Review Horizon

Google just pours the announcements today – Beside the news about YouTube and Android market video rental services, the Internet giant is getting its grubby hands in the music streaming business as well, in direct competition with Apple’s iTunes and Amazon cloud service. While the service is still officially in beta (it is also officially called Music Beta) it will offer similar functionality with Amazon’s music cloud but with a twist: You’ll get to store 20,000 of your songs for free. Since Google will have no way to check whether you actually purchased this music, which might also be the reason why the Google negotiations with the music industry completely failed. (And also that’s why you won’t be able to actually buy music from Google’s service, at least for now). The big music labels just don’t get it and when Continue Reading →

If you like to watch sports, Android has now a new application for you – WatchESPN which is available in the official Android Market for free starting today. I tested it and works well on my CyanogenMod 7.03 Nook Color. The application has several limitations however: You can only access the ESPN channels if you are currently a subscriber via your cable company (and only some qualify, like Time Warner Cable, Bright Hose Networks and Verizon FIOS), you can access ESPN3 if you have Verizon FIOS and just about everyone else is out of luck.

I installed it on my Nook Color from the Android Market and immediately it also prompted me to install Adobe AIR. Done that and everything proceeded without a hitch. You’ll need to sign in with your ESPN account and link it to the other cable / internet provider accounts but you can also opt to watch ESPN for 4 Continue Reading →

If you hoped you’ll be able to start using Sony’s gaming network, PSN soon, you might have to wait until the end of this month, specifically May 31st. According with an article posted by Bloomberg, the current outage will be completely fixed by May 31st. Bloomberg  journalists talked on the phone with Sony’s spokesman Shigenori Yoshida who provided the date.

If true, that would put the PSN outage at roughly one month and a half, probably the largest outage of any kind in the modern world. For the reference, the outage started on April 20th and left over 75 million users (paid or not) with their personal information exposed, no online gaming access and also no Qriocity / Hulu Plus access for those that Continue Reading →

What makes iPhone / iPad jailbreaking such a popular process is the additional functionality that gets unlocked together with a number of very popular and useful applications that will never see the light of day in the official app store. You might wonder yourself – Is jailbreak legal? and the answer is yes (only if the term applies to electronic devices, of course). The government, specifically the U.S. Copyright Office declared it legal “for the purpose of running legal acquired/developed applications” so with this question answered, let’s dig a little bit into the huge amount of legal Cydia applications and see what we can find. The list is up to date as of May 2011.

We mentioned Cydia: If you do not yet know, Cydia is THE app store for jailbroken iDevices. Many applications that for some reason or another didn’t make it into the official Apple App Store can now be found on Cydia, free or for a fee. Even Continue Reading →

Another iOS version, another redsnow jailbreak. Just days after iOS 4.3.3 is released,  iPhone Dev Team also released a new Redsn0w version, RC 15 (0.96rc15) for your jailbreak pleasure. Like the last version, this version is also is untethered (meaning you only have to perform it once ans sticks even if you reboot your iDevice) and once again it is very similar with the previous method since, luckily Apple has not close the vulnerability the tool is using since iOS 4.3.2.

The new redsnow version 0.96rc15 update works on all iOS devices supporting iOS version 4.3.3 (iPhone3GS, iPhone4 (GSM), iPod touch 3G, iPod touch 4G, iPad1, AppleTV2G (v4.3 8F202))  but once again iPad 2 is left out. Tough nut to crack, deh, although rumor has it that famous geohot hacker (yeah, the one behind the PS3 hub-bub) will try his luck where everybody else failed (or where nobody has gone before if you wish). We wish him tons of luck. Meantime, if you want to jailbreak your iOS 4.3.3 toy, download redsnow from here (filename redsn0w_win_0.9.6rc15.zip) and follow the same instructions we published for iOS 4.3.1. They are identical. Just be sure to download the right 4.3.3 ipsw files for your iDevice (links after the break, directly from Apple so you can be sure are safe).

Note: redsn0w allows now to enable “multitasking gestures”, useful for the owners of iPad devices. Continue Reading →