“The iPhone is the phone with the most tricks on the market. What possibly could we do to trick it up more? Bless it with the finest precious metal and jewels,” Hughes told PC Advisor.

The iPhone 3G Supreme ships with a 7kg chest, which is made from a single block of granite, offset with Kashmir gold and with Nubuck top grain leather inner lining.

The front bezel houses 136 flawless diamonds totalling 68 carats. On its back, the Apple logo comprises of 53 diamonds totalling 1 carat. The rare, single cut 7.1 carat diamond acts as the front navigation button. The device is encased in a solid 22-carat gold case that weighs 271gm.

Stuart Hughes designed the phone for the Liverpool-based Goldstriker International.

Source: EFY Times

Some one-touch effects are included, such as Vibrant, which saturates colors. Pop presents a multi-image rendering with alternating colors, while Border adds a white frame, and Vignette Blur softens edges while keeping the center sharp. Other effects include Warm Vintage, Rainbow, White Glow and Soft Black and White.

Completed images can be uploaded to Photoshop.com, where up to 2GB of files can be stored for free. The website allows users to further edit, host and share photos.

The app also supports undos and redos, and can save an original copy of a photo at the beginning of the editing process. It requires iPhone 2.0 firmware, and is a free download from the App Store.

Source: ipodnn

Saturday, August 01, 2009: After a lot of hype, Apple has confirmed that it has released a software update to fix a vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to take control of the iPhone and use it for identity theft. The vulnerability was discovered by security experts at the Black Hat security conference, on Thursday.

As per the findings of Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators and Collin Mulliner of Fraunhofer SIT — the security experts who found the flaw — the vulnerability would allow a hacker to gain control of the device by sending a single SMS.

The researchers said they notified Apple of the problem more than a month before their presentation at Black Hat. The company had yet to release the patch, so they decided to publicise their findings in an effort to push Apple to act, reports The New York Times.

“We appreciate the information provided to us about SMS vulnerabilities which affect several mobile phone platforms,” an Apple spokeswoman said in a phone interview to PCMAG.com. “This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone.”

According to Apple security note, “A memory corruption issue exists in the decoding of SMS messages. Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution.”

Source: EFY Times

Showing a new sign of rivalry with the search engine giant, Apple has refused to allow Google to distribute Google Voice application to iPhone through Apple’s App Store. Google Voice is a free application that lets users assign a single number to ring their home, work and mobile phones, and also get voicemail inbox that could be accessed on the Web. But, Apple has reportedly banned iphone applications based on Google Voice.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, a Google spokeswoman said she couldn’t say why Apple had rejected the mobile version of Google Voice. Apple has previously turned away Internet telephony programmes because they repeated key iPhone functions.

Last week, Google said in a blog post that Apple rejected its location-aware mobile app Google Latitude that would have allowed users to track their location and see where their friends were.

In addition, GV Mobile — a third-party Google Voice iPhone app — has also been removed from the App Store.

“We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users,” a Google spokeswoman said.

It’s unclear why Apple did not approve the Google Voice application. However, some media reports say that AT&T may be behind the rejection. AT&T is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the US.

Source:  EFY Times

Apple iphone Solid Gold Phone

It is learnt that four designers have laboured to produce this solid gold iPhone that also contains 53 VVS1 diamonds. The polished finish lends it a jewel like look. It contains all the regular iPhone features with an excellent 320 by 480 touch screen. It has a memory of 16 GB. It includes Bluetooth, WLAN 802.11b, WLAN 802.11g. A 2 MP camera enables good pictures. It has a talk time of 10 hours and a stand by time of 300 hours.

Solid Gold iPhone 3G

The price is really astounding that reserves it exclusively for the premium class. The iPhone Solid Gold can be bought for a price of £22,995 that is about Rs 17 lakhs.

Like similar LBS’s, Latitude allows you to add friends, view their location on a map, and send messages to schedule lunch or a meeting. You get complete control over privacy settings such as who can see your location and how exactly it is plotted on their map. Latitude for iPhone also allows you to view traffic, search for businesses, and, of course, effortlessly update your own location. Simply visit Google.com/latitude to get started.

Interestingly, Google Mobile Product Manager Mat Balez notes on Google’s Official Mobile Blog that “We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users.” Whereby “worked closely with Apple,” Balez means that Google originally developed Latitude for iPhone as a native app, and Apple shot it down. “Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.”

Thanks to Safari’s newfound access to the iPhone’s GPS hardware in OS 3.0, Latitude works pretty well as a web app in our quick testing. But Apple’s request of Google to rewrite Latitude as a web app must have been no small feat. This probably explains why Latitude arrived for just Android last month, instead of simultaneously for the iPhone, as has been Google’s typical behavior so far.

Balez’s blog post also points out that because the iPhone doesn’t allow third-party applications (or web apps) to run in the background, “we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile.” In other words, in addition to there being no native app, there’s also not nearly the amount of functionality as on those four other platforms.

Source: Mac World

* Reset your iPhone by holding down the sleep and home buttons until the Apple logo appears.
* Restore your iPhone: In iTunes, click the Restore button under the Summary tab. Restoring the phone will erase contacts, calendars, photos, and other data on the phone, but will restore automatically backed-up information including text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, etc.

However, some issues chronicled below persist:

Visual Voicemail wasn’t accessible by many users from their iPhone 3G S after restoring from a previous model’s backup. Users are required to reenter their voicemail pins when prompted by the iPhone 3G S. If you’ve forgotten your pin, you can reset it by taking the following steps:

* Log onto AT&T myWireless
* Click on Phone/Device
* Click on Reset Voicemail Password
* Press the Submit button

A text message is sent to your phone with a new Visual Voicemail password.

Passwords previously saved for numerous applications were reported lost in the transfer to the iPhone 3G S. Users had to reenter passwords for a number of apps, including (but not necessarily limited to) AIM, LogMeIn, Loopt, MySpace, Palringo, Sirius XM, Tweetie, and Wallet. (Wallet’s database had to be recovered from MobileMe). The password recovery problem is likely attributable to the hardware change from a previous iPhone to the iPhone 3G S.)

Compass has to be reset periodically when it struggles with interference, which happens often enough that iPhone 3G S users are complaining about it. Apple offers some information about calibrating Compass on its Web site, as well as in a support document, iPhone 3G S: Re-calibrate Compass. These explain that the recalibration isn’t always necessary; sometimes you need to just ignore the recalibration messages while Compass self adjusts.

The iPhone 3G S’ Oleophobic screen coating is rumored to be incompatible with screen protectors, so we called several Apple stores to investigate and were told this isn’t true. The sales associate said that we could come into any Apple store and purchase a screen protector for the iPhone 3G S. Protectors for the 3G should also work on the 3G S.

Duplicate Contacts are being reported by a number of users on Apple’s discussion boards. We stumbled upon a nice explanation for and solution to this problem in this article: “About duplicate contacts and calendars on iPhone [OS] 3.0,” via Mac OS X Hints.

Find My iPhone remembers all your devices, including the old iPhone that you just turned off when you upgraded to a new handset last weekend. MobileMe does not appear to support a mechanism that will allow you to remove the tracking of an iPhone or iPod Touch from Find My iPhone. We contacted Apple through MobileMe support via online chat and asked about this.

According to Apple tech support, removing a device from the list involves sending the device a Remote Wipe command. MobileMe will then attempt to send this command for up to two hours and if unable to contact the selected device, it is deleted from Find My iPhone. This information is contrary to the Apple support document, “MobileMe, iPhone OS 3.0: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe” which states:

Previously-owned iPhone/iPod Touch appears at me.com/account
If your iPhone/iPod Touch was configured with your MobileMe account, it may still appear when you log in to www.me.com/account, even if you no longer possess the iPhone/iPod Touch. Currently, a device is removed from your account page list only after it is successfully wiped. This article will be updated as more information becomes available.

Note: we think the last sentence points out that Apple is aware of this bug in Locate My iPhone and will announce a fix later. Following the advice given in the online chat wasn’t successful. Nearly 12 hours later, the old iPhone 3G status is still pending a remote wipe in our test. We hope Apple will release a fix for this through the MobileMe Web site.

Wi-Fi connectivity and signal strength complaints have also cropped up after the iPhone OS 3.0 update: some users complain that their phones drop them from Wi-Fi unexpectedly, others that they can’t connect at all. Some users have been able to resolve their connectivity problems by going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings, while others complained that this simple fix does not work. In the latter case, a restore might be necessary.

Troubleshooting tips
Force Quit has changed in iPhone OS 3.0 for the iPhone 3G S but remains the same for older iPhones that do not support Voice Control. In order to force quit an application, you must:

* iPhone 2G/3G: Press and hold the Home button for a few seconds until the app quits. (Valid for iPhone OS 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.)
* iPhone 3G S: Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the “Slide to power off” screen appears, then press and hold the Home button until the app quits (usually within 6 seconds).

Apple has recently updated the following support documents that might also be useful if you encounter problems with your iPhone:

* “iPhone Basic Troubleshooting”–some iPhone basic troubleshooting tips.
* “Troubleshooting applications purchased from the App Store”–Try the following troubleshooting steps on your iPhone or iPod Touch in order to resolve an application’s issue.
* “Troubleshooting iPhone and iPod Touch contact and calendar syncing via USB on Windows”–If you’re having difficulty syncing your contacts or calendars to iPhone or iPod Touch with iTunes for Windows via USB, this article can help. Note: this article does not apply to wireless syncing with Exchange ActiveSync or MobileMe.

Some users also might consider following the Apple iPhone Troubleshooting Assistant before calling AppleCare or visiting the local Genius Bar.

Tell us about your iPhone OS 3.0 or iPhone 3G S upgrade problems in the comments.

Source:  CNET Reviews

Source:  PC World

The HunterGather selection of cases may not be exactly made of wood, but it surely was inspired by it. The cases are made for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, and also in the form of a laptop sleeve. Each one has the details of wood bark, and they are a signature design of both St. John and collaborator Gary Benzel who created the woodgrain pattern and have applied it to these latest creations, as well as to furniture and skateboard decks.

The design of the cases may look like a piece of wood but the quality of the Incase Slider is very much intact as well as the 15″ Sleeve for the MacBook Pro. The entire HunterGather Line is available today with the iPhone 3G/3G S cases retailing for $49.95, and the HunterGatherer Sleeve is retailing for $59.95.

Source: Latest Mobiles

Consumers may soon be able to access sites like YouTube and Hulu directly from the mobile browsers because Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) said Flash is coming to some smartphones in October.Adobe’s Flash technology is nearly ubiquitous around the Web but is often considered too resource intensive for smartphones. The company said in February it’s committed to bringing the full version to Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Windows Mobile, Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s S60 Symbian, and Palm’s webOS.

“We are bringing Flash Player 10 to smartphone-class devices to enable the latest Web browsing experience,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Naraye said during an investor call. “Multiple partners have already received early versions of this release and we expect to release a beta version for developers at our MAX Conference in October.”The move could open up tens of millions of devices for Flash developers and content creators, as well as give consumers a richer mobile Internet experience. Adobe has created the Open Screen Project to help it achieve its goal of creating a standard platform that can be used on desktops, mobile phones, and other devices.

The two major players missing from the list are Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone. Adobe said it has been working with RIM, but they aren’t far enough to announce anything. The iPhone is another matter altogether, and Flash may never wind up on Apple’s touch-screen smartphone.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said Flash is not good enough for the iPhone because of its resource requirements. Some industry watchers also believe having Flash could potentially detract from the App Store because developers could decide to just create content with Adobe’s technology. Additionally, Apple appears to be placing some bets that HTML 5 can provide iPhone users with Flash-like capabilities like video streaming.

Source: Information Week