An overview of the jailbreak & tethering process:

• First, I used this guild to jailbreak my iPhone (with 3.1.2 firmware) and enable internet connection tethering. It took about 5 minutes total.  http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/11/03/tutorial-how-to-tether-on-an-iphone-3g-or-3gs-running-os-3-1-2/
• I then made a PayPal donation to blackra1n.com (the app that does the jailbreaking) because I couldn’t believe how easy the process was.
• I downloaded the Cydia app installer from within the Blackra1n app.

Essential Cydia Apps:

Here are the Cydia apps that I think are essential. I’d love to see Apple duplicate the functionality they provide. (In fact, Google Android phone already give most of this functionality.) Search for these apps by name within Cydia:

• SBSettings: Quickly turn Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, Airplane mode on or off. It’s accessed by swiping your finger along the top of the screen (from the carrier logo on the left to the battery icon on the right.)
• WinterBoard: This allows complete re-theming of the iPhone user interface. I happen to like the default look, but I wanted to display a weather icon in my status bar. This program is a prerequisite for any other apps that modify icons, so install it ASAP. (I found out the hard way and made my iPhone unbootable. I had to restore from backup using iTunes because I tried to use features that required Winterboard but it wasn’t installed.)
• Backgrounder:  Allows apps to run apps in the background so you can switch to other apps. This is especially useful for GPS applications. While the app you want to run in the background is running, hold the Home button for 2 seconds. A pop-up will confirm that it’s now enabled to continually run in the background. When you click the Home button, you can open other apps, and the backgrounded app keeps running.
• WeatherIcon: Displays the current temperature and icon in the top status bar and also on the application icon of your favorite weather app. I set it to update conditions every 30 minutes instead of every 1 minute to conserve battery. Note: By itself, the app gives the text for temperature. To get the icon, WinterBoard and the Klear Weather Icon Theme (or Katra-based Weather Icon Theme) are required – but be sure to install WinterBoard first!
• Lock Calendar: It turns the lock screen into something useful: a list of all upcoming calendar entries.
• GV Mobile: If you use Google Voice, this is currently the only way to get an application on your phone. I was available through the iTunes App Store but has been since removed.
• Other apps: AutoSilent to automatically silence the ringer during meetings based on calendar entries and time of day. InSpell for red underlining misspelled words in all applications. MyWi for tethering / 3G connection sharing.  Kirkae for switching between running/backgrounded programs.

Do you think Apple will add these features in the next iPhone update? Are there any essential Cydia apps I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments.

Update 11-Dec-2009: TheAppleBlog just posted a list of 10 must-have jailbreak apps and there are some that I’d missed. Check out their list of 10 must-have jailbreak apps.

Update 22-Jan-2010: Unfortunately, my iPhone 3Gs locked-up and went into a reboot loop.  I had to put it into recovery mode and restore from backup to get it working again. I feel that it’s related to jailbreaking, because the lockup happened as soon as I hit the button to turn on the screen. It froze before I could unlock it, but it displayed the “Searching…” for network status at the top left (which I frequently noticed after jailbreaking) and I was in an area with strong coverage. I’m convinced that the network dropouts, and also very poor EDGE network performance, were from jailbreaking. So I’m giving up on the modified carrier settings and on any apps that seem to “dig deep” into the iPhone operating system, like SBSettings, WinterBoard, and InSpell.

I scoured various reviews and picked the MSI Wind with the 10″ screen, 160GB hard drive, 6-cell battery, and bluetooth. Here’s why I picked it over the competition:

• I passed on the Lenovo Ideapad S10 because it only had a 3-cell battery and a poorly-reviewed keyboard.
• The HP Mini 1000 was a bit more expensive and sacrificed too much performance to get the slightly smaller size; I didn’t like the tiny and slow iPod-sized hard drive and it doesn’t have a 6-cell battery option.
• The Asus Eee PC 1000H was my second choice and is largely identical to the Wind, but I ultimately picked the MSI due to better Mac OS X compatibility should I choose to purchase and install that OS. It also has a better keyboard layout, although the Asus has a larger trackpad that supports multi-touch.

The best part is the price. $337 after applying the Live.com 25% cashback from Ebay. I can’t believe how inexpensively laptops have become.

Of course, I had to do an upgrade. More memory is always better and I purchased an additional 1GB of Crucial Memory for $13 shipped from Newegg.

More details on my experiences with the MSI Netbook are to follow.

This is such a good deal that I’ve I installed the Live.com search Add-on for Firefox and replaced Google as the default search engine.  I’ve found the search results to be just as useful as the Google results.  Live.com earned bought my loyalty.

Here are the details:

This discount applies only to buy-it-now items purchased with PayPal on Ebay.

Go to http://www.live.com and search for something like “wii”.

You should see (at the top of the page in the Ad area) something that says “Live Search cashback” and an Ebay link and the 25% off offer.  Click the Link.

Once on Ebay, search for whatever you want (Wii, Nikon D90, MSI Wind, Sonos ZP90, etc.) and filter by “buy-it-now” items.  Purchase the item with buy-it-now and PayPal, and get 25% off. If the seller uses a third-party checkout, then the offer is not valid and you will be warned that the offer does not apply.  If they do use PayPal, the amount of the discount will be shown on the checkout screen before you pay.

This offer is good for up to $200/purchase and $2000/year.  The only catch is that you have to wait 60 days to get the 25% refund (to make sure you don’t return the item.) This is good for up to 12 purchases on Ebay and then you are no longer eligible.

Apparently it was 35%-off a couple of months ago, then disappeared entirely, and now is back at 25%-off.  Who knows how long it will last. More details are available here:

http://pages.ebay.com/cashbackoffer/terms.html

Thank you Microsoft! (Who needs Yahoo! anyway? This is a much better use of that money.)

Pros:

• Wireless design
• Smallest wireless headphones on the market
• Does not completely block outside noise (so you can still hear traffic if you’re running/biking)
• Lifetime guarantee against failure from sweat intrusion
• Includes everything you could need: USB charger dock, wall charger adapter for dock, iPod bluetooth dongle, carry pouch, USB cable, replacement ear tips
• Fairly comfortable to wear for an over-the-ear design (but not as comfortable as the stock Apple earphones)
• Can control iPod from the right earphone (previous/next track and play/pause)
• Can change volume from the right earphone (press and hold the previous/next track buttons)
• Can be used as bluetooth headset for iPhone or any bluetooth-capable cell phone (auto-switches from music to phone mode when a call is made/received)
• Sound quality is adequate for spoken recordings (audio books) and video dialog and very casual music listening

Cons:

• Poor sound quality – zero bass ; stock Apple headphones sound much better
• Poor sound quality – background hiss can be heard when music volume is low, hiss increases with headphone volume
• Poor sound quality – high frequency noise / compression artifacts
• Expensive – $150
• Experienced a bug where I turned power off, but LED on headset remained dimly illuminated even when I powered it off multiple times – completely drained battery
• Overly large desktop charging dock into which earpieces do not firmly lock (can be knocked out much too easily)
• Bright flashing blue LED on iPod bluetooth dongle – very distracting when watching video
• Flashing blue light on the side of the earpiece – I don’t like it when my ear blinks
• Bluetooth dongle works only with these bluetooth headphones (an FM transmitter dongle would work with any radio or car stereo)
• Buttons are small and somewhat difficult to press and hold (must hold the earpiece with your thumb and middle finder and firmly depress your index finger tip)

Conclusion: I returned them to Target. I decided that $150 was too much to pay for poor audio quality.  The Jaybird JB200 headphones are a pretty descent solution for listening to the spoken material while exercising or for casually listening to “background” music, but that’s about it. They need larger drivers to deliver more bass and a low-pass filter to remove the high frequencies they can’t accurately reproduce.

I’ve decided to purchase an Griffin iTrip FM Transmitter for $50 and use my existing $20 FM armband radio. This gives me flexibility to listen to either my iPhone or FM stations while at the gym.  I can also play my iPod through any car stereo if I so desire. The battery life of my armband radio is much longer and swapping AAA batteries every 6 months is easier than recharging earphones every 2 weeks. The sound quality of the FM radio is not audiophile-caliber, but the bass is better, the high frequencies roll off instead of producing noise, and the price is more appropriate to the audio quality.

The Jaybird JB200 is a very compact wireless headphone solution that addresses a specific need very well (small, wireless, casual listening, exercising.)  But for me, it was not compelling enough to overcome the poor audio quality and the high price.

Even worse is the fact that I was signed-up for their newsletter in the process. I have one of their computer cases and thought the newsletter may be of interest. It turns out it wasn’t, so I used the unsubscribe link and unsubscribed. I recieved the newsletter again the next month and unsubscribed again. And the next month as well.  And then I tried the “unsubscribe via reply e-mail” method. I received yet another e-mail the next month. I unsubscribed via reply again and still continue to receive e-mails.

Today it was even worse. I received a CSX Newsletter, with different unsubscribe links that require me to sign-in to a site I’ve never visited and for which I have no account. CSX is a division of Coolermaster.

A non-functional newsletter system is unacceptable for any company, much less for one selling computer components. I’m giving up on the unsubscribing; this is flagrant spam. Coolermaster obviously has no respect for their customers and regret ever having purchased one of their products.

Bill Gates portrait photo in landscape rotate

I’m astounded that Microsoft has not figured out that people take photographs with their camera rotated 90 degrees. Not every photograph is in landscape mode. However, Windows Vista thinks that they are. All modern cameras contain a sensor that detects whether a photo is taken in portrait or landscape mode and the picture is tagged accordingly. Most software auto-rotates the photo accordingly. But not Windows Vista and not Windows Movie Maker. You have to manually edit/rotate the photo yourself. It’s time for Microsoft to become more customer-focused and start including these features in Windows.

1. Torrent Tracking and Seeding: Amazon S3 can server as an ultra-reliable torrent tracker; share/seed the files from your local PC and let S3 act as the tracker. Or let S3 handle both the seeding and the tracking. Here are the details on how to do it.
2. Enable / Disable directory browsing: If you are sharing files of HTTP, you may or may not want people to be able to list the contents of a bucket (folder.) If you want the bucket contents to be listed when someone enters the bucket name (http://s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name/), then edit the Access Control List and give the Everyone group the access level of Read (and do likewise with the contents of the bucket.) If you don’t want the bucket contents list-able but do want to share the file within it, disable Read access for the Everyone group for the bucket itself, and then enable Read access for the individual files within the bucket.
3. Prevent the contents of a bucket from being indexed by a search engine: If you don’t want the contents of a bucket to be indexed by Google and company, place a file named Robots.txt in the bucket and share it with Everyone. (This trick works for any webserver.) The file needs to contain the following two entries to prevent indexing:
   • User-agent: *
   • Disallow: /
4. Use your own domain name: You can use your own domain name (http://s3.carltonbale.com) instead of the default Amazon URL (http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.carltonbale.com/). You just need to edit your DNS settings. Here are the details on how to do it. Bucket Explorer has an option to “Use bucket name as virtual host” to make sharing files in this manner even easier.
5. Temporarily share a file using an auto-expire link: You many want to allow someone to download a file but prevent them from sharing the link and having 100’s of people download it as well. With S3, it’s possible to create a link that expires after a defined period of time expires. The easiest way to do this using Bucket Explorer. First, make sure that the file has permission set so that it is not readable by everyone, since temporary access is what you’re going after in the first place. Then select the file, right-click, and select Generate Web URL. Select Signed URL and specify the expiration date. Then send the URL to the person with which you are sharing the file
6. • 
7. Share your bucket with someone. The Third-party bucket features allows you to share the contents of a bucket. In Bucket Explorer, right-click on the bucket and select “Update bucket’s access control list…” and set the permissions and add the other persons email address. See this documentation page for more details.
   • 
8. Upload any file extension as an HTML file (to redirect to another location.) Say you have a picture shared on your account and it is being leeched by multiple, external sites. Instead of just deleting the picture, you can create a web page to replace it that directs people to your site. If you picture name was picture.jpg, create the HTML file and save it as it on your local computer. Then change the file name to be picture.jpg. Now if you just upload this file normally to S3, it will be treated as a jpg image and will not download properly. But you can use BucketExplorer to upload it as an HTML file, which specifically tells S3 to treat it as a HTML file and not a jpg file. Here is an example of picture that I converted to a HTML redirect: http://carltonbale.com.s3.amazonaws.com/distance_chart.png
   • 
9. Store your media on Amazon S3 while running your WordPress blog on a different server. If you’re like me, your web host has overly limited storage space restriction. If you have a bunch of small pictures or just a few large videos, it can quickly consume your available disk space. To combat this, you can use the Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress. Instead of uploading files to your web server, it instead uploads them to your Amazon S3 account and automatically links to them, all within the WordPress admin interface.
10. Bonus Feature 1 – Compare local and remote file versions using MD5 check sums. Wondering if version of a file on your local computer is the same as the one stored in your S3 account? Perform a MD5 check sum and see if the results match. On you local computer, you can use a program such as HkSFV to calculate the MD5 sum. To see the MD5 sum of the file on S3, right-click on it and select Properties within Bucket Explorer. If the sums match, the files are identical.
    • 
11. Bonus Feature 2 – logging: You can enable logging of all activity within a bucket through Bucket Explorer. Right-click on the bucket and select “bucket logging”. You can create log files in the bucket being logged or in a separate bucket.

Those are all of the “hidden” features I’ve found, but I’m sure there are more. Please let me know of any features I’ve missed.

• You must provide proof that you sent your Treo 600 or 650 to Palm for repair and fill-out the claim forms.
• You wait for the settlement to be finalized.
• You then purchase a new Palm phone.
• You return your old Treo to Palm along with proof of purchase.
• You receive a $75 rebate.

Here are the reason I think the settlement is terrible:

• The rebate amount is market value for the old phone. Looking a prices of used Treos 650s on Ebay, $75 is somewhere near market value ($50 for a Treo 600). So basically, the settlement gives you market value for a used phone only if you purchase a new Palm phone. Where is the benefit to the consumer? Anyone can sell their used phone for market value, and you don’t even have to purchase a new Palm Treo.

• Most repairs were a very long time ago; receipts aren’t kept that long.  I had a terrible experience getting my Treo repaired: post 1, post 2. They fixed my screen but flashed an old version of firmware that locked-up the phone and then blamed me for water damage. That was 32 months ago; I don’t still have a receipt.  Palm should be providing proof of repair, not the consumer.

• Most people get new phones every two years and won’t have 4-year-old Treos to send back to Palm. Treo 600s came out much, much longer than 2 years ago. How many people are going to still have their old Treo 600s to send back to Palm? I replaced my first Treo 650 about 29 months ago and would have already gotten rid of my second one since my contract is up.

• Who wants to buy a new Palm phone anyway? I know I don’t. Compensate me for the problems with the old phone; don’t force a new one on me. Especially after the bad experiences people are apparently having. Most people want either a Blackberry or an iPhone to replace their Treo. Not a new Treo that looks and acts the same as their old Treo — it’s not as if they have some new, compelling products.

Here’s what we as consumers can do: Complain. We need a representative in court to complain about the fairness of this settlement. Here are the details from the official claim site:

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the Final Fairness Hearing, previously scheduled for May
2, 2008, has been continued to May 23, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. at the United States District Court for
the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, 280 South First Street, Courtroom Number
6, San Jose, California 95113.

At this hearing the Court will consider whether the settlement is fair, reasonable, and
adequate. If there are objections, the Court will consider them. Judge Whyte will listen to people
who have asked to speak at the hearing. The Court may also consider how much to pay Co-Lead
Class Counsel. After the hearing, the Court will decide whether to approve the settlement.

To be clear, this is the older Stacker 810 case, not the newer Stacker 830 Evolution. I think the 810 offers many for features for a much lower price; I’m not sure why the 830 is even around.

Th Stacker 810 is a great case if you have a bunch of drives and need a large, well cooled case. If you purchase 2 additional 4-in-3 modules, this case has 14 5.25″ drive bays, so it can handle 12 hard drives plus a DVD and a floppy drive. It is extremely large inside and can easily handle pretty much any motherbaord, plus there is a removable motherboard tray. There is a 120mm fan on the top as well as one on the front of each drive bay and the case has provision for two power supplies (one above and one below the motherboard tray.)

My DVD drive was very easy to install in the case, just place a plastic guide rail on the side and slide it into the locking drive bay.

The 4-in-3 drive bay (which fits four 3.5″ hard drives in three 5.25″ bays and includes a 120mm cooling fan) was not so easy. The drives are secured using screws, but there are 2 panels and 4 rails that must be held in place before sliding it into the front of the case. And if you take it out, it completely fall apart. I would prefer these snap together somehow, but I guess I won’t be removing the drives all that often.

If you really want to stretch the capacity of the case, you can use three SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-in-3 hot-swap SATA enclosures and fit 15 hard drives plus two more 5.25″ drives. Personally, I think spending more on drive enclosures than you do on a case is a waste of money. I seen no need to hot-swap drives in a home server, but it is an option if you need the space and can tolerate the loud, high-pitched fan of these SuperMicro enclosures.

This case is designed for a bunch of airflow. The downside of this is that it creates more noise as compared to my almost-completely-sealed-and-silent Antec P180 case. The perforated covers on front of each of the Stacker 810 drive bays are great for airflow, not so great for sound blocking. Luckily, due to the large 120mm fans and super-quiet Samsung drives, the noise is a soft, background noise rather than a higher-pitched, shrill, annoying noise. But hey, this is a server case, and servers should be hidden away in a back room, and not in your living room or home theater. Cooling trumps noise for a server case, and this one has great cooling. I monitored my hard drive temps, and all were at or below 26-degrees C.

Conclusion

Pros:  This is a great case because it is very simple to work with, supports multiple motherboard sizes, has great cooling, and has a large number of drive bays. For the price, it is a very well-made server case.

Cons:  The disadvantages are that it is not super-quiet and it takes up quite a bit of space (more than it really needs to due to so much unused space inside.) Unfortunately, it does not come with a power supply and it only includes one 4-in-3 hard drive module.

Extra Info: Part Number Detail

Unfortunately, there are a bunch of different Stacker 810 cases and the differences are not clear. After some research, I figured out which is which. Here are the details and the part numbers:

• STC-T01-UW – Silver; Dual Power Supply Locations (top & bottom); ATX, mATX, BTX, mBTX motherboards
• STC-T01-UWK – Black; Dual Power Supply Locations (top & bottom; ATX, mATX, BTX, mBTX motherboards
• RC-810-SSN1 – Silver; Single Power Supply Location (bottom); ATX, mATX motherboards
• RC-810-SKN1 – Black; Single Power Supply Location (bottom); ATX, mATX motherboards

If you are looking for accessories, here are some part numbers:

• STB-3T4-E1-GP – 4-in-3 drive bay adapter with fan (case comes with 1 of these)
• RC-880-FKR1 – 3.5″ drive bay cover (case comes with 1 of these)
• SPB-S01-E1 – PlexiGlass side window – Silver
• STF-B01-E1-GP – Cross-flow fan