene’s Mobile Money and Banking today an I got into his most recent article about SMS Banking. I’m interested in the subject and probably would have just stored it away in my mental file, however, Jim was offering a $5 Starbucks gift card just for posting a “substantive comment.”

Having already been to Starbucks today (and $6 poorer for it) I thought I’d share my thoughts on the impact that cell phone service providers will have on the future of SMS and Mobile web banking.

Not long after I submit my comment, Jim emails me to get my physical address so he can mail me the gift card. This exchange struck both of us as kind of funny. We are talking about checking our bank balances and transferring money on cell phones, yet to get me a Starbucks gift card, Jim was going to have to physically go to a Starbucks¹, buy a $5 gift card, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and send it half way across the country to my place. :)

Jim did point out that we’ve come a long way to get to the Starbucks gift card, but it’s pretty apparent to me that we’ve still got a ways to go.

¹ Starbucks does sell gift cards through their website that you can have delivered to anyone you want, however the smallest increment they offer is $15.

In case you didn’t know, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. My college roommate Paul and I stumbled upon this holiday sometime during our university years and it is one of our favorites to passively celebrate. We don’t get dressed up or throw a party or anything…we just talk like pirates more than we usually do.

Need more info about Internal Talk Like a Pirate Day? Check out their website at www.talklikeapirate.com.

Need help talking like a pirate…checkout this You Tube video by the pirate guys…

What is the most important application on my machine? What are the most important files? Apparently, Microsoft thinks that Microsoft Office is the most important application that could ever be on my machine and that word, excel, and powerpoint files must be kept securely locked down. How do I know this?

Up to a week ago, I had been exclusively using openoffice and I highly reccommend it! I also have my windows machine setup without a password on my user account and I like it that way. I also don’t need to log back in whenever my computer goes to sleep and had set my settings accordingly. (I work at home…and anyone that steals my computer will easily get around these little security measures.)

Last week I had to install Office for a client project that used a third party plugin for powerpoint. I hated to do it…but I had to. After installing Office, my computer suddenly started requiring a log in after it awoke from slumber. (Even though I have a blank password!) This is just annoying and arrogant. Why the need to “secure” my machine now that it has Office installed?

I don’t know…and don’t care…I’ll change it back and keep saving for my mac.

While researching an upcoming post over for the McSpadden Technology blog, I somehow stumbled upon Erik Benson’s blog. (Looking back…I really have no clue how I got there…but I’m glad I did.)

Erik (I hope I can call him Erik…maybe Mr. Bension…nah…) has created what I consider is the greatest little app on the web, the Morale-O-Meter. I’ve found this app really helpful in keeping track of how I feel…and it’s just fun. I even added my personal “morale” to the sidebar of this blog.

So check it out…and meter your morale?!!

Today is Labor Day…and that means no labor! (At least not from 9 to 5 for me!)

• Celebrated on the first Monday of September since the 1880s
• Apparently the rest of the world celebrates something similar on May 1.
• The US doesn’t do May 1 for a few reasons:
  • Initially there were some big riots in early May in 1886. We were afraid a “Mayday” would encourage remembrance and spur future riots
  • Now we just can’t change it. I mean, let’s face it, we are America and we are pretty stubburd. Just because the other countries do it is not a good enough reason for us.

Happy Non-Riot Non-Mayday Only in the US Labor Day!