Dealsend tECH

web 2.0 kindergarten

When people want, people have!

...or eventally will have!

Some time ago iPhone 4S was presented to the public, and among the new feutures one stands out. It's the personal assistant Siri. If you don't know what Siri is, pleas Google it and come again.

Well it was not the new camera, or the new chip (A5) people care about, it was Siri that made everyone to wow.

Siri came though with a little downside. It was only available to 4S owners. Although 4 and 4S has no distinctive diferences the major diference is indeed Siri. But people who hadn't spend less a year before to buy an iPhone 4, wanted Siri as well. 

And this is where the magic begins. 

The jailbreak community started to develop ways to import the new functionality to older devices. However the process was illegal and dangerous, until ios 5.0.1 released. The software had a gap that could make the import of the software to older devices legal.

Almost in no time a great member of the community developed and released through Cydia the software under the name Spire.

Spire is like having a car in your garage but not keys or gas to run it.

You see, every little question you make on Siri, it goes through Apple's servers, but in order to get access to those servers you need to have an iPhone 4S. Or something it would look like that.

Almost in no time again, great people started to develop proxy servers to fool Apple's restrictions, other people donate there phones ID's and so on.

So now, you can have working Siri on your non 4S device. Just follow the steps below:

1. Jailbreak your phone to ios 5.0.1
2. Install Spire from Cydia
3. Buy a certificate for just $15 and access to proxies*
4. Enjoy.

* In case you wonder where to buy, I totally recomend that guy here. He and his friends give you the support you need and there are almost all day long online. I had a great customer experience and support was quick and easy thanks to David.

But that's just half of the story.

The other half is what people create upon Siri. 

Well, you see Siri has the limitations of Apple. For instance you can't update your Facebook or Twitter status through Siri, you can ask for calls or send text and emails, but that was all. Or you can't ask Siri for the best movie ever, or you can't ask Siri to use your house's automation and open the aircondition or the heater.

You have a personal assistant, but he assists you only in a few certain tasks. What if you want to add more tasks?

Some people see that and started to create plugins. Plugins for Facebook and Twitter, for Imdb look out, for home automation etc.

Siri becomes better each day. Siri can be the assistant it better suits your needs.

Overall what I'd like to point out here, is that Siri although a corporate product can also be a successful community project, like Xbox Kinect, and bottom line...when people want, people will have!

Discalimer:
You should be aware that using a 3rd party proxy you grant access to your personal info.

Get Google's two steps verification system OFF

Google has a strange way -sometimes- of seeing things.

I have that picture on my mind, people around a white table, with a lot of beverages, organic snacks, juices, recycled cakes and photovoltaic powered pens, sit and talk under a huge colorful Google logo.

The agenda of the day is Gmail's security system. After a couple of hours of brainstorming, where everything is written down, they start to evaluate the ideas.

Idea #10,234 Make the Gmail user to travel in Google's HQ with a birth certificate.
Idea #11,976 Get DNA sample from a Gmail user.
Idea #12,999 Two Steps Authentication System, with huge algorithmic passwords.

..and yes somehow, the idea with the number 12,999 was the one that they thought as more appropriate to the DNA sample.

So just in case you have dumbed enough to press 'yes I want that 2 steps system', you already know how f***ing tangled is!

Mine said, there is a quick way to get rid off that stupid thing. Just follow easy instructions here:

1. Log in to Gmail account.
2. Click on your little avatar icon,  the one on the right up of your screen.
3. Click Account Settings from the drop down menu
4. You should see now something like Account Overview, and just under that Security.
5  Edit 2 step verifcation to off.

You're done!

Enjoy life and Gmail as it should be!

Path!

Path

 

There is quite a bit of talking about Path nowadays, and I think it is time for me to step in and make clear what Path is about.

First and foremost Path is not Facebook or Twitter, yet is fun too!

Path's tagline says that it is our personal journal. They limited your friends to 50, and they did that  in order to be yourself on this sharing network.

So you don't have to worry anymore about bosses going through you around, or acquaintances you never heard about or you don't want to hear from them anymore.

..and you do have a great excuse!

So in terms of privacy, Path keeps things simple. It is for friends and family. Choose your 50 best and get connected with them, all the rest would have to settle back on Facebook.

Now in terms of funcionality, UI and shit like that.

1. Path has only mobile flavour at the time (very bad for bored secretaries though).

2. You can find it on Androids or on iPhones (only).

3. UI is fantastic. Simple, elegant, minimalistic with your personal touch on the cover and avatar photo. The posting process is also very simple and easy to understand with a series of nice icons, they could have it easier to figure out. From my point of view is exactly how Facebook should be...but Facebook is an ad platform isn't?

4. Said that, Path has no ads (at least for now)!

I love Path! I like Path, and although I've started with a 'Dealsend' account (as I regular do to try new things) I quick switch on a real Name/Surname account.

Well, Enjoy your sharing adventurous on Path.

and have a Great New Year (as this is the first post for 20-12).

Otixo

This is more than a great service! This is what CLOUD needed and now have it!!

Well Otixo, takes all your cloud services from me.com (need to upgrade to icloud though) to box.net, dropbox and google docs and put everything in a convinient online folder!

You can now manage all your cloud services from just one point, and I think it's just a brilliant idea.

I already use the service, and I do pray for an iphone app as well.

I also hope that the service will stay free!

So go there and signup!

iCal - Facebook Birthdays - iphone

I wanted to have Facebook Birthday list on my iCal and iPhone Calendar.

This is pretty easy as Facebook give you the option to export the Birthday file.

All you need to do is go to Events, scroll at the end where you will find following footnotes:

Events Birthdays Export

Click on Birthdays, now you have a list of your friends, again at the bottom, click on Export.

If you are on a Mac, iCal Subscription will automagically open and you can subscribe to that new calendar.
Again if you use iCloud to sync, the new calendar will appear on iPhone / iPad, no more effort from you.
PS

I have switched from Google Calendar to iCloud. So far very satisfied. Although Google was pretty fast, Push technology is faster, actually is instant!! I won't do that for email though, no need to change reliable Gmail. So basically I use iCloud for iPhone backup, address book backup and now Calendar.

Pearltrees

It's been a while since my last post, but here we are.

Today I stumbled upon a site I had no idea about but it is quite interesting.

Pearltrees is a service where you start a topic and you submit 'pearls' around this topic, pearls = related to the topic web info. At the end you have a tree around the topic.

As pearls can be submited by different users, you can see the different point of views on a topic, and get various proposals.

Alhtough the subtitle of Pearltrees is 'the human organization of the web' I see it more as an influential source. 

Give it a try!

I'm a Lion

Well you can't call me early adopter as there were 1million downloads of Apple's new OS in the first day, however I did  install the new OSX 10.7 (Lion) the other day.

The installation was not what we call flawless.

Here are the steps I had to take:

- Download from App store the new OS
- Try to install it right away
- Get a warning that my disk is damaged and I have to use disk utility
- Boot in SL (Snow Leopard) and run disk utility
- Boot in SL boot disk, and run disk utility
 Nothing
- Google about it, and found many people with the same problem
- Took the decision to go the hard way
- Backup in Time Machine
- Erase disk
- Install SL
- Check disk with disk utility
- Install Lion from an external drive (following instructions here)
- Use Migration Assistant (just hit it in spotlight or use it as you install the Lion OS) to get you backup in the new operating system.
- Enjoy your Mission Control and 249 new more features.

Modify Headers

The Problem:

How to watch popular stream sites, with restricted to US content.

The Solution:

1. Proxy (google it)

Modify Headers is a firefox plugin, so you obviously need Firefox, it doesn't work with Hulu anymore, as Hulu is really active to kill these methods of bypassing location restricts. However it does work in a number of sites, such as ABC, MTV etc.

How to:

Download and install the addon (link)

Once installed go to Tools --> Modify Headers 

Add a filter:
In the first box, type X-Forwarded-For and in the second box, type in the IP address of any US web site. (or use 12.13.14.15)

Leave the third box blank, and then save and enable the filter.

You can either leave the window of MH open or check Always On in Options.

Enjoy!

PS
Some claim that you need to block TCP and UDP port 1935 for Hulu, but I didn't try it.
Posterous theme by Cory Watilo