16,000,000,000: The number of dollars spent on bottled water by consumers in the United States in 2007.

A lot of people were seriously jazzed about the rather robust new VPN capabilities built-in to the new iPhone firmware. All sorts of things that just haven’t been doable from a smartphone – VNC to server desktops, full LDAP connections to your Exchange server, desktop shadowing and remote control – are now on the table and one finger-tap away.

If, that is, you can actually get the VPN working. Here is the rub: The vast majority of corporate VPN setups work on Cisco’s IPsec setup. This isn’t a bad thing – IPSec is far and away the best and most usable VPN structure going. The problem is that the IPSec setup usually involves your IT department issuing a certificate in a .PCF file with your group credentials. Instead of manually setting up your desktop VPN client, you just import this little file. The certificate has the group login and password encrypted (to keep it away from the prying eyes of the plebes, apparently) and the network dudes are usually loathe to give out the plaintext version to anyone, even people in other arms of the IT department.

This doesn’t help at all when you try to fill out the VPN client on your iPhone.

Fortunately, simple instructions for getting around this are now at hand. As in right here. If your corporate VPN is a Cisco IPSec system, you have a PCF file, and you want to get on the VPN with your iPhone, then this post is for you. Sit down and pay attention.

First, locate your .PCF file on your computer and open it in a text editor – you will need to refer to it shortly.

Next. go to the VPN setup on your iPhone (Settings – General – Network) and then tap the “right arrow” beside the VPN entry. Tap “Add VPN Configuration” and select the IPSec tab from the three at the top. You’ll know you are in the right place when you see the groovy Cisco logo at the top of the screen. Once you are there, fill it out thusly:

Description: This can be anything you want, but it would help to make it something useful since you can have multiple VPN configurations saved. If you are really stuck, try “Work”.

Server: This is the name of the VPN server at your workplace. You can find the name listed in your desktop VPN client, or you can find the IP address beside the “Host=” entry in the .PCF file. I would use the name if possible, just in case they do any DNS juggling at work.

Account: Your username at work. I assume you know this.

Password: Leave it blank – your VPN system will demand it every time you log in anyway.

Group Name: Time to peer into the .PCF file you opened earlier. Look for the “GroupName=” entry. Type in that value here – and remember, it is case sensitive.

Secret: This is the group password, and the thing that the network guys in your IT department aren’t usually willing to part with. If you look in the .PCF file, you will probably see that the “GroupPwd=” item is blank, and instead there is some gawdawful long string of crap beside the “enc_GroupPwd=” entry instead. This is the encrypted password mentioned earlier, and it useless to you as is. However – the hash that Cisco uses for encryption is public knowledge, so all you have to do is copy the string from your text editor and paste it into the blank on this web page: http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/bin/cisco-decode. You will get back an unencrypted string (yes, it may still look like garbage, but trust me, it will work) and that is what you type in beside “Secret”.

That is it. Hit the Save button, and you are done. Now when you go to your Settings on the iPhone, there will be a new switch in the upper section labeled VPN. Tap it and your phone will connect, ask you for your normal work password, and get you in. You know you are connected by the little “VPN” flag at the very top of the screen. Disconnect if needed by using the same button.

NOTE: If for some bizarre reason your .PCF file has the password in the “GroupPwd=” entry, just use it as is – you can ignore the decryption part and just put it in under “Secret”.

OTHER NOTE: The Cisco logo is one of the best corporate logos of all time. It never fails to amaze me with it’s general awesomeness.

It’s been a long time since I pimped a workday-wasting browser game, so let’s rectify that little omission right now. Bubble Tanks 2 puts you in charge of a mass of bubble that drives around shooting other bubbles. The key here is that after you blow up your bubbly opponents, you can gather up the bubble wreckage to make your own tank bigger. Get it big enough and you can upgrade to a tougher or faster tank – you decide which upgrade path you want to take – and eventually you get to the King Bubble Tank Of Doom.

Keyboard to move, mouse to aim and fire, and stay away from anything red on the screen. Everything else, you can discover on your own.

Click here to play.

A couple of people have dropped a note asking where the screenshot function has gone – they are doing the “home button / silent toggle” from version 1.14 and getting nothing but air for their troubles. Clam down, kids … the screenshot routines are still there, Apple just decided -for whatever reason – to change the trigger.

If you want to do a screenshot on your 2.0 iPhone (regardless of whether it is first gen or 3G) you hold down the home button and then press the power/sleep button. The screen flashes white, and your current screen is captured in the “Current Roll” in your photos. Enjoy,

1: The number of engineering degrees earned by Donald Sutherland.

I know that a lot of you have unlocked first-generation iPhones and you have been jonesing to upgrade to 2.0. Sadly, that has not been possible, because upgrading to the new 2.0 software meant re-chaining your phone to a specific cellular provider … something which was either annoying and inconvenient (if you lived in the U.S. of A.) or the kiss of death (if you live in Rogers-land).

Not possible … until now.

Here, for your edification and educational pleasure, is a super-simple way to upgrade your first-generation iPhone to an unlocked version of the 2.0 software – you get all of the goodies that come with 2.0 and a phone that is still free and 100% untethered. Amen, brother.

Before we go on, however, a couple of things that you absolutely must be aware of:

THING 1: You will lose all of your Installer applications, and you will not be getting any more any time soon. Fortunately, most every application that was available on Installer has a shiny new counterpart in the Application Store, and most of them are free-as-in-beer free. If there is something you absolutely must have in your Installer software load, you might want to browse though the App Store in iTunes first.
If you can’t find a replacement, then you might need to wait a bit – that is your call. Personally, I think 2.0 is awesome enough that you should go anyway, but your mileage may vary.

THING 2: This only works for first-generation phones that are being upgraded to 2.0. There is currently no way to unlock a 3G iPhone. Period. You can jailbreak a 3G iPhone but there isn’t really much point in that since nothing more is coming down the Installer pipeline anyway. If you have a 3G phone, you already have version 2.0 of the software, and you will just have to suck up the part where you are probably tied to a lame data package forced upon you by the criminals and pirates who run the wireless carrier industry.

THING 3: If you haven’t already updated iTunes to version 7.7, don’t do it until step 3.

So – if you are good with all that, have a first-gen phone and don’t mind getting your apps through the iTunes store, we are ready to cook with some serious gas.

Step 1: Download this file here:

iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_GeekboyDotCa.ipsw.zip

This is an all-in-one version 2.0 firmware file that I built up and then tweaked to do a seamless restore without a lot of dicking around. It also cures the problem with Pwned that doesn’t let you do legitimate sync operations with an unlocked phone. Once you download the file, rename it by taking the “.zip” off the end of the name. This isn’t a zip file, I just named it that way so ghetto Windoze web browsers wouldn’t fuck it up when downloading. The resulting file should be named “iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_GeekboyDotCa.ipsw”. Put it somewhere convenient so that you can easily find it when the time comes. The desktop would be ideal.

Step 2: Sync your iPhone with iTunes. This will make sure you have a backup of all of your crap, because we are wiping your phone about 2 steps further on.

Step 3: Get the newest version of iTunes. Either do it from Software Updater or surf on over to Apple’s site and download it yourself. You must have version 7.7 of iTunes to go any further. If for some reason you have already upgraded, well, then there is no step 3.

Step 4: With your iPhone plugged in, start up the new version of iTunes. Say no to any messages that might come up offering to check for new software. Once you are in iTunes proper, go to the “summary” tab of your iPhone and you will see a button labelled “Restore”. Hold down the SHIFT key (for you Windoze types) or the OPTION key (for you Mac types) and press the Restore button. You must be holding the key down when you click! This will start a restore, but not from the Apple servers – it will ask you for your own restore file. When it does, just point it to the IPSW file you saved in step 1 (did you remember to strip the .zip off the end of the name?).

Step 5: Sit back. iTunes will restore the software to the phone, and eventually reboot it. When the phone comes back to life, it will automatically make the necessary changes to the bootloader and the baseband. Leave your phone plugged in, watch, but don’t touch. You definitely want to let this finish on it’s own. When it is done its thing, it will either restart on it’s own or ask you to do so. Either way, when your phone restarts you are free and clear – running version 2.0 and totally unlocked. ‘Grats.

Step 6: Sync your phone with iTunes. This will bring all of your crap and settings back, and you are ready to rock.

TOTALLY OPTIONAL STEP 7: There is now an application called “Cydia” on your phone. It is the successor to Installer, and you can do two things here. One, ignore it, because there is nothing coming down that way any more, or two, update it if you want to use it later. If you do decide to update it, run it once and agree to the “necessary update” it will want to do. Follow the instructions, and after a bit it will be up to date but more-or-less useless for now.. Otherwise, just ignore the damn thing and get on to the goodies in the App Store

That’s it. Finis. Easiest unlock ever. I will be posting all of this over to the “Unlock Your iPhone” page shortly, but I thought all of you would want this “front end” notification right now. Get clicking, and have fun!

Also, big thanks to L-A for pointing out the typo in the Windoze restore instructions there. Whew!

I probably don’t have to come out and tell you this, but if you have an unlocked or jailbroken iPhone, do not upgrade your iTunes to the new 7.7 version, and do not under any circumstances upgrade your first generation iPhone to version 2.0 … yet. You won’t brick your phone, but you will take it back to a tethered state, and being able to buy applications from the iTunes store is poor consolation if you loose your freedom to use your phone the way you want.

Wait a few days. As soon as a way to unlock version 2.0 is available, I will post it here.

Patience, grasshopper … patience.

UPDATE: You can now upgrade to 7.7 if you are also upgrading your iPhone to version 2.0 – see all of the instructions here.

So the public faces of RIM have been pooh-poohing the touch screen on the iPhone, with the big quote making the rounds being Mike Lazaridis’ somewhat dismissive one-line critique:

I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it.

Wow. Mike and his friends must be quite the spazzes then, because they would be the only people I have seen to date who can’t type on the iPhone. And my phone has been pawed by a lot of people.

It would be easy to dismiss Mike as a fool at this point, because if he believed what he was saying then he would be dooming the Blackberry to increasing and eventually fatal irrelevance. When the Blackberry came out, doing mobile email was the number one thing on everyone’s wish list. Now, however, it has slipped to number two. What people want most out of their handheld – besides the phone* – is the ability to surf the web properly. And if you have ever used the web with the Blackberry’s built-in browser and either the thumbwheel or the pearl, you know that it is a painful and trying experience. Capital P, capital T. A lot of people grudgingly put up with this until the iPhone came along, and suddenly the gap was so vast and so deep that people started saying “hey, what the fuck?”

But, as I have stated many times in the past, Mike Lazaridis is not a fool. He knows that this gap is going to hose them over, and the quote above is 100% a smokescreen. RIM is working on a device that the marketing people want to call the “Thunder”, but that the engineers are referring to as “AK”.

“Apple Killer”.

So what makes an Apple Killer? Well, for starters, a touch screen. With a virtual keyboard on the screen so that the screen can be nice and big for web and video. And the screen and keyboard rotate automatically into landscape mode when you rotate the device. Even better, there is a hot rumour that the web browser uses Apple’s Webkit as it’s engine. Sound like a copy of anything you have seen selling like hotcakes lately?

Will it work? Hard to say – a touchscreen, landscape-mode, scalable web browser is a huge step for the moribund tech types up in Waterloo, and will close the gap considerably. And the Blackberry still has a slightly better email solution. But if they stick with the insanely kludgy “ribbon” UI and don’t find a way to make the auxiliary phone functions work better as an information manager, then it might all be for naught.

But either way, you can bet that Mike is typing on a touch screen every fucking day right now. I betcha a dollar.