Hopefully an OS update isn't required for those devices to get the new version of Flash Player, otherwise the majority of Android users are screwed. The PlayBook is currently running Flash 10.2.

A few hours later RIM posted a trademark-filled statement on their blog:

Earlier today, Adobe announced plans to stop investing in Flash® for mobile browsing, and focus more efforts on HTML5. As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations, and are looking forward to including Flash 11.1 for the BlackBerry PlayBook.

The strategic direction announced by Adobe today further validates RIM’s decision to launch the BlackBerry PlayBook with a full-powered and uncompromised desktop class browser supporting both Flash and HTML5. We are pleased that Adobe will focus its efforts on next generation Flash-based apps delivered via AIR and BlackBerry AppWorld as well as the great opportunities that HTML5 presents for our developers as we discussed at DevCon Americas.

In essence they're saying:

Adobe just blindsided us with that announcement and even though we pay them an outrageous licensing fee for access to their source code, we don't have a copy of this mythical Flash 11.1 to test on the PlayBook. Luckily we support HTML 5, because we're probably going to be dicked-over by Adobe again in the near future.

I wonder how long until RIM changes direction again and begins to downplay the PlayBook's Flash support?

Move the iPhone3,1_5.0_9A334_Restore.ipsw into the iPhone Software Updates directory. On OS X this is located in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates.

Re-run redsn0w and the jailbreak will work as expected. Don't forget that it's still a tethered jailbreak.

I find this to be much easier and faster than using the Info window or the delightful "Click to select. Wait a moment and then click again to toggle editing, but don't click too soon or else it'll be a double-click and you'll start to play the item."

If you're a Windows user I assume you press F2 to rename an item, but I've never used iTunes on Windows.

A year later in September 2011, the PlayBook is being marketed as "the world's first professional-grade tablet."

Both enterprise and professional are words that associate with specific verticals. The businessman (or woman) who is constantly on the go. The construction project supervisor that needs to stay on top of numerous contractors. A project manager juggling a dozen different projects. The IT professional who can leverage the extra processing horsepower and screen real-estate to support and manage a multitude of servers and users.

The PlayBook isn't even mentioned on the blackberry.com Apps & Software home page¹, although the page does demonstrate RIM's typical attention to detail, listing BlackBerry 6 OS, BlackBerry 7 OS and BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 in the tried and true order of Old, Newest, Oldest.

Development and Apps

The PlayBook did not ship with a native SDK (NDK), which means there was no way for developers to build an app using anything other than WebWorks (JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS) or Adobe AIR. Aside from piracy concerns, there are some things that just aren't possible with both of those technologies. There is no SSH client, Microsoft Remote Desktop client or VNC viewer for the PlayBook. There is no DropBox client. There is only one instant messaging client. There still aren't native email, address book and calendar applications. These are all applications that would be considered professional or enterprise.

Searching for "playbook" on App World yields 1057 apps (and 280 Games, which are listed separately). Being generous and assuming that all 246 apps in News, Productivity, Business and Finance are suited for the elusive "enterprise" and "professional" markets, roughly 23% of the available apps are applicable².

PlayBook Applications by Category

The Dilemma

If you were a manufacturer struggling to find a position for your tablet in a world dominated by the iPad, what would you do? You might rush to get the NDK out the door so developers can use C/C++ to develop highly-performing, powerful applications.

If you're RIM, what do you do? You rush to get the native SDK out the door so developers can "create rich and compelling games for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet using C/C++, the Standard Template Library (STL) and Open GL ES 1.1/2.0."

Wait… games?

What about the enterprise? Or the professionals? Nope, forget those.

In a post titled "Apply to participate in the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS Closed Beta!" (excitement included) the recently-departed Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup, announces:

I am very pleased to announce today that we are moving to the next stage in our launch plans for the Native SDK for BlackBerry® Tablet OS (‘Native SDK’) tools targeted at game developers. As of today, developers from around the world can apply to participate in our closed beta program to get access to these new and exciting tools.

And RIM is enforcing the closed beta as well, with Kirkup acknowledging that he denied a developer who apparently wasn't planning on building games. It's worth noting that the developer in question, Kyle Fowler, has built FourPlay, a foursquare client, for the PlayBook and Blaq, a Twitter client for both BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook.

RIM needs to choose a direction for PlayBook and stick with it. More importantly they need to stop alienating their already anemic development community.

I'd recommend reaching out to the crew at RedMonk. They get developers and developer relations (just ask their clients).

Disclosure: I like RIM and have a great relationship with them as an an enterprise customer. And while I've happily attended four of their conferences in the past three years—and presented at their developer conference—I'm much more excited to be attending RedMonk's Monktoberfest next month.

1. This isn't totally true; the sixth and final slide in the main feature advises you to "Keep the software on your BlackBerry PlayBook up-to-date" and shows an exciting screen of the PlayBook downloading a software update.
2. Some of the less useful business apps include a countdown timer, multiple mortgage and commission calculators and multiple glorified RSS readers masquerading as single-site news apps.

New Tweets Notification

The visual indicator for the newest tweet is very subtle and virtually unnoticeable while scrolling fast.

Newest Tweet Indicator - A slightly darker line

Solution

It's a fairly simple problem to solve with a bookmarklet – a tiny bit of javascript that is manually executed by opening a bookmark.

Right-click and bookmark the following link, or drag it to your bookmarks toolbar or menu: First New Tweet

This may not work in a feed reader. If that's the case, manually add the bookmarklet or view the original post. Internet Explorer may prompt you about adding a Favorite that is not safe; ignore that, or get a better browser.

There is a known bug (#86643) affecting some versions of Chrome that results in a bookmark that does not contain a name. Right click and Edit the bookmark to fix that.

To use the bookmarklet, open it the way you would a normal bookmark. If there are new tweets, the browser will automatically scroll to the oldest new tweet – which will be right above the last tweet visible prior to loading the newest tweets.

Read more about bookmarklets at Wikipedia.

Source Code

Unminified code, complete with a modified version of Dustin Diaz's getElementsByClass to accommodate Internet Explorer. I briefly tested this on Google Chrome 13, Firefox 4 and IE 8. This isn't meant to be pretty.

javascript:(function(){
  if( document.getElementsByClassName ) {
    var t=document.getElementsByClassName("last-new-tweet")[0];
    if(t) {
      window.scrollTo(0, t.offsetTop + t.offsetParent.offsetTop );
    }
  } else {
    var els = document.getElementsByTagName("div"), elsLen = els.length, pattern = new RegExp("(^|\\s)last-new-tweet(\\s|$)");
    for (var i = 0; i < elsLen; i++) {
      if ( pattern.test(els[i].className) ) {
       window.scrollTo(0, els[i].offsetTop + els[i].offsetParent.offsetTop );
       break;
      }
    }
  }
})();

Minified code, in case you'd like to manually create your own bookmarklet.

javascript:(function(){if(document.getElementsByClassName){var t=document.getElementsByClassName("last-new-tweet")[0];if(t){window.scrollTo(0,t.offsetTop+t.offsetParent.offsetTop);}}else{var els=document.getElementsByTagName("div"),elsLen=els.length,pattern=new RegExp("(^|\\s)last-new-tweet(\\s|$)");for(var i=0;i<elsLen;i++){if(pattern.test(els[i].className)){window.scrollTo(0,els[i].offsetTop+els[i].offsetParent.offsetTop);break;}}}})();

Open a new Terminal window and run the following command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

A little time on the TRS connector Wikipedia page suggests that this is exactly what's happening. Emphasis mine:

TRRS plugs do not work properly with a TRS stereo jack if the ground contact in the jack connects to the microphone contact on the plug. It is therefore a good practice to implement new TRS headphone jacks using actually a TRRS mechanical jacks and connecting ground to sleeve as well as the second ring contact. This way such jacks will provide better compatibility with different TRRS cell phone headsets.

So RIM used an old TRS jack with a poorly placed ground and now any TRSS plug will short it out. This is unique for the Torch, and isn't an issue for any of the other half-dozen BlackBerry devices I regularly use. The utility of the volume controls on a $29 headset is enough that I don't even bother using the $400 Torch as a phone anymore.

If sudo isn't installed, install that with apt-get install sudo or

su mobile
uicache

And while you're on the command line, make sure to change the password for the root and mobile users.

1. SSH to your iPhone
2. su -
3. Enter the root password, alpine by default.
4. passwd
5. Enter your new root password
6. passwd mobile
7. Enter the new password for the mobile user

Is anyone in Portland, Oregon? says @Isaiahmustafa Visiting relatives, have nothing to do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-qpEUOtLk8

about 2 hours ago via web

I've probably heard the words "Old Spice" 500 times in the past hour, but I'm still watching. You won't find the videos on the Old Spice YouTube page, instead hit up @oldspice on Twitter.

A few of my favorites:

1. inForm – Wireless Forms Made Simple – View forms, surveys, etc created by a Windows app
2. Forum for BlackBerry – Appears to be a front-end for some web forum
3. Law Enforcement theme for BlackBerry – A theme
4. vTerminal Credit Card Processing App for 8350, 8500, 9000 devices
5. vTerminal Credit Card Processing App for 95xx and 9630 devices
6. NEED FOR SPEED Undercover

Results were sorted by relevance, so I can totally understand why an application whose title contains every single word in my search phrase would be number 6, preceded by only one item that could even possibly be remotely related. That's assuming the Law Enforcement Theme makes some reference to speeding. If I had to guess, RIM is sorting results by category first, and then relevance.

It gets better though, if you drill down to the category view you can see that there actually six Need for Speed titles. But for some reason, they're all duplicated; one set is published by Electronic Arts Nederland BV and the other by Electronic Arts Inc. WHY?

This is just sloppy and really needs to be addressed. If App World is supposed to be the go-to place for BlackBerry users, it can't have amateurish mistakes like this. I hope App World 2.0 will eliminate little bugs like this. More importantly, I hope App World 2.0 fixes the nasty bug present in App World 1.x where it vanishes from the home screen, can't be launched in any fashion and needs to be reinstalled. Followed by a device reboot, of course.

The preferred noisemaker of the 2010 World Cup: the vuvuzela. For some reason these were distributed to fans attending World Cup matches, ruining the match for everyone watching at home.

When played by a stadium full of people the vuvuzela sounds like angry bees. I'm always up for a small project to help improve (or build) my BlackBerry development chops, and a vuvuzela app seemed like a perfect candidate. There are a slew of vuvuzela apps for the iPhone, but I only saw one other vuvuzela app for the BlackBerry, and that one only has a single vuvuzela sound.

Mine? It has 7.

I built the app with the 5.0 JDE. I tested it on a Storm2 9550 and Bold 9700 both running OS 5 and an 8820 running 4.5 and it worked on all three. If it doesn't work for some ancient OS, get a new phone.

Usage

Visit http://j.mp/cfg-vuvuzela using your BlackBerry to install the app. On newer devices the icon can be found in your Downloads folder.

Scroll and click a button to play the sound, or press the keys 1-7. You don't need to hold the ALT down; pressing W is the same as pressing 1. I haven't tested this on a SureType (Pearl) device.

Known Issues

• Multiple audio threads – This is a J2ME limitation. I use javax.microedition.media.Player to play the audio, and you can only have one Player instance on CDMA devices and two on GSM. I read this on the BlackBerry support forums, and confirmed with a member of RIM's media development team.
• Initial launch – the first time you launch the app on OS 5 it can take up to two minutes before the screen displays. Oddly enough it launches immediately on an old 8820 running OS 4.5. I'm looking into why this happens.
• Volume control – I'm actually not sure where the volume setting comes from, I just play the sound and it works, and it's loud. The way the VUVUZELA should be.
• The folks over at SistMan Software also have a vuvuzela app, and there is a conflict since both of our primary modules are named Vuvuzela (Vuvuzela.cod, etc). Until that's fixed, you can't have both apps installed. I like to think mine is better since it has more sounds, but they launched first and I'll publish a minor update with a unique module name.

Download

Download it OTA – Please link to this page, and not the .jad directly.

Recently the email address and ICCID (SIM serial number) of at least 140,000 iPad 3G owners were left unprotected by AT&T. AT&T chose to blame "hackers" for stealing this information, but that is just deflection. AT&T didn't adequately protect customer information, and as a result someone found it.

AT&T also claims that it was only the email address and ICCID that leaked, which is another partial truth. A 2008 paper titled SIMs and Salsa (quick view) demonstrates how the ICCID is directly linked to the IMSI.

AT&T SIM cards have a 20-digit ICCID, and the IMSI is 15 digits long.

The iPad ICCIDs all seem to begin with 8901410424 and followed by 9 important digits and then a single checksum digit. For example 89014104240123456781.

An AT&T IMSI is 15 digits, made up with the MCC (310), MNC (170) and the 9 underlined digits preceding the checksum in the ICCID. So if your ICCID was 89014104240123456781 as in the example above, your IMSI would be 310170012345678.

You can find your ICCID on your iPad by opening Settings, choosing General and then About.

Why is the IMSI Important?

Each device has a unique IMSI, and the IMSI is considered sensitive enough that it's rarely sent over the wireless network. Even the name – International Mobile Subscriber Identity – implies that it is something that shouldn't be shared freely.

The IMSI is also one of two pieces of information needed to clone a SIM card, the other being the Kⁱ, or subscriber authentication key. Fortunately the Kⁱ can only be retrieved with physical access to the SIM card.

But, knowing who a specific IMSI belongs to, for instance someone at the White House, allows an attacker target a specific user. Using technology like an IMSI catcher an attacker can insert their own device between a target and the carrier network and monitor data or voice conversations. There are a number of flaws in GSM that I assume could also be exploited relatively easily by someone – like a foreign government – with the proper resources and motivation.

AT&T is downplaying their own incompetence at securing customer information, and is putting customers at risk. Customers who are newsworthy in their own right. Even if the information on the iPad isn't sensitive, it can easily be compromised and used as an attack vector onto a previously inaccessible corporate wifi network.

Perhaps AT&T feels that is not a real risk? The latest jailbreak is a userland jailbreak and it's not inconceivable that it could be adapted to work in Mobile Safari. The first iPhone was able to be jailbroken simply by visiting a special website. And Dave Aitel has been selling Silica since 2006. One of the use cases Aitel would pitch for Silica was to mail it to a CEO and let it automatically hack anything it could find, beginning with wifi networks.

AT&T needs to immediately and proactively issue all iPad 3G subscribers new SIM cards.

To be specific:

#1: Searching and expecting to find any results older than 5 days

#2: Searching for with an until date more than 7 days ago – this is an option on the Advanced Search page, and has returned a HTTP/404 for at least a year now

#3: Partial matches – I can find this post (for the next 4 days) by searching for Ozzy or fucking, but not fuck

#4: source containing anything with a space. I can search for source:Tweetie but not source:"Twitter for iPhone"

The site fails miserably at it's sole purpose – searching.

By default both VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop associate specific files on the Mac side with Windows applications.  Because there's nothing better than accidentally double-clicking a text file with a .log extension and launching an entire VM to view it.

VMware Fusion

1. Inside Fusion, open the Virtual Machine Library window – Window menu > Virtual Machine Library, or press CMD+SHIFT+L.
2. Select the VM and click the Settings button.
3. Click the Applications icon, and then select the Default Applications tab.
4. Uncheck Open your Mac files and web links using Windows applications and close the window.

Repeat the process for every VM.

Parallels Desktop

It's not easy, but does that surprise you? The icon may look different if Parallels is still installed. It's probably considered a feature that all the file associations remain, even after Parallels is removed – who doesn't like error messages!?

1. Find your VM – by default they are located in ~/Documents/Parallels/
2. Right click on the .pvm file and choose Show Package Contents
   
3. Delete the Windows Applications folder, and empty the trash.

Amazon was taking a loss on every $9.99 book they sold, because they wanted to further the ebook platform and not confuse people with variable pricing. Amazon is thinking long-term, whereas Macmillian is thinking like a 167-year old company that's run by people who are confused by and scared of the Internet.

If there is any doubt left about who has the reader's best interests in mind, try comparing pricing for a random book from Macmillan's Top Sellers page.

Eight Days to Live at Amazon

Eight Days to Live at Macmillan

Their uninstall icon sums up my feelings quite well. Their support is horrible, the forums are filled with people complaining and even their phone system is a joke; the IVR has a computer reading the name – Para-lel-ells – instead of a person.

The real deal breaker is the sticky keys bug.  Which ever the CMD key is mapped in a Windows VM doesn't work right. If you map CMD to ALT, Alt+Tab will 'stick'.  If you map CMD to WIN, modifier keys like WIN+D don't work right.

This bug with sticky keys was introduced a couple years ago when Parallels Desktop 4 was released, and still exists with v5.

Maybe VMware Fusion is slower¹, but VMware does virtualization right. I trust close to 90% of my servers to ESX/vSphere, and I'll continue to trust my desktop virtualization to Fusion. On a Windows desktop it's not even a question, VMware Workstation has no competition.

1. Fusion 3.1 RC is in public beta, so the MacTech benchmarks are already outdated

It took me much too long to figure out that it wasn't easy (or maybe even possible) with Automator, even though it's simple to do from the command line.

Each Automator action returns a result. That result is passed to the next item in the chain, assuming the item is accepting input. The key is to chain a series of Get Value of Variable calls together, which are passed to a shell script as $1-$n and the special $@ variable. I've written a short primer on using Arrays in Bash that may be helpful.

A crappy picture is worth at least 68 words, so here is what a sample workflow looks like:

You can download the sample workflow here.

If you want to loop through selected Finder items one-at-a-time, the best way is to use Nyhthawk Productions's excellent Dispense Items Incrementally action.

array.sh

#!/bin/bash
 
echo "<<< Load a file into an array"
echo "# Set the IFS (Internal Field Separator) to a newline
IFS='
'
# Load file.txt from the current directory
arr=( \$( < file.txt ) )
"
 
 
IFS='
'
arr=( $( < file.txt ) )
 
 
echo "<<< Addressing individual array elements"
echo "\${arr[0]} = ${arr[0]}" # the first line of the file
echo "\${arr[1]} = ${arr[1]}" # the second line of the file
 
 
echo ""
echo "<<< \${#VARNAME[@]} will always return the number of elements in an array"
echo "\$arr contains ${#arr[@]} (\${#arr[@]}) items"
 
echo ""
echo "<<< Loop through the array (\${arr[@]}), loading each item as \$foo."
num=1
for foo in "${arr[@]}" ; do
	echo "Loop iteration $num: $foo"
	num=$((num+1))
done
 
 
echo ""
echo "<<< Loop through the array, addressing each item with an index"
num=0
while [[ $num -lt ${#arr[@]} ]] ; do
	echo "Array index $num (\${arr[$num]}): ${arr[$num]}"
	num=$((num+1))
done

file.txt

file line 1
file line 2
file line 3
file line 4

Saving the two files above as array.sh and file.txt, and running array.sh yields:

$./array.sh 
<<< Load a file into an array
# Set the IFS (Internal Field Separator) to a newline
IFS='
'
# Load file.txt from the current directory
arr=( $( < file.txt ) )
 
<<< Addressing individual array elements
${arr[0]} = file line 1
${arr[1]} = file line 2
 
<<< ${#VARNAME[@]} will always return the number of elements in an array
$arr contains 4 (${#arr[@]}) items
 
<<< Loop through the array (${arr[@]}), loading each item as $foo.
Loop iteration 1: file line 1
Loop iteration 2: file line 2
Loop iteration 3: file line 3
Loop iteration 4: file line 4
 
<<< Loop through the array, addressing each item with an index
Array index 0 (${arr[0]}): file line 1
Array index 1 (${arr[1]}): file line 2
Array index 2 (${arr[2]}): file line 3
Array index 3 (${arr[3]}): file line 4

iPhone 3GS, brightness set to ~55%. Wifi was enabled all day, 7:00 AM – 10:40 PM. 3G was enabled between 11:00 AM and 8:30 PM. A single two-minute phone call was placed. Roughly 11MB of data usage while on 3G (several web pages and Twitter using Tweetie).

Final result: At 10:40 PM there was 26% remaining on the battery.

BlackBerry Bold 9700, brightness set to auto. 3G and wifi enabled all day – 7:00 AM – 10:40 PM. Multiple background apps – SocialScope (Twitter) and Twitter for BlackBerry, multiple web pages and push email for 5 different accounts (4 BIS, 1 BES). 5 phone calls were placed, lasting a total of around 70 minutes.

Final result: At 10:40 PM there was 65% remaining on the battery.

Dear RIM,

Please shave 1-3mm off the thickness of my next device, I obviously don't need a replaceable battery¹.

xoxo,
Corey

Side note: I have replaceable batteries for the BlackBerry Tour/Storm/Storm2/8900, the BlackBerry Bold 9700, my Mifi, and the BlackBerry 8530. I do not have any spare batteries for any of my Android devices, which would feel like trying to color coordinate my car with vehicles the rest of the highway. The BlackBerry 9700 is the first device I've ever owned where it takes significant effort to drain the battery (<20% remaining). Enjoy the high caliber of writing I produce right before I fall asleep.

1. Thanks to Alex for planting this statement in my mind