I’ve posted up a nicely unlocked and jailbroken version of the 3.0 iPhone firmware for all of the “2G” folks in the crowd. If you have an original iPhone, have it unlocked, and want to upgrade to all of the super awesome features of the 3.0 version … this is your lucky day. Two versions of the firmware – one with Icy and Cydia, one without – and complete instructions are posted right here.

As the cool kids say, “Woot”.

It’s worth noting that Damien Cox once reported on the twitter feed of the obviously fake Gary Bettman as the real thing. Then again, he also once reported that this clown was the real Jim Balsillie. It would seem that Damien has a fairly tenuous grasp on this whole technology thing.

Meanwhile, various fenderheads out there have decided that painting your Twitter portrait green will somehow put an end to the repressive goings on in Iran. Yes, I am sure that shady and semi-totalitarian regimes everywhere live in constant fear of … gasp … green avatars!

Jeezus. Grow up, people!

One thing that was missing from the the conclusion of the whole Phoenix Coyotes saga was “Fake Gary Bettman” – as much as I am not a Twitter guy, his feed was pretty funny. But he seemed to fade away just when things were getting good. Too bad – like the Fake John McCain, he could be a real hoot at times.

A Short Canadian Drama In One Act.

The scene: The newsroom at a mid-sized Canadian daily newspaper.

The players: Myself, and some members of the sports department.

The phone rings, and a sports reporter / page editor answers the phone. We’ll call him “Lem Sportsinterviews” – the names have been changed to protect the imbecilic. Lem listens to the caller, who is later revealed to be one of the “Make It Seven” media relations flunkies – ie: the poor saps who are charged with calling various members of the press each and every day to remind them how to cover the story and to portray Slippery Jim as a Selfless Canadian Hero.

Upon disentangling himself from the call, Lem turns to the rest of the office, rubs his hands and cackles with glee, and says “You’ve got to see this – Balsillie is getting aggressive now!” So we all gather round as Lem brings up the “Make It Seven” website and clicks on the link he was just breathlessly informed of.

“Look,” says Lem, “you can click here to send this letter right to the league! They will crash the NHL’s internet!”

“Uh,” says I, “did you look at the address? That is going to go to ‘gbettman@makeitseven.ca’ – why would Gary Bettman have an email address at ‘makeitseven.ca’? That is just stupid, who would fall for that?”

So Lem turns in his chair and looks at me with much pity and scorn and says “Dude, the guy invented the Blackberry, I think he would know better than you how to get mail to Bettman.”

Ooooookay, With nothing left to say, I just wandered off to find a convenient wall to beat my head against. Fortunately for my cranium, I found no such wall – cubicle partitions just don’t do the trick there – and instead blew off the steam by making my own version of the web page. Yes, it sends the letter to the same bogus address. But I think you will find my version much more entertaining.

Epilogue 1: Lem’s quotes, in case you wondered, are word for word. I tapped them down immediately … some things just need to be saved for posterity.

Epilogue 2: Not only does the Make It Seven email form not work for a lot of people, but the whole web page looks like crap on mobile browsers. You would think that the guy who “invented the Blackberry” would have a better grasp on these things.

A REMINDER: If you have a first or second generation iPhone that is either unlocked or jailbroken and you want to keep it that way, do not upgrade to version 3.0 just yet. A bit of patience is in order, but you also need not fret, you will probably be able to upgrade this weekend. I have done my phone with the standard tools from the dev team, and it works just fine. But my pal John did the same thing and his was a big ol’ botch. As soon as the kinks are worked out, I will post a handy one-shot firmware target for your downloading and installing pleasure.

Stay tuned.

The word in media circles today is that everyone’s favourite slimeball has told his PR team to forget about the print media, and concentrate solely on spinning every single morsel of news that comes down the pike to the electronic media – specifically tsn.ca, sportsnet.ca and the folks at the Fan590. Either he thinks the print hacks are already so deep in his pocket that it doesn’t matter, or he has decided that the only real court of public opinion is what people are seeing on TV, reading online, and hearing on the radio.

There are even whispers that he has a couple of flacks stationed in the Rogers building in downtown Toronto to keep an eye on and manage the output of the Sportsnet and The Fan. I wonder if they get their own office?

Sidney Crosby is a lot of things – diver, whiner, zero-personality mope – but I never thought that he would stoop to a public display of gutless poor sportsmanship. For someone who is usually more concerned about this public persona – and, by extension, his worth to Gatorade and Tim Hortons – than his actual on-ice performance, this is a huge surprise. Here’s a tip, Sid: Even if you don’t mean it, shake hands and pretend you do.

I wouldn’t have thought this guy could get any more un-likeable. Shows what I know.

Well played, Mr Bettman, well played indeed. I burns my ass to do so, but I have to tip my hat to your deft touch.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who actually thinks that Jimbo Balsillie will somehow get the upper hand and land himself an NHL team. When push comes to shove the fact of the matter is this: What Gary wants, Gary gets. Which means the Penguins do get the cup, and Hamilton is not getting a fly-by-night “stop in for two or three years of free rent while we wait for our real arena in Waterloo” hockey team.

Bring on the summer.

In just a few short hours, the entire NHL season comes down to one game. This should be a lock for the Red Wings – no matter how hard the NHL wants the Penguins to win, they are now snookered by their own rules. League policy says that no on-ice official – neither linesman nor referee – shall work two games in a row in a single series. This hoses Gary Bettman over big time. BIll McCreary, the league’s “make it so” referee, worked the last game, and none of the other zebras left on active duty are as willing to obviously hand a game to one team or the other.

So – Red Wings win in seven, unless the league finds a way to break their own rules and toss McCreary out there. I can’s see that happening, but If they are willing to be that blatant about it, then Sid gets to hoist his first cup. EIther way, you only have to watch the introductions of the referees to know where the game is going to go. If you hear the name McCreary at the start of the game, you know the big ol’ mug is headed to the Steel City.

It might save you some time if you have a busy Friday night planned.

No matter what else happens, there is one great thing about working at a newspaper. If you go to the can and forget to take reading material, the previous users have got you covered.

Am I the only person who has noticed that the new theme song for Hockey Night In Canada is essentially the theme from Dallas?

Actually, scratch that “essentially” part. It is the theme from Dallas. But with bagpipes.

There is a really cool little application called “Bushes” on the iPhone application store right now – it is a super-simple yet deceptively competent painting and illustration program. You use your finger as a brush, there are a mere 5 controls, and within that set of limitations you can (if you are talented in this sort of thing, which I am definitely not) produce some startlingly good art.

How startlingly good was shown when the cover of last week’s New Yorker magazine was painted with this app, on the little iPhone screen, by an artist just standing on the street corner. What is even more interesting (from a “new media” point of view”) is that there is a free “companion” application you can download that will “replay” the creation of the painting. Now you can share now only your finished work, but the process as well.

A couple of things of note here: One, like a lot of other developers, the guys who created it have knocked down the price in response to getting Suddenly Famous. You can get it now for four bucks or so, which is whim money. Two, the thought and care that was put into this application – and specifically the way the tools work – is verging on remarkable. I have used Photoshop for well over a decade, and consider myself more than a bit skilled there, but I still cant sit down and “paint”. But with this – well, I wont show you my rather amateur creation, but suffice to say it was easy, fun, intuitive, and better than anything I could ever do with a full desktop package.

If I had talent, this thing would be dangerous. Highest recommendation.

You have probably read nine grillion things about the new iPhone already, so after a quick run with it today I just want to say two things:

1 – The cut, copy and paste routines are insanely intuitive and natural.

2 – The visuals of the compass application are absolutely and totally beautiful.

I mean, I couldn’t stop staring at the damn thing. Just incredible work by that team. Wow.

A couple of people pointed out that it is impossible to use Tweeting Too Hard to it’s fullest if you don’t actually go on Twitter yourself. This is true – but even if you hate Twitter, you can still make an account for purposes like this. Just don’t go around broadcasting what you picked out of your teeth after dinner, or whatever the hell people are tweeting about today.

Bonus link: If you find someone extra pretentious and want to follow them so you can get their most puerile stiff for general mocking, there is a faboo site called Tweetstalk.com where you can follow people to your heart’s content – but without letting them (or anyone else) know.

Shhhh – it’s a secret!

A quick addition to the “working the phones on the Jim-a-thon” item:

The PR team that spends all of their days “guiding” the Canadian press on how to report on St. Jim and his battle against the evil dragons of the NHL is apparently on the up-and-up. He has hired them directly and they are not a bunch of hapless mopes at RIM that he has suckered into doing his dirty work. So hooray for a small victory in the name of decency there.

Whew.

My views on the whole Twitter thing are out there in black and white (or purple and mauve and green and blue and goldenrod and black and white, if you prefer) so I won’t go through all of that again. And normally that would be the end of it. Usually the way it works is that if you think something is stupid – Facebook, whore brands, chewing tobacco, whatever – you can just ignore it and it won’t have any sort of effect on your otherwise tidy life.

Usually.

The growing problem with Twitter, however, is twofold. Thing the first: The media. In typical fashion (ie: three years after it was actually a Big Deal) the churning mill of mainstream broadcasting and press has finally learned about it. Now you cant even get the weather report or maybe listen to some tired classic rock without some drone prattling on about some celebrity tweeting this and twittering that. Ugh. Thing the second (and very much the worst): There are now self-important wankers running around introducing themselves as “at so-and-so” and referring to their friends as “at whatshisface”. Honestly. I heard this twice today and both times had to bite back a big ol’ mouthful of puke. I mean, really.

Is there any recourse? Is there any way to give this whole thing a poke in the eye and feel somewhat good about it?

You’re goddamn right there is. Tweetingtoohard.com. It’s fucking brilliant.

I had a chance to play – briefly, to be sure – with the Palm Pre this morning. One of the tech editors had their mitts on a demo unit and I joined in with the general prodding and poking.

Not-so-random aside here: If you ever wondered what the qualifications are to be an editor or writer for the “tech” section at your local newspaper, it pretty much boils down to having enough skill to work your email on your own.

Ahem. Company aside, the hour or so I had with the thing was positive. This is not surprising – I have long been a Palm fan, I have owned many of their products. In fact, for the first four years that I was assigned a Blackberry I actually carried a Treo instead – much like the iPhone which was to come, the Treo was outclassed by the Blackberry when it came to email … and then kicked the ‘berry’s ass on everything else.

Palm’s problem was that the Treo is where they stopped. Unlike companies that understand that you have to keep moving and be ready to take the next marketspace and not just squat in the one you already have, Palm stood still. The upshot? When they started development on the Pre two years ago, they were already three years behind. So while the Pre is pretty much the absolute best product you could come up with in two years – in fact, given the time frame and what they had to work with, it is a hell of an achievement – it could be too late. Palm needed this product in 2006, because this ship sailed in 2007 and is right about now making port somewhere in the South Pacific.

If you want to put a fine point on it, here it is: Palm’s revenue last year was just over 1.2 billion dollars. Sounds like a lot – until you realize that Apple made a third of that (about $440 million) at one store last year. The mountain is tall. Really tall. And Palm now has a good pair of boots, but might be buried too deep to get any traction upward.

I hope they do well. A strong Palm is good for everyone – more voices in the smartphone market mean more innovation. But at a crucial juncture in this whole business, they stuck their head deep, deep inside their ass, and it could just be that they waited too long to pull it out. I am not going to hold my breath – it might be a long time until anyone gets to exhale.

Sadly (and annoyingly) I will not be at WWDC this year. No swag, no networking, no learning, no amazing cream puffs from Beard Papa. I must be undergoing punishment for something.

I find myself wondering what the hell it is that I did … and I hope that I at least enjoyed it.

However, even if you don’t go in person, you still get all of the development tools that the attendees get. So I was picking through my new “cocoa mobile” kit last night and there are a whole series of new routines in there for video processing, saving, and manipulation. This is interesting from a couple of points of view – the most intriguing of which is that it points to a brand new iPhone being ready to go. Why? Easy – the processor in the current generation of iPhones is good as far as these things go, but it really has no way to deal with video processing, it just doesn’t have the horses. If you are going to shoot and edit video on the iPhone, there needs to be a significant upgrade at both the processor and in the amount of RAM on board.

Better – from the average Joe point of view, anyway – is the fact that a new processor would also need a new and better battery. The current battery life is barely adequate (mostly thanks to the uselessness and low-tech nature of the ghetto 3G network) and any sort of an upgrade will be more than welcome.

Fingers crossed, for sure.

So. I am making only two predictions for the keynote this year. One, a new iPhone with a seriously upgraded processor, a better battery, and video capabilities. Two, there will be no stupid tablet computer.

Enjoy your weekend – and check back for the scoop one way or the other on Monday.

UPDATE: For those who asked, the chances of S. Jobs showing up at WWDC are exactly zero. He is by all accounts doing well, and has started emailing people at the Cupertino campus now and again, but is a long way from any public appearances. So look for Phil on stage tomorrow.

Wow. This is not how the league wanted things to go. Bob Duff over at the Windsor Star summed it up best:

“The television cameras caught NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in his seat during the second period as the Wings poured it on. Bettman’s expression said it all. Watching the team he’s tied his league’s future to go up in flames, he looked like a guy who was suffering from kidney stones.”

You can bet your ass that the league will have McCreary working game 6. This is not the sort of thing that they are apt to stand still for.

The obvious corollary here, of course, is that the Orlando Magic – having spoiled the NBA’s dream match-up – haven’t got a fucking prayer. The league will make the pay for their effrontery.

Have you been at all curious as to why the Canadian sports media is so desperate to fall all over themselves to heap praise on Jim Balsillie and his mostly sleazy attempt to buy the Phoenix Coyotes? These are generally hard-bitten and mostly jaded hacks who would fling mud at Mother Teresa if they thought it would get them an extra 3 inches of type above the fold. But they treat Slippery Jim like a cross between the second coming and the guy who invented pizza.

What gives?

Well, you might be surprised to know that Jimbo has a team of PR flacks working the phones and email pretty much all day long, reminding the members of the press just how they should be reporting on the ongoing circus. Judicious application of “exclusive” tidbits, interview opportunities, and free Blackberries keeps those wheels moving just the way Jimmy likes them.

Dirty pool? Maybe, maybe not. Everyone with a public face does it to some extent, to be sure, but it is still kind of slimy. Either way, my only hope is that these are independent PR people that he has hired himself, and not some poor marketing types up at RIM that have been brow-beaten into doing his dirty work. I have seen that sort of thing before, and it is just about the worst thing that can happen to you in a workplace.

Fingers crossed.

You may not know this, but Gary Bettman used to be one of the head honchos of the NBA. He must still look in on the hardwood-n-hoops set once in a while, because the Stanley Cup final just took a rather obvious page from the NBA’s playbook.

If you watched any of either conference finals (yes, finals, there are two conference finals, one for the west and one for the east) then you will know that there was a painfully transparent mandate to the officials to do everything in their power to arrange a Kobe .vs. LeBron dream series for all the marbles. The Nuggets never had a prayer, and the fact that Orlando did manage to beat both a stacked officiating deck and the Cavaliers is a miracle that ranks right up there with a flaming bush and tablets from the mount.

I mean, I am sure at one point I saw Dwight Howard foul out for coughing.

Which is all a roundabout way of casting a jaundiced eye on the way that the officiating played out on Tuesday night. As far as Detroit is concerned, it is pretty much luck of the draw now. If they get company men like Bill McCreary or Brad Watson on the whistle for any of the remaining games of this series, they might as well stay in the dressing room and play parcheesi. Their only hope now is that somehow they get two more games without either of those corporate puppets on the draw sheet.

Otherwise, there is a new champ in town.

“Stream of consciousness” books are not always the easiest things to deal with. Certainly enough “classic Irish literature” appeared on my plate during high school to turn me off of anything of that free-wheeling kind of nature, so much so that when I first came across Roddy Doyle I had no way to appreciate something I really wanted to get into.

TIme does heal all wounds, thought, and I am finally getting around to making things right with Roddy. Which has nothing at all to do with what I am actually writing about here, since Sunday Money is not by or about Roddy Doyle. In fact, it is about as far from Roddy as you can get.

It’s about NASCAR.

The deal here is that MacGregor (that’s Scottish, not Irish, if you are keeping score) and his wife (who has a surname neither Scottish nor Irish) took all their money, bought an RV, and followed the NASCAR circuit for an entire season. Driving back and forth across the U.S. of A. they hit every race over a course of 8 months and about 70,000 kilometers of highway. He wanted to see what it was all about – where the fuss, where the passion, where the good-old-boys-with-tattoos-of-Dale-Earnhardt were coming from.

It’s a good read, it’s a fun read, and unlike the case with Finnigan’s fucking Wake, the stream of conciousness thing works here, the book reads like the general chaos of a race, the subject – and MacGregor’s semi-tortured metaphors – are lively enough to stand up to the format and the pacing.

You don’t have to be a NASCAR fan to enjoy this, and when push comes to shove on the back bumper, it’s probably better if you aren’t one of the faithful, since you then get to start the book where the author did – as one of the curious-but-sneering-at-the-hillbilly-spectacle mainstream, wondering how hard it can really be to just turn left a lot.

Tons of fun to be had here. Yee-haw.