iPhone 3G Jailbreak/Unlock

This tutorial is now obsolete ! Read about Jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone 3G with the new 3.0 firmware !

Wondering what the "Iphone 3G Jailbreak/Unlocking" is and how to do it !? Read on…

I recently bought an Apple iPhone 3G with the sole intention of jailbreaking it because in my country it is only available through Orange and I am not one of their subscribers.

First of all, you will find lots of interesting information at the iPhone Dev-Team’s official blog.

A little dictionary first:

- jailbreak / jailbreaking: the process of cracking your iPhone’s firmware with the purpose of allowing third party apps to be installed;

- pwn / pwning: slang for "own/owning"; it’s the same thing as "jailbreaking";

- Cydia / Installer: two third-party installers used for updating your iPhone with your favorite third-party app;

- unlocking: the process of cracking your iPhone’s baseband in order to allow any SIM card to be installed (usually the iPhone’s come locked into AT/T or in my country’s case Orange);

- baseband: the iPhone modem’s firmware;

- firmware: a software which runs on devices (in our case on the iPhone) that is similar to an operating system for personal computers (Windows, MacOs, Linux, BSD etc)

There are a few tools available out there, most of them for Mac, but Windows versions are emerging as I am writing this:

- PwnageTool: used for upgrading the iPhone’s firmware while preserving the original installed baseband (the baseband is the iPhone modem’s firmware); you have to use this instead of iTunes if you have a jailbroken phone, if you want to be able to use the iPhone in the future;

- QuickPwn: if you have a running iPhone but you want to install third party apps, this is the tool for you; it will jailbreak your iPhone and install Cydia and Installer onto it;

- YellowSn0w: used for unlocking the iPhone 3G (this first came out on January 1st 2009); it will make any SIM card work with the iPhone; it is a new application (it is still in beta phase) and still has some bugs - I succeeded in using it to unlock my iPhone for Vodafone Romania;

This is all you need to know in short for jailbreaking your iPhone 3G.

Now let me detail a few steps which you have to take in order to jailbreak a locked original iPhone 3G:

1. If your  iPhone is not activated (you get a "Emergency calls only" message), you have to insert a valid SIM card into it and connect it with iTunes; follow the steps there and your iPhone will become activated;
2. Check out your iPhone’s firmware and baseband: go to Settings->General->About; you have to see there Version 2.2 and Modem Firmware 2.28.00; at the time of this writing the unlock tool (YellowSn0w) only works with this baseband version);
3. If your versions are not 2.2 / 2.28.00 you have to Update your iPhone through iTunes (connect the iPhone 3G to your Mac or PC, wait until it appears left on the Devices menu, click on it and click Update in the middle of the screen - right now the latest firmware is 2.2, but this will change; if this is the case when you are reading this post, then you will have to update to 2.2 through PwnageTool; you can read more about this on iClarified);
4. use QuickPwn to jailbreak your iPhone 3G; you will find a tutorial for QuickPwn(Windows) on iClarified and the process is similar on the Mac
5. You will now have a jailbroken but locked iPhone; put your SIM card into the iPhone 3G, if you have network signal (your carrier shows up at the top left of the screen and you can make calls) stop here!… it means you either had an unlocked iPhone or you are using the original carrier your iPhone was locked onto;
6. On your iPhone, go to Cydia->Manage->Sources and add "apt9.yellowsn0w.com"; click on "Search" and type in "yellowsn0w" (the last o is a zero!); Install it !
7. Now install MobileTerminal and BossPrefs, if you haven’t already done so (also available through Cydia, you can search for them there)
8. Fire up Mobile Terminal and type in "yellowsn0w -h"; it will show you all the different parameters you can give to YellowSn0w; depending on your iPhone 3G version/ GSM carrier / SIM card, one of the options there will do the job (I’d go with "yellowsn0w" first and then "yellowsn0w -q", "yellowsn0w -a", "yellowsn0w -s" and other options that might be there (it is possible the Dev-Team will add more options in the future);
9. After you find the option the gives no error (you can expect the usual "Resource busy" error) you will have to go to BossPrefs->Power button at the bottom of the screen->Restart; if after the restart, your network carrier isn’t showing up, try taking out your SIM, waiting around 30 seconds then reinserting it (this works for SIM cards that have carrier menu’s/services on them); more info about YellowSn0w on the Dev-Team blog and on this Hackintosh thread) 

This should do it for your iPhone 3G ! If you still have problems, drop me a comment and I will help you as much as I know and can !

Magento-Google Website Optimizer Integration

I just read about this on Search Engine Watch.

It seems that as of December 1st, Magento has integrated their product with the Google Optimizer.

If you think testing is not so important… think again ! These days everybody who’s anybody seems to invest time and money into usability testing and Google’s solution is a free and easy one to use.

Due to my job I’ve had contact with a number of e-commerce platforms like: OScommerce, zen cart, magento and others probably not worth mentioning. From all the solutions I used and customized, I like Magento best as it really shows they put time into creating a solid solution.

What’s your take on this ?

A new Google tool: Google search-based keyword tool

Google has launched a new keyword tool that can be found at http://google.com/sktool/.

Basically you input a website or webpage and some keywords you find relevant and the tool output relevant data like:

• Volume of monthly searches
• Advertiser competition
• Suggested bid
• If the keywords you entered were found on the website/webpage

Also you can filter by website category, branded or unbranded keywords and where the keyword appears: in keyword / in page / both.

Of course you can do all sorts of usefull stuff to the data like sorting and exporting, things we’ve come used to getting from Google over the years.

One more usefull thing is that you can click on a small "Google Insights" logo near every keyword and you will see the Google Trends data for that particular keyword.