Free Soft

Master iPhone hacker Zibri has released ZiPhone, a utility that can jailbreak and unlock any new iPhone (as of firmware 1.1.3) directly, without any complicated upgrading or downgrading steps. Way easier than my crap.

Hats off to Zibri for this one.

Check out Zibri's blog for all the instructions.

Tagi: iphe, e check, iphone, hats, crap, hacker, blog

Simply use the coupon code "EARLYBIRD" anytime between now and midnight on November 26th at Ohio Power Tool and get an additional 10% off all Milwaukee and Bosch tools and accessories. This is on top of other sale prices and free tool offers currently in place for Milwaukee and Bosch.

  

Tagi: bosch tools, free tool, power tool, milwaukee, ace, earlybird, coup, nbsp

The original Horizon H-Racer hydrogen fuel-cell toy just got an update: Before, you could fill it with water and let 'er rip. Now, you can actually steer the bastard.

The new kit—because it may look like a race car but let's be honest, it's a science edu-toy—still comes with the solar panel and hydrogen station so that you can use the sun's rays to convert H2O to H2 and O2. But the car itself now has glowing LEDs, responds to an IR remote, and runs longer and faster with the same amount of fuel. Taking a cue from auto makers and gas companies who release literally green advertisements to convince the public they aren't part of the problem, Horizon decided to change the car's translucent tint from blue to, yes, green. The difference, of course, is that Horizon definitely isn't part of the problem. Only time will tell, however, if they are part of the solution. Meantime, here's a fun Christmas gift for anyone that still has $120 to spend on progress! [Horizon via Gizmag]

Tagi: hydrogen fuel cell, science edu, s rays, horiz, fuel cells, auto makers, mdash, solar panel, compas, race car, h2, bastard, stati, o2, cue, horizon, ing, sun

The original Horizon H-Racer hydrogen fuel-cell toy just got an update: Before, you could fill it with water and let 'er rip. Now, you can actually steer the bastard.

The new kit—because it may look like a race car but let's be honest, it's a science edu-toy—still comes with the solar panel and hydrogen station so that you can use the sun's rays to convert H2O to H2 and O2. But the car itself now has glowing LEDs, responds to an IR remote, and runs longer and faster with the same amount of fuel. Taking a cue from auto makers and gas companies who release literally green advertisements to convince the public they aren't part of the problem, Horizon decided to change the car's translucent tint from blue to, yes, green. The difference, of course, is that Horizon definitely isn't part of the problem. Only time will tell, however, if they are part of the solution. Meantime, here's a fun Christmas gift for anyone that still has $120 to spend on progress! [Horizon via Gizmag]

Tagi: hydrogen fuel cell, science edu, s rays, horiz, fuel cells, auto makers, mdash, solar panel, compas, race car, h2, bastard, stati, o2, cue, horizon, ing, sun

Yesterday night, I merged in a branch I was working on for poorlad's menu. A version of that beautiful menu is now in Git. His menu included a version string at the bottom. We didn't have any way to keep track of versions and builds before, so this was actually a good idea that I had to implement. Because I didn't want to implement support for non-fixed width fonts, or add another space-consuming font, I just used the console font I was already using for that part. I also had to brighten the gradient on the bottom of the screen, since it was basically invisible due to gamma issues otherwise.

The border between the gradient and the "black" is clearly visible on my device. This is probably because of a gamma issue. When poorlad comes back, we can ask him to calibrate it more.

Otherwise, it looks pretty good! In order to make this possible, I added in stb_images.c, a great tiny little image library that can read PNG, JPEGs and even PSD files and does zlib decompression as an added bonus. This will be a great help if we decide to change things or need to add more stuff that consumes a lot of space. I also added in a basic function to perform alpha blending (albeit comparatively slowly).

Sadly, while I was busy making these changes, ius from IRC actually begun to implement poorlad's menu without me knowing about it, so we ened up duplicating each other's efforts. He was able to compile in zlib and libpng, but the cost was to inflate the final binary to 347 KB. Whereas taking out the old menu images, and adding small, compressed PNGs and the stb_images library instead actually made openiboot smaller than it was before! His decision to preblend the images, rather than attempt alpha blending on the device, was probably more optimal from a performance perspective.

Steven Troughton-Smith told me on Twitter that he has actually implemented his own boot menu as well. I'm not sure if he used the new PNG code or not, but the new code makes it pretty easy for a competent programmer to add in whatever menu they would like. I'd tell everyone to skin away, but we should keep as few wild branches of this project as possible, since everyone randomly installing openiboot just for kicks (especially a modified version) and then coming to us (read: me, ultimately) for support is something we don't have the resources to handle at this moment.

On the porting side, the issues with installation, optimizing NOR access on iPhone 3G, NAND access on a few devices all seem to have been fixed, so we can basically scratch the first two items off of the list I put up in the last post. I'm pleasantly surprised at how relatively easy it was.

Anyway, now for the kernel. Well, if I don't get distracted by writing to NAND.

Tagi: competent programmer, performance perspective, menu images, versis, images library, boot menu, psd files, trought, pngs, libpng, deci, jpegs, image library, stb, gradient, fts, png, gamma, zlib, ing