In the press conference on July 16, 2010, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs  defended their design against accusations of antenna reception issues in then new iPhone 4. Affected (actually all) customers were offered two choices: full refund within 30 days, or a free case (because they cannot make enough bumpers).

So, about 18 lawsuits against Apple in US were filed. A big money for lawyers.

In last Friday, a settlement was preliminarily approved.  According to the settlement, US iPhone 4  buyers who never exchanged their phones for a new one, and didn’t take up Apple’s offer for a free “bumper” back in 2010, can claim a new bumper, or take a $15 payout.  By April 30, about 25 million members included in the class-action lawsuit will be notified by email. The claim period will be 120 days starting from April 30, 2012.

Please note, this settlement is only for US customers.The later iPhone 4S does not have such issues due to changes in antenna design.

Apple will post details soon.

1.  Free.
2. Untethered. Once jailbroken, jailbroken forever.
3. Trusted. The team has worked on jailbreaks for years.

Oh, yes, It is GreenPois0n Absinthe, you probably tried it before. Now try the latest version (0.4) for iOS 5.0.1.

Based on all information and rumors, there will no surprise in design and OS. However, hardware boost will be significant: quad-core CPU, LTE network support, and higher resolution. Siri will probably be included–a consolation for Apple fanbois without iPhone 4S. Hopefully, they fixed the battery issues in iPhone 4S.

What else do you think will be packed in iPad 3?

This is how iOS 5.0.1 was released last Thursday.

Apple has admitted to battery-sucking bugs in its recently released iOS 5, has promised a fix, which was released last Thursday (iOS 5.0.1).

But after upgrading, very likely, you still have the same issue. On some forums, some users even reported the update simply made the situation worse.

For the time being, you can not do much if your iPhone 4S unluckily has this issue, because Apple did not release the cause of the problem, as usual. Or perhaps, they haven’t found the real causes yet.

What you need is just a jailbroken iPhone 4 or  iPod Touch 4G. By copying the app onto the device, the iPhone 4 can call up Siri and, more important, it can also connect to the Siri servers. Cool?

You can follow these instructions to install the app yourself. For copyright reasons, we are not authorized to post eh contents here.

To make Siri connect to Siri server using iPhone 4, you may follow these instructions.

It is Siri!

Siri, the most prominent feature in iPhone 4S, now has a security hole. Basically, screen lock will not prevent Siri from doing a lot of things: from sending messages to initialize a phone call on your list. Actually, except  launching apps, Siri can do almost everything when screen lock is on.

This is potentially a security hole because any complete stranger can come up to your iPhone,  and give Siri a spoken command. Unauthorized access is always a nightmare for smartphone owners.

To solve this issue? It is actually quite simple.

The cause of this security hole is due to the default setting that allows Siri to work even when screen is locked. To change this setting you simply  go to Setting-General-Passcode Lock on your iPhone 4S. Then, you can change option for Siri as OFF.  Now, Siri will no longer function when the phone screen is locked.

Free lunch!

We must admit Kindle Fire is priced correctly. With Amazon’s tons of contents, this content tablet will surely capture the largest Android tablet market. According to Maximum PC, this $200 Kindle Fire may outsell all Honeycomb tables combined.

This mans once the Kindle Fire is shipped next month, a lot of users will use the Silk Browser.Most users probably will not know how to disable the caching feature.

The Silk browser will very likely speedup your browsing speed because most of the rendering will be done by Amazon servers.

However, users should try to avoid the Silk Browser. Here are the top 4 reasons you should stay away from Silk Browser, at least, turn off the cloud rendering.

1. Your private data
Don’t believe that Amazon will not collect some sort of your browsing info. There is no free lunch. Amazon is eager to know you better to serve you more contents and products; so they need know more about you. Browsing habit or history is the most important personal data: you may hide your political view for example, but your browsing history will tell a true story.

Also, some websites may show different pages to different users for the same URL. If Amazon cloud caches your page, and serve it to other users, do you want this to happen? If the website has some special promotion for your region, will it be available for you? probably not, because the website will only see that the page is requested by Amazon, not you.

2. Security of Amazon cloud
If you browse through the Amazon cloud using Silk browser, all your password, and all sensitive info will go through Amazon servers. Do you want to take this risk just for the browsing speed?

Once Amazon servers have such data, all hackers and cybercriminals will try to get them. Are you sure Amazon can always keep such info safe? Just for your information, Amazon cloud was down several times in different regions already this year. So, it is not bullet-proof.

3. Possible advertisements.
Again, there is no free lunch. When more and more users are using the Silk browser, Amazon may put advertisements on any webpages they want. They can easily cite the cost reasons: the servers cost Amazon money in every single second.  Maybe, just like Kindle, Amazon will roll out ad-supported Silk browser. If you do not want the ad, pay more.

4. Possible blocking by webmasters
Most websites, especially big sites, serve geo-targeted ads and contents. For example, if you are in UK, when you type Google.com, you will be directed to Google UK site. If you browse websites through Silk browser,  the website will assume you are from one of the Amazon data centers. So, this may annoying webmasters/web owners.

In addition, the Silk browser will predict what you will browse next and fetch the contents before you click the link. This simply generate misleading page views for webmasters. So, webmasters may simply block Amazon IPs, and you not be able to access such sites through Silk browser.

So, stay away from Silk browser. At least, turn off anything related to the cloud rending when you receive you device next month.

Yes, you need some protections, but for your privacy, not your head!

It actually means the web proxy uses https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), instead of the normal http protocal for their web proxy. This suggests the connection between you and the proxy is secured (to certain extent), and your IT department or your ISP have no way to peer the contents you are browsing. Of course, they know the URL you requested.

This sounds secure and safer. Yes, it does. But do not overestimated the security provided. First, the connection between the http secure proxy and teh site you are browsing may still use http, not https, if the site you are browsing is not using https. Secondly, your ISP or your IT department can still track the URL you visited.

In the downside, there are small performance degradation when using https. And if you are using IE browser, some contents may not be shown properly when the site has both secured contents and normal http contents (e.g., Java script from third party).

Overall, it does make sense of using http secure proxy if you are a bit worry about your surfing privacy. But do not expect too much. If you want to try a http secure proxy, you may go to UtopianPal.com.

Siri, or Stupid?

I, just like many others, am curious about what the S stands for in the newly released iPhone 4S. Because Apple did not tell us what the hell this S stands for, we have to guess.

Probably, based on Apple’s official site, it stands for 4 Ses.

1. S for  Siri. The coolest feature in iPhone 4S is this Siri. It demonstrates Apple’s creativity of integrating technology (they bought it) into our daily life. According to Apple, Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. I am not sure whether Siri is able to flirt with guys. Hopefully, Apple will make it in the future at least.
2. S for Speed. With Dual-core A5 chip, iPhone 4S is surely faster than its predecessors, iPhone 3 and iPhone 4.
3. S for ioS 5. Apple claims iOS 5 leaps even further ahead, bringing over 200 new features to iPhone 4S. Anyway, most people only have two hands and can count up to 10 new features.
4. S for Steve. Why did they launch the product just one day before Steve Jobs passed away? Even Apple’s major competitor Samsung and Google postponed new Nexus launch as an respect to Steve Jobs. The answer is that all Apple top executives wanted to give Steve a farewell gift so that he can play iPhone 4S in the heaven.

Of course, some people interpreted the 4S as “for stupid”, especially these Android or WinPhone fanbois.

Also, you may interpreted  the S as “semi”. It seems iPhone 4S is half-baked and rushed for the market. Maybe iPhone 5 need longer time than planned and cannot catch the coming holiday season sales. So, they released this  half-baked iPhone 4.5 for the holiday season sales, especially for Apple fanbois.

Anyway, it is an upgrade for iPhone 4. Had apple named it iPhone 5, there should have been less complaints. Sometimes, people are concerning too much on  bells and whistles, rather than details..

Yes, you can just hide your face with a web proxy.

(note: this article was originally posted on TheProxyGuide, with a title “Top 5 reasons of using web proxy “. Re-post with permissions).

Of course, most our visitors are using our free anonymous web proxy service. Web proxy is quite simple. It acts as an agent between your computer and the site you want to browse. That’s it.

People are using web proxy mainly secure surfingfor the following 5 reasons:

• Bypass blocking. This blocking may be placed by your government, or your ISP, or your organization, or even your parents. The intention may be good if contents blocked are not suitable for your age or your religion. But some ISPs or organizations just subscribe some third-party services, and block sites blindly. To access such contents, the only way is to use web proxy. Arguing with your ISP to whitelist the blocked sites is usually just a waste of time.
• Surf anonymously. Netizens are more and more concerned about their privacy. If an ad pops out telling you an event in your neighborhood, and showing you the route from your home to the venue, will you be scared? Surely. This may be slightly exaggerated, but this is possible for some advertising companies already. They know your location, your gender, your education, your marriage, your income and probably even the color of your pants. Most webmasters may not collect such info, but the third-part ad-serving companies definitely collect as much as they can. Don’t talk about the rubbish laws; use anonymous proxy. Please note, this will only partially solve the problem because the web proxy have ads as well.
• Safe browsing at work. Sometimes, you may not want your IT department knows the sites you visited. Although the site is not blocked (as a matter of fact blocking is the failed attempt to control the content access), browsing it during office hours may be deemed as inappropriate, especially when you are scrutinized for promotion or layoff.
• Access contents not available for your region. The greedy content (movies, music…) providers always want to maximize their profit by restricting the availability to certain regions. Suppose you were sent to an Asian country by your company, if you want to watch an American TV show (anyway, it may be just a rubbish, which you already subscribed in US) in Asia, you have to wait, wait…, . Even the local government does not block it, the content provider blocks your access from Asia. It is not the fault of local governments or ISP, but the greediness of content providers.
• Participate anti-government activities. The Jasmine revolution in Arabian countries illustrated the powerfulness of internet. It is not surprising that some countries have tightened the the control of internet. So, if a person is involved in anti-government political activities (usually deemed as illegal in that country), he has no choice but to hide his identity as much as he can. Actually, what web proxy can hide is very limited. The law-enforcement in all countries have more advanced technologies to track the traffic through web proxy.

Of course, it is not new that a lot of ISPs and third-party rubbish internet security services block proxy sites. The good thing is that there are many new web proxy sites everyday. Building a web proxy is very simple as explained in this article.

If your web proxy is blocked , you have to change your web proxy. So, find a way to subscribe to proxy.org, or unrestrictedsurf.com to get latest proxy.

Please note, the privacy protection provided by web proxy is very minimum. Do not play with law-enforcement authorities unless you have better anonymous tools.