Simply put, this was long overdue. Travis sung the praises of a jailbreak over a year ago, but I hesitated because I viewed it as a hassle when it comes to installing firmware updates and things of that nature (which I still haven’t quite figured out how all that will work, but I will). Since then I have felt the frustration of all that the iPhone doesn’t (thanks Droid ads for pointing this out over and over again), I have gone ahead and done what was necessary. I now introduce you to, Jeff’s iPhone 2.0:

(FYI – I was charging the phone when I took these screenshots)

Kinda neat, yeah?  Nothing mind blowing, but I love that I can run multiple apps (notice the radio icon in the bottom right corner as a “waiting” tab on it, meaning it’s running in the background), have 5 apps in the dock down below, a theme/skin (custom icons, a background other than black, my own name instead of AT&T in the upper corner, etc…), a simplified lock-screen…  Simple stuff that’s apparent right away, and very very nice!

The jailbreak process is incredibly straight forward.  I used the Pwnage Tool (google it and you’ll find a plethora of information), made sure I had current backups in iTunes (which is essential if you wanna keep your Apple App Store applications where you left them), and followed a couple different tutorials (one for when I worked on my phone and a different one for Jason’s – only really because I lost the first link).   This is why I can’t call myself a HaX0r…  The real geeks made it easy for schlubs like me!

Really, a key feature is being able to run multiple apps at once – something the phone SHOULD be able to do but Apple keeps it from happening..  I installed an app called Backgrounder (off of Cydia, the jailbreak app store) to run the multiple apps, and another called ProSwicther which gives me the fun look and feel of a Palm Pre when switching through applications, including the same touch gestures (see below – to close an app you can hit the (x) or slide it off the top of the screen).

While some of that stuff is just aesthetics (btw, did I mention my ring-tone is now the hidden door sound of the original Legend of Zelda? Major shout-out to Derek Christensen for the idea), there are some serious tweaks going on in the background.  To name a few, I’m running open SSH to gain access to my file structure, NetaTalk (uses Apple Protocol) to allow wireless access to my iPhone’s file structure, 3G Unrestrictor which gets past the “You Can Only Use This App on Wireless, not 3G” stuff, and SBSettings (see images below) to have easy access to turning features on and off as well as free up memory or kill applications.

(Note the “Available Memory” in the first image.  I hit “Free Up Memory” and it cleared a considerable amount that was being wasted.  Also note that the SSH toggle on the right only exists because I have Open SSH installed)

Finally the iPhone is what it should have been, arguably, from the beginning!  Does everything work perfectly?  Surprisingly, it’s pretty close!  Apple continually spews lies about how running multiple apps will kill the battery or destroy the memory management, but it seems pretty obvious that the jailbreak community has figure some of this stuff out.  MAYBE my battery dies a bit faster than it would otherwise, but I have to charge it every night anyway…  And with the ability to quickly turn off 3G, location awareness, and wifi in SBSettings, it’s really easy to actually conserve more battery that way.   This is the only reason I have some hope for the iPad – Apple made a fail of a product, but perhaps the jailbreak community can actually make it cool!

Oh, and my favorite jailbreak app?

WHAAA?!  You mean I can haz texts in appz?!  (Sorry I’m using you as an example Aly!) I didn’t take a screen shot of the actual reply function, but essentially I just hit that reply button and an overlay of the texting screen pops up and I can immediately respond without going to the texting application (don’t fool yourself, it’s an app like the others but with a push notification like setup – it is NOT like the phone or email clients that are constantly running).   This is a HUGE plus for me!  HUGE!  I get text messages throughout the day, and I hated having to close whatever I was working on to reply.  Granted, now that I can run multiple apps I could just move from app to app, but this streamlines the process even more!  Why does this not exist in the native iPhone OS?  Ask El Jobso, cause it freakin’ should!

All in all, I’m happy as a clam.  Yes, the novelty of it all has kind of worn off, but that doesn’t mean I’m not super happy about it.  Really, truly, this is the kind of stuff the iPhone should already be able to do.  If Apple adds a majority of these improvements to the standard OS then maybe I’ll switch back at that point, but right now the jailbreak community has figured out how to truly unlock the power of the device.

RosenBlog for Gamers
So, I don’t officially call my blog the RosenBlog, but I very well might in the near future…  The point, however, is that you can now view my blog in an optimized format on the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable (PSP), or the Apple iPhone.  Each browser displays a tiny bit differently, and now I’m set to optimize for each of those browser configurations.

(Sorry, I don’t have screenshots…)

Greet Box
The Greet Box is kind of fun and new. Depending on how you get to the blog, you may find a semi-personalized message for you as you access a specific post. For Example, when coming from a Facebook.com link you might see the following:

These messages are pretty discreet and are easily closeable.  I think it’s kind of a fun way to encourage spreading the word…  This also works for those who come in from Digg, Reddit, or all by themselves (displays a recommendation to add an RSS feed).  Nothing too huge, but kind of fun.

Sociable
Sociable is a simple sharing tool that gives a reader quick access to the correct link in order to share a specific post with the rest of the world. You should see the following buttons beneath every post if you visit the actual post page (not just the main page with multiple posts listed).

Facebook Connect
Now my readers can post comments with their Facebook ID which does a couple different things… One, it makes them a “user” more or less that can have their comments tracked on the site (I think – pretty sure). The other is that it allows users to post directly to their Facebook Feed that they have visited my site and commented on one of the posts.

You’ll notice below (if you’re on the single post page, not the main feed homepage) that you now see the Facebook Connect button:

(Note that I hate the way it is currently formatted and I will be modifying it as soon as I can find the right code… The padding and the text above the button are hidden away in some .php file within the plugin, and I’m not finding it.)

Once logged in, you’ll see this fun addition to the corner of your browser window:

Once you’re logged in and setup you just jump down to the comments box, input your text and it will post your information while your credentials come from Facebook.

You’ll have the standard Facebook stuff pop up and ask you a couple questions (like if you want to post a note in your profile feed or not) and then your comment will be up for moderation. Nothing super amazingly spectacular, but I’m all about providing options to people, and I think this one is kind of cool.

Statpress
Ok, so this one isn’t one that the rest of you can see, but I think it’s cool enough to share… I installed Statpress to do some simple analytics work for me. Nothing super spectacular (though I can install a couple other plugins that would work in coordination with this one to provide a LOT of info), but I think it is pretty cool to get some basic information from my users in terms of how they got to the blog and what they’re checking out. I don’t get tons of traffic, nor do I care all that much, but I like to feed my curiosity every once in a while.

(click on the image to embiggen and actually see the text)

That’s about it! Just thought I’d share some things. Nothing huge to update in the personal life other than that I’m enjoying the summer and my friends. Definitely looking forward to Travis and Annie visiting (likely) around Thanksgiving, and I’m pumped for Tony’s wedding in September. Also, I turn OLD on July 6th… Weird…

I’ve been playing with stuff the last week to get all of my good software and such installed on the Mac, and here’s the list of what I would call essential:

• NewsFire – best RSS reader in life… SO GOOD! It’s really simple and it makes life pretty easy for me since it’s not integrated and messy like some other RSS readers. I should have gone with something like this a while ago.
• Transmission – super simple and nice BitTorrent client. Azureus had me messing with settings for at least 30 minutes to get all the encryption and everything I wanted setup, this came with the best setting pre-done and without all the stupid bloated code in the program. Simple and clean!
• Adium – THE best chat client I’ve ever used – ever! The only thing it lacks is video chat capability, which I can load iChat up for on the random occasions when I want to do that. Seriously though, it incorporates every other chat protocol I have ever heard of with the exception of Skype, which I hate anyway. I need to figure out some of the plug-ins and such (haven’t messed with it yet), but it’s great already… AND they’ll be adding Facebook Chat support in the next release (doesn’t quite work in the beta), which I think is hilarious and cool.
• Camino – kills Firefox in almost all respects other than themes and add-ons (which I really didn’t use other than IE tab, which doesn’t matter on a mac) – I do have firefox for a couple random BYU sites that don’t render in Camino (which makes NO sense but I just didn’t bother uninstalling firefox before I went with Camino, so I just use it since it’s there). Anyway, I really like it for it’s clean look and OS X keychain support.
• AppDelete – Most effective uninstall prog I’ve seen. I know you just need to delete the executable, but this deletes any random settings or libraries that install with your install prog. I was suprised when I used it the first time to see what I was missing in my normal uninstalls. (There is a $5 donation required after you use it a certain number of times – but it’s definitely worth the $5)
• Caffeine – makes me happy because I can avoid my computer going to sleep when it should be downloading. Plus, it runs on the tray (top of the screen) and makes turning it on and off pretty easy.
• Cyberduck – I like it for ftp, cause it’s pretty simple and easy to use… You may have another preference, but it makes me happy that it is simple.
• Handbrake – great for ripping movies to the iPod, PSP, or other things. Pretty fast actually!
• Jomic – BEST comic reader other than CDisplay, but CDisplay is windows only (sadness of my life, trust me).
• Alarm Clock 2 – I have my computer in my room (I’m at college and can’t do much else since everyone else will complain I’m taking over the living area), and I thought having an alarm clock that would bring my computer out of sleep and play some wake up music would be GREAT – thus Alarm Clock 2.
• VLC – goes without saying, but it’s a million times better than Quicktime. Besides, I swore off Quicktime in the 90′s, and I don’t wanna disappoint myself at this age.

Anyway, there are a ton of others that are “required” such as VMWare Fusion and a Boot Camp partition of Windows, but those should go without saying. Let me know if you’ve got something else I should try!

Few examples:

LDSJournal.com runs much faster because it doesn’t run on the silly platform that Pyxlin uses!

Pyxlin:

LDSJournal:

As you can see, posting on LDSJournal is very similar to posting on your blog. I don’t have to worry about the silly typesetting thing that gets really annoying.

You can also use Firefox spell checking (see above picture for red squigglies), which you could not do in Pyxlin… You were instead forced to use their retarded spell checker.

LDSJournal also allows for footnotes (images and such) as well as journal addendums that can be time stamped differently to show that you went back to old journal entries and had thoughts that you wanted to share. This could be really neat for reviewing your journal at the end of the month or end of the year. You could go in and explain how certain thoughts became really important to you as the month went on and how different experiences may have shaped what you decided your next steps in life to be.

I also don’t have to have silly chapters and things in my LDSJournal. Everything is associated with a date (see the calendar on both the image above and the one below that lets you know when you’ve made an entry), and when I decide to print something (the functionality for that is forthcoming, but I’m faithful since I’ve already seen development since I moved to their service) it will be set chronologically without hassle. Apparently they are also working on the “tag” feature I would really like, which would allow me to print a different journal just based on entries with spiritual experiences or confessions of love (cheesy!).

I also like that it tells me right at the bottom what my most recent journal entries are and the dates associated with them. This just makes it a little easier for me to keep track of my progress with an actual idea of what I wrote about based on the entry title.

Anyway, this is my new recommendation! Certainly check it out (it’s FREE). I encourage everyone to keep a journal for a bunch of reasons:

1. It helps you process what you did during the day
2. It is great for thinking through whatever you are experiencing in life
3. I often have my “A HA!” moments as I’m writing in my journal, and those really help shape my life
4. It’s sort of recommended by the Prophets and Apostles…

The biggest downfalls I’ve seen to previous services like this have been that they don’t provide all the functionality I want in their web service (a full text editor and the ability to upload my photos however I want) nor do they provide much of a way for you to get a hardbound copy of what you have worked so diligently to keep… Well, those are two things that Pyxlin definitely gets right! Keeping an online journal sure is convenient since you can access it from anywhere and flake out during class if you’d like, but finally I can get my journal in a book at the end of the year to keep on my book shelf.

I like to see when people do technology the right way… Too often people try and digitize your whole life, but for the majority of us there is a strong feeling of nostalgia for the things of the past… I LOVE having hard copies of my journals. Can I tell you how much I love that? I LOOOOVE having hard copies of my journals. It’s nice to pull it out once in a while to see what I was feeling and thinking about a while back… It’s really great if you want to share some personal thoughts that you wrote about your girlfriend when you first started dating… Seriously, it’s a big deal to me, and to see someone respond to that type of user requirement (I know I’m not the only one who feels this way) is really impressive.

I recommend you check it out and take a look at a pretty neat product. I don’t know anything about the guys who developed it, other than that they were/are apparently BYU students – thus why the Daily Universe covered it, so I don’t want anyone to think I’m recommending you check out something a friend built (though you should definitely check out RateMyApartments.com).

There is a site charge (something like $20 a year if you pay annually), but you can do a 7-day trial for free. Let me know what you think! I get excited about people using technology intelligently like this – it’s a big step up from the non-innovative ideas I often see.

I can’t share any specific information due to my signing a non-disclosure agreement, but I can talk a bit about the SiteCatalyst product! To be completely honest, SiteCatalyst is an absolutely fabulous tool that still needs a little work. Currently, you have great flexibility and customization available to you (though sometimes you end up paying quite a bit more for some of those options) as an Omniture customer. The task of keeping up with all of your key performance indicators is pretty simple with the advanced dashboards you can create. From my experience, which is admittedly little, SiteCatalyst blows the competition away in sophistication and the level of customization available. Granted, those who use Omniture’s tools are paying out the nose, so SiteCatalyst better be good.

I do, however, have a few complaints. Omniture has broken up their reports into three main sections: Commerce, Traffic, and Paths. This is really helpful in some regards because it breaks up the many reports available into three different categories, yet I found myself extremely frustrated on several occasions. Because these three categories are very rigidly constructed, getting reports on data from both traffic and commerce is impossible (or at least hard enough to seem so). For example, should I want to find a report that gave me the percentage of site traffic that came from a specific domain and the revenue from that domain I would be out of luck. For some questions you can look up two different reports within their respective categories, but this is not always the case.

Without giving out specific information, I was trying to do research on CostumeCraze’s global presence (where commerce and traffic were coming from geographically) and I could not find reports that really helped me drill down on the issue. SiteCatalyst provides traffic maps, showing which countries around the world are providing site traffic, but I could not find anything that would help me see the revenue that matched up with that traffic. The data already being tracked, so why can’t I get to the information I need? There were ways to work around the problem, sort of, but I’d rather just have interoperability between the three categories.

Omniture does offer other services, and it’s entirely possible that Discover (a new app they use) or another piece of software solves some of the problems I see in SiteCatalyst. Unfortunately, I haven’t had access to any of the more advanced tools, but I can probably research it a little bit. Either way, web analytics is a pretty interesting and I encourage those who are web developers to look into Google’s free analytics tools (http://www.google.com/analytics).

Sharing on-demand content with your friends is much easier than trying to find when it will be replayed on television; by creating quality, on-demand media that can spread throughout the internet you are increasing the total number of “views” you get for little to no marginal cost.  One of the keys, in my opinion, to a successful marketing campaign is being able to select a target market (or two) and successfully drive your advertising and other marketing efforts towards those people. By creating video content (or any content, really) that is posted online, you can more easily advertise to those who you are looking to target. MySpace and YouTube have become extremely large online communities where mass amounts of younger generation users spend a lot of their time. By creating quality content with the target audience in mind, you can now specifically place your ads on YouTube, MySpace, or on another online community that specifically caters to your desired market and thus increase the effectiveness of reaching your target audience.

The creation of online content is also fairly cheap. By comparison to a television or print media ad, your costs to post some of these videos around the internet are extremely cheap or, in a lot of cases, free! It is no longer true that you need to spend millions of dollars on an ad campaign because television advertising means high costs if you want a quality time slot; in the current market you can develop an ad spot or short film for as little as a couple thousand dollars, and then have the ability to post it online for free at several video hosting sites. Even to post videos on a corporate or personal website if fairly cheap considering the plummeting costs of bandwidth. Though television and print media ads have their place, anyone can diversify their marketing efforts to the web and thus save money while increasing brand awareness and attitude.

The most curious thing, which wasn’t directly talked about in the articles I read, but was implied. If an organization wants to create a great following and truly have successful marketing on the web, they need to create a community that users will want to be a member of. This goes back to the whole Web 2.0concept that has been all the buzz over the last year or so, and the validity behind all of it is becoming more and more obvious. Think of some of the more successful web organizations out there and you’ll quickly come up with a list that includes MySpace, YouTube, and Amazon. One of the things that each of these sites have in common is their feeling of community and the fact that any registered user can create and contribute content to the site. MySpace gives you a page online where you can communicate with friends and create a customized page for yourself. YouTube gives each user the ability to upload and rate content. Amazon creates a community by allowing everyone to review products and make recommendations to others who may have similar tastes and preferences. As people become more attached to their online community, they spend more time on the site and become viral marketers to the world about the things they love online. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these services , but you have to concede that these companies have done something right that the rest of the world is trying to emulate or take advantage of (evidenced by the insane amount of money YouTube and MySpace sold for over the last year).

BTW, the sources I read can be found at the following locations:

• Blending Video and E-Commerce
• Business Goes Straight to Video

Facebook has done things a little differently. First of all, the website looks classy! There is a lot to be said about the quality of the Facebook product; each page looks professional, there is a very consistent feel to each page, there is content moderation to make sure I don’t stumble upon inappropriate content, and I have very powerful control over my privacy options. I know myspace provides some of these things, but it doesn’t make the process of manipulating options very easy, nor does it look professional.

Groups are a fabulous way to link people together. Picture albums are a much better way of presenting your images in an easy to view manner (whether to your friends, everyone, or only a select few). Each user can select the political campaign issues they consider important, thus indirectly encouraging more and more people to vote. Companies can advertise in new and non-invasive ways through Facebook marketing (whether using the small banner ads – which I find very unobtrusive – or through groups). The new “share” technology is really interesting, bringing the non-Facebook world INTO the Facebook realm (I’ve shared one of my favorite websites – www.pandora.com – with my friends).

What I really enjoy is how the Facebook team is stepping outside of the box and changing many of the stereotypes of how the internet, and social networking sites, should work. They have done some really cool things with the new technologies and programming languages available to present a really fun and useful place for you to begin your daily web surfing experience.

Am I alone? What do you think about what the Facebook team has done?

The reason I love this is because it eliminates a large portion of the time it takes me to add new media to my archives. I have a very specific location for all the the media that iTunes accesses, and by simply dragging files onto the iTunes interface I can automatically move them to the directory, rename each individual file, create a new folder for the individual albums and artists, and now I can also download the album art as long as I have the artist and album named properly.

To me, it is pretty great to have software that does all of the file archiving and organization for me. Why is this so cool? It’s cool because I don’t have to waste an average of 15 minutes renaming all of my song titles, creating appropriate folders for each artist and then each album for each artist. I also don’t have to try and find the album art somewhere online and then point each individual song file to that image. This saves a ton of time, especially if you’re adding a whole slew of media to your iTunes browser at one time.The main reason I bring this up is because I just recently downloaded Picasa (see their website) and it does not meet all of my expectations and wildest dreams.

I guess Apple has me a little spoiled by the way iTunes is designed, but why can’t other software houses develop stuff that works this well? The interface that Picasa uses looks like it would be very conducive to the same types of folder organization that iTunes can do, but either I have yet to find the ability to do it or it simply is a mirage of potential. I have over 2000 images on my computer that I would like to archive and keep organized. Picasa does an amazing job of letting me do some minor edits really quickly, and has a pretty nice interface for uploading all sorts of NEW images from a scanner or digital camera, but what about my older images from the days of high school and pre-mission mayhem?I know I may be asking a little much of all of the software jedis out there (My favorite being THE Software Jedi), but when you’re building software that is used for media manipulation and display you should really consider adding a bit of code that will properly archive my stuff. Obviously it needs to be a non-default option (since you’ll make a ton of people, including myself, angry at you for moving stuff before asking), but I think it should be a very important and standard thing to include. Though Picasa lets me do some of the little things that I find helpful, the most helpful thing it could do is help me archive my files. Even if it allowed proper drag/drop capabilities I would be pretty happy, but it does not properly (at least with my noob experience) let you do this very effectively.

It sounds pretty funny to read me go over something as strange as a specific feature in software, but for those who don’t know me well, I definitely have an interest in how software is developed. I’ve been trying to get my foot in the door as a program manager at Microsoft, and hopefully my general thoughts on things like this will help me wrap my mind around the different aspects of software design.