The iphone-dev.org crew has released QuickPwn for Mac OS X, there is a an official torrent for the release.

Here is the long awaited “QuickPwn” for Mac OS X. You’ll see a similarity to the user-interface of PwnageTool, this is because of the great feedback we’ve had since we moved to that interface with PwnageTool 2.x.

QuickPwn is not a replacement for PwnageTool, they are different tools and provide different features, QuickPwn is for quickly pwning a device, whereas PwnageTool is designed to custom build and tailor the ipsw production process, both tools will be actively developed in the future.

If you are not comfortable using bittorrent, come back in 12 hours and we’ll post a direct link on our server (when the initial rush has died down a bit!)

Read the full blog post at iphone-dev.org

I was just forwarded a link to the blog of Mobile Chat’s company Twenty08′s. You can view it here – twenty08.

There is some interesting information that was just posted today. Information that a lot of people have been looking for over the last little while after purchasing the Mobile Chat iPhone Application on Apples Application Store.

The two recent posts go in depth into some of the problems with the Mobile Chat Application on the iPhone, a new version being released and how they’re trying to fix the problems everyone is experiencing.

Yes, Mobile Chat crashes and has many major problems like not connecting all the time to any IM service. However this will change and this is how.

What’s going on? Why is MobileChat still not working?
There are a lot of reasons for this. I’ll attempt to cover as many as I can; however, there are a lot of things that we don’t have the answers to yet.

1. The iPhone app is just way too buggy. The 3.0 version of MobileChat has a lot of minor connection bugs that collectively make MobileChat useless at times (most times). This along with the absurd number of memory leaks has rendered it useless on many devices. Your ability to connect is based on the pure chance of whether the application “decides” to work or not. These problems exist only due to our inexperience with the iPhone SDK. Two weeks and hundreds of bug reports later, we’ve learned a tremendous amount more about the inner workings of the iPhone platform and how we could of utilized resources in a much more efficient matter. Our consultants have taught us an extensive amount as well and we are carrying this knowledge into MobileChat as well as into our other products.

2. If by chance you are able to attempt a connection, our servers aren’t keeping up with the demand. Everyone hates this line, and I’ve had many people tell me that this is the worst excuse in the book; however, it’s the absolute truth. In order to understand why, let me explain how our platform is setup: The iPhone application connects to our server platform and “checks in” with the server. It then tells the server what accounts it wants connected and what status to set. The server performs the requested operations and sends back the status to the iPhone. If the iPhone goes offline or suddenly shuts off, the server continues to hold onto the session and keeps the requested accounts logged in. All of the communication is done using XML messages back and forth between the server and the client (iPhone). On the server side, the messages are processed and actions are performed based on what the client wants done. The libpurple library is used to connect these accounts to the specified protocols. Now, many of you might not know what libpurple is. In short, libpurple powers just about every third party IM service/software out there. Adium, Pidgin, Meebo…etc. They all use libpurple as a foundation for their connections with the IM protocols.

As you can see, they seem to know what they’re doing and publicly letting people know. This is good! There is much more information in the post, you should definitively give it a read.

Read the full blog post on twenty08.com’s blog.

The other tidbit of information is in regards to their Mobile Chat Server 2.0 which they have just started rolling out.

I just thought I’d give you guys a bit of info on the new server, however, I’m going to keep this as brief as possible as Saverio already gave you guys a thesis to read.

The original server was based on the open source libpurple, and as Saverio mentioned, it didn’t play well in a threaded environment. We hired some of the brightest programmers available to help fix it, and ultimately we reached the conclusion that if we wanted stability, this wasn’t the way to go.

Ultimately, we rewrote the entire server application from the ground up. The new server is based around the enterprise grade OpenFire XMPP server that can support hundreds of thousands of users.

There’s still a ton of work to be done to improve the server, but right now we feel the version we have is easily a million times better than what we were previously using.

Read the full article on twenty08.com’s blog

Two very big posts that are going to make a lot of people excited next week. Unfortunately now we can only wait and see what happens.

Samsung has developed low cost SATAII SSD’s. Specifically the SSD’s Samsung has been sampling are 30% smaller than 2.5 inch SSD’s, and are really cost effective. They come in low density sizes, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB and operate at a speed of 90MB/sec to 70MB/sec.

Read the full article at Engadet

This was on Digg before, however I got a screen capture of the entire page. I don’t know why.

If you need a 24 core, 48G linux cluster then you might want to build a Helmer.

This is the story of Helmer. A linux cluster in a IKEA Helmer cabinet.

3D computer rendering are very CPU intensive and the best way so speed up slow render problems, are usually to distribute them on to more computers. Render farms are usually very large, expensive and run using ALLOT of energy. I wanted to build something that could be put in my home, not make too much noise and run using very little energy… and be dirt cheep, big problem? no computer stuff cost almost nothing these days, it just a matter of finding fun stuff to play with.

I wanted to use Intel Quad core 65 nm or better. I surfed the web and found 6 of then at a good price. Then I looked after the cheapest motherboard that could run these. The result of my investigation was the Gigabyte S-series GA-G33M-DS2R/S2 card.

Next, finding memory. The motherboard could hold up to 8GB of memory each, and I wanted to maximize all I could. Here are the 12x4GB =48GBmemory modules.

Next problem was to find a good computer case that could hold these motherboards. But this was a big problem. 6x cases cost almost as much as the motherboards and CPU’s! So here was some room for improvement. I found the IKEA helmer cabinet. Perfect! Who knew IKEA made there stuff ATX compatible.

You can read the all about the Helmer with pictures of course on the http://helmer.sfe.se website.

I was recently having issues with my phone not being able to use 3G, and I thought it might have been a firmware or possibly hardware issue. But after troubleshooting for some time, I found that it was in fact applications crashing or firmware bugs.

Hearing more and more reports of network issues with 3G and iPhones, Wired Magazine decided to do a survey of 3G coverage across america. The results are pretty interesting.

Recently Wired.com asked iPhone 3G users all around the world to participate in a study, which involved testing their 3G speeds and entering their data on an interactive map. The purpose? To gain a general idea of how 3G was performing — where it’s best and where it’s worst — in light of widespread complaints about the handset’s network performance. More than 2,600 people participated (wow!) and we’ve diligently cleaned up the data to present it to you here.

Read the full article at wired.com

Not too long after releasing and updated PwnageTool and Quickpwn, the iphone-dev.org team has released an update to QuickPwn.

We’ve had some issues with iPod touch devices and the latest version of PwnageTool for the Mac, in certain conditions incorrect permissions will be used and the keychain doesn’t save passwords. So hold on and wait for the next release, we’ll push out the updated version via Sparkle as soon as it is tested (it is being tested right now). We have also encountered some issues with the Windows Beta of QuickPwn, and we have an update that should fix the issues seen with 64-bit Windows versions and should be able to be used with all versions of Windows, but as with all beta software other bugs may be present.

They have released QuickPwn RC3 on their website.

Read the full article and download QuickPwn RC3.

I haven’t been keeping up with my submissions as of late so this one squeaked through. But the http://iphone-dev.org team has updated both their PwnageTool and QuickPwn Tool. There is still however no baseband unlock, just support for new jailbreaking of the new firmware.

The updates to the PwnageTool

PwnageTool 2.0.3 is available. This version provides support for iPhone/iPod firmware 2.0.2 5C1, it has an updated Installer.app beta (b6) and contains a new .de localization for our large amount of German friends. The application SHOULD ONLY be downloaded as a .tbz file from our servers and should NOT be decompressed using the application called “the unarchiver” (this breaks permissions within PwnageTool) just use the standard OS X built in ‘Archive Utility’ to decompress. The SHA1 sum of PwnageTool_2.0.3.tbz is 91e670e0c623cd43f5e8cfbfaae6c23d98d8f31b

The updates to QuickPwn

Also released today is the ‘150’ beta update to the Windows QuickPwn application, this contains a revised GUI from Poorlad that has tighter integration into the the main updated QuickPwn executable which has fixes for YouTube and provides BootNeuter support for the unlock of 2G iPhones, remember this is still beta software, use at your own risk. The updated tool is available for download here NB: QuickPwn Windows doesn’t work well with virtualization as there are some problems with the way USB resets are handled, so we wouldn’t advise trying it, we have had reports of some success with VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta 2, but this shouldn’t be relied on, use PwnageTool instead, or wait for QuickPwn Mac.

You can read the full article here at iphone-dev.org

Microsoft through the Sysinternals team has released Windows Desktops, which provides Mutiple Desktops within Windows XP and Windows Vista. Sysinternals created quite a few applications and utilities for the Windows Operating System that Microsoft evntually acquired them.

I’ve always loved Linux and its fluid Mutiple Desktops in Fluxbox. Even Mac OSX and its mutiple desktops is very mature and a time saver when working with mutiple applications. I know there are a few applications that allowed the use of mutiple desktops on windows, but this is an official release from Microsoft’s Sysinternals team.

Just some heads up about what you can and can’t do with Windows Desktops. First off, if you select the ALT modifier and the function keys (F1,F2) then watch out for ALT+F4

Also, you if you make a change to your quick launch, like add or remove anything. Then you won’t see it on your other desktops. You will have to reboot your machine, restarting Windows Desktop doesn’t resolve the issue. If you like using FireFox and want to use it on two different desktops, it won’t work out of the box. You can open another Firefox Window, but you can’t move it in-between desktops. Firefox uses profiles, unfortunately if you want to launch another Firefox profile you need to actually create a new profile. The hiveminds.co.uk has an article “Running Multiple Versions of Firefox on Windows” which will assist you with creating a new profile and getting up to four different Firefox processes.

Download Windows Desktops from microsoft.com/sysinternals

Here are some pictures of Windows Desktop in action.

I was browsing through my mail spool on my machine, and I noticed that there were some messages in one of my accounts for a vBulletin forum. After further review, it was some bounce backs that had accumulated from users that didn’t have a valid email address.

I then started to do some Google searches for a vBulletin module (vBulletin’s search is horrendous and practically useless) and found this module.

The module works in conjunction with a POP3 account. You setup a catchall on your forums domain. A unique identifier is placed within the return path email. The message bounces and is sent to the catchall account which is forwarded to a POP3 account. A cronjob runs and accesses the POP3 account and parses the messages and action is taken on the user which is specified within the modules settings.

The module is in its BETA stages and there have been some users who just can’t seem to get it working. I’ve posted some comments on how to improve this module as a whole. I posted under another account as I have lost my vbulletin.org login.

fatal1980 fatal1980 is online now
Member

Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 33
I do have one suggestion. If a message is going to bounce properly, the messages sent from vBulletin wouldn’t even be accepted by the destination host. Typically if an email no longer exists, the message is bounced during the SMTP transaction.

Instead of your current method of verifying bounce messages. Why don’t you either re-write the vBulletin sending function or place a hook before the message is to be sent. And have a script resolve the domains mx record. Then connect to the destination mail server and confirm the message is valid. You pretty much just have to issue a HELO, MAIL FROM, and RCPT TO. You don’t even have to send a message through.

This definitely cut down the time and resources used to determine if an address is legitimate. You would obviously have to setup the pop account as well to catch mail servers that are accepting mail and then bouncing it (which is bad and shouldn’t happen).

Furthermore, the process of the bad mail addresses would happen during regular mail operations.

Thanks for the great mod.

Download Auto Bounce Messages Management from vbulletin.org.