Supported devices:

- iPad 1 running iOS 5.1.1.

- iPad 2 running iOS 5.1.1.

- New iPad running iOS 5.1.1.

- iPhone 3GS running iOS 5.1.1.

- iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1.1.

- iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1.1.

- iPod Touch 3rd gen and 4th gen running iOS 5.1.1

Before you go for the guide you must know:

- This jailbreak is only for the supported devices mentioned above.

- There is no unlock available for iOS 5.1.1 if you jailbreak it with Absinthe 2.0 so people who rely on unlock you must not upgrade your iPhone to iOS 5.1.1. Read this for details on Ultrasn0w fixer that unlocks iOS 5.1.1.

- I will not be responsible for any loss of your device while attempting this jailbreak, do it on your own risk.

How to jailbreak iOS 5.1.1 with Absinthe 2.0:

1. Download Absinthe from the links provided below.
2. Backup all your data.
3. Run Absinthe and connect your iOS device to your Mac/PC .
4. Absinthe will show some text telling you that your device is detected and you should press the Jailbreak button to start jailbreak process.
5. The progress bar will tell you about the completion of jailbreak process. When it’s done, you will be greeted by the text saying “Done, enjoy”.

Download links:

• Absinthe2.0 MacOSX (10.5, 10.6, 10.7)
• Absinthe2.0 Windows (XP/Vista/Win7)
• Absinthe2.0 Linux (x86/x86_64)

image by ivifield

(The following apps are listed in no particular order. All of them are also available for the iPod Touch and most of them for the iPad)

1. Pandora Radio Pandora is an extremely well known app for streaming free music on your iPhone. You probably already use it. It automatically creates a customized “station” for you after you’ve looked for an artist or a song. It is absolutely personalized radio listening, absolutely free!

2. Last.fm This is another very famous, very free app. Mimicking the website, the app lets you listen to the music you like, see what your friends are listening too and find out about concerts and tour dates of your favorite artists. Last.fm recommends new music to you based on what you listen to and makes personalized radio stations for you.

3. Vevo If you’re interested in not just the audio and you’d like to see some video, Vevo is perfect for you. It has a selection of over 50,000 videos from over 11,000 artists. If you already have a Vevo account, your music videos shall be synced automatically to your iPhone. Vevo has exclusive content including video premiers and live performances. Free!

4. Spotify Another great app to listen to free music on your iPod, iPhone and iPod. You can stream the music online and listen to it offline later. You can share the music with your friends and send your tracks to Facebook and Last.fm. You can create and sync your own playlists as well. Give it a go!

5. AOL Radio Another good way to access music from your iPhone is to have access to radio. AOL Radio gives you access to over 200 radio stations. You can create your own customized radio stations. Some unique features include skipping songs, running the app in the background while listening to music and banning songs so you don’t have to listen to them again.

6. Accuradio Another great app with unlimited skips, over a 100 radio stations, customizable radio stations is Accuradio. The great thing about this app is its simplicity and ease of use. It also allows you to go through your song history now. Free!

7. Flycast Select Flycast is an app which isn’t just limited to music. Pertaining to music, Flycast has over hundreds of music channels you can go through and save them to your favorites list as you go. Flycast is free, and is the whole package with more then 2000 channels total. It also includes videos now!

8. Slacker Radio Slacker has over 150 expertly programmed radio stations which include programs with music, news, sports and much more! You can personalize specific stations and then add them to your favourites. With a premium account, you can listen to music offline!

9.  iHeart Radio Another radio app featuring more then 800 radio stations from the US. As always, you can create your own playlists and select what you’d like to listen to. This app is extremely simple to use since you can login using your Facebook account and then share the music you’re listening to on your Facebook page.

10. Band of the Day This app is for people who’d like to discover new music…EVERYDAY! I think this is a great idea, for music lovers and for new artists. Band of the Day features a new artist or band everyday featuring their music, videos, photographs etc. Free! Go check it out right now!

11. TuneIn Radio This is one of the apps that features the most radio stations…over 50,000! It is packed with features! You can play music in the background; pause, rewind or forward upto 30 minutes of live radio; save your favorite radio stations and unlike many other radio apps, TuneIn gives you a radio guide to help you find music you want to listen to! Free!

12. Daytrotter This is another great app for new artists and music lovers. Day trotter not only features new bands and upcoming artists, but features two hours of live performance from the band or artist specially done for Daytrotter at their studio! A new feature to the app is listening to Daytrotter sessions live as they are being recorded in the studio. How cool is that?

13. 8tracks Radio This is a social internet radio where you listen to mixed tapes created by music lovers all over! 8tracks features the best playlists on the web. You can follow your specific DJ, like your favorite mixes and search for whatever genre you love, it’s all there!

14.  Wolfgang’s Vault This award winning app features the biggest collection of concerts which you can access through your iPhone for free! This app runs in the background, so you can listen to music while doing something else on your phone. It has four radio stations which play hundreds of songs round the clock from concerts from 1950 to date!

15.  Jango Jango is another customizable, easy-to-use radio app. You can listen to 100′s of stations and you can create custom stations which you can share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can save stations you’d like to listen to again. As good as Pandora. Maybe better?

16. Free Internet Radio Base This app is simple and straightforward. It’s a radio app featuring dozens of different music genre’s. By BA.net. Free!

17.  Absolute Radio Absolute radio is amongst the unique radio apps that guarantee NO REPEATS during workdays! Radio has never been more fun. You can browse through what you’ve missed, what songs have recently played and share the songs you are listening too! Absolute radio also features over 50,000 podcasts. Absolute Radio’s sister apps include Absolute 60′s, 70′s, 80′s, 90′s, 00′s and Absolute Classic Rock.

18.  Saavn Music Let’s come to the Bollywood side of things, shall we? If you’re into Bollywood music, this app is perfect for you. Featuring the “world’s largest” catalog of Indian music Saavn lets you search and listen to their entire music catalog, save playlists, make your own and share them with your friends. This app has it all Bollywood!

19. Free Music downloader and player This app does exactly what it’s name suggest. You can download music from a vast variety of search engines and play this music on the go! You can later transfer this music to your computer your iPod.

20. Free Music download player This app with a similar name, does exactly the same. Search from over 500,000 free songs! Make playlists, listen to music in the background and sync the music later to your Mac/PC. That simple and free!

21. YouMusic This app has a very simple concept – music videos from YouTube. This app enables you to search through music videos on YouTube and listen to them in the background. You can make playlists and share these playlists and songs with fellow YouMusic users. As simple as the idea seems, this app is absolutely better then looking for YouTube vidoes via the app or Safari.

22.  Audiogalaxy This app is a little different then regular music streaming apps in the sense that it also allows you to stream your own music from your PC/Mac instead of just the music it has to offer itself. It is absolutely simple to setup, it allows multitasking and it lets you listen to music offline too! Free!

23.  Free Music Download Another free app to download and listen to free music on your iPhone. Does exactly what the name says. You can sync the music to your computer via iTunes.

24.  Stagedom This social music app doesn’t only let you listen to your favourite music but also lets you watch your favourite music videos. Not only this, it allows you to send messages to your favorite bands and keep in touch with fellow music lovers. The app features artists bio’s, photos and tour dates. Free for a limited time!

25. Mp3 Music Downloader Free featured in AppStore’s What’s Hot section, this app lets you download hundreds of songs for free. With the help of it’s player, you can listen to the music you have downloaded and also load your iPod music into the app. This app has an excellent music management feature that lets you organize your music into folders.

26. Radio Javan Have you ever listened to persian music? Because if you aren’t a fan already, you’ll become one. Radio Javan let’s you listen to the station on your iPhone for free. It features amazing persian tracks. Give it a shot!

27. Soundtracker Radio Featuring more then 13million free songs, Sountracker is a social music app that lets you share music with your friends. You can like friend’s music stations or create your own. Soundtracker lets you check out lyrics and concert listings as well. Free!

28.  iTuner Radio Free One of the best online radio apps, iTuner features radio stations from around the globe. 30,000 radio stations from over 80 countries can be accessed through this app. You can share your favorite stations via Facebook, Twitter, SMS and email and listen to radio in the background.

29.  Tandora Tandora Radio features a range of apps which include Tandora Indian, Telugu, Latinos, Tamil, Chinese and Japanese radio. Over 30 radio channels in each language, Tandora is slowly increasing the number of radio stations and features to each app. Airplay enabled, Tandora lets you multitask and everything is for free!

30.  Indian Radios Another app that lets you browse through almost all Indian radio stations. Back ground playing is enabled, so is live radio recording. The app lets you chat with other people using the app or shake your device to listen to a random station. Free!

Know another cool app that lets you play free music? Tell us about it in comments.

I used the Asus ZENBOOK for more than 2 weeks for tasks like writing, coding, video encoding, data transfer and playing media.

First Impression

Apple was the first one to introduce such a notebook that is super thin and and weighs less without loosing it’s performance. In 2008, Apple introduced MacBook Air and amazed the world. More than 3 years after the introduction of the ultra thin MacBook Air, we see Intel introducing the Ultrabook series. So obviously, my first impression was “Woa! It’s a MacBook Air replacement for the PC world”. Spoiled by Apple, I was not amazed by the design and size of Ultrabook. But as a PC user, I was excited to see such ultra portable machines coming from PC manufacturers.

Specifications

ASUS ZENBOOK is a powerful machine in a shiny armor. It has the finest finish as compared to other PC notebooks available in the market. I got one with the following specifications:

CPU:
Intel® Core™ i7 2677M Processor

Operating System:
Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64bit

Z-height:
3mm at the front; 9mm at the rear

Main Memory:
DDR3 1333MHz 4GB (on board)

Screen:
13.3 (16:9)

Backlight/ Resolution:
450 nits HD 1366×768

I/O port:
6 (USB2.0 / USB3.0 / audio jack / DC jack / microHDMI / miniVGA)

USB3.0:
1 Port

SSD Generation:
SATAIII SSD (256GB)

BT:
Bluetooth 4.0

Battery:
50W (7+hrs)

Mic:
MEMS MIC (Digital MIC)

Camera:
0.3M

Audio:
Bang & Olufsen ICEpower® SonicMaster
Design

Usability

The mouse pad isn’t that impressive. I was not comfortable with it. I had to switch to a wireless mouse after using the mousepad for 30 minutes. The keyboard is very comfortable. Noiseless and smooth. What else can I say? It is pretty much a perfect design for notebook usability.

Like other modern day notebooks, it comes with an option to restore operating system. The recovery system allows you to install Windows automatically if you mess up something. It is pretty easy to do. It installs some tools and utility software from ASUS with the Windows Installation. I am not a fan of crapware so I don’t like it. I like my Windows installation how Microsoft made it by default.

Performance

SSD gives an awesome boost to this machine’s performance. It is extremely fast. I also installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on it and it ran like a ray of light. Even faster than the Mac OS X in Macbook Air. Probably the fastest desktop Operation System I have ever seen. Intel has successfully managed to reduce the size without compromising the performance. Metal body gets rid of any heating issue it could have.

Portability

Of course, this is the most portable PC notebook ever. The slim design makes it fit anywhere.

Price

The price of this Ultrabook is slightly on the expensive side. It costs around $1000. That is a turn off because I would rather buy Macbook Air. Why? because better design and engineering (In my opinion). There Ultrabook should be cheap.

Pictures

I took some time to photograph this beautiful thing, here is what I managed to do:

According to the info graphic, Apple has 110 billion in cash and can afford to buy Nokia, Twitter, Adobe, etc. Its not shocking to discover that 75% of Apple’s revenues are generated by the sale of iPhones and iPads and that 30% of smartphone users in the US use iPhones. 67 million and counting iPads have been sold since their launch. I wouldn’t have  imagined that out of 600,000 apps on the Appstore, only 18% are games. A little extra peace of information says that 1 in 5 cosumers in China want a Mac. Who wouldn’t?!

Check out the infographic below.

[Via Mashable]

The first one is Trello. You create lists and add tasks to them. The tasks further have options to add to-dos, comments other things. The manager can assignment members to tasks by simple drag drop. It is ideal for projects that are more oriented toward modules. Where a task has to go through multiple modules to get done. You might fall in love with it.

Asana, that means sitting down in Sanskrit is another simple and elegant project management tool. It is more focused on task lists and priorities rather than modules (like in Trello).

Comparison

There is a thread on Quora about How does Asana compare to Trello? …The comparison is quite detailed.

The YouTuber ezratwena, who posted this video, seems to be a huge enthusiast of pets.

Users can between the existing Windows app and immersive apps with a blended experience. There seem to be a blend of HTML 5 and JavaScript Apps with the native immersive apps. It seems that Microsoft is trying hard to create a well understood connection between the OEMs, hardware manufactures and Windows 8 team to bring the flawless immersive experience.  Watch the video:

This gives a very hard time to Android tablets with version defragmentation and not-so-unique experience. In few days Apple will unveil Mac OS X Lion about which Apple says “It is getting back to the iPad” pointing to merge the experience of iPad with a Mac for something very ‘magical’. Also iOS 5 will be unveiled for iPad and iPhone that should have a prolific feature list and better experience  for getting in competition with Windows 8 Immersive Experience. About 90% computer users in the world use Windows so Windows 8 immersive experience can be a big hit if it proves to be a better experience than the experience of Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5(specially).

After few hours of tryout, I was able to run Mac OSX 10.6.6 in VMWare on Windows 7 with fully working App Store and XCode 4. Here is the step by step tutorial to install Mac OS X 10.6.6 in VMWare on Windows 7.

1) Click here to Download a zip file that contains “Snow Leopard.vmdk” That is a pre-made virtual hard disk for VMWare and “darwin_snow.iso” that helps to setup.

2) You need a modified Mac OSX 10.6.6 .iso by Hazard. It is being distributed over the torrents by the name of “SL_10.6.6i_by_Hazard.iso”.

3) Get VMWare workstation and install it.

4) Run VMWare workstation and open “Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental).vmx” from the downloaded files in the step 1.

5) Click on “Edit Virtual Machine Settings”. Under Hardware tab select “CD/DVD (IDE)” and under “Use ISO image file” browse for the “darwin_snow.iso” That you downloaded in the step 1. Start the Virtual Machine.

6) Following screen will appear.

Right click on the CD/DVD icon at the bottom right of the window and click settings. Here under “Use ISO image file” browse for SL_10.6.6i_by_Hazard.iso that you downloaded in the step 2. Press ‘C’ to boot DVD.

After few moments you will see the following screen.

Proceed with the installation procedure, select the language and click the next arrow button.

7) When the following screen appears. If the disk drive doesn’t appear under “Select the disk where you want to Install Mac OSX”, go to utilities > disk utilities and erase the disk.

Now Click the customize button. and following screen will appear.

Here check the following options:

- Under Chameleon_Boot_Loaders select the latest Chameleon boot loader.

- Under Chameleon_options select Ethernet_builtin and Graphics_Enabler.

- Check Kernel.

- Under Patches, select USBFix.

Click OK and then Install. Wait while Mac OS X 10.6.6 Installs.

When the installation is done, stop the Virtual Machine and set the iso image to Darwin_Snow.iso and start the Virtual Machine again.

9) VM boots up showing the following screen.

Press h to force hard drive boot and you should be able to run Mac OS X 10.6.6.
If it Mac OS X doesn’t boot up or VMWare give’s an error, enable ACE features (The option is available under the VM settings link button.

10) The last step is to install VMWare tools. Installing VMWare tools enables some drivers that help the guest operating system to use shared folder options and graphic adapters etc. Do do this, right click on the CD/DVD icon at the bottom right in VMWare window (make sure you are not in full screen mode) and click settings. In Use ISO image file browse for darwin_snow.iso that you downloaded in step 1.

11) Right click on the CD/DVD icon at the bottom right corner and click connect if it’s not connected.

You will see the VMWare tools icon on the desktop. Double click it to install VMWare tools. Restart if required and enjoy your hackintosh.

“VMWare Arbitrator Returned Error Code 4"

After a little bit of Googling and some common sense, I came to know the version of VMWare that I am using doesn’t support USB 3.0 or needs a driver in the guest operating system for the support.

The solution:
Connect your USB device through the port that supports USB 2.0 or less and it will work.