Fake iPhones are getting much better. This iPhoney is almost identical to the genuine article, until it's booted up. It was bought by Steven Fernandeez of Toronto. CC-licensed picture by Steven Fernandez. Counterfeit iPhones have come a long way. They’re now almost identical to original iPhones, fooling bargain hunters on sites like eBay. Look at the video below from Dana Stibolt, founder of MacMedics, who was given a fake iPhone bought on the auction site. At first glance, it’s almost identical to current models, from the touchscreen to the volume switches on the side and the dock connector on the bottom. “It looks EXACTLY like an iPhone,” says Stibolt. “But it does not work very well, and when it does work, it is very slow.” Last year, knockoff iPhones were easy to spot

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Mozilla’s new Firefox 3.5 browser, released on Tuesday, adds porn mode, big speed improvements and location services. But one feature for MacBook users has been removed from previous beta releases — the multitouch twist gesture for navigating between tabs. It’s a handy gesture. With a twist of your fingers, you can whiz through open tabs just like using Control-Tab. Here’s how to re-enable it. For owners of new MacBooks that support trackpad gestures, there are several multitouch gestures enabled in Firefox, including pinching to zoom in, and spreading to zoom out. There’s also swiping three fingers down to page down, and three fingers up to page up. But the twist gesture in various betas was removed from the final release because it was too easy to invoke accidentally, Mozilla said. With it, you can to jump backwards and forwards between open tabs, just like using Control-Tab. But it can be re-enabled: In the address bar, type: “about:config” A warning message will pop up about fiddling with advanced settings. Hit “I’ll be careful,” and proceed to the settings screen.

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What it is: Archon Classic is an iPhone app that brings my favorite-ever Mac game to the iPhone — perfectly. It’s basically like extraordinarily Manichean version of chess — the battle between not just white and black pieces, but light and dark forces. And instead of merely taking other pieces as you do in chess or checkers, you must battle for each square you try to claim, with action and heated attacks. Whether you’re a phoenix, a shapeshifter, a golem, or a troll, you need quick reflexes to win. Why it’s cool: Way back when my family got its first Mac Plus, one of the very first games we installed on it was Battle Chess, a title that had chess pieces actually fight each other instead of claiming their squares. Here’s the problem. It was actually completely lame. It was exactly like chess, except that it had slow-loading and highly repetitive animation sequences. I wanted real battle chess. I wanted to fight for each inch of precious territory. Needless to say, I stopped playing. My frustrations were quickly remedied when my cousin introduced me to Archon for the NES. It was exactly what I had been looking for but better.

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Image © David Hockney In a move that’s a bit like thumbing his brush at the lawyers who sent a nastygram when we mistakenly reported David Hockney’s gallery artworks were created on his iPhone, the artist is offering free downloads of three wallpapers made on his device. The unsigned trio of flower paintings from the 72-year-old pop artist maestro — painted with the Brushes app on his iPhone (it’s revealed  for certain this time) — do sort of look like something you could  do yourself. Image © David Hockney Still, these are the quick sketches Hockney makes daily and sends to friends and family. He likes the fact he’s giving them away, saying “my real vanity is the vanity of artists, I like my work to be seen.” Image © David Hockney The wallpapers are offered gratis to promote a BBC documentary on Hockney and are only available for the next 48 hours. Hat tip to CoM reader Paul Dixon . This article is copyright Cultomedia Corp .

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The iPhone 3.1 beta has been released to developers, and includes some cool features, including Voice Control over Bluetooth. Baseband has been updated to 5.08.o1, so don’t install the beta if your iPhone has been unlocked with the ultrasnow hack — it will permantly lock it. The beta also allows edited videos to be saved as a copy, preserving the original. And MMS is on by default, but doesn’t work for AT&T subscribers. The full list, via the QuickPwn website , after the jump. According to the QuickPwn website, here’s what’s been discovered in the iPhone OS 3.1 beta so far: The baseband has been updated to 5.08.01 – ultrasn0w users should not use the iPhone OS 3.1 beta, otherwise their iPhones could be permanently locked! iPhone 3GS – When you’re trimming your videos you now have the option of saving the original video by tapping the “Save as copy” button. Voice Control is finally working over bluetooth now! When you move your icons around the iPhone vibrates MMS is enabled by default but does not work for AT&T users The AT&T profile is updated to 4.2 Improvements to OpenGL and Quartz There’s now a VideoEditorController API – Allows third party apps to call up video editing UI Video picker API QuickPwn promises to post more features as they are discovered! This article is copyright Cultomedia Corp .

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What it is: Lala is a newish (about a year old) web-based music marketplace, but to brand it as simply that does an extreme disservice to an interesting, innovative Internet destination that, given enough publicity, strong management and bit of good fortune could become the first online music store to give iTunes a real run for its money as a music distributor. Why it’s cool: When I was a kid growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, I spent uncounted hours in the music listening rooms at the back of Pop Tunes on Summer Avenue, where I discovered the heritage of the city they call the Home of the Blues , and learned about the ground-breaking artists who gave birth to the Blues’ baby, Rock & Roll. Pop Tunes was a great spot to get in out of the hot summer sun or the cold winter rain, where I could browse the racks, amassing a stack of LPs and 45s, both old and new, and head for one of the four or five sound-proof listening rooms at the back of the store, where I’d listen to my heart’s content before deciding which of the albums or singles my meager allowance or paper route money would buy me any given week. By the time I left home for college in another of the great music cities in the US – New Orleans – I had a music collection numbering over 1000 lp records and another few hundred 45rpm singles. What does my ancient music-buying experience have to do with Lala and this review? Join me after the jump, where I try and tie it all together for you. I’ve got over 10,000 songs in my iTunes collection but the overwhelming majority of them got there by my ripping CDs from my own collection and putting them into iTunes. Of course, I have bought music on the iTunes store, and there’s no denying that, as a music industry lawyer I know in Los Angeles says, “iTunes is the only online music store that matters.” However, one thing I’ve always found limiting about iTunes, and a feature that seems to have been copied across the board by other online music retailers, is the 30 second preview. Sure, you can check out any song in the collection, but the limitation to what can often seem like a randomly selected 30 second slice has always left me feeling short-changed. Which is why, when I discovered Lala I was immediately transported to the halcyon days of my youth. You can listen to any of Lala’s more than 7 million songs all the way through once before being limited to a 30 second preview, and the effect of that feature is not only a feeling that the retailer is treating you fairly in the complex dance that can go on between buyers and sellers of music — but it also has the effect of providing you a way to check out whole albums and genres of music in what amounts to potential hours and hours and hours of free listening. In my personal view, the complete listen-through feature is enough on its own to make Lala worth checking out the next time you want to buy some music. But the site designers have built-in other innovations that make Lala a serious long range contender

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  if  you are a developer,  go grab iPhone SDK 3.1 beta. if you are not a developer, you will be happy to know that iPhone 3GS may be a step closer to the jailbreak . Also, let’s hope that the most annoying bug with constant compass interference is fixed for the iPhone 3GS users. Let’s answer poll below: Are you annoyed by constant compass interference on your iPhone 3GS Are you annoyed by constant compass interference on your iPhone 3GS ( survey )

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Section: iPod + iTunes , iPod touch , iPhone , Features , Operating Systems , Windows , Originals Microsoft is really good at dreaming about the future; their track record on delivering it is not quite so shining. Seen ubiquitous Tablet PCs? Anybody remember SPOT? (No, it’s not a dog, it was the Smart Personal Object Technology that Microsoft envisioned us all using to read stock quotes on our watches. Seriously .)  Okay, they kind of called the current netbook trend (a little early), but they were wrong about most of the details of what was then called the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC); they envisioned something between a smartphone and a netbook that was too small to be really useful and too big to be really portable. Microsoft also has a track record of blowing smokescreens to distract attention from gaps in their own product lines while they work to crush competition, and that list is exhausting in length: Cairo and Longhorn, with all their promised glamorous features , top the list. Given this track record, it is virtually not impossible to pose the question: what impact, if any, will Microsoft’s Surface have on everyday computing? When you get right down to it, the computer-user interface has seen no major advances since the introduction of the mouse in the 1980s

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What do you do with your old Macs when you upgrade to a new system? Many folks sell their old computer on eBay or locally, but that’s something I’ve rarely done. I mostly either keep them as “B-team” units, or hand them off to other family members. My Mac laptops are tools of my trade, and I would feel pretty vulnerable if I didn’t have a spare — or two — on hand, with the most likely candidate for understudy usually being the machine most recently replaced as No. 1. For example, when my WallStreet PowerBook’s processor died without warning in August 2002, the 1.5-year-old Pismo PowerBook 2001 I’d acquired nine months earlier got promoted to No. 1 workhorse without my suffering even a day of computer-less downtime. Even if you don’t depend on your Mac for your livelihood, it’s worth considering how much inconvenience and/or expense you’d incur if your No. 1 machine failed, needed to go in the shop or sent away for repair, or got stolen. Hanging onto old computers as “spares” is, of course, much easier if they’re laptops.

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