So many people have been asking about the specifics of iPod touch jailbreaks, that we decided to go ahead and do a jailbreak live for your reading pleasure. I have a fresh new iPod touch at my side and will step you through the entire jailbreak process along with my reactions, failures and possible complete public humiliation. Here then is my attempt to jailbreak my iPod touch.

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.

Gallery: Calendar Events on iPod

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.

This morning, a couple of intrepid iPhone users tested this out for me (thank you xorl and SmileyDude) and confirmed that the hack works. They were able to skip steps 6-8 on their bricked iPhones but you may need to do those steps if your 1.1.1 iPhone is new-in-box.

Apple Hacker Mauricio Pastrana discovered a way to export composite video from his Apple TV in full color. He gives all the details in this handy YouTube tutorial. Normally, when you use composite out from AppleTV, you're limited to black and white video from the green channel. Instead, if you plug in HDMI output (he uses an HDMI-DVI adapter with a DVI-VGA adapter attached), and then switch resolutions with that attached, wait about 5 seconds, and reattach your RCA cable to the green channel, it suddenly switches to full composite color.

I haven't tested this myself, so let me know if it works for you.

Last night, iPhone hackers "dinopio" and "Edgan" brought 1.1.1 hacking into a new arena. By using symbolic links before doing a 1.1.1 upgrade, they were able to gain access to the entire 1.1.1 file tree. Today, I'll be liveblogging my attempt to duplicate their hack. So sit back and reload as I put my poor iPhone to the test.

Apple has your unlocked iPhone in their crosshairs. What do you do? This method in no way guarantees that your iPhone will survive the update after being unlocked. If you're risk adverse, you may want to wait a day or two for these instructions to get debugged. And be aware there may be a lock/unlock limit set by hardware.

Important note: people are experiencing munged IMEI's. "Delayed Green" says that he saw this "Incorrect SIM" error in the early unlock days and that he knows of no way to fix the problem. The IMEI errors seems to be unrelated to unlock method--I'm hearing from people who used pretty much each of the unlock scenarios. Quite a few people have simply re-unlocked and are using their phones without problem but can't re-lock, that is reverse the unlock. Can you put the genie back into the bottle? Reliably? Apparently not yet. And the methods previously published just aren't working properly. If you haven't tried relocking yet, do yourself a favor and just wait until we figure out why some relocks are going wrong. Update; iPhone unlocking team promises relocking tool within a week.

TUAW Reader Peter writes: "The reason why we're getting the Invalid SIM error seems to be because running bbupdater with the .fls and .eep files somehow causes the phone's IMEI number become 004999010640000. Running AnySIM or using any of the other unlock methods seems to "program" the iPhone again with the correct IMEI number. There must be another step required to reflash the baseband and get the correct IMEI number back. "

Gallery: Yarrrrrrghhh. TUAW Pirates

Arrrr, me hearties. A TUAW exclusive for your iPhone today (since it be Talk Like a Pirate Day). Download a copy of Pirate.app onto your iPhone and you're ready to turn any landlubber into a true Pirate. (A package should be available through Installer.app by the time this post goes live.)

Launch the app, aim the camera at a loved one, and tap Stop. This stops the preview and freezes the picture. If you don't like it, tap Start to go back to a live preview.

After freezing, arrange the props -- pirate hat, mustache, beard and parrot -- as you wish. Then tap Snap. The iPhone captures your work and creates a new email photo enclosure for you to share with loved ones.

Shiver me timbers! Now that's a good reason to keep the iPhone a semi-open platform!

Update: Dread Pirate Gregg writes in to let us know that he is responsible for the Apple and Crossbones I found in the TUAW archive.

1. Click System Preferences, then Accounts
2. Click the small "+" icon at the bottom of the window
3. In the sheet that appears, set up your guest account. I got fancy and named mine "guest," with a password of "guestpw," but you can choose whatever you like.
4. De-select "Allow user to administer this computer."

1. Open Terminal. By default, you're in your Home directory
2. Create a new folder with a "." as the first character using the "mkdir" command, like this: mkdir .MyPrivateStuff
3. Hit return. You're done!

I've kinda sorta almost have Macintosh Dashboard widgets running on the iPhone. Some run okay, others not so much. The Weather, ESPN and Calendar widgets are some of the best; the Flight Tracker, Dictionary and Phone Book are among the worst. If you'd like to give this a try, download a copy of Widgets.app with the following understanding:

1. Widgets uses the XLaunch icon and splash screen and the Unknown icon is the wrong size. Sorry about that.
2. You must install System/Library/WidgetResources from your Mac onto the iPhone. Same folder, same name, same contents. Most Widgets will not run properly without these support files.
3. Install your widgets into /var/root/Library/Widgets on the iPhone. Widgets.app runs plain old ordinary OS X widgets. You must copy over the entire file structure, so scp -r YourWidget.wdgt root@youriphoneip:/var/root/Library/Widgets is going to be your best bet. And yes, you need to create the Widgets folder if it does not yet exist.

Hacker par excellence Cleverboy, aka Dudley, has pretty much figured out what makes ringtones ringtones as far as iTunes is concerned. He discovered an atom in the m4a metadata that identifies the file's role. He downloaded a copy of AtomicParsley, the command-line metadata editor, and after a bit of hacking discovered that setting the "stik" metadata to 14 turned any aac file into a ringtone. He writes, "The file immediately appeared in my ringtone list, and after syncing, it appeared on my phone without one iota of complaint. --NONE".

The command in question is as follows:

AtomicParsley mmbop.m4a --stik value=14

Yesterday, stepping into iPhone development got a lot easier. "Kroo", an iPhone developer, put together this Binary Toolchain Installer for Intel Macs. Instead of taking two days to download, debug and compile, installation takes a few minutes. Download a copy and install and you're set to start programming.

You'll need to copy your iPhone files to your Macintosh for the toolchain (and the toolchain installation) to work. You can either use a tool like scp -r and connect to your hacked iPhone or you can copy the file system from one of the iTunes restore software dmgs--google for details. Rename the root of the iPhone file system "heavenly" and place it into /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin. Then run the installer.

One more thing: All the makefiles I have posted here at TUAW use the old toolchain. To use my makefiles with this new toolchain, you'll need to update the Makefile header as such.

Looking for a little hand-holding? Head over to irc.osx86.hu and connect to #iphone-uikit.