Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
The school district in Union City, NJ doesn't have the resources of more affluent suburban districts, according to an article in Monday's NYT (free registration req.). What it does have is a large population of students who speak Spanish at home and who need a new approach to bilingual education. The solution? iPod to the rescue. Kids in ESL classes get pop songs and lyrics (in English) on the iPods to kick-start the language learning process. The program has been so successful that parents are requesting the iPod-enabled classes and more iPods are on the budget for next year; meanwhile, the kids in the iPod language classes are described as "Pod People" by fellow students.
Interestingly, the school has an extremely strict ban on student-owned iPods on the premises, confiscating several each week (to prevent distraction and cheating). Clearly the iPods wield a double-edged set of white headphones. Got your own iPods in education story? Let us know below.
Our love of Quicksilver, the sometimes inscrutable application launcher (and much more), but Daniel over at waferbaby has us beat. It would seem Daniel isn't a big fan of the Finder and he is crazy for Quicksilver. Clearly, it took the next obvious step and replaced the Finder with Quicksilver. Read his post for the details, but be warned it isn't for the faint of heart.
We've been eagerly awaiting WireTap Studio, and it has arrived -- available for download and purchase today from the fine folk at Ambrosia. Like Rogue Amoeba's venerable Audio Hijack Pro (friend to podcasters everywhere & used in the production of the TUAW talkcast) and the older Ambrosia versions of WireTap and WireTap Pro, WTS will allow you to record the audio output of any application, line-in or microphone source on your Mac. The new app goes beyond AHP, however, in providing a full 'lossless master' editing environment to allow your audio to shine. You can roll back to your original source at any time, and even hear 'live previews' of your compression settings before putting the squeeze to your files.
A full WTS license is $69 for Tiger or Leopard (universal binary), and WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro users can up/cross-grade for $30. I'm definitely going to check it out, and if you do the same, please let us know what you think.
Hey, you there! Yes, you, Microsoft Word user -- you in the blue shirt. Do you want to have the contents of your computer's memory overwritten with malicious code? Really... you sure? We could take care of that for you, no problem. Are you positive about this? Lots of people seem to enjoy having their memory overwritten with malicious code, so we thought you might... OK, OK, no need to get snippy about it.
If you're certain you don't want your memory overwritten (c'mon, think of it like a weekend in Cabo -- what harm could it do?) then perhaps we could interest you in the Microsoft Office 2004 11.3.8 updater, which patches a vulnerability in Word (also present in Word 2000 and Word XP, but not in 2003 or 2007) that could allow the aforementioned overwriting. It's a 9.1 MB download or you can snag it from Office's Microsoft Auto-Update tool. Note that this is a patch only for 11.3.7, just in case you're a bit behind on your update schedule. As an added treat, the update is available in eight languages. Nice.
I have yet to jailbreak my personal iPod touch but interesting news has come to my ears from a variety of sources. Many iPod touch jailbreakers find that their systems lose read-write access after reboot. The iPod seems to "self heal" and "modify" the /etc/fstab file on their system.
The problem may simply arise from the file not getting written properly during the jailbreak itself. For the moment, iPod touches that are jailbroken using older (primarily Windows) versions of iPhuc are leading this trend while Mac jailbreaks resist the reversion. More as this develops.
Hackers Nicholas "Drudge" Penree and Tony Hoyle have figured out an easy fix that allows you to add calendar events to your iPod touch. You'll need read/write access to your touch and a full jailbreak but once you do, all you need to do is add the following two lines to the N45AP.plist file inside your Core Services' SpringBoard app.
<key>editableUserData</key>
<true/>
The plist is found at /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/N45AP.plist
Update: Reader Andi notes that you need to put the editableUserData under "capabilities" not under "root" in the property list.
Update 2: If you'd rather use a text editor rather than the property list editor, convert the file to text-based xml. At the Mac command line, you can do this by issuing plutil -convert xml1 filename.plist. To convert back use binary1 instead of xml1.
Today, Apple has launched its WebApps directory after much anticipation. The new site highlights many of the best pages and web applications that have been built specifically for the iPod touch and iPhone. Categories span games, news, productivity and more.
In the words of the sainted Professor Farnsworth: "Good news, everybody everyone!" The iPhone/iPod touch dev team has decrypted the iPhone 1.1.1 and iPod touch ramdisks. So what does this mean, loyal TUAW readers? It means that you're getting really close to free, non-commercial 1.1.1 unlocks put together by a cadre of dedicated hackers who are doing all of this for your benefit, for fun in their spare time, and for free.
To all of you cynics who roll your eyes and add "does that mean we're getting really close to free, non-commercial bricks for the next firmware upgrade", the for-pay SIMFree 1.1.1 unlocks are now on sale. For those of you who would rather wait and save the $60-$100, it doesn't look like it will be long.
Update: Yes, they are working on unbricking as well as unlocking, saying they are "dedicated to getting a free and workable solution out to the general public. At the very least, a baseband downgrader should be possible. We understand your frustration, and please don't think for a second that we've forgotten you."
We here at TUAW are always on the lookout to help you, our dear readers, understand what is going on in the crazy world of Apple related technology. The biggest news, as of late, has been the continued efforts to hack the iPhone. A rich language has developed around the iPhone hacking community, and we thought it might be time for a primer of sorts. Never again will you confuse your jailbreaking with your bricking.
Jail. The public areas of the iPhone or iPod to which, by default, Apple allows read/write access via USB. In Unix terms, this refers to the /private/var/root/Media folder.
Jailbreak. The iPhone and iPod touch hacks that allow users to gain access to the entire Unix filesystem. In Unix terms, this refers to changing the root of the directory tree to /.
Activation. The process that allows you to move beyond any of the various screens that instruct you to connect your device to iTunes before it can be used. On the iPhone, you can only make emergency calls until your iPhone is activated.
Bricking. To render an iPhone or iPod touch inoperable. The 1.1.1 firmware update turned many iPhones into iBricks. Users could not reactivate their iPhone to get past their "Please connect to iTunes" screens. Although the phones could still be used for emergency calls, users were locked out from all normal iPhone operations.
File system. The way your iPhone or iPod touch uses its memory to store data and applications. The iPhone and iPod touch use two "disks": a smaller private file system that contains the operating system and a larger public one that contains your media (songs, videos, etc), preferences, and data.
Following up on the iPhone 1.1.1 jailbreak, iPhone SIMfree--they are the commercial unlock folks--have announced a 1.1.1 upgrade and a 1.1.1 unlock solution. Moreover, they believe their unlock solution will restore and repair iBricks: "This now means that SimFree v1.6 release, is now capable of completely restoring/repairing software unlocked "bricked" iPhone". TUAW has not had the opportunity to try this out ourselves, so for now we're just passing along the link to the iPSF site. Let us know in the comments if you were able to unbrick and/or update to 1.1.1.
Update: TUAW Reader Matthew Fliegle writes: I am on AT&T, and I installed the IPSF 2.6 using WiNstaller (on 1.0.2 with 4.01bb). It took about five minutes with no error messages. Then I restarted the phone and a error popped up saying invalid sim. I connected it to iTunes and clicked update. That took another 5 to 10 minutes, and then it made me reactivate it with AT&T. The only thing bad is that it made me renew my contract for another 2 years, but I called AT&T and they said I shouldn't have had to renew it and they were putting it under review.
I don't eBay nearly enough to use a completely separate application just to browse through it, but if you do you'll probably be interested in GarageBuy, a free download from Iwascoding. They also make GarageSale, an eBay buying-and-selling program that I've heard good things about, but GarageBuy is committed specifically to browsing around eBay. If you want to browse for auctions without using eBay's old school (and frankly, clunky) interface, GarageBuy might be just the ticket.
They've just updated to version 1.1, with a whole lot full of new features. There's a new view that features a cool color-coded price tag (to tell you whether you're winning the auction or not), a countdown timer to show remaining auction time, and a slick little sliding thumbnail view for the auction's images. Plus, there's a whole bunch of other performance improvements.
And the best part is: it's all free. GarageBuy is freeware (and if you like it, check out GarageSale) over on the website.
Macenstein's got the tip on the Army using iPods in Iraq to speak Arabic. Vcommunicator Mobile is a hardware/software setup (the iPod straps to your arm, and gets a small speaker hooked up to it) that allows soldiers in Iraq to "speak" Arabic by choosing and playing certain phrases through an iPod-like interface. Very interesting-- the Arabic text even shows up on the screen as the sound clip is being played, and phonetic translations and simulated graphics of suggested gestures for each phrase are included in the browser.
A new Nano version is planned (having the whole thing in a Flash drive will probably make it a little more sturdy), but for now Mac says the 10th Mountain Division will be hauling around 160 iPods to speak phrases like "Please get out of the car," and "may I see your ID?"
Here's hoping the whole thing is working as well as Vcom3D is saying that it does-- clear communication is invaluable, especially in an environment as volatile as Iraq. Just another great use for Apple's little mp3 player.
AppleInsider has a nice long preview of the new Leopard Dock, along with a short history going all the way back to a company called Acorn Computers, and the NeXT Dock (there's even some good, healthy Windows TaskBar bashing thrown in the mix).
There isn't really anything new here, but it is a nice wrap up of everything we've seen about the Dock so far, including the new perspective that folks are so worked up about, and the idea of "stacks," special icons that will expand into a number of different icons. AppleInsider even runs down the default stacks provided with Leopard-- Applications, Documents and Downloads. I'm not sure how long those will last on my Leopard install, however-- I'm much more eager to make my own stacks and reorganize everything myself.
Very exciting. Unfortunately there's no mention of an update to how the vertical Dock looks, but Leopard is right around the corner, so we'll find out for sure very soon if Apple's new Dock lives up to expectations.
Too early to think about what you want for the holidays? You're all alone then-- Solutions Research did a survey on digital products that Americans want to receive this year, and surprisingly, Apple products didn't make the top 10. The leading product was an HDTV, and Windows-based notebooks and Windows-based PCs took the second and fourth slots (you can see the full top ten list over at Engadget).
Apple didn't do too badly, though-- the MacBook hit number 11 and the iPhone was at number 15. And that is a ranking of all generic products, so considering brands, Apple actually lands in the top 5, with 1 in 6 consumers wishing for an Apple product this year.
Sounds about right. I need an iPhone before the year is out, and as soon as Leopard comes out, I'll have a Mini, too. Of course, I also want a Wii, and about 50 different games, and a new Macbook Pro, and an iPod Touch... well, let's just say if this survey had polled me, Apple would have showed up a little higher on the list.
Want to jailbreak your 1.1.1 iPhone so you can access all its files and install third party apps? Don't want to wait for Niacin's patch to leave beta? Here's a published method direct from the team. It may look similar to the iPhone Alley hack that is making the rounds but this isn't a derivative or leaked guide. This hack provides jailbreak, activation, and third party applications. The iPhone Alley hack is a actually copy of an early team method that someone leaked.
The school district in Union City, NJ doesn't have the resources of more affluent suburban districts, according to an article in Monday's NYT (free registration req.). What it does have is a large population of students who speak Spanish at home and who need a new approach to bilingual education. The solution? iPod to the rescue. Kids in ESL classes get pop songs and lyrics (in English) on the iPods to kick-start the language learning process. The program has been so successful that parents are requesting the iPod-enabled classes and more iPods are on the budget for next year; meanwhile, the kids in the iPod language classes are described as "Pod People" by fellow students.
Our love of 
We've been 
Hey, you there! Yes, you, 
We here at TUAW are always on the lookout to help you, our dear readers, understand what is going on in the crazy world of Apple related technology. The biggest news, as of late, has been the continued efforts to hack the 
I don't eBay nearly enough to use a completely separate application just to browse through it, but if you do you'll probably be interested in 
Macenstein's got the tip
AppleInsider has 
Too early to think about what you want for the holidays? You're all alone then-- Solutions Research 
