I know, I know. I said that I was going to wait and see what happens with the iPhone and the SDK (due out very soon). And, I really really like how well the iPhone just works as an un-modded phone. I actually think that I could have waited to see what happens. But the intrigue got to me, especially after reading that iNdependence was now working with firmware 1.1.4. So, off I went.
Disclaimer: I don’t recommend doing this if you don’t know what you are doing. You probably shouldn’t do this type of stuff since it possibly voids your warranty. Anyway, for those of you interested in how I did it (and I didn’t really follow any real directions), here are my steps:
- Download iNdependence 1.4 beta 5 (or later) from here
- Attach your iPhone (make a backup/sync)
- Launch iNdependence (take a look at their help menu, it is useful)
- Go to the Jailbreak tab. It should say “Perform Jailbreak”. Click that. I had some issues here and got some errors like “Failure – Error entering recovery mode” (that shows up in documentation). Just disconnect your iPhone and restart it. Quit iNdependence and restart it as well and try again.
- If you are in Jailbreaking mode, you will see a ton of text scroll by on your iPhone (very Matrix-y). If it works, the phone goes into recovery mode and that is when you see the text scroll by.
- Then iNdependence should say that your iPhone is jailbroken.
- Next step should be to install SSH, SFTP and SCP. That is the next tab on iNdependence. Click the Install button for those. You will have to restart your iPhone 3 times.
- After the restarts, I recommend changing the passwords for the accounts listed in the iNdependence Help File (namely “root” and “mobile”)
- Then you need to get the installer.app on the system. The place where I got the latest version was here. This is the 3.0 version, I believe. Just use iNdependence to drop the installer.app to the Application/User directory. If you have issues with SSH, you may have to delete your old keys. Check my post here for some info on how to delete your ssh keys on a mac.
- After that, you can start installing 3rd party applications…the only problem is that you get some script errors when you try to install.
- If you get the script errors when trying to install applications, you may have to do some fixing. I looked at this thread and tried to do it. It didn’t work for me. I had issues running the commands (they weren’t recognized). Also, many of the commands in that script was just to download the latest version of installer.app. I already had the latest. So the best thing was to just run the appropriate comments. So, I tried to do just one of them, the “chmod +s Installer.app/Installer” one. To do this, once you are SSHed in, type “cd /” and then “cd /Applications/” I restarted my iPhone and installations worked fine. Remember, to do SSH commands to your iPhone, you need to be sure that you are connected on a wireless network and know the IP address of your iPhone.
- That’s it! Your installations should work now!
Sorry for the short list. I wanted to document what I did. In fact, I had some issues where my iPhone crashed or hung and I lost all sound coming from my device. Luckily, going to iTunes and clicking restore got me back to an un-jailbroken phone and I just went through the process again.
Let me know if you have any questions. There are now a TON of new 3rd party apps and many look very intriguing. [click to continue…]
To write this all up would probably take way too much time. But for a while I have been trying to find the ultimate solution for listening to my iTunes library where ever I am. There are obviously other combinations of this that would work, but this is the latest iteration that I have come up with that I’m happy with.
The Goal: Be able to stream my iTunes library based at home from where ever I am (e.g., at work).
The Tools (briefly): What I used to “make it work”
- DD-WRT – this is an open-source project that allows you to flash a “compatible device” router with firmware to enable hundreds of new features. You essentially turn a $100 router into a $1000 high-end routing device.
- OpenVPN – another open-source project that brings VPN functionality to various operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux)
- LaCie Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition – the hardware that I recently reviewed that, coupled with Axentra server technology, allows me to stream my iTunes mini within my local network
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I must admit I was excited to receive the just-announced pair of DLO Portable Speakers for iPhone, simply for one main reason. For some time, I had been looking for a good portable speaker system that could be used with iPods and iPhones, as well as other devices. I found a few that were ok on the iPod, but when it came to the iPhone, the TDMA noise frequently made listening a real pain.
What is TDMA noise? Simply described, it is the patterned buzzing or beeping tones that you hear when you put your iPhone next to an unshielded speaker. These magnetic tones happen when you are receiving data (the antenna is active) on your iPhone and are picked up by unshielded speakers. I was first introduced to this phenomenon when I had my Tmobile Sidekicks. I thought it was extremely annoying then and I think it is now as well. If you want a technical definition of TDMA, look here.
So, what did DLO do? They recognized this as a pretty big issue (this is why many of the iPod FM transmitters for your car always give you a compatibility warning on 
your iPhone when plugging them into your iPhone), and they created a shielded, portable speaker system. But they didn’t stop just there. They packaged the system up as a true, on-the-go, portable system. The speakers’ unique design allow for them to be packaged up in an elliptical ball, making it very portable and rugged.
Ok, so the top two pictures are from the DLO product page. But I did take a few pictures of what is contained in the box and how the device looks from a “real world” view.
UNBOXING
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I must admit, I was a bit skeptical about testing out another hard drive, but let me tell you, the LaCie Ethernet Disk Mini – Home Edition really changed my mind about things! First of all, this is not just another external hard drive, this is a networked hard drive which means that you plug it in to your network and it appears the way a computer would. This device is known as a NAS (Networked Attached Storage) which simply means that it is a hard disk storage device that is set up with its own network address rather than being attached directly to a computer.
Now this was not my first experience with a NAS as I currently own a Western Digital My Book World Edition 11 (with a Terabyte of space). The Western Digital is ok…but just ok. I got it because Costco had a great deal with a rebate. This is actually my second one, since the first one I managed to “brick” because I tried to install some 3rd party tools on the Linux portion of it…but that is another story altogether. The WD is loud but does its job (since it has two hard drives in it, and they are replaceable, it seems like a good device to get). But I digress…
I learned about the LaCie Ethernet Disk Mini – Home Edition when I was at MacWorld 2008. I had a long conversation with Barry Katcher, the LaCie PR guru and explained to him my “issue.” For several months, I had been searching for a solution for centralizing my media (music and photos). I wanted a place to simply offload all of my photos for storage (and redundancy) and an area to put my measly 30 gigs of music. The real thing that I was looking for was a way to create a media server for all of the computers in my house to have access, a centralized music server, so to speak. I went through countless free and paid “solutions” (I currently have a FireFly media center running off of one of my computers) but I wasn’t really happy with the results. I think I must have spent 15 hours looking for a solution, but nothing really grabbed me as working and simple. This is what Barry and I discussed. After listening to my “pain” he suggest that I look at the Ethernet Disk Mini – Home Edition (which I will simply call the “Mini” from now on in this review).
Shortly after the show, I received one from LaCie to review. Mine arrived yesterday. Several hours later, the Mini is installed, running and I am truly impressed. Before I dive into a detailed analysis of the system that drives it, let me go through the set up process.
The Set Up & Product Shots
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