Let me start with an apology for my less than amble blogging over the past week. In short, I’ve been busy, real busy. But even though I haven’t blogged in a while, I’ve been keeping track of the traffic to my site. So you can imagine my surprise when received over 1500 hits a day over the course of a week, and rising!

This seemed strange to me because the average amount of views for my blog is well below 200 with a consistent flow of continual readers. After checking my referrer logs, I realized that most of the traffic was coming from StumbleUpon — a web community that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, and videos. The way it works is, you download the toolbar and every time you press the “stumble” button, you get a new site you’ve never seen before. For whatever reason, one of my blog post has been “stumbled” and because of that, I’ve been getting an influx of traffic to my blog.

Because StumbleUpon uses peer and social-networking to recommend new sites every time, it’s vulnerable to spammers and commercial sites with no real content. I received over 300 pieces of comment spam, all of which were caught by Akismet with no real positives. This means that most of the visits to my blog during the past week were by spam bots that must some how be surfing through the StumbleUpon service.

I’m happy that my blog is being “stumbled” because I’m getting more readers but the drawback is being spammed excessively by bots trying to advertise and make a buck. You make me sick.

Here’s a simple little trick to amplify the sound from any smartphone or mp3 player that has less than stellar speakers. Just drop it in a cup!

I learned this trick last year, when a few of my friends and I went camping. We didn’t bring a stereo with us so we had to play whatever we had on our smartphones. But even at maximum volume, the speakers weren’t loud enough to cover our camp ground. The sound was even less projective when we laid our devices on a flat surface. So we’d have to hold our phones with the speaker-side up everywhere we went in order to keep the music going. I know, we’re so lame, haha! Well, we eventually got tired of holding it so one of us dropped it in a cup and that’s when we noticed a big difference. The sound was amplified twice as loud, especially with the speaker-side towards the bottom of the cup!

Now, I use this trick whenever I’m in the kitchen cooking, when I’m in the shower with loud running water, or when I’m just too lazy to plug my iPhone into my speakers. Does it sound beautiful? No. Is it a replacement for even the cheapest of speakers out there? Nope! But if you ever find yourself in a bind, this little trick just might get you out of it.

The first jailbreak release for iOS 4.2.1 involved having to connect your device to a computer every time you want to restart it. Yeah, which is why I completely avoid tethered jailbreaks. Lucky for us, GreenPois0n released the untethered jailbreaking process earlier this month for iOS 4.2.1.

The process is fairly simple, but there have been a few issues reported since the release. To my knowledge, this process has been successful for iPhone 4, and 3GS. I only ran into problems with GreenPois0n when I tried to jailbreak a iPhone 3G. If GreenPois0n doesn’t work for you, you’ll need to use the RedSn0w jailbreak. More about this after the full tutorial.

Apple is rumored to release 4.3 firmware sometime next week so if you plan to jailbreak, do it before Monday, February 14 because once the new firmware is released, Apple won’t sign off on letting you install 4.2.1 firmware.

WARNING:
Jailbreaking is NOT for the faint of heart. Do not attempt this unless you know exactly what you are doing to your device. I am not responsible for anything that happens beyond this point.

Here’s what I did:

1. Download GreenPois0n for your operating system and iOS 4.2.1 firmware for your device. Unless you prefer iTunes to download the firmware for you, you can download it now to speed up the process. Keep these files in a folder on your desktop for the jailbreak.
2. Make sure you’re currently running iTunes 10 and Safari 5.
3. Plug in device and backup everything on iTunes before proceeding. To backup, right-click (or control-click) the device under Devices and choose “Back Up”. I took screenshots of my apps and emailed them to myself so I know what to reinstall after the jailbreak, just in case.
4. Upgrade to iOS 4.2.1 by holding down the OPTION button and click Restore on iTunes. This will allow you to select the IPSW you downloaded from Step 1. You can simply click Restore to let iTunes download the IPSW for you but it takes longer to restore your device.
5. Once your device is updated to iOS, quit iTunes and run GreenPois0n.
6. Follow the instructions on GreenPois0n (sleep button is at the top of your device and home button is the round button with a square symbol under your device screen).
7. Wait for the jailbreak to complete as your device will take some time to boot. It might even need to boot twice.
8. Once you see Loader on your iphone, your device has successfully been jailbroken.

So what happens next? Run Loader on your iPhone and install Cydia. With Cydia, can now install any 3rd party app and customize your device!

If this doesn’t work for you, use RedSn0w jailbreak. The tutorial could be found here.

If you used the GreenPois0n jailbreak and you don’t see Loader, you’ll need to add the RedSn0w jailbreak. Download RedSn0w along with the iOS 4.2.1 software for your specific device. Run the RedSn0w jailbreak with the GreenPois0n jailbreak already installed. This should successfully solve your Cydia problem if it occurs.

I hope this helps for those who are looking to jailbreak! Good luck!

Update 2/21/2011 — iOS 4.2.1 is running fine on iPhone 4 and 3GS. iPhone 3G users are experiencing an intolerable amount of lag after upgrading to the new firmware, regardless if devices are jailbroken or not. Something to consider if you have the iPhone 3G.

For more information, check out Lifehacker.

Searching the web can yield some useless results if you don’t know what you’re doing, but if you have a few tricks up your sleeve you can find just about anything in seconds. Here are some tips for using Google, but they can be applied to almost any other search engine.

Weather
To see the weather for many US and worldwide cities, type “weather” followed by the name of the city or zipcode. You can simply type “weather” to see the weather of your current location.

Map
For a quick map of any where in the world, type “map” and the name of the city you’re looking for.

Local Time
To see the time in many cities around the world, type “time” and the name of the city.

Movie Times
To find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you, search for “movies”. If you’ve already saved your location on a previous search, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters. Enter a zipcode if you’re specifically looking for showtimes in a particular area.

Dictionary
To find the definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define” followed by the word(s).

Unit Conversion
If you ever need to modify a recipe, look for currency exchange rates, or convert between different units of measurement such as height, weight, and volume, just enter your desired conversion and the search engine will do the rest!

Calculator
Google has a built-in calculator function for their search engine that performs simple addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), as well as more complicated math equations like exponential (^), percentages (% of), square roots (sqrt), and factorials (!).

Sports
To find scores for any sports game of the day, enter the sports association (NBA, NFL, MLB) and receive current up-to-date schedules and scores.

Track Flight Status
Check the status for arriving and departing US flights by typing the name of the airline and flight number.

Track Packages
You can track packages by typing the tracking number for your UPS, Fedex or USPS package directly into the search box. The status of your shipment won’t appear on Google’s search result page, instead, you will get a quick link to track the status of your shipment on the appropriate carrier’s website.

Phrase Search
If you know a specific phrase that you’re looking for — such as a line from a novel or a verse from a popular song — you can use quotation marks to narrow your search. However, you might be missing good results accidentally with such a constrained search. For example, a search for “Alexander Bell” (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.

Search Within A Website
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query “site:deeindesign.com sweet” will return pages about anything relating to “sweet” but only from “deeindesign.com”.

Use keywords, not sentences.
Search broad, then narrow down when you see what kinds of results you’re getting. For instance, instead of typing “How can I speed up my windows PC” in your search box, try using 3 or less keywords and then tighten your search accordingly:
1. “Windows Speed Up”
2. “Windows 7 Speed Up”
3. “Windows 7 Speed up How To”

Add your favorite search engine to your browser toolbar.
Save time by using the search toolbar that comes with your web browser. Just type in what you’re searching for directly from the top of your browser toolbar and go!

Use different search engines for different searches.
Don’t fall into the rut of using one search engine for all your search needs. Every search engine returns different results. The more comfortable you are with a good variety of search engines, the more successful your searches are going to be.

I’ve developed the habit of abbreviating a lot in my text conversations. For the lack of time or because I’m just plain lazy, it’s easy to shorten the more popular phrases when I’m carrying a conversation via email or text. It almost feels like I’m talking in another language sometimes! Below are some of my favorite abbreviations…