Today is iPhone trivia day. I will be posting iPhone related questions throughout the day! The first question for the trivia is:  I work for Apple’s law firm and have been trying to get Appulous shut down since the beginning. I wish I was better at my job :(. What’s my first and last name?

Do you think you know the answer? I’ll help you by giving you some hints:

• Here is a fill in the blank: I_ _ R_ _ _ _ _
• He has sent a notice before to an editor on Wired.com

If you know the answer, post it in the comments section. The first commenter to get it right will have their name updated in this post! Comments will be moderated, and the correct answer will be approved later, to give everyone a chance to try to figure out the answers themselves.

WINNER: vania Smirnov

ANSWER: TBA (To Be Announced)

On Friday, November 6, Verizon released their first phones running on Google’s Android 2.0 operating system: Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris phone. As I went to my local Verizon store I noticed that there were no long lines, in fact there were only two other people besides me who went in the store. Verizon has been heavily advertising this phone, as the “iPhone killer”, and mocking the iPhone for not having a lot of basic features that the Droid has. Is the Droid really an iPhone killer, and is it really worth it? Continue reading to find out. I  got the Motorola Droid, so I’ll be reviewing that phone in this post.

Browser: The browser on the Motorola Droid is very nice, and in my opinion it beats the Safari browser on the iPhone. Just like the browser on the iPhone and on the Palm Pre, it uses the same Webkit engine. The Droid will get Adobe Flashplayer early next year along with the Palm Pre, while the iPhone won’t be getting it any time soon. You can double tap to zoom in or zoom out of a certain section on a web page. Unlike the iPhone or the Palm Pre, multi-touch is not enabled on the browser so you can’t pinch to zoom in or zoom out. The reason I’m saying enabled is because the Droid does support multi-touch but Google has not enabled it for some reason. I hope they do this in the next update. Scrolling through web pages on the Motorola Droid is very fast and smooth, unlike the iPhone there is no checkerboard background when you’re quickly scrolling through web pages. Holding down a link on a web page brings up a menu that shows you the URL the link leads to, and gives you the option of opening the link in a new window, bookmarking the link, saving the link, sharing the link through E-mail/Facebok/Gmail/Messaging, or just copying the URL of the link. Almost every website  I go to today has a favorites icon that helps me identify which tab  I have it open in, and the Droid’s browser displays the favorites icon for each website you visit. Neither the iPhone, nor the Palm Pre does that. When you open multiple windows in the browser, you can easily find and switch to the Window you want to go to. With the iPhone or the Palm Pre, you need to slide your windows left or right and find which one you want. The browser supports copy and paste, you can tap the “Select text” button from the menu, select your text, and it automatically gets copied to the clipboard. You can bookmark websites and save them to the Bookmarks menu or save them to your home screen. All the bookmarks in the bookmark menu display a screenshot of the website that you bookmarked and the title. The browser also has a “Find on page” feature that allows you to enter in some text and find a certain keyword you are looking for on a web page you’re viewing, unlike the iPhone. The browser also allows you to speak and search on Google without having to type what you’re searching for.

Multiple apps: One of the big features of the Motorola Droid is that it can run multiple apps. The iPhone can only run one application at a time. The Palm Pre can run multiple applications, but it lags whenever I have more than one application open. I was actually surprised when I opened multiple applications on the Droid, there was no lag and I was able to quickly switch between other applications without any problem.

Android Market: The applications store on the Droid is called the Android Market. You can download free applications without having to register an account, but you must register an account with Google Checkout in order to download paid applications. While browsing the Android Market, I downloaded the top Twitter application (Tweed) and noticed that the interface of it wasn’t that great compared to the interface that most of the iPhone apps use. The iPhone App Store has a lot of better applications than the ones found on the Droid, and it definitely has better games as well. If you are a games person, you definitely don’t want to get the Droid, there is no game on there that is worth buying in my opinion. Downloading applications from the Android market was a better experience than downloading applications from the App Store. I was able to download multiple apps without having to exit the Android Market application and I was also able to check how much percent of each application was downloaded. On the iPhone, I have to manually open the App Store application each time  wanted to download a new app.

Keyboard: The Droid has a physical keyboard with a D-Pad and a virtual keyboard. Typing on the physical keyboard wasn’t easy at first because the keys are flat, but after trying it a couple times I am now used to it. I prefer to use the virtual keyboard though, it’s easier to type on that. I wish Motorola hadn’t included a D-Pad on the physical keyboard, otherwise the keys would have been a little bigger. Typing on the virtual keyboard was very easy, but I did tend to make more mistakes than I did when I typed on the iPhone. The iPhone’s virtual keyboard is still the best.

Camera: Despite the Motorola Droid having a 5.0 Megapixel camera, it’s camera is no better than the iPhone’s camera. It can take videos and pictures, but the quality of the pictures isn’t that great. The camera application also tends to be slow or even freezes at times. I’m pretty sure that this is a software issue and it will be fixed in the next Android 2.0 update.

Customization: You can easily customize the icons for the applications you download, the theme of your phone, or even add widgets. iPhone users don’t have much customization options without having to jailbreak.

Conclusion

As of right now, the Motorola Droid is the best and fastest phone running Google’s Android 2.0 operating system. I liked the Motorola Droid, and I’ll definitely be keeping it over the iPhone. Why am I doing this? It’s on Verizon’s network, which is far more reliable than AT&T, it supports multi-tasking, the browser experience is great and it will support flash, and the screen size of the Motorola Droid is bigger than the iPhone. As a previous iPhone user, I will miss the games that I downloaded and played but I will also be more productive. This post was just a quick review, without any screenshots/videos, so I highly recommend that you go to your local Verizon Store and actually try this out and decide if you like it or not. You can check out a full review of the Motorola Droid with pictures and video at Engadget.

According to a report from OTR global, Apple has contracted to produce a hybrid iPhone which will be released near the end of next year. This iPhone will support CMDA, the network which Verizon Wireless runs on.

Today Geohot released his blacksn0w software unlock for the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS. If you would like to unlock your iPhone on firmware 3.1.2 and use them with other carriers, this tutorial will show you how.

blacksn0w is a software unlock developed by Geohot for both iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users. It works with the latest baseband 05.11.07 and is scheduled to be released on November 4.

You know that Motorola Droid phone aka “iPhone killer” that Verizon was showing off in their iDon’t commercial? Verizon has officially announced more details on it today! The Motorola Droid is coming to Verizon on November 6. The phone will cost $199 after a $100 mail in rebate.

The Motorola Droid will come preloaded with Google’s Android 2.0 (Eclair) operating system, and it will also support Adobe Flashplayer in early 2010. Unlike the iPhone, the Droid has the following key features:

• Full virtual and physical QWERTY keyboard
• Multi-tasking
• Adobe Flashplayer support
• 5 Megapixel camera
• Removable memory

Full specs can be found here. You can read Verizon’s full press release and see high-res pictures of the Droid here.

Two weeks ago, Geohot released his blackra1n iPhone 3.1.2 jailbreak. The blackra1n jailbreak software worked with all iPhones and iPod touches running on iPhone 3.1.2 firmware except for the newer 8GB iPod touch (MC models) that Apple released after the September 9 event. The blackra1n jailbreak also did not work on the newer iPhone 3GS which Apple patched the 24kpwn exploit in. blackra1n RC2 works with all iPhone and iPod touches, but the newer iPod touch and iPhone are only tethered jailbreaks. Tethered means that you will need to run blackra1n each time you reboot your iPhone or iPod touch.  If you were an iPhone 3G user, you most likely had to try many different methods to get blackra1n to work. Geohot has fixed the iPhone 3G problem so blackra1n should now jailbreak without any problem.

If you already did jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch, you don’t need to use blackra1n again.

Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 with blackra1n RC2

Here is how you can jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 firmware using blackra1n RC2.

1. Download blackra1n RC2 (Available for both Windows & Mac)

2. Follow the steps at my jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 post.

blackra1n on Windows 7

I tried blackra1n on Windows 7, but it crashed when I first tried opening it. To get blackra1n to work on Windows 7, do the following:

1. Right-click the blackra1n icon and click properties.

2. Click the Compatibility tab.

3. Under compatibility mode click the box to enable it and select Windows XP (Service Pack 2). Click OK, and then run blackra1n.

I’ve only tried this on a Windows 7 32-bit setup, but it should work on a 64-bit setup as well.

Many people are confused, and have e-mailed asking me when is daylight savings time 2009? This is also the top keyword many people are searching on Google. 2 years ago daylight savings time ended on the last Sunday of October, and this is why people are thinking that today daylight savings time ended. Daylight savings time actually ends on the first Sunday of November, so the daylight savings time for 2009 will be on November 1, 2009 at 2:00 AM.

Pictured above is the clock on my Windows 7 PC. It will automatically adjust the time, so I  don’t need to worry about adjusting my clock. If your clock won’t automatically adjust to daylight savings time, remember to change your clocks an hour behind on November 1 at 2:00 AM.

If you are a college student who purchased Windows 7 for $29, you should have received your download link for Windows 7 in your e-mail. I received mine, and like many other people I got an Unloading the box error message: We are unable to create or save new files in the folder in which this application was downloaded. Microsoft and Digital River are both aware of this problem and are working on fixing this.

This error message only appears for those people who are trying to update from a 32-bit Windows operating system to a 64-bit. You cannot upgrade from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system, according to Microsoft’s FAQ page. I would recommend just saving all your data to an external hard drive and then doing a clean install of Windows 7. If you still want to upgrade you can, but it’s not going to be easy. You’ll need to do a custom install, and follow the steps here.

As of this posting, Google is down, Gmail is down, and Adsense is down. Thankfully YouTube, and Blogger are still up. I’m wondering what happened. Did someone hack in to Google.com? It is unlikely for Google to ever go down. Every second they are losing a lot of revenue, and making many people disappointed with their services. A lot of my online activity involves Google, but now that it’s down I  actually have to get up and do something else.

If you want to search, I recommend you use Bing. Go to http://www.bing.com and search! Hopefully Google comes back up soon.

Update: Google was only down for Comcast users, but it’s back up now.

Update #2: Google and Gmail services are still down for RCN users.

Update#3: Are you on RCN and still having these issues? Follow the guide below to learn how to fix it. Credit goes to Ben Stewart for this solution!

1. Open your Control Panel.

2. Click on the Network and Sharing Center icon.

3. Find the name of the network you’re connected to, and then click on View status.

4. In the Networking tab click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and then click Properties on the bottom-right corner.

5. Select “Use the following DNS server addresses:” and enter in the following:

• Preferred DNS server: 207.172.3.16
• Alternate DNS server: 208.59.89.21

6. Click OK. Open your web browser, and Google/Gmail and other Google services should now be working. If this doesn’t work then call 800-RING-RCN and get help from RCN Tech Support.