jailbreaking

It's our last week of 404 podcasts for 2011! We'll be back in the new year for a round of LIVE CES COVERAGE, but Wilson's not feeling well today so Joseph Kaminski fills in for an update on kid tech.

This year's most-wanted gift is the LeapFrog LeapPad, a junior tablet with games, e-books, and apps that helps kids learn...and also frees up the TV so Dad can watch the game.… Read more

Whether or not the masses actually jailbreak their iPhones, it seems as though users are willing to support the work that the jailbreak community is doing, feeding the Chronic-Dev Team with more than 10 million crash reports in a single week after the release of the Chronic-Dev Crash Reporter application.

The app was created for Mac and Windows and, once installed, allows the Chronic-Dev Team to access the crash reports from your iOS devices before they are sent to Apple. Once accessed, they are sent instead to a server run by the Chronic-Dev Team and analyzed.

That data is then … Read more

Despite the overwhelming success of Apple's "walled garden" approach to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, many users still wish to part ways with the benefits of control in favor of the unbridled technology (good and bad) available when jailbreaking iOS. If you are one of those users, you can actually become an integral part of the jailbreaking community.

Jailbreaking your iOS device largely depends on finding exploits in the iOS code that hackers can use to take control of the operating system and install applications and functions not approved by Apple. Those exploits can be found … Read more

One of the big draws of jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad is access to SBSettings, a free app that provides quick access to settings like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, screen brightness, and so on.

If you've ever wished for that kind of convenience without the hassles of jailbreaking, this is your lucky day. A hack called IconSettings lets you add up to 40 iOS-settings icons to your iDevice, no jailbreaking required.

This "app" is actually a collection of fancy-icon browser bookmarks with hooks into iOS settings. Thus, when you tap, say, Brightness, you'll see Safari appear and … Read more

One of the reasons users jailbreak their iOS device is the ability to add custom settings shortcuts directly to their home screen, or, with iOS 5, the notification tray. … Read more

We can't remember the last time it snowed on Halloween weekend, but the cold weather kept all but one of us from dressing up today. Tune in to see who conjured up the spirits of Halloween!… Read more

Still don't have a Halloween costume? Check out Superpunch's list of downloadable masks--just print and cut them out, add a string or a Popsicle stick if you're extra lazy, and off you go. Happy Halloween!

Vampire power, also known as standby power, is a reference to some electronics sucking up juice even when they're turned off, but it also works for our ongoing Halloween show title theme! Check out this article on the Learning Thermostat to see what Nest Labs is doing to kill vampire power.

The iPhone Dev-Team is already close to finishing a preliminary jailbreak on the iPhone 4S that will eventually work with the iPad 2 as well, but what happened to good old analog piracy? As it happens, Activision Blizzard is knee-deep in pirates already circulating bootleg copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.… Read more

Ever since Apple unveiled Siri--its new voice assistant feature for the iPhone 4S--at its media event last week, there's been a little confusion over who can get Siri and how.

Twitter and Apple forums have been filled with questions about whether and when Siri will make an appearance on other iOS devices, like the iPad or regular iPhone 4. Some Apple fans rushed to download the iOS 5 update when it became available this week--causing quite a few problems for Apple servers--in the hopes that Siri would be included in the upgrade.

Alas, the common consumer has had no luck getting his/her/its hands--or rather, vocal cords--on Siri until today, when the iPhone 4S finally arrives in stores. That's also good news for those with no current plans or budget for grabbing the new phone, because it gets the actual hardware into the hands of more of the code wizards working on a port of Siri for other devices.… Read more

Verizon is reportedly preventing jailbreakers from unauthorized tethering, at least according to one account at ReadWriteWeb.

The tech blogging site recently revealed that one of its own employees tried to use a jailbroken Motorola phone without a data plan to tether on Verizon's network. But instead of gaining access, the person was "blocked" by Verizon and redirected to a page describing the carrier's terms and conditions for using a mobile hot spot.

If accurate, this is a new development on the part of Verizon since the employee said she was able to use her jailbroken device … Read more