guide

If a holiday season free of wrapping paper and ribbons is on your wish list, there are many options for giving presents without touching anything but a computer and credit card. Services that can be ordered and received online also can be more eco-friendly than physical presents. Of course, you could always funnel funds directly into someone's PayPal account, but where's the fun (for you) in that?

That's entertainment

Netflix offers gift subscriptions from $9 for one month of movie rentals to $108 for one year. GreenCine's rental certificates for indie film buffs start at $44 … Read more

Though we're still searching for a way to delete multiple email messages from the iPhone simultaneously, an enterprising developer has now developed a native third-party application that will allow you to delete individual SMS text messages instead of simply clearing conversations (the iPhone's only option, by default), which will delete all text messages with a given contact.

The interface is still a bit clunky -- messages are organized and labeled by incoming number, not contact name -- and there are some quirks (like the misspelling of the word "Delete"). Still, this third-party app fills a lapse … Read more

What is Flock and why should you use it?

Flock is essentially Firefox with a handful of highly focused extensions built in to let you connect with social services like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and others. We think Flock 1.0, which is now in public beta, offers a fantastic browsing experience that brings you the best of Firefox with a few tweaks that prove to be exceptionally helpful. For Web newbies out there, Flock's offering provides an easy way to manage and monitor profiles, media uploads, and communications with all your social networks while continuing to browse other sites like you would in any old browser.

Here are four steps to get you up and running with Flock's biggest features:

1. Setting up permissions and accounts

Once installed, Flock will want to make itself your primary browser. We'd recommend holding off on making it the default until you decide whether or not you like it more than whatever you're currently using. Just remember the default browser is the one that URLs open up from when clicked on from other applications on your computer.

Flock is based on the same underlying code as Firefox, and basic features work the same, so if you're a Firefox user you'll feel right at home.

To experience what Flock offers beyond Firefox, the first thing you'll want to do is connect it to your social networking accounts. To do this, you'll have to introduce yourself to the sidebar menu, which is where you'll find nine icons that serve as ground control for most of Flock's special features. Click on the one shaped like a key, which takes you to the accounts and services control panel. Here you'll find links split up into four sections for people, media sharing, blogging, and social bookmarking. Clicking each of the links will take you to the site or service, and if you've got login credentials, entering them will automatically save your account settings.

Continue reading to learn about ways to track friends, exploring and saving social media, and easy ways to share and blog Web content you come across using some of Flock's built-in tools.… Read more

A new process for jailbreaking and allowing the installation of non-sanctioned third-party applications to the iPhone has debuted. It's called AppSnapp, and is unique in two respects: it automates the process on iPhones running software/firmware 1.1.1 (previous methods were multi-step), and it can be completed purely using the iPhone; no interaction with a Mac or Windows computer (as with previous methods) is required. The process will jailbreak the iPhone or iPod Touch then push Installer.app to the device, which contains a catalog of native applications that can be installed directly over a WiFi or EDGE … Read more

One of the things that separates the new News.com personal blogs, like this one, or Declan McCullagh's The Iconoclast, or Caroline McCarthy's The Social, from the larger, impersonal News.com blog, is that they are a place for us to write not just about what's going around us, but also what we're doing ourselves that's relevant.

In my case, that's pretty easy because I live a lot of the things I write about. So there's a never-ending supply of blog fodder. And you get the benefits of that. Insert smiley here.

Well, … Read more

Google recently added IMAP support to its Gmail email service, a major boon for iPhone users since it allows changes made by the user to be reflected on the server, won't put both sent messages in your inbox and more. In addition to text-based step-by-step instructions, Google has now posted a video demonstrating how to setup IMAP Gmail on the iPhone. The process is pretty simple: Enable IMAP in your Gmail account settings through a Web browser, then create a new "Other" mail account in your iPhone's mail settings (the "Gmail" icon for creating … Read more

Users who unlocked their iPhones under software/firmware revision 1.0.2 with AnySIM or iUnlock, then lost functionality (bricked) their iPhones by updating to software/firmware 1.1.1 now have an option for restoring their devices to an ostensibly factory-fresh state under software/firmware 1.0.2, then upgrading to software/firmware 1.1.1 again and performing a successful unlock using the new version of AnySIM. This is made possible through the release of a "re-virginize" tool that is loaded directly on the iPhone.

In other words, users like this iPhone Atlas reader:

"I … Read more

There's a great scene in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy saga; I think it was in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The lead characters find themselves on a spaceship full of middle-managers from the planet Golgafrincham. (No, I don't know how to pronounce Golgafrincham.)

According to the hapless, half-witted middle-managers, their home planet was doomed and they'd been sent off on this spaceship to escape certain death. The plan was to rendezvous with two other ships - one of which contained the planet's leaders and scientists, and the other containing all its useful workers.

In fact, the planet wasn't doomed and the other two ships didn't exist. It was all a scheme to rid the planet of its useless populace. And the middle-managers were clueless.

Contrary to the book's satire, middle managers are useful, especially these days. There was a time - the 80s - when bloated companies had three or four more layers of management than they needed. That was ridiculous. The great management-layer purge of the 90s took care of that.

Still, there is a stigma attached to middle-management. But is it deserved? Let's see.… Read more

A version of AnySIM that is compatible with iPhones running software/firmware 1.1.1 has been released. In a nutshell, this means that iPhones running the new software release can be unlocked to run on carriers other than AT&T via an iPhone native application with a graphical interface.

A note from the iPhone/iTouch Dev Team reads:

"Please note that this version works only on VIRGIN 1.0.2 or 1.1.1 phones. We are working on a re-virginizer. DO NOT USE IF YOU HAVE ALREADY UNLOCKED WITH ANYSIM 1.0."

In other words, … Read more