Yesterday morning we reported that some of your iPhone data was nearly impossible to erase. This issue was discovered when someone purchased a refurbished iPhone and using special software was able to read personal information from an area of the iPhone that should have been empty. Several people wondered aloud if there was any way to wipe all the data off their iPhone prior to selling it on eBay or returning it to an Apple Store. Web site Securosis.com has detailed instructions on “formatting” an iPhone to wipe data. It involves filling it to capacity to force old data off. Here are the partial instructions (check out their web site at the link below for the full article):

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While most of you know me as Clinton Fitch, writer for Gear Diary and owner of Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!, I do have a day job. That would be the Unified Communications Product Manager for Spanlink Communications. While we are not the biggest Cisco Systems partner on the block, we are one of the best when it comes to applications in Unified Communications and Contact Centers. As you can imagine, I have email constantly flowing into my inbox and thus onto my HTC Advantage on a variety of different topics, customers and solutions. My answer to managing all of this email are sub-folders. I love them. I have them for just about every category out there and it makes it quick and easy for me to find a message. This is great on my Windows PC but by default Windows Mobile does not synchronize any folders other than your Inbox via ActiveSync or Over-The-Air (OTA) Push Mail. Fortunately this is somewhat easy to change and in this How-To I’ll show you.

Now for a word of warning: What I’m about to demonstrate requires that the folders you are wanting to synchronize are on your Exchange server. This will not work if you are trying to synchronize folders that are stored in your PST file on your PC. It could also be that your Administrator does not allow folder synchronization beyond the Inbox through policies set in place. You will need to check with them if this does not work for you. Secondly, this will require a lot of bandwidth depending on how much you have to synchronize so make sure you have an unlimited data account. Gear Diary is not responsible for your $5,000 data bill!

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A little over a week ago I installed Mac OS Leopard on the MSI Wind I had picked up at Best Buy. I’m pleased to report that after a week of use, it is still going strong. I’m amazed at how well the Mac OS runs on the device; I am grateful to everyone who figured out how to get Mac OS X running perfectly on a Wind and were then kind enough to share their work.

Well, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and so I decided that I need to trick out the diminutive Mac just a bit. The first victim… the hard drive.

I always wanted to have a notebook with an SSD drive. Unfortunately, the premium for getting flash on the MacBook Air I had last year was too high, and I needed a large drive on the new MacBook I got last month. Since the goal of the WindOSX is to be able to throw it in my bag and go, I figured I didn’t need a huge drive. Moreover, I figured I could always add additional storage by using the SD slot. I found a reasonably priced 32 GB SSD at SuperBiiz ($90 plus a $20 rebate) and ordered it.

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If you’ve been following the series that Dan and I have been doing on the MSI Wind, then you need to take a look at this.  There’s a quick update you can make the the Darwin Boot Loader on the OSX side that will give your multi-booting Wind a bit more polish.

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This past August in Nashville, Tennessee it was too hot to be outside to do any yard work, so I decided to work on a project in the comfort of air conditioning.

Everything I do or build is a mentally consuming exercise. I Google for ideas, pictures and documentation. Later I sketch, process and make the commitment to get it done. But I’m such a perfectionist when it comes to building things, so I have to manage my time. I’m taking a break from Legos and anything lumber related to try my hand on something totally different. I’ve got the power tools, the drive and a decent mechanical skill set and gritty tenacity to see it through. Except software. PhotoShop? Building a web page? Nope, I like the physical things in life like carpentry and massive Lego structures.

So here’s my newest project. I’m recycling my one of my four original Apple Macintoshes into an aquarium. I have the 128K, 512K, Plus and Classic form factor to choose from. I think I will use the Plus on the left as it is discolored from age, so I plan to speckle paint the case as well.

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When Mac Rumors first leaked the story that the Slingbox application for the iPhone was set to launch cries of joy rang out from iPhone users everywhere.  That is until they read further and learned that the application would only run on a wifi connection.  For fear of overloading their network AT&T apparently asked Apple to restrict use of the Slingbox application.

Luckily for those users who running Jailbroken iPhones there’s a nifty utility called “VOIPover3G” which tricks applications into thinking there is a wifi connection present when in fact there’s only a 3G.  This allows the Slingbox application to work perfectly over your 3G connection.

Set up of this utility isn’t difficult but as with any tinkering you do with your iPhone’s system files, please do so at your own risk. Continue Reading

Ten years ago, I acquired two 55-gallon plastic drums to store an emergency supply of water for the impending Y2K disaster occurring at the stroke of midnight 2000. Of course, I became suspicious when the plane I was flying on did not fall out of the sky on 9/9/99 and my trusty Honda still ran like a charm well past January 1, 2000.

Being the positive person that I am, I was grateful to acquire several storage containers of personal hygiene items, first aid supplies and all kinds of camping paraphenia that I still use. So what if Y2K was the biggest con ever-perpetuated on mankind? I have all kinds of emergency supplies on hand, plus two 55-gallon plastic barrels!

As an avid vegetable and flower gardener, I’ve been hearing about the importance of using a system of collecting rainwater runoff from roofs. The benefits are having a mindset of being eco-friendly, lowering water bills by recycling rainwater, and having a ready source of water for garden use. There are a number of rainwater collectors available for sale using a large size capacity barrel and facets. After ten years of having these barrels, I decided to build one!

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If you’re using one of the new iPhone 3GS models you may have noticed it’s no longer possible to force quit an application by holding the home key down for 5 seconds. This worked on prior models but now holding the home key down will only bring up the voice control. Instead to force quit an application running on an iPhone 3GS press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. When the Quit/Cancel screen appears THEN you can hold the home key for 5 seconds and the application will force quit. When even that doesn’t work I’ve found the combination of holding home and power for 5 seconds will still force a reset.

Appmodo

There you are standing on the edge of a beautiful lake on a warm July day. With the naked eye the scenery is magnificent. Captured with the 3GS’ video you get a full sense of it. Unfortunately while the upgraded camera on the iPhone 3GS works well, any given image only captures a small portion of the view.

Fear not! For there is a simple way to capture and share a beautiful panorama of the entire image in just moments. Here’s a quick “iPhone How-To”.

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This began as a review of Audioboo, a relatively new service that allows you to create voice podcasts either on your computer or on the go using an iPhone, or an iPod touch in quickly and easily upload them to the net and share them with the world. In the process of creating this review I decided to make a brief podcast of my very first recording and realized that it actually might be more useful and, I hope, more interesting, if I did this post more as a “how-to” than a review.

So here’s a step-by-step of how to go from scratch to the online podcast below these words in just a few moments.

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So here was the dilemma… I was sitting outside in the sun rereading a book I purchased a number of years ago. (Yes, a dead tree book!) I remember some insights in it that might prove useful for some talks I need to be giving in a few weeks. So there I was on vacation reading it for the second or third time. And I was right, there was something worth noting on every other page.

The problem was I didn’t have time and paper nearby and, quite honestly, I didn’t feel like sitting there and taking notes while reading in the sun. Fortunately I had my iPhone with me. It made note-taking a breeze. I tried two different approaches and each was useful in its own way.

Here’s what I did…

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I wanted to share about my affection for a different set of gear… now we all love wireless stuff, cell phones, tablets, etc, etc. but I’m here to testify having POWER TOOLS are heaven sent!

One day, I’ll have a big workshop with table saws, compound miter saws, routers, cordless drills, jigsaws and all of the accessories like clamps, drill and router bits to build furniture to house all the gadgets acquired over the years!

When we were remodeling our kitchen, there was quite of pile of construction materials and demolition scrap left over ready to haul to the local dump. Destined also for disposal was a large metal satellite dish that was taking up a lot of space in the yard and no longer functional since acquiring DirecTV.

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When I bought my new car in September 2007 I knew I would be keeping it for a few years, so I decided that I was going to take the plunge, and build a Car PC like those that I had read about on the MP3Car.com forums. The computer would replace the standard audio system, and add MP3 playback, video, GPS, GPS tracking and internet access to my car

After months of dreaming about such a setup my Car PC is finally installed. I’ve had the computer on my desk for over 3 mths now but time and money kinda pushed it WAY forward to this day. Since my dad was off work for the Australia Day holiday, we decided it was time to tackle it.

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This past weekend I took on a new project, or really two projects – upgrading the RAM and hard drive in my 17” Macbook Pro, then taking the “old” hard drive and putting it into a 13” Macbook belonging to my other half. After researching a lot of information online (I love Google searches), I made some decisions about how to proceed with the updates, gathered the pieces, and started into the process.

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Twitter account? Guilty. Jaiku account? Guilty. Never update those two microblogs after getting a Facebook page? Guilty.

If you haven’t yet discovered the fun world of microblogging, it’s a great way of keeping tabs on what your friends and online acquaintances are up to without having to make the effort of actually contacting them directly. And vice versa. Depending on the service you’re using, you get a certain number of characters (usually 160) to do with as you will, and the usual style of posts ranges from what you’re currently doing, to how your day’s been, to what mood you’re currently in.

What surprised me is the number of emails I’ve gotten in the last couple of weeks informing me that so-and-so is following my Twitter feed – despite the fact that I haven’t updated it in months! Hmmn, this makes my Internet self feel guilty for not making more of an effort. So I decided to do a bit of research and see whether anyone had come up with a microblogging aggregation service that would let me post one status update that would be pushed out to all of the microblogs. Okay, I lie, I actually just read about said service in my RSS feeds, but it makes me sound more proactive if I say I went out and looked for it!

HelloTxt is a free service that lets you update your status across pretty much all of the Web 2.0 services that offer this feature. The well-known ones like Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Plaxo, LinkedIn and Pownce are all on-board, but there are some I’ve never even heard of, like Gozub, Feecle, Fanfou and Meemi. All you have to do is sign in to all of the services you use through HelloTxt, then update your status message from the Dashboard. In my quick tests, updates are pushed out to all the specified services immediately, and there’s also a mobile version that’s optimised for small screen sizes.

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