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Tomorrow we start the New Year, and for those of you who aren’t still in line to buy a Nintendo Wii, it is looking to be a good one. I’m having my doubts about Apple though, as it would seem success is going to their head as they put Think Secret out of business, and I and a lot of others were tricked into believing they personally threaten the guy who writes the Fake Steve Jobs parody — recall I recommended his Options book for anyone who is fascinated with Apple.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Not to say it’s actually easy to get your hands on the rumored 1.1.3 firmware at this point, but in the event that you do, proceed with caution. Nate True, the guy that brought us a video walkthrough of the supposedly leaked goods, is reporting that he can’t seem to downgrade to 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 after performing the install. Locked phones show an “Incorrect SIM” error — a problem unlockers of yore are all too familiar with — while previously unlocked phones can’t be upgraded to 1.1.3 at all. Let’s be honest, though: if you somehow managed to score a copy of 1.1.3, is that really going to stop you from going for it?

[Thanks, cingular#1]

Update: We’re hearing that the phenomenon observed by Mr. True has existed since the very first firmware release; it’s a state the phone enters whenever it finds a baseband version different than the one it’s expecting to find, and it’s apparently been bypassable via a modified “lockdownd” binary for some time. Thanks, Alex!

Update 2: To those asking why the network says “Nate,” Nate True told us that “The network name comes in through the com.apple.springboard preferences plist. That file is copied back to the phone after a restore (and is thus not affected by an update).” In other words, even after an update that file pushed through and apparently showed the network name. So there you have it.

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theodp writes “Ready for one-automobile-per-child (OAPC)? India’s giant Tata Group is on the verge of launching the world’s cheapest car. The People’s Car, slated to be unveiled January 10th at a New Delhi auto show, will carry a sticker price of 100,000 rupees ($2,500), which some analysts say could revolutionize automobile costs worldwide. The Tata is a pet project of Cornell-trained architect Ratan Tata, which he helped design. The vehicle is aimed at improving driving safety by getting India’s masses off their motorbikes and into cars.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The iPhone kid — young George Hotz of Glen Rock, N.J. — came back from Rochester Institute of Technology this week with his head full of new ideas. Not surprisingly, the tinkering teen’s also been up to a bit of mischief on the upstate New York campus. Next month, the Bergen Academies grad is headed for Sweden to attend the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar and talk about his 3-D imaging invention — called “Project Holodeck” — that netted him a $20,000 Intel prize earlier this year.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Just yesterday we saw some pics of what was being touted as an iPhone running the as-yet-unannounced 1.1.3 firmware version, and now we’ve got word of some video proof from a pretty reliable source. Nate True, all-around modder and creator of the Walluminate light-up wallet, has a short vid up on his cre.ations.net site that claims to depict that handy home page icon rearrangement feature — you know, the one that suggests an SDK to make use of all the new slots. Go on, check out the short clip after the break.

[Thanks, Marcus S.]

Continue reading iPhone firmware 1.1.3 icon rearrangement on video?

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A Wired article reports on data loss in 2007, and the numbers aren’t good. Credit card and social security theft was at an all-time high, with even more losses expected in 2008. Information thieves, it seems, are just one step ahead of IT security. “While companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of data with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, the investment often is too little too late. ‘More of them are experiencing data breaches, and they’re responding to them in a reactive way, rather than proactively looking at the company’s security and seeing where the holes might be,’ said Linda Foley, who founded the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center after becoming an identity theft victim herself.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The entrepreneur was not one to pass up a marketing opportunity. However, when Jason Calacanis went on a bit too long about his latest product at a technology conference in August — at least in some eyes — pioneering software developer Dave Winer had had enough. Winer, of Berkeley, Calif., jeered Calacanis from the crowd as a shill. Almost immediately, he took his criticism online and onto his blog, casting the issue into the open seas of the Internet. Calacanis, of Santa Monica, Calif., responded on his own blog.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

While the corporate IT world has long had access to remotely-controlled power for servers and data centers, it’s pretty cutting-edge stuff for home theater, with PS Audio releasing the first line of Internet-connected power management devices. Ranging in price from $600 to $1,995 and scheduled to release in Spring 2008, the four products in the PowerPlay line differ in number of switchable and isolated plugs, but all offer a web interface to toggle power, schedule reboots, and monitor power quality. There is an RS-232 port for hardwired power control as well as IR blasters for turning devices back on after a reboot. Now you can reboot your TiVo without ever stepping foot in the house.

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An anonymous reader writes “Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Shares of The SCO Group started trading Thursday over the counter after the Nasdaq stock exchange delisted the company. Nasdaq suspended trading on The SCO Group stock at the opening bell, citing the company’s filing for bankruptcy protection in September. “They are kind of stuck on this path of going out of business,” said Rob Enderle, chief analyst of the Enderle Group, which analyzes the high-tech sector. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SCO said it had lost its appeal to the Nasdaq, which had moved to delist the company in September.

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