When I bought my car back in 2006, aux port on factory radios was still a novelty, at least in non-premium vehicles, and unfortunately for me the casette players were long gone already, so the only decent source of audio entertainment in my car was either traditional radio or CD player, which was what the radio in the car plays.. there was no way to connect other audio players like iPod, well almost no way… there were things called FM transmitters which were mostly useless for me since FCC put restrictions on the signal power of these transmitters.. Being in the NYC area meant there were no FM stations which I could use with these weak transmitters, and after going thru a few transmitters from various brands, I gave up on them. That’s when I started looking out to getting rid of the stock radio and replace it with something a little less restrictive and finally did that this past week and thought I’d share my experience which could help others out there like me. Read on for instructions and tips along with some useful pics of the process…

In my hunt for that perfect new radio, I wanted as many features as possible and be a quality radio which provides best bang for buck… I’ve been eyeing the pioneer AVH series for a couple of years but have been procrastinating mostly because I was using an XM Radio (an fm transmitter based one, but an old model which was released before the FCC restrictions were enforced so it worked pretty well) for a while, which I got rid of as I was put off by their decision to play ads on most stations I listed to and didn’t think the extra subscription was worth anymore. I almost bought the 2011 series pioneer but the bluetooth feature on that unit was only limited to phone calls and had to buy extra adapters if I needed bluetooth streaming or HD Radio. When Pioneer announced the 2012 models, I set my eyes on the AVH-P3400BH  which I thought had most everything I needed built into the unit without the need for any expensive adapters and was waiting for the right price. I finally got one couple of weeks ago when I found one for under $300 shipped on amazon market place and best of all I had a lot of amazon gift cards lying around so I couldn’t resist anymore… I have never installed a radio in a car before but I wanted to do it myself so I can save some money and satisfy my geek heart

Ok, I promise I’ll keep the rest of the article a little less about my impressions or opinions and more about getting the install done. This is obviously for installing the Pioneer AVH-P3400BH radio in a 2006 Nissan Altima without Bose radio, but the same instructions should work for most other radios (especially double din) in any 2006 or 2005 non-bose Altima.. For the ones with bose stereo, you’ll just need a different harness than what’s listed in this article, but the rest should be same… Also, if you had factory satellite radio, you’ll lose that ability unless the radio you re replacing has a that feature. Now all that being said, there’s one thing I want to get out of the way.. This task is not for everyone, and when I said it’s easy, it’s relative to other such task I did, that should in no way be generalized for everyone. So do this at your own risk, and if you are intimidated by the instructions, I’d advise you just get it installed instead. Messing with internal wiring could lead to serious accidents or costly repairs.. so consider yourself Warned!

To make the install painless, I’d recommend you collect the following tools or accessories before you start anything.

1. Metra 70-7550 Radio Wiring Harness so you don’t have to cut any wires in the car
2. Metra 95-7419 Double DIN Installation Kit to fill the gaps around the new radio
3. If you have steering wheel controls, this Metra Axxess ASWC Universal Steering Wheel Control Interface
4. Optional (not recommended for most), Automatic Parking Brake Bypass Interface to bypass parking brake restrictions.. This one is for the radio I installed, you may have to check if it’s compatible with your radio
5. A philips screw driver to remove and install radio in the car
6. A flat screw driver or any other flat tool to gently loosen the frame around radio the first time
7. A pliers or a nut driver to remove or replace the negative battery cable

If you have the accessories listed above, then your first job would be figuring out the right matches between the harness that comes with the radio and the wiring harness (point 1 above) you bought. Don’t worry, both harnesses use standard colors so most of the matching is a task for a first grader (matching colors I meant), but there are some that needs some figuring out to do. I used the instructions that came in the radio instruction manual and tried to map it with the wiring info provided on the metra harness, and the only thing that wasn’t straight forward was the blue wire from the radio harness (labelled radio control acc) had to be connected to plain blue antenna power on the metra harness. I first connected it to the power amp or something, the other blue cable on the metra and after the install in car, I noticed that the antenna was very weak.. so If you are following my instructions, I just saved you some valuable time :). The other thing which I struggled a bit to figure out was the fact that I didn’t know that there was a separate plug for the steering wheel controls and was trying to figure out where the axxess control adapter wiring goes. Oh btw, that adapter harness has a whole lot of wires but just follow the instructions provided in the vehicle specific instructions found here @ axxessonline.com. Most of the wires on the harness are not used for the Altima. All these wirings can be done form the comfort of your home as these harnesses are not tied to anything.. I used a soldering iron and soldered the joints together and then taped up the exposed metra portions with an electric tape and I recommend the same so the connections are strong enough that they don’t come apart over time and the tape prevents any short circuit and prevent any nasty fire/accidents. Once all the connections are done, it’s time to get everything installed in the car.

[easyrotator]erc_38_1335129632[/easyrotator]

Before you start any taking apart in the car, I highly recommend that you remove the negative battery terminal from the battery (as shown in the gallery below) and rest it on any plastic portion of the car. I can’t warn you enough here, please don’t touch any metal portion of the battery or the cable unless you love to be electrocuted. Once the negative terminal of the battery is off the hook, you can go ahead and undo the dash around the radio portion as seen in the photos in gallery. I think the pictures are self explanatory but post your questions in comments below and I will try to anser them. It’s pretty easy to get the first plastic frame around the AC controls out, just place your fingers int he gap at the bottom and just pull it a little. Once that’s off, you need to unscrew the 4 screws that hold the AC controls in place (as seen in pic ), you don’t need to unplug this completely and can just rest it down in the dash and work on getting the plastic frame around the radio off by pulling at the bottom (as shown in pic again). If it’s your first time, you may have to use the flat tool to loosen it a bit around the frame by poking the tool gently into the crease between the frame and the rest of the dash and very gently try to undo it.. everything here is fit in place by means of plastic hooks that lock in, so be gentle to avoid breaking any of those plastic parts.. once this frame is removed, you will see the factory radio is held in place by 4 screws.. get them removed and you can pull the radio out, exposing the connections on the back which you need to undo one at a time. Be careful while pulling these plugs off the back, DO NOT USE the wires to pull them off, I know it’s tempting and seems a lot easier to do it that way. Try using your flat screwdriver to push down on the plastic lock on the plugs and try to gently separate them out.  There should be 3 white plugs and one black (antenna) plug in total. Once you get them all apart, you are free to take your factory radio out. Wait, don’t trash it yet, if that’s your plan for the factory radio :).  You will need the metal plates that are screwed to the radio on its sides. You need to take them out and use it on the new radio. I had to use the screws provided by pioneer to secure this metal plate on the new radio as the factory screws didn’t fit in the pioneer unit. Once that’s in place, it’s just a matter of plugging in all the adapters to the new shiny radio. Just to summarize, you’ll have to plug in the factory antenna adapter in it’s corresponding port on the new radio, the axxess steering wheel adapter plug in the right port on radio (the bottom right corner plug on the pionner radio when you are looking at the back of the unit), and the new radio harness plug into it’s port. Also, in my case, I had to ground all the black (our ground cables) by connecting them to any metal portaion of the car interior. The steel frame that supports the radio is a good choice. Make sure this connection is relatively strong enough so it doesn’t come apart while driving. Oh, the steering wheel adapter wiring had to be tapped into the third plug which I couldn’t find a dediated harness to plug into,  so I had to make tiny cuts on the plastic insulation on these cables to connect the adapter’s wires and tape them up in the car. Be careful if you are doing the same while cutting the plastic insulation, you do not want to cut the wires unless you don’t care for connecting your factory radio back. Alternatively you can buy those nice plastic adapter tools called posi-tap, so you don’t have to mess with cutting wires in this case.

Once you had all the connections in place, rest the new radio in the car but don’t screw it all up yet, as we want to test everything and more importantly make sure the steering wheel adapter programmed fine. So now, you should connect that cable you took apart from the battery and turn the ignition to ON position (or ACC position), and press and hold the volume up button on the steering wheel to program the axxess adapter. If everything went well, the adapter will start controlling your radio after a few seconds. If the adapter doesn’t control your adapter, then you need to monitor the led on the adapter and use the metra troubleshooting guide. If it didn’t work, you have most likely not held the volume up button on time or long enough.. just reset the adapter by pushing the reset button with a paper clip or something and repeat the step. In my case, it took a little while but it worked the first time. Now you can test the radio a little bit and if everthing’s good, turn off the ignition and put everyting back again (just do the opposite of what you did when you took everyting apart). That’s it, you got your flashy new radio in place of the very restrictive factory radio. Enjoy your new radio

Just got myself access to Google+ and I am still taking a look a this all new attempt @ social networking from Google (after failed? Wave, and not so popular Buzz). So far my first impressions are in line with ll the hype on most tech blogs, but only time will tell if it’s going to catch on or not, after all, social media lives and dies with social participation, or lack there of…

While I am trying this cool looking product from google, I can understand the urge for geeks like me to try the latest, so I am willing to spread some invites. Just drop a comment below and will try to send some out.

pal

Optical media is fast becoming obsolete, there’s no denying that. If you are in denial, then you probably didn’t experience the fate of then ubiquitous floppy drives, or maybe you are one of those few who still rely quite a lot on optical discs. Well my point is, if you don’t find ourself in need of that DVD drive in your laptop, especially on a Macbook, where empty real estate is hard to find (see pics of the internals) and wish you had more HDD space, then read on to find out how you can swap that DVD drive for a second HDD… Firstly, I want to make it clear that this task will need you to open up your laptop and expose all the delicate internals. If you are not the type who has opened up electronic goods and put it all back together (albeit with step by step instructions), then I highly recommend you stop right here, and maybe just get an external drive for your needs. Are you still with me? Well then, come along

I did this on my late 2006 non-unibody macbook pro, which had the 6x super drive (PATA), but the same can be done with any notebook. Just make sure you get the right caddy (the dvd drive like case which holds the HDD) for your laptop and try to find proper instructions to get to your DVD/CD drive in a non destructive way. If you are with a mac, I highly recommend www.ifixit.com for their wonderful step by step instructions with key photos. They have guides for a lot of gadgets including game consoles, PCs, phones and even cameras. In my case, I followed their instructions listed here. Please make sure that you take precautions to deactivate any static on you by touching metal surface and if possible avoid touching any circuitry.

So here’s what you will need.

• An optical drive enclosure with PATA to SATA converter chip to host the second hdd. I bought this one from ebay for $18 : HDD Caddy (Amazingly delivered in 5 days from china)
  My version of MBP had a PATA optical drive, so I had to pick this, but if yours supports a SATA drive, then you need to pick the SATA based caddy (usually available for a buck or two cheaper).
• A SATA 2.5″ hard disk drive. I bought a 500gb WD Caviar blue, but it’s up to you. Just be aware that there are two kinds of these 2.5″ drive, the usual 7mm thick drives that fit in most laptops and then there are the fatter 9mm thick drives which only fit in desktop replacement kind of laptops (the fat ones). For me, I needed a 7mm one.
• For my Macbook pro, I needed a T6 torx screwdriver and a 00 sized Phillips screwdriver.. but this info is depends on your machine. If you find instructions on iFixit, they list the tools needed as well
• Some time and patience, and of course the skill

The most significant part of the instructions for this article would be available on iFixit’s website referred above. That involves opening up your laptop to get to the optical drive, and slowly and carefully removing the drive form the machine. But assuming you were able to get to it, the rest should be a walk in the part (relatively).

• Place the new 2.5″ hdd in the hard disk cavity on the optibay or hdd caddy.  Make sure you align the connectors with the drive carefully before you push the drive in to fix it to the connector. I didn’t use any other means of securing the drive to the caddy, but I guess that wasn’t needed as there wouldn’t be any room inside the laptop once everything is put in place and sealed for the drive to wobble or anything.
• Now, carefully pull the connector ribbon from the just removed optical drive (might not be relevant on other laptops) and place that on the caddy and then place the caddy in the slot where the optical drive was sitting. On my Macbook pro, I had to remove a plastic tab from one end of the caddy (see pictures below) before the caddy sat flush int he slot. Without that, I wasn’t able to secure the palm rest back on. If something like this were to occur on your laptop, please use your judgement before you go applying all your strength  to get things in order or you could break something and make this all a nightmare.
• Don’t forget to secure the caddy to the frame using the same screws that were used for the original optical drive and connect the connector ribbon to the motherboard. After that just follow iFixit’s instructions (or whatever you followed earlier) in reverse to put it all back.

That’s it really, you should now have a dual hdd setup on your laptop. Your laptop should recognize the second hard drive just like it did the first one, and then you can use your favorite software to partition and format it for your use. I did it all to get me more space for my pictures and videos which I have been shooting a lot lately but there are even more compelling reasons to do this. For instance you could setup your two HDDs in RAID 0 for improved performance or any other RAID configurations (as long as it needs only two discs) which wouldn’t have been possible with a single hdd.

Here are a couple more pics of the second hard drive inside my Macbook pro. One showing the plastic piece that I had to remove from the caddy before I could install it in my laptop.

Hope this post helped

Well that was 2010, and there were no real competitors to iPad. There were some attempts like the crunch pad (JooJoo) which showed some promise but well, what can I say, you probably barely heard about it. Then there was that much awaited HP slate with windows 7 that so many people were holding off for, well, it never really saw the light of the day yet.. There was another promising concept called Adam, well, after numerous delays it just started shipping in 2011 and has it’s share of problems. the only real successful (if we can call that) was the Samsung Galaxy tab running andrioid 2.x which was really meant for phones and not optimized for the big screen. But 2011? well it looks like the competition is really heating up for real this time… here are some nice options I am looking forward to this year.

First amongst the new tablet’s from a reputed company that shows real promise is RIM’s Blackberry Playbook. It’s a 7″ version unlike most others but RIM has been promising everything you can ask for at this moment.  Specs wise, it has 1Ghz dual core processor, 1GB of RAM (4 times that of current iPad), dual cameras with 1080p video recording, hdmi out and myriad of other specs considered standard on a 2011 device. On the software front, they are redoing the OS from scratch presumably the fruit of their recent aquisition QNX. It supports multitasking, HTML5 and even flash. All in all, it looks very promising if it’s not delayed and is priced right. Also, a lot depends on the king of developers and apps RIM can attract on to this platform. As for pricing, RIM is going to be really aggressive is the belief. Rumor has it that cheapest version starts under $500 here in the USA.

The next announcement in the tablet sector which I think will probably be the sales king behind iPad (or dare I say, might beat iPad sales) was from Google (with Motorola) about their tablet oriented OS update to the Android, ver 3.0 codenamed Honeycomb. The Google experience device for the tablets was a model from Motorola named Xoom. Moto started promoting it heavily even before even releasing much information about the tablet, but since then we know pretty much everything about it. It sounds impressive on the specs front and Honeycomb looks exciting too. A few more tablet PCs were announced at the MWC today (Feb-13th) including one from Samsung with almost similar specs. Basically it looks like Honeycomb tablets all have a dual core processor 1ghz or better, 1gb RAM, 1280×800 10″ screen, dual cameras and the usual stuff. On the software front, Honeycomb looks a lot more refined and makes use of the added screen real estate very well. It supports flash as well if that’s your thing. And android being the second most popular modern smart mobile OS, there’s no shortage of Apps. Pricing for the XOOM is rumored to start at $799 which seems pricey and might be factor if it fails to succeed, but then again the beauty of Android is that it won’t be just one device, so here’s hoping that other will price their more competitively.

Now the last major announcement in this segment comes from HP, which just made the much anticipated follow up to it’s acquisition of Palm and WebOS. They are releasing a pair of smart phones and a tablet PC running WebOS. They are calling the tablet HP Touchpad. It boasts a 9.7″ (1024×768) screen and weighs 1.6lbs (heaviest among the bunch, hair heavier than the metal clad iPad 1). Other tech specs include a front facing camera for video chat, 1.2gh dual core CPU, 1GB RAM and other usual stuff which is pretty much the standard for 2011. On the software side, WebOS 3.0 will be powering this device which has been updated to make use of the bigger screen and as before it looks gorgeous. Here’s hoping that HP with it’s vast manufacturing and retail expertise will succeed where Palm failed and manages to attract more developers. Rumors suggest that the pricing start at $699 here in the US which might be asking for a bit much.

The original iPad was announced over a year ago and has been out for almost a year, so obviously all the competition is really going to compete with iPad 2, which is rumored to be released any time now which probably translates to within a month. And the rumor mill has pretty much nailed the specs and so far it appears that it too will boast a dual core CPU running 1.2 ghz, 512 or 1 ghz ram, dual cameras and supposedly decreased thickness and weight….

2011, it’s an exciting year for tablet PCs, who knows if the tablet PCs are going to still sizzle into next year or something else will be all the rave. But for now, if you are looking for a tablet PC, 2011 should be the year where you should be happy to let go of your Benjamins

I have a Windows PC with shared drives which I regularly use from my Macbook Pro, and recently I have been annoyed as hell with a pesky problem with various iLife apps on my mac.. Every time I launch iMovie, iWeb, iDVD or sometimes iPhoto, even before they finish loading they try to connect to my shared drives on my desktop. If i already had the share available, I wouldn’t see any problem but when the PC is turned off or if I am away from my home network I see this stupid “Connection Failed” dialog and the only action available for me is to click the ok button to dismiss the dialog. But it doesn’t stop there.. this dialog keeps appearing again shortly after I dismissed it. Also, if you have the share available in the network but didn’t have the password stored in keychain you may see a different dialog asking for your credentials to access the shared drive.

I can understand that I may have accessed some media from the shared drive earlier and the apps want to load it, but I wish they weren’t that stupid that they keep trying to annoy the hell out of the user trying to warn me of that stupid error endlessly. So finally I wanted to fix it for good and found the solution. Turns out, it’s pretty simple. Just delete the following file, or if you are nervous about deleting the files that you don’t know about, just drag it on to desktop and launch the applications.. the error should be gone.

“~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iApps.plist”

I know a lot of people must have already faced this issue and probably found the solution, but it took me quite a bit of time to find it myself.. so hope this post helps some in finding the solution quicker.

pal

UPDATE: Looks like the solution above only clears the error until you try to access the media with the problem again :(….. in my case my iphoto library (which was over 130GB) had a link to some photos on my PC.. had to do it the hard way in my case to get rid of the problem for good….. Apple, fix it already.. at least show the error one damn time and get it over with.

If you are among the numerous past xbox owners burnt by the infamous RROD and were holding out to replace the box with the new re-designed XBox 360 S, chances are, you have a lot of content on your old xbox which you want to transfer to you new shiny xbox.

Ideally, you should have been able to just connect your old xbox the new one and transfer your content, but that requires an official “Xbox 360 hard drive data migration transfer kit” (seriously, that’s the full name)… Microsoft being greedy as always, doesn’t include this cable in the new Xbox and wants you to pay $15 + shipping for it.. not a bad price, but considering you only need it once and that is because of Microsoft’s decision to change the HDD design in the new console (for good reasons) and having just forked out a good $300 on the new console, it is ridiculous to pay that kind of money to MS again.. so if you are still with me, not all is gloomy.. read on for a couple of free solutions…

First, either of the two solutions I am going to talk about here will require that you have access to a USB thumb drive. In case your mind is still set on the data transfer kit and are thinking of contact xbox support to see if they can send you a free one (like they used to last year), take my advise and don’t even bother… I was on phone for over an hour talking to level 1, then level 2 and then finally the top level, level 3 support and all I got was a lame advise to go and try in a B&M Store to see if they will let me use their display xbox to hook up my HDD…

If you are still reading, then here’s the simpler approach of the two… do you have a friend or neighbor who would let you use their original model xbox? If so, then just take your HDD and a USB thumb drive and connect them both to their xbox, and then in system settings –> storage, you’ll see the options to transfer the content for the hdd to thumb drive… if you don’t have the options in there, make sure you update the system software on the xbox…. once you are done transferring content to the usb drive, just connect that usb drive to your new XBox 360 S and do the reverse… depending on the size of your content and the thumb drive, you might have to repeat until you transfer all your content… btw, don’t bother about game installs, you install them again and content you bought on xbox live can be re-downloaded… Also, don’t forget to transfer the licenses to your new xbox. Visit the following site for instructions:http://www.xbox.com/en-us/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration

Ok, you are still with me.. hmm, so that option 1 wasn’t an option for you… well you are not alone.. that was the case with me too. So here’s the option 2. Not as easy or straight forward as Option 1 or ideal solution, but it works and it doesn’t cost you a dime. Here’s how it goes… btw, if you are not good at or comfortable with taking things apart and putting them back again, this might not a wise solution for you. You have been warned!
Even though new Xbox is using another proprietary HDD format (at least from the looks of it), it is actually a step closer to using the standard drives than the old one did.. the new slick looking HDD cartridge is just a casing for the standard 2.5″ SATA drive like the one used in the old HDD case, but this time, the connectors are the standard sata connectors, which is the key here… So all you have to do is to pop open the HDD from your old xbox HDD case. Not sure of how to do it? Just carefully follow these instructions:  http://www.xbox-scene.com/tutorials-xbox360/open-xbox360-hdd-drive.php
Now that you have the standard 2.5″ SATA HDD from your old xbox, just pull the HDD cartridge from the bottom (or right side, depends on how you place you xbox) of the new Xbox 360 S and very carefully try to insert the old HDD into the slot. Take your time and make sure you are seeing the SATA connectors inside the new xbox and you have aligned the pins on HDD with the slot in the xbox, and gently press it into place. Again, be very careful here, you don’t want to break your brand new xbox trying to save your 20 bucks….

Ok, so you did it… you have your old HDD in the new xbox.. just power on the new console and it should just work with your old hdd like it was it’s original drive… ignore any alerts you see about the license or any thing and head on straight to the system settings –> storage and plug in the usb drive and transfer all your content to the usb drive. Once done, power off the console and unplug it and carefully remove the loose HDD from the bottom. You may have to use a pliers if you can’t get the grip to hold it with your fingers, but please be gentle. then you just insert the new cartridge in place and transfer content from the USB drive to the new HDD… That’s it really… you did it. Now go enjoy… and maybe join me on live. You’ll most like see coolpal playing MW2, he could use your help kicking some ass….

UPDATE:
Now that it’s been a while since the new Xbox has been out, the sellers from China already came out with authentic looking replacement cases for the HDD bay.. so you can buy something like this: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.48653 and make this a permanent solution without any fear of knocking the HDD off while moving the xbox. This makes the new 4GB slim a lot more value for money.

pal

Within 24 hours of apple releasing the Gold Master (final) version of iOS 4 (new name for iPhone OS 4), the hacker community, or in this case, just one guy (or gal?) has released patches to the Pwnage Tool 3.1.5 to support this new OS… and naturally I had to try it out

I followed the instructions posted on redmondpie.com here: http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-jailbreak-ios-4.0-with-pwnagetool/ which were pretty clear and precise, but due to a couple of mistakes in the instructions posted there, Cydia wasn’t working, but otherwise everything else was good and my base-band was still intact. However, after some searching around I found the problems that caused the cydia failure and tried to correct them and succeeded. Here I am posting a concise  how-to for anyone interested.

Warning: This stuff might turn your beloved iPhone into an expensive paper weight if things go wrong, and this method doesn’t work on most iPhones, so please don’t attempt this if you have never done this before and haven’t heard most of the stuff stated here. In case you are going to follow these steps, please proceed only after you read thru the entire instructions.

These instructions work only on iPhone 3Gs with 5.11.07 or earlier base-band and has already been jail broken by anything other than spirit jail break!!! Also, this is only a jail break, not unlock, so don’t attempt this if you rely on a incompatible carrier’s SIM.

Now that you have been warned, I assume you are a brave soul or just curious.. either way, here’s how it goes… First, here’s the list of things you’ll need to proceed.

1. Download Pwnage Tool 3.1.5 from here or here or just Google it.
2. Download the new firmware bundle for Pwnage tool by msft.guy from here
3. Download the updated Cydia files from here (data.tar)
4. Get your iOS 4 GM build that you got at WWDC along with iTunes 9.2 beta

Now it’s best to copy all the files to a folder or some place like desktop so it’s easy to manage. Also, for item 4, if you aren’t fortunate enough to be @ WWDC, you could ask your friends online.. Google’ll do

Now here’re the steps.. pay close attention to each.

Step 1: Mount the .dmg you got from step 1 and copy the “PwnageTool” to your folder of choice or desktop (I’ll assume desktop from now on).

Step 2: Extract the file from item 2 and rename the file to “iPhone2,1_4.0_8A293.bundle” (renaming might not be necessary, but I did it anyway). Now right-click the PwnageTool file on desktop and choose “Show Package Contents”, then browse to “Contents\Resources\FirmwareBundles\” and place the .bundle file there.

Step 3: From the same finder window, you can navigate to “Contents/Resources/CustomPackages/” then right-click CydiaInstaller.bundle and choose show package contents and browse to the “files” folder. Now copy the data.tar file (item 3) into the files folder.

Step 4: Open a terminal window and browse to the files folder in step 3. Yoy can type “cd ” then drag the files folder into the terminal. From files folder issue the following command.. “tax xvPf data.tar”. Pay attention to the upper case ‘P’.

Step 5: You are almost there.. well, actually there :)… now just launch the update PwnageTool app and follow the instructions.. it’s the usual process from here.. create the custom firmware like you always do..

Step 6: Launch itunes 9.2 and use chose restore while pressing left ‘alt’ key and choose the custom firmware to restore…. that’s it. You should be good, hopefully!

The changes I made to the instructions on redmondpie.com is in step 2 and step 3. I now have iOS 4 with Cydia working, but my favorite MyWi doesn’t work and it is even crashing the SpringBoard, so I had to uninstall it. SBSettings doesn’t seem to work either. I am still playing around with it, but the os itself seems to be fast and stable.

Hope it helps someone….
Pal

I am a sucker for new software, especially when it’s free. I briefly tried the Moblin 2 when Intel released the first beta last year and liked the UI and the way it worked on the tiny netbook screen. Moblin, short for Mobile Linux, was supposedly built with netbooks and nettops in mind and seemed pretty and fun but thou basic functionality all worked right out of the box, but a lot of hardware was still not working at the time and I quickly forgot about it… well, almost forgot.. until Meego 1.0 was released.

Meego is the combination of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo projects, tho I am still not sure how they came up with the name ‘Meego’. Meego is aimed at providing a fast and trendy OS to low powered internet devices like netbooks, MIDs, connected TVs and even car Infotainment, but as of this posting only netbook version was officially released. There were two versions of the release, one which requires you to accept Google’s EULA. Downloading and installing Meego was a breeze like most other linux distros these days, but should you need assistance, Meego has a pretty straight forward wiki post here: http://meego.com/devices/netbook/installing-meego-your-netbook ..In my case, I prepared a bootable thumb drive with the Meego disk image on Mac using bit copy and booted off the thumb drive on Samsung NC10.

I haven’t completely installed Meego to the HDD yet as I already have Windows 7, XP and Ubuntu NR installed and to install Meego, I’ll have to replace one of the existing OS so I wanted to try it out some more to see if It will actually replace any of these on my netbook. So far, It’s been running extremely well from the thumb drive, and here are my initial (or first) impressions..

• It looks almost exactly like Moblin 2.0… at least that’s how I remember Moblin to be
• Most of the hardware was working out of the box including special keys like volume up/down, but the brightness adjustments don’t work yet
• The UI is pretty slick and I think there are a few enhancements I noticed like auto hiding dock, zones etc.,
• It synced well with my google account for email, calendar, contacts etc., and also integrates well with twitter
• The included Chrome browser is pretty fast even with multiple tabs open
• Best of all, the whole UI feels right at home on the tiny (by laptop standards) 10″ screen, and is a real pleasure to use

I am really liking the way these linux projects are evolving and that can only mean one thing… awesome things are on the horizon.. imagine Microsoft trying to 1 up Meego.. not like windows 7 is bad on netbooks, but clearly it’s not meant for netbooks and tiny internet devices.. overall, my first impressions of Meego are really positive. Now get these things on car Infotainments already… those are really lagging behind on technology curve.

pal

Here are some more screenshots of Meego on NC10.

Well, like anybody else (or almost anybody else), I googled for the behavior hoping to find a solution as I thought it must be a pretty common thing and a lot of people already faced and fixed this issue, but to my surprise, I haven’t found a single result which helped me.. then again, it could be that I am sucking at my google skills lately. So anyway, after a few such encounters, I was determined to solve this problem. I also had google app installed on the phone, and noticed that the search results in the app were working just fine (I configured the google app to open results in the app itself instead of launching safari) and it was just the safari browser that was having this problem. When I see this error page, I noticed the URL was pretty long which was pointing to m.google.com with query parameters having the info to forward the request to the appropriate URL which seemed right to me, so I knew the browser was trying to reach the correct URL but for some reason the m.google.com was just responding with 404.

The settings screen for safari

Then it occurred to me, stop thinking like a geek web developer and think like a common tech aware person… so, I headed to the settings app and went on to the safari settings (see pic), and tried the “Clear History” and “Clear Cookies”. Didn’t want to clear cache as gmail had quite a bit of data cached and didn’t want clear it unless absolutely necessary. And that’s it, it solved the issue :)…. but I think “Clear Cookies” is what probably did it. So there it is folks, if you ever face the same problem, try that. Or if you know of a better solution or have more knowledge of why this happens in the first place, please let me know in the comments.