GITweekly

This is probably nothing but old news to the harder core of tech heads out there, but for us newer experimenters the thought of jailbreaking an iPhone is nothing short of frightening.

Voiding warranties or bricking your phone are a little too much to bear thinking about. Enter Comex and their/his/her/its wonderfully easy jailbreaking website.

As explained on TWiT 259 – all that needs to be done is to plug www.jailbreakme.com into your iPhones Safari browser and “Slide to Jailbreak”. This makes it no harder to hack your phone than it is to unlock it. Brian Brushwood of the highly recommended NSFW and Scam School jailbroke his brand spanking new iPhone 4 on air.

After jailbreaking, your iPhone will have access to the wonders of the Cydia app store along with an offer to fix the security vulnerability that has allowed this easy jailbreak to occur in the first place (apparently a glitch relating to the lack of love between the Safari browser and Adobe PDFs).

I will have to say this is all a big “apparently” because we’ve not done the jailbreak ourselves.

Enjoy in the knowledge that GITweekly neither recommends or bears any responsibility for your iPhone’s welfare. If you smell smoke you’ve been warned. Just read up on forums to get the true inside line.

Don’t forget peoples. If you’ve still gone and gotten yourself one of those new fangled iPhone 4′s – get the iPhone bumber app too. It’ll apparently allow you to use the phone as a phone!

It’s actually called the iPhone 4 case program app.

It’s free and available in the iTunes app store.

Happy bumpering people.

P.S – from what we’re hearing from Aussie iPhone 4 users is that the reception issues related to the external antenna have been a little overblown.

Now when does my 3GS contract run out?

Ever since the rumour emerged that Skype would soon allow you to call your mates over a 3G connection, rather than over WiFi only, I’ve been hitting that “Updates” button in the App Store.

Waiting, waiting and then last night – bang!

Then I read the fine print – there’s always a catch isn’t there?

There will be a charge for calls (Skype to Skype) over 3G after the end of August 2010 – what?

Sure they may want to earn some extra cash for the silky new audio codec (SILK) that they’re using but this goes against the core business that Skype has built – the “stuff the phone company” model.

Anyway, give it a look – let us know what you think.

If not you may want to try a great little program called Fring – they’ve been allowing Skype calls over 3G for some time now – I wonder if the 3G charges will apply to Fring Skye calls?

Both juicy bits of software are available free in the App Store.

So, here’s the rub. When I wrote that last post I wasn’t really prepared for the positive “droppings storm” that followed. So we’ve decided to muse some more, to further savour the roast that is App Marketing – We now present part deux.

Where were we before I rudely hit the publish button?

Marketing – in a dictionary-esque way – is what you do to sell your blood and tears. To get part of the way there we talked about simple icons and app names that said a lot with a little. The other important ingredient was the importance of “spellin’ stuff right”. Just remember baby Jesus and the tears.

Today we’re going to talk about thievery and corruption. We’re talkin’ devious. You must learn to cheat via flattery. And that sincerest form of flattery is to admire your opposition. Gaze longingly at them if you must.

Instead of programming up some objective C or Java greatness and punting it out into the ether without restraint – you must channel your inner grasshopper. Be patient and study three things to find the one answer.

The three are:

• What makes my competitor successful?
• How do they stand out above their opponents?
• And where are their flaws?

And the one answer you seek is:

• Why am I the one?

So by studying the three you’ll know that your customer is successful because, for example, their interface is more modern and clean. They stand out because they have Twitter integration. But you also realise that they are dearer than their opponents.

By knowing this you can become “the one” by exploiting those points of difference. Instead of rushing out and producing an app just like “them”, you’ll spend time creating a better interface, incorporate Facebook along with Twitter and price your app just under the leader.

Of course these are simplistic views of a complicated dilemma for the upcoming developer – but at the end of the day, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and the rest all do the same things. It’s called preparation and market research.

You may think you’re a hotshot, and it may just work out that way for you, but it never hurts to take a peek at what you’re up against. And, perhaps, decide if it’s really not worth it – do we really need another Foursquare clone?

So, until next time, I’ll leave you with this:

You must find out, by fair means or foul, why you are “the one”. Why your app is better than all others. If you cannot answer these questions or mould your app to fit those answers, now is not your time.

Just be patient grasshopper and in the immortal words of Zack De La Rocha – “Know your enemy”.