iphone downgraded and cracked

Couple of weeks back, Dad’s friend’s iphone started behaving a wierdishly and he by mistake hit the restore button on the iTunes! It went back to locked conditions and he asked me to look into it. I had unlocked this phone around Feb when his son sent it as a gift to him from the US. I had used Ziphone (took only 5 mins to unlock!) and thinking it would be a no brainer, I took up the issue.

But after one full day trying to poke around I was clueless and frustrated. I attacked the problem the next day and I seemed to have gone nowwhere! Afraid that the phone might have bricked, I gave it one last shot to restore it and phew I successfully managed to do it. Its was frustrating for me to actually diagnose the problem and solve it as I had no idea what the uncle did & I had not followed iPhone developments.

Just bloggin this in case someone else faces the problemo ;P. Here it goes …

• If you are getting error 20 (Version you are trying to load is older than the one you already have) check if you are really on DFU.(nice instructions there)

To put your phone in recovery mode simply:

1. Switch off the iPhone.
2. Hold the home button as you connect your iPhone to your PC/Mac.
3. Continue to hold the home button untill you see the iTunes/Dock Cable logo.

To put your iPhone in to DFU mode:

1. Turn on iPhone
2. Connect to PC/Mac
3. Open iTunes
4. Hold down power and home buttons
5. Wait untill red slider appears to shut down iPhone – keep holding the buttons.
6.Wait untill the iPhone shuts down
7. Release power button, keep home button pressed (if the Apple logo appeared you didn’t release the power button quick enough – try again!)
8. Wait about 7 seconds – iTunes should say there is an iPhone connected in “restore mode”

• You will have to install iTunes 7.5 not the latest one! You need to remove all traces latest iTunes completely! Then you need to download 1.1.4 firware and install it (press the shift button when you click Restore to install a specific firmware) You will most likely come across error 1601 or 1602.
• For exact instructions go to these links …
• I had to use iLiberty+ finally to dissect the problem
• Even then I was getting stuck with a problem where I had opened the phone but it was not recognizing the vodafone SIM! Duh, it was more like a iTouch! Final solution came when I understood the crux of the matter was the baseband doesn’t change automatically. You need another software called the KiPhone. One has to do this as people haven’t still figured out how to crack the latest baseband 04.05.04

Hope this helps i.e. savnig time. The 5 minute venture last time turned out to be 3 days of effort ;P Mainly stalled due to pathetic download speeds. Who says experience helps!

Figure just for illustration borrowed it from the FaceBook News feed.

comments on vibrancy of SNS

Just read Fred’s article Vibrancy of the online Social Space and wrote a comment there … given the fact that my blogging is coming down I think I repost the comment to the article as blog post. Some snippets from the article:

as I log in, I am engaged by a cross-section of my social relationships. In an instant, information is revealed, opportunities are discovered, and a website becomes a social nexus – from which I can derive a sense of gratification, meaning and identity.

In her 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs described the sidewalk ballet of a vital urban environment. Jacobs argued that a vibrant and diverse city should possess four characteristic design elements, the first being that a neighborhood should be multifunction, creating activity throughout the day. Next, a city should have short blocks and its buildings should be multiform, creating interest and promoting exploration by inhabitants. Finally, Jacobs argued for density, in which different populations intersperse, affording variety and shared resources.

Applying Jacobs’ criteria to an online space creates a challenge; as a neighborhood jumps from the physical to the virtual, the nature of its goods changes.

Arguing for shorter blocks, Jacobs felt that this type of design would foster exploration by city dwellers. The “short blocks” analogy is alive and well in online social networks, where the ability to browse and explore fellow network participants fuels use. In a social network, we enumerate our identity as we describe our interests, tag each other, and post on walls and message boards. These “digital traces” are often hyperlinked, permitting endless point-and-click exploration of the social space.

Indeed, online social networks are concentrated; in this sense they are unlike any neighborhood. Social networks allow for the centralization of one’s network in a single place; geographic boundaries are rendered insignificant as we connect across place and time. The social network allows the work friends to intermingle with grade school friends in an odd, often awkward dance.

In a study conducted at Michigan State University (Lampe, 2006), researchers found that friendships in social networks often began offline and migrated online, rather than the other way around.

The social cost of relationship maintenance decreases; the birthday card is replaced with a wall post. We can certainly lament the depersonalization of online interaction, but we can’t impugn the outcome – we are able to manage larger collections of friends with less effort than ever before. Do these extended friend networks increase sociality or simply introduce new digital tethers to our social life? That is a question we’ll work towards answering, as the effects of these digital publics on our real world is explored.

We flirt, we interact, we do business, we seek out information and gratification, finding a complex social world at our fingertips. While the digital spaces we inhabit will have a good deal in common with our cities of concrete and granite, they are unique places with unique challenges. While the technological emphasis of relevance and searchability will create new types of interactions online, it would be wise for developers to pay attention to Jacbos; they will find both the meaning and the letter of her laws instructive.

My comments:

Fred … nicely written will read this again and hopefully get back with more thoughts. From my personal experience, I see myself making more friends either in the offline or real world and enriching the boards in social networking sites like playing a game of scrabble or doing fun stuff.

However, I make more chance exploration kind of encounters in communities like Flickr and Flickr communities and special niche communities for like minded topics. When we have meetups – I like the interaction and then choose to go online hoping to find the people I liked online and grow the bond richer.

I have never come across party like behaviour in the online space. And yes, I haven’t tried second life as the bandwidth is very less in India. (Feel frustrated about that once I moved back from the Bay Area.)

But, there is one thing you should consider: the influence of the mobile and information convergence it brings on! It was also very interesting to see Steve Jobs showcasing facebook’s beta iPhone site What happens as a next step as your social internet sphere moves with you on the go. What happens in countries like India and other where majority of population in a year or two is going to experience SNS primarily through the mobile??

I am just putting a screen shot from couple of applications to aid your thought process of the visualization of my facebook social sphere. Remember its going to be only 3 months I am on facebook and I am loving it completely. I have around 225 contacts on facebook and around 375 contacts on orkut – all decently meaningful ones so that my interactions there don’t get diluted!

iPod touch – not good to own!

The looks are there and the price is there! You may decide to buy the thing for the pinch and flick and the lovely screen.

But I think I will either wait for the iphone or wait for a more feature packed iPodTouch! I agree with VitaminCM here on most accounts. The list of feature I want to see more in the iPod Touch are:

• Two small cameras – a 1M in the front and a 3M in the back
• Can make video voice calls!
• Capture moments and ditch the camera
• Also cut and make videos on the go – nokia ain’t that good!
• Open the damn platform and give api’s for the touch and accelorometers – there are so many lovely things to be done.
• Apple is still thinking these things are MP3 players and computers
• we are nearing convergence damit – open the shit!
• Wireless USB and Bluetooth
• The market this year and the next is going to explode with wireless usb products – keyboards, monitors, webcams etc ….
• GPS – with map integration
• Blogging tools!
• 40GB memory! (you have 160Gb on one extreme and a mere 8Gb on the other!)

I probably the logical explanations on why apple is slowly taking a back door entry to iPhone like device. it was also nice to see steve showing facebook’s iphone version on the keynote. Lovely right?

The day Apple releases the above specs in the iPod Touch for $300 or Rs 12k-15k I am gonna buy it even if it doesn’t have a phone on it! Else I would be happy to check it out in the apple store or borrowing it from my friend …. Jobs make me want more … the new iPods suck any way!!! and release the leopard out the cage faaaast! roar …. Anyway – the buy statement always holds