At this weeks Black Hat security conference held in Las Vegas, researchers, Collin Mulliner and Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators, have demonstrated an effective attack on an iPhone using a flaw in the way the iPhone handles SMS or text messages.  Your iPhone hacked via SMS!  By sending hundreds of special SMS control messages that are not normally visible to the iPhone owner the attacker can gain complete access to the iPhone until it is rebooted. At the moment there is no patch from Apple to fix the problem despite Apple being notified over six weeks ago regarding the problem. For you Windows mobile users you are not immune as the the attack can work against your devices as well.

  The Obama Inauguration app displays the days remaining until the inauguration of the new president. Aside from that it is  an advertising application, displaying random iTunes artist advertisements or advertisements for other applications created by the same company

The WordPress iPhone app is a great way to keep your blog up to date when you are on the go. The first time you run the app you will need to add your blogs.  A very straight-forward process needing only URL, username, and password.   One caveat is that for self hosted blogs XML-RPC remote publishing is enabled.  That is a simple as checking a box in the "Writing" section of the Settings tab on your blog. Once all your blogs are set up you then choose the one you want to explore from a list on the app's home screen From there you get the choice to view or edit existing posts or create a new post.  When creating a new post keep in mind that you are working in an HTML format not WYSIWYG editor.  You do have the option to preview the post and in your blogs theme, which does help make up for the present lack of a  WYSIWYG editor.  You can add photos either from your iPhone's photo library or taking a new one.  The photos already included are displayed via thumbnail at the top of the screen.   I really like the app overall and it does help me when I get ...

Ask Urbanspoon the question “Where do we eat?" and give your iPhone a shake watch the reels spin and soon you have a destination in hand.  Need to be cautious about how much you are spending or want to try a new Thai restaurant, lock one or a combination of the three reels and shake shake shake. Urbanspoon works with the GPS location feature on your iPhone to give you a list of restaurants nearby your location.  To find a restaurant you can either shake the iPhone, browse though a list of local eateries, or review a list of places you have already visited Urbanspoon brings up location, phone number, and any user added information.  You can even add the restaurant to a wishlist to hit at a later time. You can add reviews and other information like photos and menus about the places where you’ve eaten.   I like the fun amusing way that the Urbanspoon iPhone app takes the drudgery out of finding a place for dinner.  Now all I need are more people to join me on culinary explorations, when your ready  find me as kestrachern on Urbanspoon.

Lightsaber Unleashed - It all started a long time ago in an the mind of a developer (probably) far far away from where you are now.. the Lightsaber iPhone app was born.  It was enjoyed immensely by the fans. Lucasfilms stepped in and asked that the app be taken down. Cries went up from the masses. And it came back, as Lightsaber Unleashed. More options more sounds more fun, more advertising. Well yeah. Lucasfilms did a beautiful job in remaking the application. You now have choices in the color and type of lightsaber.  You choose from preconstructed models by clicking on Darth Vader portrait to bring up the menu of options with a click on the empty portrait to design your own. Music can be turned on and off and there are two different "activation modes" for the lightsaber, one with the full lightsaber started by clicking almost anywhere on the screen and the other a zoomed in cross section of a lightsaber.  Sounds and light flashes are activated by the accelerometers in your iPhone. Lightsaber Unleashed is probably the most fun app I have for my iPhone. As you never know when you will need to defend or accost the Old Republic.

Zhiing is a new application that allows you to easily send directions to your location to anyone who has a mobile phone. Although an app is available for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Nokia N series, I have only experimented with the iPhone version of the app. You are also able to send Zhiing's to any mobile device as long as it accepts SMS messages. What is a Zhiing? When you open the application your top choice is to send a Zhiing to another person. Clicking on that link reads in your location from the GPS and gets it ready to send to your choice of recipients. Click on the address book, make your selection, then add a brief message and hit send. Off it goes. The recipient gets the message in their Zhiing inbox as well as an SMS notifying them of the incoming Zhiing. Clicking on the incoming Zhiing automatically maps from your location to the location where the Zhiing was created. Instant directions... and each recipient receives personalized directions at that. Now there is also the SMS direction function, but I have not been able to test that out as of yet..   ...

Brightkite as a social networking service excites me and I was thrilled when they came out with an application for the iPhone. The iPhone app offers all the flexibility and functionality found when accessing Brightkite via the web with the added benefit of using the location ability of the phone to more easily mark your position.   Users have the ability to checkin at a known location, allow yourself to be located and then checked in, or search for a nearby location (based on the iPhone locating you) to check in.  You can also check in an leave a note or check in and post a photo.  Once checked into a location one of your options is to choose the "nearby" button and you will be presented with a list of other people that have checked in to that location or a nearby location.  From there you can explore the locations where they checked in, make new friends, or leave comments for those that follow to find. The only thing that I have found that you cannot access from the app is some of the fine grained settings, but they rarely are accessed save when setting up your account.   I highly recommend this app and Brightkite too.  If ...

I was messing around on iTunes, during a rather long phone call and absentmindedly clicked on the Sync button.  To my surprise everything worked just fine.  The call did not drop, the sync completed successfully.  iTunes did not perform a backup of the phone during this session, so that may or may not impact performance.   I'm going to play around more and see what other things can go well during a sync. Hmm VNC works

Graffitio   is a digital graffiti app for the iPhone.  It is location based so performs better with the 3G version of the phone that has the integrated GPS system. Although billed as a graffiti app it is much more the digital equivalent of urban tagging.   Your name and a short message are posted on a geographically specific digital wall.   Walls can be of various sizes, but users can only create localized ones.  Walls the size of cities, states, and countries are a Graffitio staff only creation.    Creating a wall is fairly simple.  Once Graffitio has loaded and found nearby walls you press the + icon presently located in the lower right portion of the screen.  A map is loaded showing your present location.  If you wish to create a wall elsewhere, simply drag the map till the cross hairs are positioned above the desired locale.   The last step is to add a name then click on create. A nice simple app that allows for brief self expression.  I've seen all sorts of usernames out and about, but have yet to find Kilroy.  I would like to see the feature of designating size (or range) of the wall.  A digital version of geocaching could result with small enough ...

While updating my iPhone today I came across a limit of 144 icons that can be displayed on your home screens.  During the restore process I had iTunes add all of my app purchases to my phone.  The result was nine full pages, each having sixteen icons on each.. with another twenty icons not displaying.  Made for a bit of confusion as I was looking for several of the apps that were not on the screen. Has anyone else run across this limit?  How did you handle it?  I've been playing around with the Categories (jailbroken) iPhone app which condenses apps into groups. More on Categories later. Aside from not having enough screen real estate the iPhone is working much better since the reinstall.