And the cat and mouse game continues. Last Tuesday, Apple released the latest version of the iPhone OS 3.1.3 (7E18). This was an unexpected release, since a lot of people were hoping for the 3.2 version which is on the new iPad.

3.1.3 is a relatively minor update, fixing battery level reporting and a few crashes caused by 3rd party apps and the Japanese Kana keyboard.

Unless you absolutely need the improved battery accuracy, or your iPhone was crashing incessantly, you want to stay away from this update if you have a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone.

As usual, it didn’t take that long for the iPhone Dev Team to come up with a solution. They have released PwnageTool 3.1.5, which allows you to go to 3.1.3 while preserving your jailbreak and ultrasn0w unlock.

Of course, there are exceptions :
- if you used the blacksn0w unlock (at baseband 05.11.07), you need to stay at 3.1.2.
- if you have an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, it’s best not to upgrade (just to be safe).

PwnageTool 3.1.5 works with the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS with early bootrom, iPod touch 1G, and iPod touch 2G with early bootrom.

Since I just upgraded my iPhone 3GS to 3.1.2 about a week ago, I’ll stick to it until a bigger update comes along — 3.2 maybe?

Where the settings are blank below, you should leave them blank on your iPhone.

First, navigate to Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network

Internet Settings

APN: wap.voicestream.com
Username :
Password :

You can try this alternative APN setting :

APN : internet2.voicestream.com
Username : guest
Password : guest

MMS Settings

APN: wap.voicestream.com
Username:
Password:
MMSC: 216.155.174.84/servlets/mms
MMS Proxy 216.155.165.50:8080
MMS Max Message Size:
MMS UA Prof URL:

NOTE : After entering the MMS settings, go to Settings -> Messaging. Turn MMS Messaging to ON.

Note that if you have an iPhone which your bought from your mobile operator, and you’re still using that mobile operator, then this doesn’t apply to you. If you have an unlocked iPhone (legally or otherwise) and you wish to use a different mobile operator, then this guide is for you. This guide is for iPhone OS 3.0 and above.

This time around, I’ll be showing the settings for Malaysian telcos Maxis, Hotlink, DiGi, Celcom, Xpax, and U Mobile. Where the settings are blank below, you should leave them blank on your iPhone.

First, navigate to Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network

Maxis (also Hotlink)

Maxis currently offers the iPhone to its customers. If you purchased your iPhone from Maxis and it doesn’t work on Maxis or their prepaid Hotlink service, please check with them.

Internet Settings

APN: unet or net
Username: maxis
Password: wap

MMS Settings

APN: unet
Username: maxis
Password: wap
MMSC: http://172.16.74.100:10021/mmsc
MMS Proxy: 202.75.133.49:80
MMS Max Message Size: 307200
MMS UA Prof URL:

DiGi

Internet Settings

APN: diginet
Username:
Password:

MMS Settings

APN: digimms
Username: mms
Password: mms
MMSproxy : 203.92.128.160
MMSC: http://mms.digi.com.my/servlets/mms
MMS Max Message Size: 307200
MMS UA Prof URL:

Celcom (also Xpax)

Internet Settings

APN : mms.celcom.net.my (if you have Postpaid non-3G SIM)
APN : celcom3g (if you have a 3G Sim)
APN : celcom (if you have an Xpax Prepaid Sim)
Username:
Password:

MMS Settings

APN: celcom3g (if you have a 3G SIM)
Username:
Password:
MMSC: http://mms.celcom.net.my
MMS Proxy: 10.128.1.242:8080
MMS Max Message Size:
MMS UA Prof URL:

APN:mms.celcom.net.my (if you don’t have a 3G SIM)
Username:
Password:
MMSC: http://mms.celcom.net.my
MMS Proxy: 10.128.1.242:8080
MMS Max Message Size:
MMS UA Prof URL:

U Mobile

Internet Settings

APN: my3g
Username:
Password:

MMS Settings
APN: my3g
Username:
Password:
MMSC: http://10.30.3.11/servlets/mms
MMS Proxy: 10.30.5.11:8080

NOTE : Once you have entered the MMS settings, go to Settings -> Messaging. Turn MMS Messaging to ON.

1. Alive 4 Ever

I love the zombie genre. For a while, all the games I played were zombie-related games! Alive 4 Ever is a top view shoot ‘em up game, which sort of combines Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil and Gauntlet. In each mission you have a primary and secondary objective. As you complete missions, you earn credits to purchase additional weapons and also level up.

There’s also cooperative multiplayer over Bluetooth and WiFi, which is always fun when you have a buddy to shoot zombies with.

Get Alive 4 Ever on iTunes ($2.99)

2. Modern Combat : Sandstorm

Modern Combat : Sandstorm has one of the best controls I’ve ever played with in an iPhone game. This game was a pleasure to play : easy to control, and lots to shoot at and blow up. The game takes place in the Middle East, and you play a soldier who’s part of a hunt for a master terrorist.

The graphics and atmosphere are great. You have multiple choices of weapons that you can pick up within the game, and there are several different locations and scenarios from a hospital, to a truck chase, to exploring subterranean tunnels.

With the great controls, this would be an awesome multiplayer game — if only Gameloft can get the multiplayer working properly.

Get Modern Combat : Sandstorm on iTunes ($4.99)

3. Blades of Fury

Street Fighter is back! Well, actually no, but Blades of Fury is a good 3D arcade-style fighting game. It’s actually more like Soul Calibre than Street Fighter, but you get the drift. In Blades of Fury, you have a number of characters (and costumes) to choose from. There’s a story mode which gets repetitive, but you need to play it to unlock certain characters. The graphics are incredible, and the game uses a lot of short videos for cut scenes and KO moves.

You can play against friends over Bluetooth, which is cool.

Buy Blades of Fury from iTunes ($4.99)

4. Dungeon Hunter

If you like RPGs (role playing games) like Baldur’s Gate, then give Dungeon Hunter a try. Developer Gameloft calls Dungeon a “3D epic quest set in a dark fantasy world”. The graphics, sound and controls are well done. Even the storyline is quite decent, although it’s not always so straightforward. The game plays in a story mode, as you go to different locations to accomplish different missions.

There’s minimal replayability with Dungeon Hunter, but playing it will give you a “wow” feeling — when did the iPhone get to be such a good games machine?

Get Dungeon Hunter on iTunes ($4.99)

5. Eliminate Pro

I’ve had a lot of fun playing Eliminate Pro over the past few months. This was a widely anticipated game, and indeed developer ngmoco delivered what they promised. Eliminate Pro is a multiplayer first person shooter. You can play against friends or random strangers across the Internet, who are automatically matched to your skill level.

The frag sessions are pulse-pounding, frantic, fast paced, but frustratingly short. As long as you have a decent enough Internet connection, the game plays extremely well … which is amazing considering you may be playing against 3 other people who may be all over the globe. Since this game is designed from the start as multiplayer, you get all the usual leaderboards and bragging rights that come along with them.

The graphics are great. There’s lots of customization options, from weapons to armour to skins. Eliminate Pro is one of the first games that fully used the in-app feature to the max. You can have a perfectly ok gaming experience without spending any money, or you can get ahead faster by buying “power cells” which you can use to gain credits to upgrade your gear.

Get Eliminate Pro on iTunes (free)

So those are the 5 iPhone games that I have been playing over and over in 2009. What games have kept you up lately?

Remember when the phone was just used to make calls? Later on, text messaging came along and after that, data. When I was using my Treo 650 four years ago, I was proud to have 10,000+ third party applications to choose from. Now the iPhone ecosystem has over 100,000 apps, and what’s mind blowing is not just the number, but also the sheer variety of apps. In this post I’ll highlight a few iPhone applications that make your iPhone more than just a phone.

1. Reserve, find and unlock your (Zip) car

If you don’t want to own a car, but find yourself needing one once in a while, Zipcar fills that need. You can reserve a car of your choice online, select the location and time period, and it’s done. You get a contactless “Zipcard” which unlocks the car for you. Cool, right? With the Zipcar iPhone app, it gets even cooler.

As you may expect, the Zipcar app allows you to view and reserve your car direct from your iPhone. You can use the integrated map to select the car closest to your location. Here’s the magic bit : once you’re near the car, you can honk the horn (to find out exactly where it is) and even unlock the car using a virtual key fob.

Here’s a video of Zipcar for iPhone :

Download Zipcar for iPhone.

2. Paint the cover of a magazine

Just about every smartphone platform has its fair share of graphics or painting applications. The iPhone, with its touch screen interface, has its own advantages and disadvantages as an artist’s canvas. One of the many paint apps for the iPhone is Brushes. And one of the most talked about iPhone-based works of art this year is this cover of New Yorker magazine :

Jorge Colombo drew this magazine cover using Brushes while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square. Of course it’s not just the tool, but also the talent. Still, this isn’t something you expect to do on your phone.

Here’s a video of the painting in progress :

3. Accept credit card payments

In the mobile world today, there’s hardly any paper — but there’s hardly any plastic, either. If you need to process credit card payments on the go, (you know this part) … there’s an app for that. There are several on-device credit card processing apps, including SwipeIt (formerly iSwipe) which also captures signatures.

Now payment giant Verifone has come up with Payware Mobile, which is both an iPhone app and a portable hardware card reader. Here’s a video of Payware mobile in action :

4. Become a star in your own live Internet show

Here’s the pitch : Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. Did someone say camera + Internet connection? That’s an iPhone, right? Ustream is the first company to get a live streaming, broadcasting app approved by Apple.

The Ustream Live Broadcaster app works over 3G and WiFi, and features Facebook, Youtube and Twitter integration.

Download Ustream Live Broadcaster for iPhone, so you too can join the likes of Tila Tequila to become an Internet star. If you’re not a fan of Ustream, their rival Qik has also submitted a live broadcasting app for Apple’s approval.

5. See the world with different eyes

With a video camera, GPS capablity, a digital compass and good data network connection, the iPhone 3GS works wonders for augmented reality, especially once Apple opened up their APIs for all these goodies. Earlier this year, we were amazed by Layar, displays real time information based on your location and the direction you are facing, overlaying the camera with locations and information that you are looking for.

Since then, we’ve seen a few more cool augmented reality apps, like Twitter 360, allows you to track your friends via geolocation of their tweets. Here’s a video of Twitter 360 in action :

Of course, there are more practical augmented reality apps. One is TypeWalker by Xcoolapps. For those of you who tweet and walk, it can be dangerous sometimes. TypeWalker lets you tweet in safety, since it uses the iPhone camera to display what’s actually in front of you while you walk. TypeWalker lets you update Twitter and Facebook, as well as type to email.

No more falling down the stairs or bumping into people, ok?

So, that’s my 5 unconventional uses of the iPhone. Any more you want to recommend?

iPhone OS 3.1 brought a few cool new features to the iPhone and iPod touch, including App Genius and the ability to manage your device screen from iTunes 9. However, we’ve also heard reports of the instability of 3.1. Apple has released iPhone OS 3.1.2, which addresses several issues including problems waking from sleep, network service disruption and crashing during video streaming.

This update contains bug fixes and improvements, including :

- Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
- Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
- Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming

The update is compatible with all iPhone models (and the iPod touch) and is approximately 240 MB in size. Do look for the update option the next time you plug in your iPhone or iPod touch to iTunes.

Warning from the iPhone Dev Team : if you care about your jailbreak and unlock, don’t update your device – iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS owners should pay particular attention to this warning. Do note :

– Current versions of PwnageTool and redsn0w are not yet compatible with iPhone OS 3.1.2
– There is no estimated release time for compatible tools

Did you hear about the guy who threatened to shoot his iPhone at an Apple Store? I know a lot of people were getting impatient waiting for a jailbreak solution to be made available for the iPhone 3GS, but that’s a bit much. Well, wait no more, the iPhone Dev Team has come through again and released PwnageTool 3.1.3.

What you should know :
- this Jailbreak will work for iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.0 and 3.1. For units that shipped with iPhone OS 3.1, and units that were upgraded to 3.1 using the official Apple-provided update, you’re still out of luck.
- this new version of PwnageTool will work with all iPhones and iPod touch devices, except for the latest 3rd generation iPod touch.
- for 3G and 3G(S) users who are Pwned, PwnageTool is your key to updating in the future, just remember to never install an update directly from Apple, always use an .ipsw that has been created with PwnageTool.
- as always, try it at your own risk and back up your iPhone beforehand.

I just tried using this version of Pwnagetool to jailbreak and unlock my original iPhone, and it works.

Last year, I spent 11 days without a computer — the sole computing device I used was an iPhone. This year I did the same, only my break was shorter (7 days) and I used a new iPhone 3GS. In the end, the only real difference was that with the 3GS, I took more videos.

Just to catch up on some news while I was away:

iPhone users on the AT&T network in the US catches up with the rest of the world, with MMS finally arriving. Here’s how you enable MMS on your US iPhone. I had MMS on my original iPhone for a while now, with SwirlyMMS on iPhone OS 2.1, and a workaround on iPhone OS 3.0.

I used to use MMS a whole lot, but with the iPhone I tend to use email, or post photos directly to Facebook more.

You can now get push Gmail on your iPhone. This is not an officially supported push email like Yahoo! Mail, but a workaround developed by Google. Push Gmail behaves like Microsoft Exchange — follow instructions here if you want it. I’m not obsessed with getting my email right this very moment, so I’ll pass.

I love the camera on the iPhone 3GS. The autofocus works great. If you want more out of the camera, here’s a good list of 10 applications for taking photos with the iPhone.

The iPhone Dev Team has done it again. Just a week after Apple released iPhone OS 3.1, it has been jailbroken. It’s not all good news so far, though.

PwnageTool 3.1 WILL work for Original iPhone (1st Generation), Original iPod touch (1st Generation) and the iPhone 3G. It does not currently support the iPhone 3GS or the 2nd and 3rd generation iPod touch.

Notes :

- If you are using a 3G iPhone with ultrasn0w and rely on ultrasn0w to obtain cellular service, then you should only upgrade to 3.1 with a PwnageTool created .ipsw. – Stay away from Apple’s direct updates.
- If you have an original iPhone (1st generation) then 3.1 unlock works with this PwnageTool release. iPhone 3G users upgrading to 3.1 will need to continue using ultrasn0w with a PwnageTool created 3.1 .ipsw

Get more details (and download links) at the iPhone Dev Team blog.

At work, I meet a lot of new people every week. Even in this age of Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, it’s still a standard practice to exchange business cards. While I have over 2,000 contacts in my iPhone, I still have several hundred which I have not saved and entered into the Address Book / Contact list.

I recently purchased an iPhone 3GS, and I’m very happy with the improved camera, especially the auto focus function. The iPhone 3GS camera is perfect for capturing images of business cards. But how easy is it to convert that image to an actual contact? I looked at 4 different solutions :

- Card Scan
- Snabiz
- CardSnap (and CardSnap Lite)
- Evernote

Card Scan $0.99, 10.1MB

Scan your business cards using your iPhone 3GS’s awesome camera and save it in as a contact into your Address Book.

Card Scan makes Address Book entry easy and fun:
1. Snap a photo of a business card.
2. Card Scan automatically scans it into text.
3. Select an Address Book field (such as name and phone #) and copy-paste from the scanned text.
4. Save it to your Address Book.

Features:
- Automatic text recognition.
- Scan business cards from the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.

Snabiz $4.99, 7.8MB

Snabiz is billed as “the first OCR application for iPhone”. Snabiz helps you to import business cards in your Address Book. Simply take a picture, Snabiz recognizes the text and automatically tags all known fields. You are presented with a list of all scanned text fields so you can tag everything that you want to import. Then you can save your new contact in your Address Book.

Features
- take a clear picture thanks to the built-in CameraSteady functionality (3 second countdown with sound effect prior to taking the final picture)
- automatic field detection (phone numbers, address, zipcode, ..) + possibility to overrule them
- shake to clear all detected fields
- Snabiz is using the Tesseract OCR engine (licensed under Apache License 2.0), which is considered one of the most accurate free software OCR engine currently available

CardSnap, 0.8MB $15.99 Lite $0.99

Just take a picture of a business card with your iPhone and click submit. The card is processed on the server, generally within 24 hours. Every time you open the application it will check to see if your cards have been processed and load them into the address book.

CardSnap is not just an OCR application. They use a proprietary processing method that ensures the greatest degree of accuracy. All legible fields are captured and properly mapped to a contact record on your iPhone.

CardSnap provides unlimited cards with no signup, activation, or additional charges. It only recognizes characters in English.

Features:

- Quick and easy method for taking pictures of business cards and submitting them from the iPhone
- List of all cards submitted and their current status
- Red tag indicates the number of cards that have been newly processed
- Details for each card indicating the status, image, and how it was processed
- View or edit contact information from within the application
- Detailed user guide included in application with hints on how to take legible pictures with the iPhone
- Upload cards from photo album or camera
- Automatically add contacts to existing groups

The following fields are automatically mapped:

- First Name
- Last Name
- Middle Name
- Organization
- Job Title
- Work Email
- Work Phone
- Work Fax
- Mobile Phone
- Other Phone
- Website
- Work Address Street 1
- Work Address Street 2
- Work Address City
- Work Address State
- Work Address Zip
- Work Address Country

Cardsnap Lite is identical to the full edition except that only 6 fields are processed instead of 17. The fields processed with the lite edition are:

- First Name
- Last Name
- Organization
- Work Email
- Work Phone
- Work Fax

Evernote 2MB, Free

Evernote turns the iPhone and iPod Touch into an extension of your brain. This multiple-award winning app lets you remember and recall anything that happens in your life. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, put everything into Evernote and watch as everything instantly synchronizes from the iPhone to the Web, to your Mac or Windows desktop.

Key features:
- Create text, photo and audio notes
- Auto-synchronizes your notes with Mac, PC, and Web
- Magically makes text in snapshots searchable
- Selected “Favorite” notes can be accessed quickly, even offline
- All notes include geo-location information for mapping and search

Evernote isn’t technically an OCR solution; images are scanned on their server and made searchable. You won’t be able to copy back the contact information to your iPhone. The free version of Evernote has a maximum upload allowance of 40MB/month. The premium version of Evernote costs $5 a month and has a maximum allowance of 500MB.

Conclusion
Overall, all of these solutions are really hit-or-miss. I haven’t found one that really works out of the box. Right now, I just use Evernote to capture and save business cards in a searchable form.

If you don’t have an iPhone 3GS, you can still use your iPhone 3G or original iPhone with the Griffin Clarifi case. This case comes with a built-in macro lens for close-up photography — perfect for capturing business cards.