This is good. And though you can’t dole out the punishment that Apple Maps deserves (full on execution/delete), you can excommunicate it to the folder where all the crappy Apple iOS apps go to rot. You know, the one you put stocks and contacts in. And though Apple Maps will still likely be the iOS system default mapping system, there are few things more comforting when you’re out than seeing that familiar Google Maps icon on your home screen.

Google Maps for iOS has all the things you’ve missed so much like public transit directions and Street View plus features it never had on the iPhone like turn by turn navigation. Basically, it’s better than it has ever been on the iPhone. Which means, just like with what happened to the YouTube app, Apple kicking out Google Maps for Apple Maps had the side benefit of iPhone users eventually getting a better version of Google Maps.

Along with Google Maps for iOS, Google is releasing a Google Maps SDK for iOS and a URL scheme to get third party applications to launch the Google Maps app and perform searches, direction requests and display map views. That’s a workaround that could allow Google Maps to act like the primary mapping system on the iPhone (clicking something in another app would launch Google Maps and not Apple Maps, for example). Also, the new Google Maps’ maps are vector-based (like Apple Maps) so it should be snappier and speedier than the old app. So yes, this is awesome news all around. We can now all pretend that the three month stretch of using Apple Maps never happened. [iTunes, Google]

To answer two of the more frequently asked questions, the noPhoto does not violate license plate frame or cover laws that prohibit covering the license plate and there is nothing covering the license plate – not even a clear peice of plastic. And yes, the noPhoto reacts fast enough. See our video here to see the noPhoto reacting to flashes in the daytime at distances of 100+ feet!

Source: NoPhoto

Source: iTunes, Google Blog

Browsing
The biggest boost to convenience with using SmartGlass is probably the keyboard. You know how every time you’ve got to type in a password on your Xbox and you ponder whether you’d rather climb onto your roof and jump face-first into the arborvitaes or spend the 20 minutes required to select one letter at a time? SmartGlass fixes that by popping up the native keyboard every time you come to a text entry box. From what we saw, it’s pretty snappy in the Xbox’s Internet Explorer, and in other places you might need to enter a username or search term.

Browsing pages themselves is also made pretty easy. You use the tablet’s surface to drag the viewing area around, and you can tap links to navigate around, and pinch and squeeze to zoom in or out. It works pretty well, but you get into some trouble on pages that have smaller links. Because Xbox IE always loads the full version of sites to display on your TV, some of the controls aren’t touch-friendly, even though you’re using nothing but touch. It’s a compromise, but not a huge one.

Music and Movies
Here’s where SmartGlass really shines, and is probably where you’ll get the most real world use out of SmartGlass. You can use SmartGlass to control your music, either your local files, or streamed songs over Xbox Music. The controls are intuitive, and make your TV seem like a big, visual entertainment center.

For video, you can press a “Play on Xbox” button, and your video will transfer from your phone or tablet to your Xbox. From there, you’ll have a nicely designed control panel, and, basically, Amazon’s X-Ray for movies feature—only much better designed. Microsoft says it will be on 65 percent of all “views”, which is a sketchy metric, but chances are it’ll be on any popular movie you watch. The Play on Xbox button changes into a play on tablet function when the movie is playing on your TV. The time between it swapping from one source to another is pretty quick, and I didn’t notice any lost time or dialogue as it was changing over. At the very least, it’s a much, much, much more fluid way to control your movies than clicking the shoulder buttons on you Xbox controller.

Sports
Sports are a natural fit for the second screen, so naturally everyone’s trying it. For Microsoft, it makes sense because you can use SmartGlass to navigate through content from ESPN and the NBA, UFC, and NHL (assuming they ever start playing hockey again). That will include games through your cable provider, or ESPN over your ISP. You’ll get the usual—scores, rosters, stats—and the strangely heavily featured ability to pick the winners of games (no one will use this).

The highlights and stats packages look pretty good, for something you’re throwing up on your TV. But the strength of sports on SmartGlass is also a weakness. You’re much more likely to want to use your phone or tablet to look at scores while you’re watching a game, especially if you’re using that phone or tablet as your remote. But without access to your fantasy teams, or some of the more granular stats on dedicated sports sites, it might not be enough for the kinds of fans who already have a tablet or laptop in the hands during games.

Playing Games
Some games will have a SmartGlass Duel Mode, which turns your phone or tablet (there are apps for Android and iPhone, in addition to Windows stuff) into, basically, a Wii U controller. You can use it to select what kind of pitch you want to throw in a baseball game, for example, and then you’ll play a mini game to determine how well you throw it. It’s a pretty neat feature, but it’s totally developer-dependent, so it’s not clear how much support you’ll see built in going forward for content not all gamers will see.

That is, until now. After more than five years of development, a proprietary technology has emerged that synthesizes the shape and movement of the human hand to produce movement onto a computer. It’s called The Leap — and for an astonishingly low price of $70, you can begin to control a computer with nothing more than your hands, as early as next February.

The company, Dr. Web, issued a report on Wednesday that claimed 550,000 computers running Mac OSX were subject to Flashback. Later, Sorokin Ivan, an analyst at Dr. Web, sent a tweet upgrading the figure to 600,000 and added that 274 were based in Cupertino, Calif., Apple’s hometown. Fifty-seven percent of all Macs affected are in the U.S., while another 20% are based in Canada, according to the company.

Flashback was originally discovered in September 2011 and was designed to disguise itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer, using Flash player logos. After installing Flashback, the malware seeks out user names and passwords that are stored on your Mac.

Go to F-Secure’s website for the instructions and files needed to rid yourself of the Flashback virus.

This won’t be a painless operation and there will need to be sacrifices and trade-offs, but if we get together and pool our knowledge and resources then I think we can do it and show these cable companies that raising prices without giving better service is not a sustainable business model.  I’ll lay out the basics, but I need you to go out and find better alternatives, new technology, the best online options, etc. so that we can come up with the definitive direction for cutting the cable.

1. Over the Air HDTV

Did you know that you can get FREE HDTV over the air using nothing but those old rabbit ear antennas?  Well, you can’t really use the “old” rabbit ear antennas, but there is a ton of new digital HD over the air antennas on the market.  The signal you get though the air on these antennas is actually better quality than the signal you get through your cable box, in most cases.  Most cable providers broadcast in 720p or 1080i; most over the air signals are now sent out at 1080P.  You got that new 55 inch 1080p TV, but typically the only 1080p content you are able to watch is on bluray.  Why not get full 1080p for FREE with an antenna?

Using an antenna is not without its disadvantages.  Depending on your area, you may not get every channel that others get due to high buildings, trees, etc., but in most cases you will get the major channels such as NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox.  To check what channels you are most likely to get with an over the air antenna you can visit AntennaWeb and enter in your address.  The site has a huge database of TV transmitters and will tell you what channels you are most likely to receive and where you should position your antenna for best results.  Over the air channels are limited to the major stations, so you can forget about cable only channels like Comedy Central, AMC, and HBO.  In order to get those channels we will have to look into alternatives like streaming video.

2. Choose Streaming Video Services

There are tons of streaming movie and TV companies out there like Netflix and HULU so we need to catalog all the sources we can find.  Netflix is great, offering streaming video and DVD by mail services relatively cheap, but their streaming content is very limited.  Until these cable companies realize that we will not continue to pay them exorbitant amounts of money for their service, Netflix and the like will have a hard time getting better content.  The television and movie producers still believe in the cable way of life and continue to support the cable companies and keep content away from the streaming options.

Hulu Plus is another great option, but like Netflix has its limitations.  Because Hulu, owned by NBC, News Corp, and Disney, has the same pressures from the movie and TV industry to limit their streaming options, their streaming service is limited to mostly computers and mobile devices.  They block their service from options like the Google TV and Roku box.  There are ways around it, so I want to hear from you so we can list them all so we can easily follow instructions on how to circumvent it.

3. Buy Ala Cart Cable

You can’t get current episodes of shows like The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, but you can usually find them soon after their airing on services like iTunes and Amazon Instant Video, usually just days after they air on TV.  An episode is going to cost you around $2-$3 and just like buying the DVD in the store, once you buy it you can watch it anytime you want.  Device like the Apple TV make it really easy to get fresh content onto your TV and most of the new “smart” TV’s have apps for Amazon Instant.

4. Streaming Boxes Galore

Many bluray players and recently released HDTV’s have built in support for streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Instant, and Hulu, but if you don’t have one of these there are plenty other options.  Most game consoles like the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the Wii have Netflix streaming capability.  The PS3 and Xbox have been receiving OS updates adding new services.  The Roku, Boxee, and Google TV are plug and play devices that offer a lot of streaming services as well as added benefits like a web browser and other applications.  Most of these boxes are relatively cheap, hovering around that $99 pricepoint.  The Boxee box recently has offered a HD antenna upgrade so you can get over air channels as well.

If you are like me, then you have gotten in the habit of recording all your shows and watching them when you have time, not when they air live.  If you want to continue to do that you will need a box with DVR functionality.  TiVo is the first one of these DVR’s that come to mind, but there are a bunch of other alternatives.  Help me put together a list so we can weigh the differences and list them in order of their offerings and quality.

5. What About Live Sports

My biggest concern with cutting cable is live sports, specifically the sports packages I’ve become accustomed to like the NFL Sunday Ticket.  There are some options out there, but I still find it pretty lacking at the moment.  Many sports like MLB, NHL, and the NBA offer streaming services, but my main concern is the NFL which as of yet doesn’t have such a service unless you also have the ticket via cable.  Since the whole purpose of this is to cut cable, then that isn’t an option.

With over the air HDTV using an antenna you can get local showings of most sports airings, but it is limited to the game that is scheduled to show in your area.  If you are a fan of an out of state team, like my Falcons, then you don’t get to see them every week  There has to be a way around this.  Go out there and find something so we can cut cable!

6. Our Plan Must Be Cheaper Than Cable

If we can’t make this cheaper then there is no purpose in cutting the cable umbilical cord.  Find as many free services as you can.  Let’s try to use as little extra equipment as we can.  Keep track of what you are actually paying for streaming services you sign up for and episodes you buy from Amazon Instant.  Together we CAN find the best alternative to cable in order to preserve most of what we are accustomed to and show the cable companies that we won’t be forced into their monopoly.  Use the contact form to send us your findings so we can find a better way for TV.

This is a starting point for developing on the iphone, in this tutorial we will obtain the iPhone and iPad SDK, and run our first app in the simulator. The post for this video with links can be found at maniacdev.com The eventual goal is getting an app in the app store. Please note these tutorials are not for developing apps for jailbroken apps, this is for genuine sdk development using Xcode for the app store.

by The Rocketeer

Download GreenPois0n Absinthe Now

To jailbreak your iPhone 4S (running iOS 5.0 or either 4S version of 5.0.1**) and/or your iPad 2 (all Wi-Fi only, GSM & CDMA devices supported; must be running iOS 5.0.1**) – select one of the links below to download your Absinthe A5 untethered jailbreak. Simply unzip the file, then install on your iOS A5 mobile device with one click of a button!

Windows » GreenPois0n Absinthe v0.3 for Windows

Mac OS X » GreenPois0n Absinthe v0.3 for MacOSX

Linux » GreenPois0n Absinthe v0.3 for Linux (x86/x86_64)

**NOTE: If you haven’t yet heeded the advice I gave weeks ago – before you take one step further, upgrade your firmware to iOS 5.0.1 NOW! (Unless you need an iPhone4s Unlock) Also, we don’t mean to beat you over the head with this warning, but please remember: you should not update to iOS 5.0.2 when it’s released, or you will lose your jailbreak! Bookmark our GreenPois0n blog now, and be the first to know the next time we advise our jailbreak users to safely update their iOS firmware.

As with all our previous GreenPois0n releases, should you run into any bugs in the A5 jailbreak, leave us a comment below or contact us on Twitter (via Chronic Dev Team, GreenPois0n, or directly to “Dream Team” hackers posixninja, pod2g or nikias). Even if we aren’t able to respond to your messages individually, we depend on all users to let us know about any issues you run into so that we can address them & fix the most-reported problems as quickly as possible.

Muchas Gracias

First & foremost, THANK YOU to all our loyal fans & readers for your enduring patience over the past several months. We’ve been toiling night & day in order to perform the serious hacking ninja magic required to develop the most advanced iPhone jailbreak yet – we only hope it was worth your wait! And as always, thank you for your never-ending support of Chronic Dev Team & all our GreenPois0n releases!

I also want to express my personal gratitude to:

• saurik – for all your guidance & support, especially in helping us out of the sandbox, and for acting as administrator to the “Dream Team” donation fund;
• Chronic-Dev, LLC – for hosting the web servers that will inevitably crash due to the sheer number of simultaneous download requests; and
• finally & especially, the other “Dream Team” members – for all your expertise, dedication, cooperation & countless hours of hard work! It was a true pleasure to work closely with each of you, and without your contributions, this jailbreak would not have been possible.

Post Credit goes to:  GreenPois0n.com

The Motorola Atrix 2 is a very high-powered smartphone, but for a very low-powered price. But, is it worth it? Let’s find out! Twitter: twitter.com/ThisIsIanK
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