corigin.com

Previously mentioned file sharing site Drop.io has added a neat feature: the ability to record and share MP3 audio from your phone. Create a new voice “drop” and get a phone number and extension. Call it, and start talking or recording a lecture, podcast, or interview, and when you hang up, the recording’s available as an MP3 download for sharing at a custom drop.io URL. Store up to 100MB “drops” (that’s shared files and/or MP3’s) for free or upgrade for 1GB of storage for 10 bucks. Update: This post giving you déjà vu? Our apologies for the duplicate.

Google already released a fast and friendly optimized mobile page for iPhone and iPod touch users, but now they’re at it again. The mobile page is sporting an updated look, faster navigating, and improved auto-complete suggestions for everything from search to Gmail contacts. You can also customize tabs and use your iGoogle homepage from the mobile interface. You may be wondering why Google is so gaga for iPhone interfaces, but the fact is, when Google’s Andriod phones hit the streets, they’ll be running a similar WebKit-based browser, so even if you’re not looking to buy an Apple product anytime soon, this interface may be in your future.

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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
When California enacted its law banning 16- and 17-year olds from cell phone use while driving (it takes effect July 1st), I asked, “Why stop there?” While there is also a law on the books (starting the same day) which requires all drivers to be hands-free when using a cell […]

At its most basic level, webapp Jott is a voice to text transcription service: you call Jott, leave a message, and Jott transcribes it and emails you or your contacts the text. That alone can capture the big idea that pops into your head on the drive to the office, but Jott can do a whole lot more than send you email. With Jott’s built-in links and tools that capitalize on its email-sending abilities, it can give nearly any personal organization system a go-anywhere, add-anything boost. Today we’ve got a quick primer on how to turn your phone into a ubiquitous capture tool that zaps info into all your favorite organization apps by voice.

Getting Started

If you don’t already have a Jott account, have your cell phone handy and head to their sign-up page. Fill in the forms, confirm your email, add 1-866-JOTT-123 to your contacts and/or speed-dial and make the confirmation call.

Once you log in, head right to “Contacts” and add “My Phone” (first name, last name) as a contact with only your own phone number. “Wait,” you might ask, “doesn’t Jott let you have all your messages sent to your phone as a preference?” Precisely—that’s every single Jott, which isn’t something I want to deal with. By having “My Phone” as a contact, you can skip your email inbox and leave yourself notes on your cell phone—which comes in handy when trying to remember a number or address while driving.

Next, hit up “Groups” and think of any sets of emails and phone numbers you might want to message all at once using one phrase, such as “Co-Workers” or “Family.” After that, head to “Jott Links” and enable any the growing number of Jott-enabled webapps—including Lifehacker favorites like Remember the Milk and Google Calendar—you use.

You owe it to yourself to check out Jott’s simple How To guide before calling, but the basic technique is simple. Dial the number, wait for the “Who do you want to Jott?” prompt, and then say either “myself” or one of the contacts, groups or “Links” you set up. After the confirmation and beep, you can speak clearly for less than 30 seconds, and your message will be translated by a mix of computers and humans (your privacy, they say, is assured) and then sent to the right inboxes, phones or web apps. I’ve had pretty decent luck with both the accuracy and turn-around on the service, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

Filter and customize your Jotts

Sending yourself email from a dial tone can be pretty handy, but only if your Jott messages don’t get lost amid your other messages. You could filter all of them into one folder or label by the “@jott.com” sender, but why not organize your messages by topic? If your email server allows the common username+label@email.com format (detailed here), simply add that extended email as a Jott contact and set your filters accordingly (like I’ve done to record my feature ideas). If your can’t accept “+” emails, think of a unique phrase you can say in your messages—like, say, “gigantic awesome idea”—and have your email client file accordingly. If you find yourself using Jott a lot, and you can use this method to set up a Gmail/Jott to-do list.

Group and print projects/ideas

If you’d rather not mingle your wandering thoughts with your email inbox, you can create folders to store specific memos to yourself on the “My Jott” page. Say “Home,” “Work,” or whatever else when asked who you’re Jotting, and the messages will end up inside folders that have easy printing tools. iGoogle users can also go email-free with the Jott gadget.

Make your organizing tools more accessible

Great organization systems provide a single place to drop all your to-dos, events and thoughts, but what if you’ve just remembered a task while you’re walking to the store? Jott has you covered. The site provides built-in Links for many web-based systems previously mentioned on Lifehacker—including

• To-do manager Toodledo
• Expense tracker Xpenser
• Calendar and task organizer 30 Boxes
• Vitalist, a frequent commenter favorite

If you have Google Calendar hooked up your own preferred scheduling app, just add it to your Links and you can call in your quick-add items (like, say, “9 p.m. Sunday Watch The Wire“) for easy posting. But perhaps the strongest Jott integration tool is Remember the Milk, which already can seamlessly insert itself into Google Calendar and Gmail. Put them all together and there aren’t too many places where you won’t be able to record your thoughts and ideas for later use.

Keep Sandy close at hand (platonically)

Sure, she’s technically an organization tool as well, but the integration of Jott and Sandy deserves its own mention. For one thing, it’s the most stress-free way to set a reminder or task for yourself. You can speak your reminders in nearly any form, give them GTD-like “@whatever” labels, export everything to an iCal feed, and, even more than with Sandy’s email interface, feel the reassuring sense that you really do have a personal assistant to watch your forgetful back. Bonus: Those irked by the app’s gender assumption can change its Jott name to “Michael” or “Jeeves” or anything else, for that matter.

Use Twitter to make a Jott RSS feed

Jott itself doesn’t offer a helfpul RSS feed for your memos, but it’s easy enough to create one using its direct Twitter link. Those who don’t have an account could create one solely for the purpose of sending occasional items to their feeds, and those who do could combine a filtering tool like Feed Rinse with keywords to pull their important items out.

More handy Jott uses

• Remotely control your computer—Follow these instructions on shutting down Windows or controlling your Mac, and you can save power, automate tasks and show the IT guy in a not-so-subtle way just how strong your Sysadmin mojo is.
• Send snail mail from anywhere—Using email-to-snail-mail service Postful, you can set up unique email addresses to have paper copies of received messages mailed out to a specific addresses—whether to poor, web-less Uncle Bif and Aunt Marge, or as a can’t-be-deleted note for yourself. Add that Postful email to your Jott contacts and you can send a short note, albeit with a little free print advertising for Jott. I haven’t tested this myself, but it seems like it has mash-up potential.
• Update del.icio.us—If you use Jott’s Twitter feed, Twitticious can grab links from Twitter feeds and paste them into del.icio.us accounts. Great for noting web sites that people tell you about, even if you have to spell out some of the wonkier URLs.
• Record short messages for anywhere playback—If you’ve got a short message or sound you want to access later, try setting up a Jott for yourself and holding your phone up to it. You only get 30 seconds and the transcription almost certainly won’t work, but you’ll get an audio file you can play back later on the Jott web site, and dialing Jott from speed dial is often much faster than finding a cell phone’s record function or keying into voicemail.

How have you used Jott (or its recently-launched competitor reQall) to keep yourself organized? What Jott/email mash-up tools can you conjure up? Share your thoughts and tips in the comments.

Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker associate editor, doesn’t mind the stares when he says “Remember The Milk” into his cell phone. His weekly feature Open Sourcery appears every Friday on Lifehacker.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
Anyone remember the Foleo? We do - it was Palm’s ill-fated attempt to marry an underpowered UMPC with a cell phone, and it died a very, very swift death. See our coverage “5 Reasons Why Palm’s New Foleo Device Will Fail”
Today we fond out that the Foleo concept is rising from the […]

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
OK - so it isn’t, but after all the ugly iPhone imitations, this is the first concept design that actually looks appealing. We hereby take quick a break from reality to bring you the following idea. A forum member on ZuneScene named Teccom747 dreamed up this concept phone. His specs:
The Zune 3 is […]

The power of GOOG compels this random YouTube subscriber…

I came across the Google 411 while searching the Google Labs, which I am sure you’ve heard about. I work for Verizon Wireless as a 411 Directory Assistance Operator. I know some people who have told me that theres a chance Google 411 will take us Verizon employees out of a job because it is free. I have used Google 411 and it really is pretty impressive. To use Verizon’s 411 it costs $1.49 each time you call, and Google is doing the exact same thing, plus offering more for absolutely nothing. I was just wondering what your opinion on Google 411 was, if you’ve ever used it, and if you thought it would be the next most popular 411 out there.

I’ve used Google’s 411 service… and would definitely use it again. Why pay for 411 anymore?!

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These days, it’s harder to get a new cell phone without a built-in camera than with. If you’re not all that enthused about taking grain pictures with it, you can still get some value out of the little lens, as detailed at the Digital Inspiration blog. One idea in particular caught my eye:

Car Parking - Most shopping malls here have huge underground parking but there aren’t any signboards so it gets tough to locate the car. So when you park the the car, just look toward the lift (or the exit) and take a picture or record some video. This will save lot of effort (and time) when you return with all those heavy shopping bags.

If my area mall has parking numbers, I sure don’t notice them, so I’ll be giving this a try soon. What MacGyver-esque uses have you pulled from your mobile camera? Give up the secrets in the comments. Photo by Mrs. Gemstone.

Windows Mobile: Freeware skinning application Pointui makes the notoriously kludgy Windows Mobile interface more usable and accessible, and does so with great success. Most notably, the Pointui interface allows for fingertip navigation (à la the iPhone) rather than the traditional stylus (or fingernail) navigation that requires you to pinpoint with pixel precision. Not every aspect of WM is skinned, so you’ll be returned to WM ugliness from time to time, but where it’s skinned well (especially the system settings) it’s great. For a fuller look at what Pointui can do for your WM device, check out Gizmodo’s video tour and glowing review. If you’ve been down on Windows Mobile ever since you saw what navigation on the iPhone is like, skinning that phone with the freeware Pointui might be just what the doctor ordered.

The iPhone certainly didn’t invent the mobile browser, but it does seem to be the mobile device that’s bringing mobile browsing to the mainstream. The benefits of mobile browsing are obvious: You can access the web from practically anywhere and at any time—assuming you carry your phone with you wherever you go. Mobile browsing has always had a couple of obstacles, though, namely that carriers’ data plans have often been very expensive and most (pre-iPhone) mobile browsers have traditionally been unwieldy. Again, those obstacles are slowly breaking down, so now that many of you are sporting shiny new post-holiday phones, we’re wondering:

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If you are a frequent mobile browser, I’d love to hear what your most-frequented mobile web destinations are, so give us the goods in the comments.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
As if your traveling experience isn’t bad enough already, here come new battery safety requirements from the DoT. The new rules ban packing of spare lithium batteries in checked baggage, and go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.
New rules from the Transportation and Security Administration that take effect on January 1 […]

If a new iPhone or iPod touch found its way under your tree and you just can’t wait until Apple officially supports third-party application development to extend its functionality (who can wait until February?), it’s time you jailbreak your favorite new portable device. We’ve covered two methods for doing so already, but that feisty Apple keeps on changing things up, and the latest firmware (which all of you new owners are likely running) requires a bit more finesse before you gain access to the throng of great apps that have already been developed for the iPhone. So today we’re jailbreaking that iPhone or iTouch of yours to open it up to the wonderful world of third-party software.

NOTE: I’ve only tested these instructions on my iPhone using a Mac, so I can’t absolutely guarantee the same level of success on the iPod touch or Windows computers. However, the software was made to jailbreak either the iPod touch or the iPhone on either Windows or Macs, so it should work fine on either. That said, I’ll be referring to the iPhone through the rest of these instructions. If you’re looking to install apps without activating your iPhone with AT&T, our pals over at Gizmodo have covered that.

UPDATE: It seems that there have been mixed results for some users attempting to downgrade from the 1.1.2 firmware. The downgrade appears to be working for some, not for others. If you have trouble downgrading to 1.1.1, you can simply restore the current 1.1.2 firmware and everything should be back to normal, but unfortunately you won’t be able to install any third-party apps. I’m very curious to hear what kind of luck others are having with this, so if you give it a try, let’s hear your experience in the comments.

Check Your Firmware Version

First thing’s first: Dock your iPhone, open up iTunes, and find out what version of the iPhone firmware you’re running by clicking on the Summary tab when your device is docked and seeing what it says after Software Version. If for some reason you’re running one of the early 1.0 firmwares (1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2), we’ve already covered how to jailbreak those phones here. Instead, though, I’d recommend jailbreaking your phone using the following method, since you’ll get new and improved features from the newer firmware. If you’re currently running the 1.1.1 firmware, skip straight to the Jailbreak Your 1.1.1 iPhone or iPod touch section.

Downgrade or Upgrade to the 1.1.1 Firmware

Whether you’re running 1.1.2 (the latest firmware) or one of the early 1.0 versions, you want to install the 1.1.1 firmware on your iPhone if it’s not the firmware you’re currently running. The reason is that the 1.1.1 firmware features a one-click jailbreak through mobile Safari, which makes the process incredibly simple and is a necessary step in jailbreaking the latest 1.1.2 version. So how do you successfully downgrade/upgrade to 1.1.1 since it’s not the latest firmware?

Well, first you need to download the 1.1.1 firmware, which you can do here for the iPhone and here for the iPod touch. Make sure that the file ends in _Restore.ipsw, which it should by default. While it’s downloading, go ahead and reboot your iPhone into recovery mode. To do so, plug in your iPhone, hold down the power and home buttons at the same time until your iPhone restarts (don’t slide to power off), and then release the power button. Continue holding the home button until your device enters recovery mode (as indicated in the screenshot).

Since your firmware is probably still downloading, go ahead and download the 1.1.2 jailbreak files here and unzip the contents on your desktop.

When the firmware completes downloading (which—at a whopping 152 MB—can take a little time), make sure you know where you’ve saved it and fire up iTunes if it isn’t already open. Again go to the same Summary tab where you found your current firmware version. This time, though, you’re going to restore the firmware to the 1.1.1 version you just downloaded. To do this, Shift-Click the Restore button in Windows or Option-Click on a Mac and browse to where you saved the 1.1.1 firmware, select it, and restore. When the restore process completes, it will end with an error. Don’t worry if this happens, as the jailbreak software is made to overcome the error.

Once you get to this point, close out of iTunes completely and then run either the windows.bat file if you’re a Windows user or the jailbreak.jar user if you’re on a Mac to get your phone past this error and booting into the 1.1.1 firmware. If you’re running jailbreak.jar, all you need to do is click the Boot from Recovery button.

Jailbreak Your 1.1.1 iPhone or iPod touch

Now it’s time to perform the first portion of the jailbreak with the 1.1.1 firmware, which—as I said above—is extremely easy. We’ve covered this in detail before, but here’s a quick refresher:

Point mobile Safari to http://jailbreakme.com/ and tap the Install AppSnapp link. Safari will close after a bit and eventually your phone will return to the Slide to unlock screen. After your unlock the phone, you should see Installer.app on your home screen, meaning it worked. When I used this method my iPhone froze the first time I tried unlocking it, so I restarted my phone and sure enough, there was Installer.app. That’s really all there is to it.

Jailbreak and Upgrade to 1.1.2

At this point you could just rest comfortably in the knowledge that you’re running nearly the latest firmware and it really doesn’t have that many differences from the latest version, but if you want to take advantage of the latest ringtone improvements and you want to be sure you’ve got all the latest and greatest bug fixes and features available, you may want to upgrade to 1.1.2. I did, and here’s how it works.

First, fire up Installer.app on your iPhone, find the Tweaks (1.1.1) section of the Install tab, and install an application called OktoPrep. Nothing special will show up on your phone after you install it, but it will have made a few tweaks on your device making it possible to jailbreak 1.1.2 after you upgrade.

Now you just upgrade your iPhone the normal way—by connecting your device to iTunes and selecting Update from the Summary tab. iTunes will go through the long download and upgrade process and when it’s done, you’ll be updated to 1.1.2 but not jailbroken. To complete the jailbreak, close iTunes, make sure your device is connected, then head back to the 1.1.2-jailbreak Folder you downloaded earlier and re-run either windows.bat (if you’re a Windows user) or jailbreak.jar (if you’re on a Mac).

Follow the instructions each app offers, and when they finish, you should see Installer.app on your home screen and be completely updated to the latest firmware and jailbroken. That means it’s time to start installing those apps!

My current favorites—for those of you new to third-party iPhone or iPod touch apps—include:

• iFlix, and incredible Netflix account management tool
• iMapIdle, an app that works in conjunction with IMAP email (including Gmail) to enable real-time, push-like email notification
• iPhoneHome, an app that lets you change the default double-click behavior for the home button
• Navizon, a pseudo-GPS locator that determines your location in Google Maps using cell towers your phone communicates with (iPhone only, obviously)
• Apollo, the native IM app
• MobileScrobbler, which uploads everything you play on your iPod to your Last.fm account
• WebSearch, a web search tool for quickly performing a search on any web site without going through the rigmarole of loading a site, finding the search box, and then entering your search terms
• HuaRongDao and iSolitaire, a couple of really nice looking and addictive games for your device.

Now you’re probably thinking, Great, my iPhone’s all jailbroken, but I sure wish I knew all the ins and outs of this beast, including how I can squeeze the most productivity from this little gem of a device. Lucky for you, the best iPhone book I’ve ever written (with Jason Chen of Gizmodo) is both in stores and shipping right now!

Finally, if you’re looking for more to do with your iPhone, here’s how you can:

• Use Your iPhone’s Internet Connection On Your Laptop
• Stream Music from Your iPod touch or iPhone to Any iTunes Library
• Set Up Gmail with IMAP
• Remote Control Your Computer with Your iPhone

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who hacks his iPhone for business and pleasure. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker, and his book, How to Do Everything with Your iPhone, is in stores now. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Previously only available as a private beta to donators, a PlayStation 1 emulator for the iPhone and iPod has been released to the public. The version is 0.1.0 so it’s obviously far from done, but psx4iPhone is available now.
The developer, ZodTTD, indicates that although there will be public releases to […]

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Thanks to all of you for sending in your Top Five lists. These are great! Keep them coming, by emailing them to me at chris@pirillo.com. This one gives us some excellent text etiquette tips!

• Do not write in “text language.” It is hard to read and you look like an idiot who can’t take the time to spell out words. For example, don’t use: Yo, c u l8r ily!
• Do not send short text messages like “ok”, “hey”, “no”…ect. Most people don’t have unlimited text messaging. Because if you send someone something like hey, they send back hey, then you say how was your day, they say great, they say how was your day, You just wasted 5 text messages. Say something more like “Hey, how was your day?” Also, don’t send “No-end texts.” There the kind were someone says “Hahaha.” you have no idea what to say next. Think when you’re texting like you are having a real conversation, face to face.
• Don’t send forwards. They drive people crazy! Forwards are the messages that say, “If you don’t send this to 345 people in 2 hours, the little girls spirit will haunt your for life.” Are you really going to believe that?
• Don’t do anything on your phone that you can do on your computer! Don’t download songs, check your email and all that other web stuff when you can do it on your computer! You will end up paying a whole lot of money on data charges. Its not that pretty when you get your bill and you see you owe 70 bucks in data charges or more!
• Last but not least, don’t sign up for all the “Text message Alert” features you get everywhere. Before you know it, your bill will have you paying $100 for all those texts! Just look at it online at your computer. Its also a waste of time for you checking all those texts. Stop being glued to your phone and explore the world.

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There’s at least one Scott who has subscribed to my videos on YouTube (which is quickly supplanting any numbers I could ever hope to drive through iTunes)…

Now, not to waste your time, but i had a thought watching the following video and figured i would write in for whatever the reason is that my subconscious has deemed important.

One of the tech terms in question is a cell phone, and it was said that they do not use “cellular technology”.. now, i may just be misinformed, but i believe they do. cellular technology, being that the whole network is based on a complex grid of cell towers, creating “cells of service within rang of the towers.. as you move from one cell to another (dependent on the number of towers around you), your connection to the network is automatically transferred over to the next tower that controls that particular cell you are in.

I think whoever sent in that bit of a rant has analog/digital mixed up somehow with cellular/satellite networking.. even though most cell phone data is transmitted via digital encoding nowdays, its still done on radio frequency with cell towers (except of course for satellite phones.)

First, anybody’s email does not waste my time (unless you’re a spammer). Second, I believe your clarification is spot-on.

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Windows Mobile and Symbian phones only: Freeware application Palringo brings multi-client chat to your Windows Mobile device or Symbian smartphone. There once was a time when the go-to mobile IM client was a program called Agile Messenger, but ever since it went shareware there’s been a gap for freeware IM on a lot of phones. With support for everything from AIM to Google Talk and its own mobile voice chat, it looks like Palringo is filling that gap with aplomb. Palringo is freeware, works on Symbian Series 60 phones and Windows Mobile 2003 and up.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
T-Mobile and Motorola have confirmed what users already know: some Sidekick Slides, when the display’s slide mechanism is actuated, may reboot or even power off. They’ve suspended sales, and in fact, if you go to the T-Mobile website, you’ll see the Slide is listed as “temporarily unavailable.”
The root cause […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
If a company can fire a worker via text message, then why can’t a worker “call in sick” via text message?
Apparently he can, an Edinburgh employment tribunal has ruled. Or at least, if an excuse via text message has been accepted once, it has to be accepted again, unless notice […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
A recent story I wrote asked the question ” Did Text Messaging While Driving Play a Part in a Fatal Crash?” A Harris Interactive survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger Inc. found 89% of those surveyed believe texting while driving is dangerous and should be banned. More on […]

Nine out of 10 Americans think sending text messages while they’re behind the wheel is dangerous, but 60% do it anyway, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey. 18-34 year-olds are most likely to be reading and sending SMS messages while they’re on the road, even though driver distraction is a main cause of traffic accidents. We want to know:

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By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Prima Cases has partnered with Xantrex and now sells the Mobile Mini Power Charger as part of their Portable Power line.
Could have used one last week on a business trip and if they make a version that can be used by the Rest of the World (in other words charging from […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Pile on the bandwagon for iPhone lawsuits. I mean, Apple was sued over its battery replacement policy … now it’s being sued over its virtual keyboard. It’s been accused of violating a patent hed by SP Technologies, which describes a “method and medium for computer readable keyboard display incapable of […]