July 19, 2007 by Santaduck.

The iPhone has been hacked to be an AT&T pay-as-you-go phone by the folks at the infamous iPhone IRC. A little terminal hacking, and the use of their new tool iASign, you can use your prepaid card. For example, buy the $100 plan with the free Motorola C139 at your AT&T store, and you’ve bypassed the 2 year $60/mo minimum obligation to AT&T. Most everything still works, but of course data is incredibly expensive, but WiFi functions such as web browsing works fine, and is of course free. For more information see the tuaw Unofficial Apple blog, and easy-to-follow instructions over at hacktheiphone.com. Of course you may end up with a brick, but we’ll know more soon as reports filter in.

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July 14, 2007 by Santaduck.

In Japan, the gigantic cell provider NTT DoCoMo is planning an wireless 300Mbps service experiment for cell phones, a “Super-G” configuration, in another step toward 4G.

Yes that’s an “M” for mega. This cellular service will be faster than wired home internet. By several orders of magnitude. Imagine the iPhone on this.

My ADSL is consumer grade, with 1.5Mbps DL speed, which is pretty standard for much of the US, with some regions at double that speed (3.0Mbps), or half that speed, 768 Kbps.

In related news DoCoMo is helping fund AT&T’s 3G network in the United States, specifically on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, which is a destination for many Japanese tourists, who find they cannot use their handsets because NTT’s 2G is proprietary and incompatible, and GSM is not included on their 3G phones. Read more here at PC World.

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July 4, 2007 by Santaduck.

Apple is almost officially sold out of iPhones at their brick & mortar stores. Checking Apple’s iPhone availability page this Fourth of July holiday evening revealed that all stores are sold out except for just one on the west coast (Tigand, Oregon’s Bridgeport Village store), and one on the east (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Shadyside store). And that means 162 Apple Stores are sold out, and bets are on that it’ll be 164 before tomorrow evening.

Of course AT&T’s outlets have been sold out completely for days, and since Apple’s online store is still showing a 2-4 week shipping estimate, look for prices on Craigslist and eBay begin to rise, at least until new production arrives.

UPDATE: Looks like this Friday July 6, many Apple Stores in some states (but not Texas or California) have received more units and are again in stock. If you really want a unit, and your area is sold out, hang out next Friday as that is the end of the 14 day unopened return policy. You’ll likely see many speculators returning their units then.

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July 3, 2007 by Santaduck.

On a cursory survey, it looks like perhaps that more than 50% of 8GB iPhone auctions are eventually canceled by eBay security due to fraudulent buyers with hijacked accounts.

Try this: Go to eBay and open up say 20 different 8GB iPhone auctions with bids that are about to end soon in different browser tabs. You can check the ending prices in an hour or whatever by refreshing each tab. Then leave the browser tabs open. Check back in 24 hours, refreshing each tab again, and most of the auctions that ended over $750 will be canceled by eBay security, which apparently has over 2000 investigators currently on the lookout for iPhone fraud. When I checked early morning July 3rd, about 70% had been canceled in my (quasi) random sample. Results may vary on auction close time depending on the time zones the scammers are from.

Closing prices for legitimate auctions may inch higher as availability at Apple Stores becomes more scarce, but the scammers (with hijacked eBay accounts) may not tire, because once they win the auction, they receive the seller’s direct email address. Even if the auction is canceled by eBay security, they may try to get the seller to ship anyways through phishing.

See my own experience with a hijacked buyer in “eBay iPhone Fraud: Sellers Beware: Update 3 below). This scam attempted to convince me in dead earnest to ship the item to a specific address in Nigeria.

UPDATE 1:
Looks like eBay security is finally making a dent in the iPhone scammers. I tried another survey today for auctions for 8gig units ending later afternoon today (July 3) Pacific time. Out of about 15 auctions, only 1 ended suspiciously high, over $800. Yesterday a full two thirds in my small sample ended over $800, and were subsequently canceled.

UPDATE 2:
24 hours later on July 4, all auction ID numbers in my new sample were still valid, none canceled by eBay security. Looks like these past 36 hours, it’s been getting more probable that legitimate buyers and sellers would hook up with each other. Good job to eBay; I’m sure they dealt with a similar process with the PS3 and Wii.

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July 1, 2007 by Santaduck.

Like many of you, I live on both sides of the fence. I’ve had Apples through the ][+ and SEs and PCs since the original 8086 and XT.

Currently I have a Peecee, specifically a Compaq laptop. However I <3 the Apple GUI.

So I wanted to share one teeny Apple-like tweak that gives me pleasure on my Peecee, a Dashboard jury-rig. If you have a Compaq, you may very well have those “One Touch” buttons along the top. I have one of these buttons set on something like Exposé. XP has a “show desktop” function, and that’s what I’ve set it to; it’s not exactly the same, but the essential gestalt gut feel of it is the same: If I’m sick of overlapping windows, I just reach for a physical button, without thinking, and they are gone. I push it again, and the windows are back.

To set it, do the following:
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July 1, 2007 by Santaduck.

Well the auction ended. At first I was happy, I got more than the iPhones were going for. Currently iPhones are not sold out at all the Apple stores yet (and the waiting time at the online Apple store is 2-4 weeks), so people can just walk into a local store and buy one at cost. Consequently, eBay prices have been low the past 24 hours, but I’d gotten more.

But something was fishy.

The red flags: I had a reserve and the auction ended right at the reserve. I looked closer. The second place bid was in the range of what iPhones were selling for today, which was way below my reserve which I had set back when they were selling for more about 36 hours ago. That meant the winning bidder just bid WAY above the going price. Red flag number one. Then I got the email from eBay that I had sold an item. The email address of the winning bidder looked like a spam email, a senseless 15-long jumble of random letters and numbers @ jetable.net. That’s #2. I checked out jetable.net, and it’s an email REDIRECT service. That was red flag #3. I looked at the bidder’s account. Feedback was low, only 5. I looked closer and the last transaction was 2 1/2 years ago in January 2005. That was red flag #4. Damn. Well I’m nervous at this point, but figure if the PayPal address is truly confirmed, then who knows. I post a question to the eBay answer center and think. I’ve received no payment yet.

As I’m fretting with my capitalistic greed, I receive a new email.
It was from eBay’s security department and here’s what it said:
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