Sunday, October 17, 2010

Angry Birds, the popular iOS game, now available for free in the Android Market.

Angry Birds is one of the most popular games for iOS, and it was bought by over 6.5 million people running Apple's devices (without counting those who downloaded it via Installous).  A few days ago it has also been launched for Android, in the Android Market, and is now available for download, yes, for free. Of course that it includes ads, but they appear only when you are restarting a "mission" and only for a few seconds (2-3 maximum).

Just as I was expecting, it is a very addicting game, and I started liking it as soon as opened it. On my Nexus One (1GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM) the game runs smoothly, without any lag. I've first seen this game on someone's iPod Touch (3rd gen) and it really had lag. The high graphics the developers included in this game make it a must have one for any Android device.

As someone said, "Once played can't stop". Maybe only when your battery discharges completely. It has already over 250 000 downloads, and about 10 500 ratings. A paid, ad-free version is expected to become available later this year.

To download it, just search for "Angry Birds" in the Market, it should be available on Android Markets from all over the world. If you can't find it there, just request me a download link for it and you'll be able to download it directly on you Android device.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Limera1n/Greenpois0n and iPad on 3.2.2? Better...not.

If you've got an iPad and you want jailbreak on it, my recommendation is to avoid the update to 3.2.2 (if you haven't done it already). My iPad was bricked today by a an app (it was stuck at boot logo), and I decided that because there was no way of recovering the data I had on it, the best option was to update it to the latest firmware, 3.2.2. But it turned out that it was a bad idea....

Everything went fine, iTunes 10 successfully updated it to 3.2.2, but the problems started when I tried to jailbreak it. Even though it seemed that the jailbreak succeeded, I couldn't find on the home screen the icon/shortcut/logo/app/whatever of the jailbreak tool I tried. I tried both limera1n and greenpois0n, on three different computers. One was running Windows XP, one was on Windows 7, and the other was on Mac OS X. However, on none of the them I got the icon of the jailbreak solution I tried. So, I couldn't get Cydia, so the jailbreak was completely useless.

I really don't know where's the problem, some people reported that both solutions worked fine from the first try on their 3.2.2 iPad, others reported that they tried of few times and than they succeeded, and others reported that they got in the same situation as me. I think that I tried about 25 times to jailbreak that iPad. I really got tired of these iDevices. Unjailbroken, the iPad it is just a bigger iPod, even a much cheaper Android-powered device being able to do much more that an iPad can. But if you jailbreak it (it's legal in case you didn't know, read more here), you'll get a big headache with all the bugs and problems jailbreaking brings.

I ended up by restoring the iPad to 3.2.1 (I had SHSH on file for 3.2.1, so it was quite simple), and I did the jailbreak using jailbreakme.com. If you're still on 3.2.1 (or 3.2) and you want jailbreak, make sure you do it before updating the iPad to 3.2.2, because at that time you can save your iPad's SHSH blobs without any problem.Having SHSH saved on 3.2.1/3.2 (or even on 3.2.2 if you get there with a jailbroken iPad) means that you can anytime downgrade/restore to the version you have that SHSH saved.

Use them on your own responsibility:

Jailbreak by limera1n (Windows, Mac OS X): http://www.limera1n.com/
Jailbreak by greenpois0n (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux): http://www.greenpois0n.com/

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Ubuntu 10.10 is live, there aren't any huge changes.

Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, got today to a new version, 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. This new version brings some changes, but they are small so the experience is pretty close to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. The themes (Radiance and Ambiances) were slightly polished, making Ubuntu a quite good-looking alternative for Windows or Mac.

One of the most notable difference is represented by the fonts. They look now much prettier than before. Below is an example:



The Ubuntu Software Center has also been changed, bringing you new features, such as "What's new", "Where is it", the ability of handling .deb files or paid applications. Actually, there's only one paid application now, but it is just for testing purposes, more are expected to come with Ubuntu 11.04. 


The installation process has been completely redesigned. Andrew (from webupd8) shot a video of it:

Ouch, I was about to forget about it. There's also a new wallpaper into Ubuntu 10.10 by default. The old one, which has been a little redesigned compared to the one present in 10.04, created a real scandal and was changed after some users reported even a bug into it. So, it now looks something like this:


Other changes are represented only by under the hood improvements and updates to most applications, changes that are seen rarely or aren't at all for the end user. 

Ubuntu is available for download from here.

Limera1n is available, jailbreaks iOS 4.0-4.1.

Limera1n has been released yesterday evening, and after geohot got angry and pulled the download link (I don't know exactly why), it seems that Limera1n is now available for download again on the official website. This new jailbreak tool promises to jailbreak almost any device running iOS 4.0 or 4.1.

The supported products are iPhone 3Gs/4, iPad, and iPod Touch 3G/4G. For the unmentioned products: iPod Touch 2G support is coming soon, while for the iPhone 3G you must use redsn0w. For the moment, limera1n is available only for Windows, the compatibility for Mac is coming soon.

Theoretically, limera1n does hacktivate your device (allowing you to use it with any carrier), but many people reported problems after hacktivating their iPhones with limera1n, so I don't recommend you doing this yet (limera1n is currently in beta 4).

Hope I don't have to tell you that you're using it on your own responsibility, it is an unstable release so don't expect from it to be bug-free. You might have to restore your device or you may even get a bricked one as a result of using limera1n!

Download from here.