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The iPhone Dev Team have announced the release of their new Pwnage 2.0.1 iPhone 2.0 unlock Tool. This release fixes many of the issues encountered by users when trying to unlock their iPhone using the previous version of the software. The issues addressed includes:

• It auto-finds the bl39 and bl46 files better, if they’re on your computer
• It creates the ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support/ folder if not present, which should help with some 1600 errors people have been having.
• Many people have reported the PwnageTool not starting up at all (the icon never stops bouncing). This issue should be resolved now.
• The Sparkle AppCast URL is fixed in this version, so automatic updates should work for future releases.

So, for those who have encountered problems with the previous Pwnage Tool, you can try the new one, which can be found here and here. For those who successfully unlocked their iPhones using the 2.0 version of the unlock tool, you’ll be fine.

This guide shows you how to create an iTunes account without the need of a credit card. Why would you want to do this?

• You are 18 or younger and don’t have a credit card.
• You don’t plan on buying anything from iTunes Store but would like to download the free stuffs such as music and or some of the App store’s free iPhone apps.
• You want to download album arts via iTunes.
• You live in an area where the iTunes Store is not yet available.
• Other reasons I can’t think of.

If you’ve tried to create an account on the iTunes Store, you’ll realize that credit card information and billing address are required. However, there’s a way to circumvent this. The iTunes Store has a Gift Certificate Redeem feature which allows you to redeem a Gift Certificate you bought at a store or given to you somehow. There are lots of websites online that offers iTunes Store Redeem codes in exchange for user registration. However, the website Tunecore is even better in that you can get a redeem code without doing anything. So, follow the steps below to create your iTunes Store account without providing a credit card:

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After hours of battling with my 1st-gen iPhone and Pwnage 2.0, I finally got it to work and successfully unlocked/jailbreaked my iPhone. Whether you’re running into trouble upgrading your iPhone to the 2.0 firmware or you’re just looking for a step-by-step to guide you through the process, this is definitely for you. If you’ve been reading some of the comments on the iPhone-dev Blog or other blogs/sites, you’ll realize that many people have trouble upgrading, just like I had. This guide will walk you through the process and provide solutions to possible problems that you might encounter. But, first thing first.

Is the Pwnage 2.0 software for you?

You must be able to answer this question before deciding whether or not to upgrade. The following are some of the points that’ll help you decide:

• This tool currently unlocks your 1st-gen iPhone only. So, if you’re thinking of unlocking an iPhone 3G, this tool is NOT for you and you’ll probably have to wait for another solution to come out.
• This tool will however jailbreak your 1st-gen iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPhone 3G so you can install 3rd party applications.
• This tool currently does NOT support the installer.app. It comes with Cydia, which is a similar application manager for the iPhone, though the library is far less complete compared to Installer.app.
• This tool is Mac users only. Microsoft windows is NOT supported.

So, if the above points sound fine to you, you can proceed to download the Pwnage 2.0 Tool here.

Step-by-Step Guide to unlock/jailbreak your iPhone

1. Update your iTunes to the latest version (7.7). Connect your iPhone and get iTunes to download the latest firmware for your iPhone. Do not upgrade your iPhone at this point!
2. On Google, search and download the iPhone bootloader version 3.9 and 4.6.
3. Download the Pwnage Tool 2.0 from the link above, extract and launch the application.
4. Under normal situation, the application should launch right away.
5. Now that you have Pwnage Tool open, select the device that belongs to you. You can also choose whether you want to proceed the unlocking/jailbreaking process in simple or expert mode. For now, we’ll do the simple way.
6. Once you’ve selected your device, click on the bottom-right corner arrow to advance to the next step.
7. Pwnage Tool 2.0 will search your computer for the iPhone 2.0 firmware. Once it has found the firmware, select the firmware and click on the bottom-right corner arrow to proceed to the next step.
8. When asked about creating an .ipsw file that you can use to restore your iPhone with iTunes, select “Yes”.
9. When asked whether you’re a legit iPhone user, it is actually asking whether you want to unlock or just jailbreak your device. Click “No” to unlock and jailbreak or click “yes” to jailbreak only.
10. You might be asked for the bootloader files in case the Pwnage hasn’t found it. Select the “Browse for Bootloader” and find the files you’ve just downloaded for both the 3.9 and the 4.6 version.
11. Afterwards, Pwnage Tool 2.0 will start to do it’s magic (building the .ipsw file on your desktop). During the process, you’ll be asked for your root password. This process may take a few minutes to complete. Please be patient.
12. Finally, Pwnage will ask you whether you have previously PWNED your device. If you’re not sure about this, just click no.
13. Pwnage will try to get your iPhone into DFU mode. Follow the onscreen instruction to do so.
14. Once in DFU mode, iTunes will open up and ask you to upgrade your iPhone to the latest firmware. Click “OK”
15. In iTunes, hold the option key and click on the “restore” button.
16. Browse on your desktop for the firmware file that Pwnage had created for you and select the file as the one you want to restore.
17. Once you’ve done that, iTunes will start to “upgrade” your device to the PWNED firmware. This process may take up to 10 or more minutes so, please be patient and don’t disconnect your phone unless the entire process is complete (check the screen of your device).
18. If you’ve gotten to this step, congratulations, you’ve now successfully unlocked your 1st-gen iPhone 2.0 or jailbroken your iPod Touch/iPhone 3G.

It all sounds easy, except that when actually doing it, things may or may not go that smooth. If you encountered any problems during the process, check the following section for troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting

• “Bouncing Icon problem” - If you’re one of those that gets the “bouncing icon” without anything happening when trying to launch the Pwnage Tool 2.0, please try the following: Launch the Pwnage Tool 2.0, go to the “Applications –> Utilities” folder and open the Activity Monitor. Find the process “ps” under “all processes” and kill the process. This should get the Pwnage Tool 2.0 to launch properly.
• If Pwnage says that it can’t find the IPSW file (the iPhone 2.0 firmware), please download it from iTunes if you haven’t already done so. Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes. Select your iPhone in iTunes and click on the “Check for Update” button. Note! Please just download the update, don’t upgrade your iPhone yet. Once the firmware download is complete, you can relaunch Pwnage.
• “Failed to enter DFU mode” - If Pwnage fails to get your iPhone into DFU mode, don’t panic. You got what you wanted and close Pwnage. From this point on, you need to get your iPhone into DFU mode manually by following the steps below: 1. Connect your iPhone to your computer. 2. Hold the power button for a few seconds until the red button appears and slide the button to the right to power off your iPhone. 3. Once you’re iPhone is turned off, hold the power and home button together for exactly 10 seconds. 4. Release the power button but keep holding the home button until your iPhone is recognized by your computer and iTunes pops up asking you to upgrade your firmware. Note that there should be no screen coming up on your iPhone. If a screen appears asking you to connect your iPhone to iTunes, you’re doing it wrong! If everything goes fine, go back to step #14 on the step-by-step guide above.
• “Oops, I Bricked it again!” - If you bricked your iPhone mistakenly by upgrading to the latest unpwned firmware, you should now start to worry. Just Kidding, it’s fixable. On your bricked iPhone, hold down the power, home and volume down button simultaneously long enough to shut down the device (You may need 30 seconds or more). Once the device is powered off, following step #3, on the bullet-point above.
• “An unknown error occurred (6)” - If this happens while you’re restoring your iPhone’s firmware, it might mean that you’re not in DFU mode. Please go up two bullet-points to learn more about getting your iPhone in DFU mode.
• “An unknown error occurred (1600)” - If this message appears while you’re restoring your iPhone’s firmware, open up your Terminal and type in: mkdir ~/Library/iTunes/”Device Support”; If that directory already exists, remove any files in it and relaunch the pwnage tool.

Well, there you go, everthing you needed to know to upgrade/unlock/jailbreak your 1st-gen iPhone to the 2.0 software or jailbreak your iPod Touch and iPhone 3G.  This is basically all the trouble I went through to get my iPhone working on the 2.0 software, so, hope you find it useful.

For those of you with the first gen iPhone waiting to install the iPhone 2.0 software, today is your lucky day! A week after their videos of the Pwnage 2.0 software for the iPhone 2.0, the application is finally available for download and you can get it from the iPhone-Dev blog here.

Please note that this application only jailbreaks and unlocks the 1st-gen iPhone and jailbreaks the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3G, which is consistent with the previous reports.

Anyway, go ahead, grab a copy and enjoy! Their server are hammered as of this post, so, please be patient.

Apparently, the HTC Touch Diamond, a windows mobile based smartphone with TouchFLO 3D is doing quite well in Europe, with Orange UK already running out of stock. According to sources, the “iPhone Killer” has sold more than 250 thousand units already. This feature-full phone is actually quite decent, sporting a VGA touch screen, 3.5G, GPS, G-sensor, 3.2MP camera and a whole lot more. And contrary to many of the reviews of the test units out there, which claims that the device suffers from a slow navigation, the shipped units with the latest software runs pretty smooth.

For those who are drooling over the HTC Touch Diamond but prefer one without the “diamond-cut” back cover and with a more rounded corner, you’re in luck. The device, codenamed “Victor”,  is exactly identical spec-wise to that of the Touch Diamond, with only the difference in the design. I must say, this version is definitely better looking than the HTC Touch Diamond, which is not bad at all. Apparently, these are already on sale in Taiwan with no details of a worldwide launch. Check out the image below for a comparison:

Apple finally decides to sue Psystar, a company that sells modified PC’s running the popular Mac OS X operating system from Apple. For those who have not been following this, Psystar had started selling “Mac Clones”, which are normal PCs running a modified version of the OS X Leopard, earlier this year. While everyone expected Apple to get all over Psystar the minute they announced to sell the machines running Leopard, Apple did not make any move until now.

According to the lawsuit that Apple has filed, not only is Apple demanding Psystar to stop selling these Mac clones, but also to recall the ones they have sold since April. How this will be done and whether customers who have already both these machines will get a full refund is still unclear. Apple claims that not only does Psystar not own the right to modify and distribute they operating system, but also confuses and deceives the public as well as hurting Apple’s sales of their Macs.

Although Apple has finally filed the lawsuit, there’s still the controversy of whether Psystar is doing anything illegal, with many voicing that the move by Psystar was not illegal at all, mainly because each and every copy of the Leopard OS bundled with the clones are legitimately purchased. It’ll be interesting to see what will the lawsuit result in. Will this be the end of Mac Clones? That is the question. Any thoughts?

A few minutes ago, I was trying to submit some news on to Digg but failed. It seems that Digg is experiencing some problems with the page loading up. On the browser, all I can see is a blank page. To make sure its some a browser problem, I’ve tried it on Firefox, Sarafi and Opera, all leading to just a blank page. Is it just me or does anyone else experience the same problem I do?

Firefox 3.0.1 is released and can be downloaded from the link below. This releases mostly deals with issues present on the 3.0 version. Check the list below for the detailed fixes:

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Fixed an issue where the phishing and malware database did not update on first launch.
• Under certain circumstances, Firefox 3.0 did not properly save the SSL certificate exceptions list.
• Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
• In certain cases, installing Firefox 2 in the same directory in which Firefox 3 has been installed resulted in Firefox 2 being unstable. This issue was fixed as part of Firefox 2.0.0.15.
• Fixed an issue where, when printing a selected region of content from the middle of a page, some of the output was missing (bug 433373).
• Fixed a Linux issues where, for users on a PPP connection (dialup or DSL) Firefox always started in “Offline” mode (bug 424626).

Download Firefox 3.0.1

There are many agencies out there that claim to be “Adword experts” and charges you a great sum of money for their “professional” consultation service. Some even will take care of the entire ad campaign for you. However, if you’re someone who wishes to put that money into better use, this guide is for you! I was recently responsible for running a large Google Adwords campaign for my company. Throughout the process, I have learned a lot about running a successful campaign and would like to take this opportunity to share them with you.

I’m going to divide this how-to guide into several parts and the topics covered will include everything you’ll need to know from start to finish. These extensive topics include things like defining your campaign objective, your ad group, keywords and ad texts to things like putting together a great landing page that’ll bump up your conversion rate substantially. Also, I’ll show you how to track your campaign’s performance as well as how to optimize your campaign for the best result, increasing the click-through rate, quality score and lowering your minimum bid. Don’t worry if you don’t know what some of these terms mean for now.

Whether you a company trying to sell your product or an individual trying to increase your site’s traffic, this guide is prove to be helpful. So, stay tuned!