Note that unblock and unlock are used synomously throughout this article.

Apple signed a contact with AT&T Cingular where only AT&T Cingular had the exclusive and authorized right to be dealers to sell iPhones with a phone contract. Because of this contract between the two parties, Apple has made it so that the iPhone only works with AT&T Cingular as the carrier or network.

This sucks if you are on another carrier like T-Mobile where you get charged an Early Termination Fee (ETF) if you break your plan early to switch to AT&T Cingular. Not to mention AT&T Cingular requires you to get a data plan on top of your individual plan. Plans can then range from $70 to $130 a month and this is not including added features like text messaging or voice dial.

If you already have a data plan with another carrier and want to switch phones, your best option is to unblock or unlock your iPhone.

There are two ways to unblocking your iPhone:

1. Software Hack

2. Hardware (a thin SIM card that goes underneath your carrier’s SIM card)

Unblocking your iPhone using a Software hack.
To unblock your iPhone to be used with a different carrier, first it needs to be Jailbroken. What does it mean to jailbreak an iPhone? Jailbreaking allows unofficial code to override the software installed on the iPhone.

With that, you can then install third-party apps and use another installer called Cydia, rather than just Apple’s App Store installer. So the reason the jailbreaking needs to be done is to install a 3rd party app which unblocks your iPhone to be used on any carrier.

Note: jailbreaking or unblocking your iPhone via software hack may void your warranty with Apple.

To jailbreak your iPhone with Windows, use this tutorial How to Jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch for Windows

If you have a Mac, there is a tutorial with videos in this article How to Jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch for Mac

After you have jailbroken your iPhone using the tutorials above, you can do a software hack to unblock your iPhone.

Very important: Do NOT update your iPhone in iTunes. It must be at baseband 2.28.00 or lower. Check your baseband by going to Settings->General->About.

Now you can begin unblocking your iPhone with this unblock tutorial How to Unlock Your iPhone 3G

Pros: Unblocking this way is very reliable. It works most of the time and does not drop off. You can download and install third-party apps, and also download and install paid apps for free.

Cons: You need to keep your baseband at 2.28.00 or lower until the Dev Team who creates yellowsn0w comes out with a new hack. You are totally dependent on their releases. You may void your warranty.

Unblocking your iPhone using Hardware hack

The hardware hack consists of a thin filmy SIM card which is placed underneath your existing SIM card. When the card is insterted, it overrides the blocking capabilities of your carrier’s SIM card. Thus allowing your to make and receive calls, use your data plan, and send out texts without much problems. Some of these SIM card companies are called: GEVEY SIM and Rebel SIM.

Pros: No need to do any software hack that may turn your iPhone into a pretty paperweight. Will not void your warranty.

Cons: Very unreliable. Will work for a few days and then when your SIM card tries to contact the network, it will drop off unexpectedly.

Those are the only two ways to unblocking your iPhone. You have to be careful when you are doing these because there are a lot of legal issues surrounding unblocking your iPhone. But as my Uncle Larry used to say: “It ain’t illegal unless you get caught!”

You might have read my other post on unblocking Facebook. This post is a similar topic, but I’ve broke it down to 10 easy ways to get on Facebook at school in no particular order. Here it is:

10 easy ways to get on Facebook at school (in no particular order)

1. UltraSurf. Download UltraSurf to surf and browse the internet anonymously and also to protet internet privacy. It allows you to visit any public site in the world safely and freely. Note: Firefox users need to also download the add-on on top of the Ultrasurf software.
2. Use a free Proxy site. Sign up to receive email updates every 3-4 days from the Circumventor Central site to receive free proxy URLs. I have also mentioned this in my unblock Facebook post.
3. Sign up for the event on Facebook called: How to access Facebook from school. This event notifies people who are attending about the newest sites for accessing Facebook from your school.
4. Access Facebook at School application on Facebook. There’s also an application which also notifies you of working sites to access Facebook.
5. Use Google Translator to get on Facebook at school. Google Translator? What does that have to do with Facebook? It actually kind of works as a proxy as well. Enter in www.facebook.com in the page you want to translate using Google Translate and it will redirect you to Facebook using Google in the header.
6. Use the data plan with your cell phone to access Facebook. Either by tethering your phone or by directly accessing Facebook from your phone, you can get on Facebook at school.
7. Remote access your PC at home to get on Facebook. I have also already blogged about this, but it’s basically using remote access to get on your computer which isn’t blocking Facebook.
8. Pay for a Proxy which allows you access. Some free proxy sites are not very reliable, but if you find a service where you pay for a proxy, it may give you some stability in being able to access blocked sites.
9. MoDazzle.com. Access Facebook using email commands or SMS. (Sorry, MoDazzle has discontinued their service on Friday, February 13, 2009)
10. Curb your addiction. What about resisting your temptation to check your Facebook account while at school? … Eh, who am I kidding? Try the other ways above!

Is Facebook safer than MySpace?

-

• Back when Facebook was only open to college students, it may have been safer then because only people with .edu email addresses were able to join. Now that it has been open to everybody, it also opens the risk of safety concerns.
• Only confirmed networks and friends are allowed to view profiles. Facebook uses a “closed system” (Unless a Facebook Unblock Technique is used) where users can only see profiles of users within the same network.
• Facebook does not have a search tool like MySpace does which allows users, for instance, to search for 14 year olds.
• Facebook has applications where user information is gathered including personal information and Web surfing habits. In August 2008, one of these applications was found to allow users to read comments on other users’ pages, even if they weren’t friends or in the same network.
• Private photographs of users were able to be publicly viewed after a security break in March 2008. Even those of celebrity Paris Hilton were leaked.
• During a test run of Facebook’s beta format in July 2008, private profiles were made public because of an error.
• In a 2007 MySpace hoax, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide in real-life after a neighbor created a fake user named “Josh” posing to be her boyfriend, broke up with her on MySpace.
• A zip file with millions of images from private profiles was taken from MySpace users in January 2008 and uploaded onto bit torrent for anyone to download.
• Anyone can view your profile unless you change your privacy settings.
• Both Facebook and MySpace have privacy settings where you can allow only friends to see your profile.
• In August 2008, a glitch in MySpace’s security allowed private messages of users to be viewed by any MySpace user. Also around the same time, bulletin messages were able to be deleted from any user even if they did not belong to that group.

Tip: If you don’t want to risk your personal information, don’t share it online. Anything you put on the internet is at risk: sent through your email, uploaded pictures, any information on social networking sites.

It doesn’t matter which social network you sign up with, whether it’s Facebook or MySpace. To stay safe, you should keep your computer up-to-date (see tips on my Facebook Virus post), don’t give out personal information, and keep your privacy settings to only your friends.

Be wary of sites that claim you can view private Facebook pages or profiles

You may have seen some of these sites before – the ones that claim you can view private Facebook pages by just entering a person’s unique profile ID. Let me give it to you straight: they don’t work. They may have worked before Facebook caught it and patched it up, but they do not work now and probably will not work in the future. Let me give you some examples of these sites:

Facebookspy.org claims that you can view private Facebook profiles

Facebookspy.org was created in November 24, 2007 and it might have worked at that time and you may have been able to see private Facebook pages. But Facebook has since changed its markup language to ensure the privacy of its users. In June of 2007, you were able to search for private profiles using advanced search features to reveal people’s names, pictures, religion and sexual orientation. Not long after the discovery of that, Facebook clarified that only names and some non-revealing info, not profile content, is opened to search engine spiders.

Stay away from like spyonfacebook.com and viewprivatefacebookprofiles.com.

These sites asks for you to submit your email address, access code, or perform some function like clicking through an ad to be able to view a private Facebook page. These sites are email scams and are just trying to generate revenue through an ad click or by selling your email address.

I didn’t want to leave you empty handed so here are some tips and tricks for using Facebook.

Let’s say you have somebody who is not your friend yet on Facebook or you have a friend request. Usually you’ll have a 100 by 100 pixel image of them and it may be hard to tell who it is.

Add a Friend on Facebook

This is what you can do to see a larger image:

1. “Right click” on the small picture and choose “Properties“.

2. Copy the location. You should have something like this :

http://profile.ak.facebook.com/v228/1164/37/s1486050667_6368.jpg

3. Paste this link in your browser and change the “s” to a “n” and press enter. The new link should be:

http://profile.ak.facebook.com/v228/1164/37/n1486050667_6368.jpg

And it also should be large enough for you to see who it is. (Double the size)

Please leave any comments below of any tips and tricks you know on Facebook.

Is your school or work blocking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube?

When you try to access your favorite sites such as Facebook, it may be blocked if it says “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” or “Address Not Found. Firefox can’t find the server.”

Why do companies or schools block sites like Facebook?

Businesses block access to Facebook during office because managers may feel that surfing social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace at work could make employees less productive. Schools may block access to those sites for the same reasons, with teachers feeling that students may not be paying attention in class. Both schools and companies also want to protect their computers from viruses or spyware that can potentially be transferred through certain websites.

How do I unblock Facebook?

• Use a free or paid proxy website
• Remote control a PC which has access to the blocked site
• Tether your cell phone to unblock Facebook

A web proxy server acts as a go-between or middle-man between your computer to a different server, in this case Facebook’s server. Use the Circumventor Central site to receive new URLs every 3 to 4 days of free proxy sites to access blocked sites. You could, of course, pay for a proxy which would generally run you a fixed monthly price of $10 to $100 a month.

If you have a PC at home, you can remote control your home PC from your school or work. You’ll need to install an application on both your home PC and your school or work computer. Some businesses or schools may restrict your access to install applications. You can try Radmin 3 to remote control your PC to unblock Facebook.

A lot of cell phone providers offer a data plan with your cell phone service. With the competition of cellular phone providers these days, some plans come with an unlimited data plan. Basically, you are using your cell phone as a modem to connect to the internet. eHow.com has a good tutorial on how to tether your cell phone to your laptop. But if you already have access to internet on your cell phone, you can just directly access Facebook from your phone. That’s a lot easier then trying to tether it.

There was a recent service called MoDazzle.com which made it possible to use Facebook through email commands. Unfortunately, that site has discontinued its service on February 13, 2009.

There you have it! Ways to feed your addiction to Facebook and unblock it at your work or school.

If you have any questions, ideas or suggestions regarding our new Facebook Series, please let us know.

- Jchen

Last week, I received a wall posting on Facebook from my friend Nicole which said “U poker!!” For a second, I thought she meant something about the card game of poker, but then I finally realized it was because I had poked her the night before. In my state of drunkenness, I must have gone to her profile and clicked “Poke Nicole” underneath her profile picture.

But what does it really mean to poke someone on Facebook?

I went around surveying my “popular” and active friends on Facebook, you know, the ones with 600 or more friends and leave status updates every 5 minutes. So this is what they came up with:

• A poke is mostly “just like an attention thing.” Like if I were to walk up to you and physically poke you. Poking someone lets him or her know that you are thinking about them or just wanting to say “hello” without having to write on their wall.
• It can be considered a form of flirting. Just like in grade school when you poked the person you had a crush on. Nobody else sees the poke but you and the other person so it’s kept secret, unlike a wall posting.

I’ve also heard that poking lets you view the other person’s profile for a week, but that may have been an older feature because now you’re only allowed to poke friends. And that wouldn’t make sense because friends can already see your profile.

Poking someone on Facebook can be interpreted differently from many people, ranging from just a hello to I want to hook up with you. Poke your friends on Facebook today and see how they react!

Zoho Chat also comes with an impressive number of customizable features; you can change background images and other visual features, receive and customize audio notifications for various alerts, customize various view and sort options and so on.

While Zoho Chat is no slouch when it comes to feature and options - actually, it’s probably among the best such applications out there - its biggest strength is its integration with other applications in the Zoho Suite. If you’re a Zoho user, using Zoho Chat is simply a no-brainer. It also brings Zoho another step closer to becoming the ultimate online office suite, even if faced with fierce competition from Google.

http://mashable.com/2009/04/01/zoho-chat-20/

If the overall brightness changes, then of course so must the related exposure settings. As I’ve already mentioned, shutter speed is a unit of time, often a fraction of a second, for example 1/125 of a second, or 4 seconds. Sensitivity is measured by an ISO number. ISO is the acronym for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO numbers, used to describe the light sensitivity of film and digital capture devices, is defined in ISO standard 5800 (1987).

A low ISO, such as 100, means relatively lower sensitivity to light than a higher ISO of 1000, which captures ten times the light of ISO 100 (but may produce unwanted side effects, such as too much noise). Remember, aperture is denoted in f-stops. The larger the f-number, the smaller the physical opening creating the aperture. For example, f/1.4 represents a lens almost fully open (the lens is sometimes said to be “wide open”), whereas f/32 means that the lens is only open slightly (the lens is sometimes said to be “stopped down”).