Jailbroken and Loving it

It's what all nerds should do (and wannabe nerds). If you have an iPhone and haven't jailbroken it you are not using it to its max potential. Why wouldn't you jailbreak? It's now easier than ever. After Googling and researching extensively, I found that the process is very simple and only takes a couple minutes. My biggest worry was if my Apple App Store apps were going to remain after I Jailbroke. I was also concerned if I would continue to be able to sync my music and App Store Apps with iTunes. Those thoughts were laid to rest when all of them showed up on my springboard after jailbreaking. 


So what exactly does jailbreaking allow you to do? In short, everything you want it to do. You know you have been looking over your Android buddy's shoulder wishing you could customize like they can. Now it's possible. Notifications are done right with the LockInfo app. You can configure your lock screen to your liking, displaying calendar events, notifications, emails, and weather. All of these things are possible now with jailbreaking. The act of jailbreaking is free, but some apps do cost money, and it's good to pay for these apps to support the developers. Jailbreaking also allows you to install third-party apps that Apple's App Store does not support. If you ever wanted to have five columns of apps, ever wanted to put a custom theme on your spring board, or ever wanted to simply swipe the top task bar to toggle Wi-Fi, 3G, or adjust your brightness, then jailbreaking is for you. Here's a link to The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Jailbreaking Your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on LifeHacker.com. I'll see you on the other side.

Family Feud - Sandy Bridge built-in graphics and Discrete GPUs don't get along

Intel Sandy Bridge processors support internal graphics built right into the chip, but it is only active without discrete graphics. In other words, as soon as a graphics card is plugged into a PCIe slot, the internal GPU is disabled. My question is why? I think it would be great to have a game played and email or music on the second display, where that second display is powered by the lower-powered Sandy Bridge GPU. I think it is an amazing advancement in CPUs to include a GPU on the same die, but limiting it's use to a solitary life style where you are forced to choose one or the other is not the enthusiast way. Let's be realistic: non-enthusiasts will not be purchasing this CPU. The chip offers amazing performance and power saving over it's predecessor (Nehalem), but I guess you can't win them all.

LG Optimus 3D Smart Phone is Coming

Gizmodo.com released an article today discussing the Optimus 3D  smartphone from LG (Gizmodo - LG Optimus 3D ). The specs are pretty impressive for the nerd crowd (me included) out there:

• 4.3 inch screen
• Dual cameras for 3D capable 720p video, 3D images, and 2D 1080p video.
• Dual core 1GHz processor
• 4 GB of dual channel DDR2 RAM memory
• 8 GB of Flash memory storage (the article refers to this as straight up "memory", which is incorrect)
• 1500mAh battery

 My question: How long will the battery actually last? I have an iPhone 4 (fyi - not an Apple fanboy, just a lover of all things tech), it has a 1420mAh battery. I check emails, text regularly, and listen to Pandora/iPod all day at work. I don't have to try hard to make the device last a full day on a single charge. For a device that has twice the processing capability, 8 times more memory, and a battery with only 5.6% more capacity, how long can I even shoot in 3D video mode on the LG? One hour of strenuous use is hardly revolutionary.

Let's not forget about the power hungry 4.3 inch screen. LG/Android better have put some good task management built in, so as not to inadvertently drain the battery on standby (I'm looking at you Evo 4G).

Don't get me wrong, I am very excited about this phone. I can't wait to see how it does when released in the coming months, and I think 3D will become standard on hand held devices. The parallax screen technology is perfect for single-viewer applications. I just don't want the portability aspect of smart phones to take a back seat in the car of technology advancement.