Spammers

Just a short note to anybody who finds my site because they’re tracing spam received from addresses in the bluedonkey.org domain. Once again, the spammers have selected my domain to use in their forged sender addresses. I see some of these emails because they bounce, or are blocked by spam filters which are still stupid enough to send responses back to the sender address, as if that is ever valid on spam these days!

The folks at Barracuda Networks are top of my list for stupidity in this regard. You’ve made it into my filter list now so any email coming from your tool will be trashed instantly. For a company that is supposed to specialise in spam, you seem to be remarkably clueless on how to deal with it:

Just drop it – do not send it ‘back’ since it almost certainly didn’t come from the address in the ‘From’ line anyway, so all you’re doing is spamming somebody else who had nothing to do with it.

iPhone Progress

Lots of progress recently on the iPhone front (been busy with that, and a couple of other research projects for work, hence the lack of posts). Tonight I uploaded the source for a little tool called iOpener that combines the jailbreak function with the installation of the dropbear ssh server.

It is based on the well documented iPhoneInterface app developed by the folks at the iPhone Dev Wiki, but removes the shell function and replaces it with pre-programmed commands (the same way the jailbreak app automates the process of getting out of the chroot jail). It also employs the same trick as jailbreak to enable iTunes to function correctly as well (and therefore also supports the latest versions of iPhoneInterface).

For now you can download it from here. I’ll re-host it somewhere on bluedonkey.org soon. Next target for me is to get Devicescape‘a hotspot login application running on the phone… Since we have a Mac OS X version, I’m hoping it will port easily now there is a toolchain in existence.

iPhone Application Development

New iPhone ApplicationMaking some progress on getting applications installed on the iPhone. There is still a lot of work to do though, and the team over at the iPhone Dev Wiki (you can find them through their IRC channel: #iphone @ irc.osx86.hu, or using Google, but they ask people not to link directly) are making a lot of valuable discoveries towards this goal.

The photo, which is real, shows a new icon on the SpringBoard screen; the icon is Devicescape‘s and provides a clue as to what I am trying to add to the iPhone. Currently it just launches the FieldTest app though.

First Stones Laid

Yard Day ThreeSo, completely off the topic of the iPhone, Nokia N95 or anything technical at all, here’s a photo of the first few stones of our new back yard patio, laid today.

Today was actually day three of the job. The first two days were about getting the irrigation system laid, raising the drains up to the right level for the patio and generally preparing things.

Nokia N95 vs Apple iPhone

iPhone & Nokia N95I’ve had the iPhone for a few days now (and the N95 for over a month), so I thought I’d post a little comparison. There are plenty of other places out there with reviews and comparisons, and the N95 is the obvious phone to compare it to.

The first surprise with the iPhone though is how heavy it is. The N95 feels like a hollow shell by comparison!

Purely from the specs, the N95 has the iPhone beaten. That topic has been beaten to death everywhere, including a series of amusing YouTube videos in the Apple Mac vs PC style.

The UI though leaves the Nokia in the dust (and I’m not even going to talk about Windows Mobile – that should just be purged from the earth). Most of the apps make good use of the UI too, especially the flick scrolling.

Both devices are amazing, but both have their flaws too. The N95 interface is clunky at times, though even the stunning UI on the iPhone has problems – the keyboard is really hard to use. The camera on the iPhone is terrible, though the N95 one has issues at times too (I’ve had days, like today, when the auto-focus just refuses to lock).

The biggest thing that is missing from the iPhone though is simple: no third party applications. It comes with essentially 13 applications on top of the basic mobile phone behaviour. My N95 comes with over 20 applications, and I can add more very easily. I currently have Opera Mini, Google Maps, ScreenShot and, of course, Devicescape.