Legal Jailbreak - it even sounds bad.

(Yahoo) – Owners of iPhones and other smartphones are one step closer towards taking complete control of their gadgets, thanks to a new government ruling Monday on the practice of “jailbreaking.”

This weekend has seen a flurry of activity about digital rights, but the biggest news dropped Monday morning, when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking??? your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.

Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are used on the U.S. T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers, or are used to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone’s SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

While technically illegal, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice. (Apple does seriously frown on the practice, and jailbreaking your phone will still void your warranty.) It’s estimated that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their handsets.

Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules

Swing battuh battuh, swing battuuuh!

(Gamespot) – Apple announced yesterday the iPhone 4 as part of Worldwide Developers Conference 2010. The iPhone 4, which gained notoriety after a leaked prototype surfaced in April, is the first hardware update to Apple’s best-selling smartphone since July 2008, and it will apparently carry a handful of enhancements for gamers.

As related by GameSpot sister site CNET, Apple has catered to motion-sensor enthusiasts by building a three-axis gyroscope into the device. The gyroscope allows the iPhone to detect pitch, roll, and yaw, and it works alongside the previously available accelerometer to provide six-axis motion sensing. The device also uses the CoreMotion programming tools to further enhance precision.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off the new tech with a demo for the classic party game Jenga. During his presentation, he tilted the phone forward, back, and side-to-side, with the game responding to these movements in kind onscreen. He also showed how rotating the iPhone 4 in a circle resulted in the game equally spinning.

Further playing to the gaming crowd, Activision was on hand at the event to announce that Guitar Hero is now available on the App Store. Available for $2.99, the Guitar Hero app will launch with six songs from the likes of Queen, Rise Against, The Rolling Stones, Vampire Weekend, Weezer, and The White Stripes. Six additional three-song packs are also available for $1.99 a piece.

Additionally, casual game publisher Zynga announced that a version of its top Facebook social game Farmville would see release on the App Store by the end of June. Gamers will be able to access the same plantation on their phones as they can through Facebook, according to Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.

As for the rest of what the iPhone 4 offers, Apple has ramped up the device’s screen resolution to 960?×?640 pixels, which offers a pixel-per-inch resolution of 326, four times that of current iPhone 3G models. The company also noted that the iPhone 4 has an 800-to-1 contrast ratio, also a four-fold increase over current devices. And at 9.3mm, it is “the thinnest smartphone on the planet.”

The updated device also includes two built-in cameras (one on the front and the other on the back with an LED flash), as well as two microphones and a noise cancellation button. Apple has upgraded the device’s cameras to a five-megapixel sensor. The iPhone 4 also features HD video recording, capturing 720p at 30 frames per second.

[Full Article at Gamespot.com]