iPhone Worm is Rick Astley's Face

Rick Astley used to be a big star in the 80's but now, thanks to some people in YouTube, have become some sort of a joke because of the Rick Roll'd phenomenon. It seems to have died a natural death around late 2008, but it seems to have made a comeback, in a somewhat sinister way: he's become a worm for jailbroken iPhones.

"Apple iPhone owners in Australia have reported that their smartphones have been infected by a worm that has changed their wallpaper to an image of 1980s pop crooner Rick Astley.

The worm, which could have spread to other countries although we have no confirmed reports outside Australia, is capable of breaking into jailbroken iPhones if their owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH. Once in place, the worm appears to attempt to find other iPhones on the mobile phone network that are similarly vulnerable, and installs itself again."

What a way to have the iPod Touch/iPhone's first worm: an image of an 80's star.

If your iPod Touch/iPhone has it, fret not as all it does is install Astley's wallpaper. To remove it, you need to change your root user password and delete "LOCKBACKGROUND.JPG" from (VAR/MOBILE/LIBRARY).

What's interesting here is that the creator has a message for those who got the worm.

Is this for the users who have brazenly jailbroken their iPod Touch/iPhones or for Apple? Nevertheless, this is proof that the iPhone 3G's security is really bad.

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Cowon S9 an iPod Toch Killer?

When it comes to personal media player from Cowon nothing does it better than them. Almost all company wants a wager or get piece of that market share the iPod Touch is having right now.

The Cowon S9 features a slick 3.3 inch display compared to the iPod Touch’s 3.5 inch display. It comes to a second place with 8GB and 16GB models unlike with the iPod Touch’s 32GB. The S9 doesn’t even come close with the Touch’s built-in Wi-fFi support compared to the much less Bluetooth support.

There are some areas where in the S9 surely shines out from the rest of its competitors. When it comes to audio quality particularly the BBE+ sound field system really packs in a punch to compressed music files.

It has a unique tweeting system in which users can enhance their sound for their chosen preferences. They have added a new JetEffect and EQ enhancements settings that lets you control your sound just the way you want them to be. Talking about the sound, you need to buy yourself some decent ear buds because the ones they supplied can’t do the S9’s sick sound.

The Cowon’s S9 is a bit lighter than the iPod Touch and a bit smaller in terms of dimensions in all sizes. It sports a AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) screen that is more brighter and color rich than the standard LCD screen use by many media devices. Movies played in the S9 are more stunning and more vibrant as ever, not only that it has a motion sensor, which means you can play your movies in widescreen.

It also features a FM radio and audio recording. Battery life is on the average for a couple of movies. Obviously though, it seems to be an Ipod Touch wanna be. Overall, the sound quality is the only thing that keeps this device afloat amidst its unresponsive controls.

iPod beats the iPhone 3GS anytime!

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

When the first generation iPhone was sold and the iPod Touch came after, a lot of people suddenly felt their iPhone was just an iPod with a phone feature. Now it looks like it's happening again when it was confirmed that the iPod 3rd Gen is faster than the iPhone 3GS.

Macworld’s tests show some impressive gains. Boot went down from 31 to 19 seconds. Launching apps went from 12, 20, and 10 seconds to 7, 15, and 5 for Peggle, HR Battle, and Rolando 2 respectively. Web page rendering for the NYT site was down from 34 to 15 seconds, and the Sunspider JS test went from 34.2 to 15.6 seconds.

Well, it shouldn't be news to most iPhone and iPod fans but even the iPod 2nd Gen was much faster than the iPhone 3GS. What's worse, is that not only is it faster at loading but faster at everthing!

But it’s not just in benchmarks such as these where the new iPod wins out. Just as the iPhone 3GS was faster than the iPhone 3G at everything, the new iPod touch feels much faster at any task you throw at it: applications launch (and quit) faster, Web pages load more quickly, processor-intensive games and programs perform better—you name it.

Is it time to change to a cheaper and faster iPod third gen, sell that iPhone 3GS, and just buy a really cheap mobile phone? Depends if you're happy with what you got. If you ask me I'll take the iPhone anyday whether it's slower or not.



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iPod Touch and iPod Nano Upgrades!

Image via CrunchBase

Apple's latest event, "It's just Rock and Roll", surely had a large impact on raising the bar when it comes to mobile gadgets! This post will tackle the new iPod Touch and Nano.

iPod Touch 3rd Gen: a new mobile gaming platform?

Ok, I admit it, I was one of the bloggers who thought that the iPod Touch 3rd Gen would have a camera. I was proven wrong when Steve Jobs presented the newest one without a camera on the back. However, what bothers me and almost every Tech Blogger I talked with, is besides the memory bumpage and hardware upgrade, what is there to look forward to with the new iPod touch? New games? Is Apple serious in going up against mobile gaming giants the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS? Looks like the iPod Touch is Apple's foray into the gaming world:

According to Steve, Apple wasn't "exactly sure how to market the touch" at first, but once they listened to their customers and started to focus on gaming, "it just took off."

Good luck on that Steve.

Prices will range from $199 for the 8GB, $229 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, and the brand new 64GB for $399.

iPod Nano gets vid cam!

The biggest upgrade was the iPod Nano as it now comes with a camera at the back and FM Radio. It'll also have speakers and microphone on it to enable you to hear the video without speakers. It'll also have a wide range of colors from red, pink, orange, silver, black, purple, blue, green, and yellow. They will cost $179 for 16GB and $149 for the 8GB.

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Apple iPod touch 8 GB 2nd Generation

The iPod touch has always been an amazing iPod. And with its groundbreaking technologies--including a Multi-Touch screen, the accelerometer, and 3D graphics--and access to hundreds of games, iPod touch puts an amazing gaming experience in the palm of your hand. It comes in 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB models with new volume controls and a built-in speaker. Play hours of music.

Create a Genius Playlist of songs that go great together. Watch a movie. Surf the web. View rich HTML email. Find your location and get directions with Google Maps. Browse YouTube videos. And shop the App Store for games and applications.

Price: $214.99

(Source) Amazon