Switcheasy – Capsule Rebel iPhone Case Review

Posted by Rick | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 06-08-2009

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capsule rebelAs I’m sure you guys are aware, the novelty of items I purchase wears off pretty quickly. Bad for my wallet, but good for you. The other day a friend sent me a link (damn you Karhu!) to a site that had cases for the low low price of just $24.99.

Currently, I’m using the Incase Slider (metallic) to shield my iPhone from scratches and drops. It’s served me when, but for 25 bucks… sure, why not. So I went to the website and I purchased the case pictured above. Click the “continue reading” link below to see my video review.

Grab a beer, kick back, and enjoy.

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In Your Face Flexible iPhone Holder Review

Posted by Rick | Posted in Review | Posted on 03-08-2009

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Killer iPhoneI recently purchased the “In Your Face” flexible iPhone holder from the official In Your Face website.

First, here’s what I was looking for:

After recently downloading a navigator application, I found myself struggling with where to keep the iPhone in my car so that I could see the navigation on the screen. I tried to put it on the dash where the speedometer was, but it keep sliding side to side or falling over. I tried holding it, but nearly got in a wreck.

I went to my local electronic store and found several “holders” for the car. All of which had little suction cups that I could stick on the windshield. At first thought, that would work great for me, but what about plane trips? I take a few plane trips a year and I don’t want to hold the iPhone up the entire plane ride. What about bike rides? Can’t really suction cup anything there.

Enter, the In Your Face flexible holder. This thing is perfect. It has a large clamp at the bottom allowing me to clip it to the review mirror, the ash tray (finally a use for that damn thing), the tray on the air plane, the handlebars on the bike. Basically anywhere that I wanted.

After checking the pictures and videos out at the site,  one of the key things I noticed was the swivel on the clamp. Most of the clamps all suffer from the same problem, they don’t clamp odd shapes. If you have a flat surface, you’re okay… but try to clamp it to a pole or something like that, and you’re screwed.

Not with this device though. This thing firmly grasps just about any surface. My other concern was with the holder for the phone. Some of the holders made you snap the iPhone in place, which is great if you don’t have your phone in a case… but I do.  I don’t want to have to remove it every time I go to put it in the holder.

No problem here, the sides expand so that you can put your iPhone, case and all, in there without any issues. It’s also wide enough to hold other devices like a PSP or several other navigation units.

Oh, and here’s another great feature… The flexible stand and ball and socket join on the holder allow you to move this thing into pretty much any position that you need. It’s long enough to reach where you want, but not so long as to not be sturdy.

This item is rock solid guys, it does exactly what it says it will do and with a $30 price tag, you can’t go wrong. They’re website was also easy to order from and I got the item within about 3 days. I got one for myself and for my wife, and I told several other iPhone owners about it at work.

5/5 – Definitely worth checking out.

P.S. It also helps to make a killer iPhone as seen in the picture above :-D

**NOTE** Just for full disclosure, the makers of the product are sending me a free one. However, I bought and paid for one, made the robot, and wrote to them telling them how awesome their product is PRIOR to them offering me a free one (for my wife). They did this as a thank you for the support as they recently debuted their product. Had they not offered me one, my opinion wouldn’t be changed in the slightest.

Jailbreak Your iPhone to Protect It!!!

Posted by Rick | Posted in How-To | Posted on 31-07-2009

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Lock it upIn an epic case of irony, we have discovered that those who have jailbroken phones are the most capable of protecting it. For those that jailbreak, this is no surprise. Imagine if the only way to protect your windows pc was to wait around on microsoft to release a patch.

Since no patch has been release the best option is to disable SMS. The people over at quickpwn have put together a quick guide for you. Here it is.

How to disable the SMS App

  1. Jailbreak your iPhone using either purplera1n or redsn0w
  2. Go to Cydia, search for OpenSSH and install it
  3. Download an SSH client (WinSCP for Windows users and Cyberduck for Mac)
  4. Make sure WiFi is turned on, go to Settings -> WiFi. Select your network and check your iPhone’s IP. SSH in to your iPhone using the iPhone’s IP. Login with the Username: root and Password: alpine.
  5. Navigate to the Applications directory
  6. Locate the directory named MobileSMS.app. Right-click and click on properties. Where it says Permissions uncheck all the options.
  7. Click OK.
  8. To test if you did this right, tap the SMS app on your iPhone and it should crash when you launch it!

If you’re not going to apply this method and you receive an SMS with a small square character, turn your phone off immediately.

Mediafox: Custom Portable Firefox Build

Posted by Rick | Posted in Applications | Posted on 04-06-2009

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MediaFox

I don’t even know why I still have cable. Well, actually I do. It’s because the wife likes the cable. She’s a freakin’ DVR ninja. If however I was single, I’d have already canceled my cable months ago. Between RSS bittorrents, Newsgroups, and online TV shows straight from the networks themselves or Hulu, why bother shelling out the extra money?

There’s a few problems with this setup though:

1. You have to have a PC connected to your TV. (which I suspect most people will have in the near future. I have a shuttle hooked up to every TV in my house)

2. Setting up a media center PC can be a bit of a pain in the ass.

3. Finding all those websites for online TV can be a bitch and might not look slick in your default vanilla browser.

Well, for the first two,you’re on your own. For the third one though, you can check out Mediafox. Mediafox is simply a download of portable firefox (no install, just unpack and run) version of firefox that has been tweaked with the media junkie in mind.

This handy tool has a theme and addons such as cooloris, foxytunes, as well as a fullscreen button. It also has a shit-ton of bookmarks for all your online TV needs. Check it out. It’s worth the download if you ask me.

Mediafox.zip

Project Natal for XBOX 360

Posted by Rick | Posted in Gaming | Posted on 04-06-2009

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Project Natal XBOX 360What a tease!!!

Apparently Microsoft has been working on an update for the 360, instead of adding more horsepower to the device, they’re giving it different functionality. I guess they got tired of Nintendo one upping them in the novelty department and decided to dish it back. They’ve developed a way to play games without the use of a controller.

The video makes it look really awesome, score one for marketing. However, if being a gamer has taught me anything, it’s to be skeptical of video game commercials. Too many times have I been burned by pre-rendered graphics and other awesomeness in the commercial that wasn’t delivered with the final product.

However, if this turns out to be as bad ass as the video makes it out to be, we could be looking at a Wii killer here.

I’ll let you check out the video for yourself after the break.

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