Today at Apple’s “Let’s rock and roll” event in San Francisco, they officially announced the updated iTunes, releasing version 9 today.

iTunes 9 comes with Genius Mixes, with more than 54 billion songs to choose from, helping consumers find new music that relates to current library. Apple also announced Genius DJ built into iTunes 9 that seeks out songs and creates a playlist for endless possibilities, great for parties.

iTunes 9 also improves syncing with devices, for your iPhone and iPod Touch. Users can sync by artists, playlists, genres, and more possibilities. Apple also announced that iTunes now offers Home Sharing, allowing users to copy songs, movies, TV shows and more, for up to five computers around your house.

iTunes 9 comes with a built in application sorting feature for the iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing users to customize the layout of their device directly from their computer, without having to painstakingly move dozens of applications and games around. The built in feature should make users organize their devices a little easier.

Download here: Apple iTunes v9 Windows XP & Vista x86 (88MB)

Apple releases 3.1 iPhone & iPod touch firmware

Apple has announced the release of iPhone and iPod Touch firmware 3.1, available for download later today. The free download, for both iPhone and iPod Touch 3.0 users, is said to improve battery life.

The 3.1 firmware will improve video editing on the iPhone 3GS, that won’t overwrite the original clip when editing videos, preventing the loss of the original film. The new developer API’s allows third-party applications access to the videos and edit them, without having to use Apple’s editing tools for the iPhone 3GS. The update is said to increase the boot time of devices. The device will now vibrate when moving icons around to different locations.

Apple also included a “Fraud Protection” toggle switch for browsing, now available under the settings for Safari. The firmware update allows Voice Control over Bluetooth now. Users can also organize their icons through iTunes without having to move them around on their device.

Download v3.1 for iPhone 2G – iPhone1,1_3.1_7C144_Restore.ipsw (241MB)

Download v3.1 for iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_3.1_7C144_Restore.ipsw (242MB)

Download v3.1 for iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1_3.1_7C144_Restore.ipsw (306MB)

Get them while they are hot!

What is Trapster?

Simply put, Trapster is an application for getting speed trap alerts on your Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Android, Garmin, or TomTom device.

How does Trapster work?

When you see a trap, report it by pressing a button on your phone, or calling a toll free number. Other user’s phones will alert them as they approach the trap. Trapster learns the credibility of traps based on how many users agree. It also learns the credibility of each user, over time.

So how does it work? Our goal is to make it so simple that you don’t need to know. But in case you are interested, it combines technologies such as GPS and wireless location, voice transcription, geocoding, reverse geocoding, and SMS, with a central database server. It communicates in real time, using the Internet.

Some Statistics:

1390641 Total Trapster users world-wide

1131687 iPhones using Trapster (I wonder how many SA users there are?)

717612 Traps reported world-wide

Why you need trapster even if you already have a radar detector.

Even the latest, most expensive radar detectors are useless against modern police enforcement technologies such as instant-on and laser. Your radar/laser detector will still beep, but in almost all cases, only after it is too late. The only way a radar or laser detector can help you is if it beeps in time for you to slow down before the officer gets a reading on your speed. With instant-on and laser, this only happens if the officer activates early or “misses” the shot, and some of the signal leaks past a car in front of you. Radar detectors are still effective for more traditional (Ka etc.) band radar. We recommend that you use both Trapster and a radar/laser detector for the best possible coverage. Also radar detectors are illegal in many US states, and are illegal nationwide for commercial vehicles.

Trapster works on Garmin and TomTom.

After about a gazillion of you (our users) asked for Garmin and TomTom support, we implemented it! While other sites charge money for this data, we offer it absolutely free (for personal use by individual registered users). Check out our innovative approach to setting areas, routes, and alert types of interest, and for POI Mailer automated notifications! Note: Static trap types such as red light cameras and known police enforcement points stay in the same place for years. But real time trap types such as the motorcycle police with laser, a mobile speed van, or a checkpoint, move from place to place every few hours. Garmin and TomTom navigation devices are not connected, so our servers cannot deliver real time data to them. Therefore we suggest you additionally use our location based text message system to be alerted to the trap types that are not static in nature.

Is Trapster legal?

Our understanding is that Trapster is legal in most countries. It does not fall under text messaging or hands free calling laws, or radar detector laws. If you are concerned you should probably check the laws in your state or country. In fact, the police we’ve spoken with actually like the idea. It beeps, people slow down, they have met their objective, you save money on the ticket and insurance, and everyone is happy. The police can always find plenty of other people to issue violations to. People who don’t use Trapster, that is.

Traps in South Africa?

Reported traps in Cape Town, South Africa

Amazing hey? I definitely think that there are already a number of Trapster users in South Africa! Or maybe just one user doing a LOT of driving around?

Anyway, give Trapster a try by downloading the application for your iPhone here:

Trapster on the App Store

Official Trapster Blog

Trapster Website

We know that HTC Magic owners out there are pretty psyched at the news that the HTC Sense UI is available for their Android phone. However, based on this latest news, it appears that iPhone owners also have a reason to rejoice as they too can enjoy the benefits of this new user-interface!

Well, it looks kinda nice, but there is no real new functionality!

Enjoy the pics!

Remember this is still beta software, so usual rules apply, no complaints ifanything goes wrong and use the tool at at your own risk! 

Download here!  SHA1 = 8e1ed2ce9e7e473d38a9dc7824a384a9ac34d7d0

NB: Using QuickPwn does not update the firmware itself, this tool is designed to ‘Pwn’ (the ability to install future custom non-Apple firmwares) , ‘Jailbreak’ and install Installer or Cydia on a given device. If your device is running 2.0.1 and you QuickPwn it, it’ll still be running 2.0.1, although it will now be Pwned and Jailbroken, similarly if your device is running 2.0.2 and you QuickPwn it, it will then be running 2.0.2 but the device will now be Pwned and Jailbroken. It will also activate (not unlock) devices that are being used outside of their intended territories and cannot be activated using iTunes.

If you want to update to 2.0.2 then use the normal iTunes update to get to 2.0.2 and then use QuickPwn to Pwn, Jailbreak and Activate, remember that the 2.0.2 update includes a baseband update for the 3G iPhone, so depending what your long term intentions are for the phone, update wisely, of course in the upcoming PwnageTool application you’ll be able to create a custom ipsw without the baseband update enabled.

Our Mac GUI whizzes in the team are working on a graphical Mac OS X version of QuickPwn and also adding some nice little tweaks to the next release of PwnageTool. As soon as these are finished and tested, we’ll let you know, but don’t hold your breath and refresh for these, the release is not imminent.

Again, no updates from our baseband hackers with regard to the unlocking of the 3G iPhone.

Step 1: Shift+Restore your iPhone to v2.0.2 firmware

If you want to update to 2.0.2 then use the normal iTunes update (Shift+Restore) to get to 2.0.2.

Step 2: Download, Unzip, and Run QuickPwnGUIv120.exe

Browse to the downloaded v2.0.2 firmware file…

Step 3: Follow the onscreen guide to Jailbreak, and Activate your iPhone.

Step 4: Use BootNeuter to Unlock

If needed, you can download BootNueter using Cydia, and install THAT to unlock your 1st gen iPhone

neuter, unlock, do not change bootloader settings, and then flash!

What gives???

You will also notice that you can’t edit, add or remove any of the email account settings at all.

Reason for the Problem

This is caused by the sync of the backup from iTunes. The permissions on the mail folder are incorrect. The folder is supposed to be owned by “mobile”, but instead it is owned by “root”. This causes the application to crash, sending you back to the dashboard.

The Solution

The easiest fix is to run bossprefs (which you can install using Cydia), click more, and click “fix user dir permissions”. You may need to reboot.

You can also SSH into your iPhone, and take ownership of the folder directly – but this is the advanced way!

WinPwn 2.0.0.4 has been released for the iPhone 2.0.1 firmware and it includes Installer 4 beta support.

Download link: Winpwn_2.0.0.4_Setup.zip

Release Notes

- Support for both 1.1.4, 2.0, 2.0.1
- Root partition resize support
- Installer support
- Support for WinXP and Vista 32/64bit.

Notes:

- You MUST do a full uninstall of winpwn before installing the new version
- Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes ( Currently 7.7)
- WinPwn uses 300MB of ram at peak due to the ipsw being extracted in memory
- You must first click browse and load an IPSW to use WinPwn (i thought this was clear)
- For 2.0 only the *5A347_Restore.ipsw files are valid. The 345 image will not work
- If you see Failed to load image catalog/payload catalog, this is fine and won’t cause problems
- If you already have service with AT&T do not activate or install Youtube Fix

Download, Install, and Enjoy!!!