"24" Season 8

Season 8 of Fox's "24" has been announced and will be premiered on the 17th January 2010 in the United States. I've been an avid fan of 24 ever since season 1 and although I'm looking forward to season 8, I gotta admit my expectations are not so high now for this series. For one, every new season seems all the more predictable. Can't blame the writers though. It has been the flagship of the 24 series to have all the conspiracy, internal traitors, etc. They have probably ran out of ideas on how to make a new season more creative or different (or they might just wanna keep it the same). But that being said, 24 has actually evolved a lot from being a primarily Counter Terrorist Unit to CTU being abolished (season 7 onwards). Not sure if CTU will be revived in season 8.

Nevertheless, I still look forward to watching the new season and watching Jack Bauer get screwed all over again! But maybe I would like to see the "powerful" people behind all the conspiracies in the US Government brought to justice (wishful thinking). At least 24 ends every season with an ending. Unlike Heroes, which seems to be never ending and hopefully they know their ratings aren't really as great as they would have liked. And I'm kind of glad Prison Break came to a series ending too. That aside, my current favorite series would be Dexter but its a shame Dexter seasons are pretty short and makes you crave more for the new season...

Blacksn0w will be released soon. 11/03/2009.

Geohot has done it. Blacksn0w (a.k.a Blackra1n with unlock) will be released tonite. Here is an excerpt from Geohot's blog:

Today 11/3/09 is a sn0w day. School is officially cancelled, and all your iPhones will be unlocked. Remember getting those calls?


At Noon EST, I will be making it sn0w, and I'm looking to see "#blacksn0w" trending. blacksn0w is the unlock for the latest 05.11.07 baseband, and will also enable official tethering. blackra1n, a jailbreak for 3.1.2, has been updated to RC3, with hacktivation support, 15 second speed improvement, Tiger+PPC support, and installation of the latest blackra1n.app. Here is how getting yourself some sn0w and ra1n will work.


Nothing is live until Noon


If you are a loyal blackra1n user who kept the blackra1n.app on your iPhone, run it. You will see Icy replaced by an option "ra1n". Install this to upgrade your app. After upgrading, run blackra1n.app again. You will see "sn0w". Install this, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone.


If you are new to the scene, just looking for an unlock, finally ready to upgrade to 3.1.2 and the accompanying baseband, willing to restore for the latest and greatest, or stuck on the "Connect to iTunes" screen, you are in luck. Jailbreaking and unlocking have never been easier. Go to blackra1n.com, click on the logo corresponding to your operating system, run the app, and click "make it ra1n". When your phone reboots, you'll see blackra1n.app. Run this, install blacksn0w, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone.


If you jailbroke using pwnage or deleted your blackra1n.app, you are in luck too. Sometime later in the sn0wday, blacksn0w will be added to Cydia, and instructions will be posted here.


If you are on a 2G iPhone, blacksn0w isn't an option for you. But BootNeuter is, a completely free permanent unlock for your 2G. Of course, blackra1n will work great, and even hacktivate for you.


If you have been getting 404 errors when downloading from blackra1n.com, first off, be sure you use the links at blackra1n.com If you are, something is blocking your http referrer.


Thanks to ih8sn0w for bringing the at+xemn command to my attention. This is the injection vector used to get code running on the baseband. One of these days I will write a technical post about how it works.


Also, a note. This may be the best iPhone users ever have it. Be sure, if you have a 3GS or iPod Touch 3, to use Cydia's "On File" or Firmware Umbrella in order to be able to restore to 3.1.2 in the future. And as always, the baseband cannot be downgraded, so be *super* careful with updates if you need the unlock.


Anyone with an upgraded (FW 3.1.2) iPhone 3G/3GS, your baseband will likely be 05.11.07 baseband and if you're not on the official network, then you will need this to unlock your phone. Brace yourself people.. for BLACKSN0W!

New Blackra1n RC2 jailbreak from Geohot for iPhone

I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS on firmware 3.1.2 last month using the Blackra1n software by Geohot. Everything was smooth sailing for me, but I do understand many people went through a lot of problems with their iPhones. Mainly because of the different versions there are (i.e. 2G, 3G, 3GS with different firmwares as well). Well, Geohot has released version 2 of the Blackra1n jailbreak method which hopefully solves many of your problems.

Here is the update list:

• Fixed 3G issues
• Tethered jailbreak for 3.1 OOTB ipt 8GB and new 3GSes
• Fixed Icy issues
• Both Windows and Mac
• If you used RC1 with success, no need to rerun

Note the last one. IF YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY JAILBROKEN YOUR IPHONE USING THE FIRST VERSION, YOU DO NOT NEED TO JAILBREAK AGAIN WITH THIS VERSION!

Sorry I had to SHOUT that.... some people just don't understand it :)

If you're looking for a step-by-step guide (I'm not gonna write one since so many are already available on the net), go here for a pretty good guide: iPhone Download Blog and you can download the blackra1n executable here: BLACKRA1N.

Please note though that this jailbreak method (blackra1n) DOES NOT UNLOCK YOUR PHONE. So if you need to unlock your iPhone, do not use this method.

Microsoft My Phone... their solution to Apple's MobileMe

Microsoft has a new service called My Phone (maybe it isn't new, but I just discovered it). Its a very apparent respond to Apple's MobileMe service. Well, I do not use MobileMe service for my iPhone and neither do I own a Windows Mobile cellphone, so I can't make any comparison about these two services. One thing I know though is that Microsoft's My Phone service is free (although service provider data charges may incur).

Google Wave, I HAVE!

I was recently given a spanking brand new Google Wave beta account :D With all the hype about it a few months back, I think I remember signing up for the beta account. If you do not know about Google Wave, check out the loooonnngg video below:



Of course I was like a kid receiving a new toy and dived right into it. I'm a little perturbed to explain what Google Wave does. I will quote from Google's website:

"Google Wave is an online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless -- in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.


A wave is a conversation with multiple participants -- participants are people added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It's also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when."

Obviously being only the first few who get this account, I do not have many things I can do in it. Fortunately I have another friend who also received an invitation to test the account. Its a great tool for collaborations or online meetings to take place and certainly at this moment in time looks promising. You can't do much yet beside the messaging part, embedding Google Maps and some other extensions.

Whats amazing is that you can see what is being typed in real time. So whatever you need to type, think about it first before you type. Because if you make a mistake, the person on the other side will see it even if you have backspaced to delete it. Of course you can always disable the real time typing, but you might as well use Windows Live Messenger then =)

You can even edit previous messages or your collaborators' messages. All in real time. Watch the video above and you will see what I mean. But would this replace the messengers out there? Well, we'll just have to wait and see.