Apple Hired a 19-Year-Old iPhone Hacker Behind JailbreakMe.com

Apple just hired Nicholas Allegra, the world-famous hacker known as "Comex" who created JailbreakMe.com, the easiest way to "jailbreak" your iPhone.
Allegra posted on Twitter last night that he's starting an internship at Apple in two weeks. Apple is no stranger to hiring members of the iPhone hacker community, but they seem to have hit the jackpot this time. Allegra is one of the most prolific and well known iPhone hackers. JailbreakMe.com made the act of jailbreaking, which Apple hates, accessible to anyone who knows how to use the web browser on an iPhone. While Allegra has received mostly encouraging responses on Twitter, it's undoubtedly a huge blow to the iPhone hacking community at large.

Google Maps Adds Voice Search Feature to Chrome Desktop

If you talk to your desktop PC, it's probably for all the wrong reasons--usually to hurl expletives at the machine for not working properly. Well, users of the desktop version of Google Chrome now have a more productive reason to get chatty with their computers. Google has added voice search for Google Maps to Chrome, offering users a (sometimes) faster way to get directions.
The main Google Maps interface in Chrome now includes a microphone icon. When you click it, a "Speak Now" dialog appears.How well does it work? Pretty well in my brief testing, albeit with a few hiccups. When I said, "Petaluma to San Diego," Google Maps understand me perfectly and posted the map below.

Jailbreaking 101: how to Hack Your iDevice

So you’re thinking of jailbreaking your iOS device are you? The process of hacking your iDevice is simpler than ever but with so many different hardware, firmware, and software combinations out there, choosing the right jailbreak tool for your configuration for you can be a bit daunting if it’s your first time. Here’s a guide to picking the right tool for you.
Determine your hardware.

If you’re not sure what hardware model you have, read this guide for iPhone, or this one for iPod Touch. If you have an iPad, the iPad 2 has a front-facing camera, while the original iPad does not. Apple TV can also be jailbroken.

Determine your firmware
To determine your iOS firmware, on your device, open the Settings app, then navigate to General; About; Version. Alternately, you can plug in your device to your computer and open iTunes. Your Software Version is listed under Summary.Mac or PC?Depending on if you sync your iDevice to a Mac or Windows PC, there are different tools available.

Apple Releases updates for Boot Camp, iMac graphics firmware

The 482KB iMac Graphic FW Update 3.0 fixes a bug experienced by some iMac users who upgraded to Lion and found that their systems would freeze during the playback of certain videos, leaving them with no option but to restart their machines. The patch updates the firmware in iMacs’ graphics processors to correct the problem.Both updates are available from Apple’s Support Downloads site or via Software Update on applicable machines.

Apple on Wednesday released a pair of updates to exterminate lingering bugs: one for Boot Camp, and one for the firmware in iMacs’ graphics processors.Boot Camp—OS X’s utility that allows users to install Windows on their Macs—received an update that brings critical bug fixes and hardware support. Boot Camp 3.3is a 199.75 MB download that requires Windows 7 and Boot Camp 3.2; it’s recommended for all Bootcamp 3.2 users.

Facebook Has Hit 1 Trillion Page Views Officially

Facebook has officially hit 1 trillion page views, according to figures released for web traffic in June, Time magazine’s TechLand column reports.According to Time, those 870 million visitors are around 120 million greater than Facebook's reported total number of registered users. The discrepancy may be due to non-Facebook members visiting the site from other social media links or through search engine traffic.After Facebook, the next most popular site is YouTube, which has only one-tenth of the page views, but matches 90% of Facebook's unique visitors for the same time periodThe data compiled by the Google-owned Double Click Adplanner show that throughout the month of June Facebook received more than 1 trillion page views and was visited by more than 870 million unique users -- an average of 1,149.42 page views per user.

My Apple Story

I was never a True Believer. In fact, probably the opposite.I’m not one of those guys who discovered the joy of computing with an Apple II or an original Mac, and then faithfully bought macs throughout his life. One of the fellowship of fans who kept Apple above water through the 90s. I was a PC all the way.My grandfather, a huge computer guy, discovered computing through work and was thus a PC fan, and so I had a PC as a kid, and grew up in a PC world. I discovered computing through the DOS command line. Whenever an Apple product was mentioned in my house (quite rarely), it was to dismiss them as overpriced toys.

As a teenage geek, the joy of computers for me was the ability to open a big beige box and be able to swap out any parts I didn’t like for something else. It was about playing graphics-intensive games. (Half-Life 2!) But, in a way, that makes me the story of Apple’s revival. I generally disliked Apple products. I disliked the pastel designs. I disliked the underpowered, overpriced iBooks......

Samsung Launches 4 New Android Phones

Samsung has announced four new Galaxy Android-based devices and revised the naming strategy for its whole phone lineup. The four new phones, the Galaxy W, Galaxy M Pro, Galaxy Y and Galaxy Y Pro, are the first to sport the new naming convention and all run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.Samsung says the new naming system is easier to understand and it’s meant to accommodate the growing variety of devices it manufactures. From now on, Samsung Galaxy phones using the S (for Super Smart) in the name will be the flagship top-of-the-line devices, R (for Royal or Refined) will designate its premium models, working down to mid-range W (for Wonder) and to the lower end with M (for Magical) and Y (Young).