About two weeks ago we found out that a virus has been released out in the wild and that it’s attacking jailbroken iPhone 3G/3GS users who haven’t changed their root password. At the time the ingenious coder was only trying to alert people that their smartphones are not as secure as they thought and that simple safety measure would keep them away from trouble, however, some less well intended hacker has refined the iPhone worm to actually steal sensitive details.
Fast forward to our days because today we caught wind that the Australian who started everything, has been offered a job as an iPhone application developer by a company called mogeneration. Although 21-year-old, Ashley Towns has publicly acknowledged that he’s in charge with the Ikee worm that made unauthorised modifications to people’s handsets, he was never under investigation, hence why he took the opportunity.
Ashley Towns wrote Ikee, a self-propagating program that changed the phone’s wallpaper to a picture of 80s pop singer Rick Astley.
Mr Towns has now been employed as a iPhone application developer for Australian firm mogeneration.
Ikee was not malicious but paved the way for a more serious variant which targeted users of the online bank ING.
There’s no doubt high-end mobile devices like the iPhone, Palm Pre or Android-powered phones will continue to increase in popularity in the years to come. With these smartphones boasting full HTML browsers, it’s only natural for Google to pitch its omnipresent AdSense product to mobile publishers in the same way they’ve been promoting AdSense for regular website monetization for years.
Asteroids –This is a great Windows Mobile version of an equally great classic. If you don’t mind using 200KB of your mobile phone’s memory, this is a must-have.
BeMario – A simple clone of the 8-bit Super Mario game, BeMario offers even the iconic jump and coin-snatching sounds.
BombSquad – This is a cool game which clones an equally cool Windows game, Minesweeper.
Break My Bricks – This game was developed specifically for the HTC Touch Pro, but it works on other Pocket PCs. The game feature various options for sound, vibration and ball speeds and has increasing levels of difficulty.
Buggles - This is the classic plastic bubble game ported to the Windows Mobile phones. It features an authentic ‘pop’ and realistic graphics.
Butterfly – Match sets of three or more bubbles to rescue butterflies in this fun puzzle game.
Crazy Matrix – Try to get as many lights glowing as you can in this addictive puzzle game.
Dope Wars – Buy and sell dope in this strategy classic.
EdgeWay Turbo 21 – If you’re fond of playing cards, you’ll like this game. Exercise your mind to make as many blackjacks as possible. Just a little warning: this game can be pretty addictive.
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The rumor mill has been put into high gear this morning by a discover of some code in the latest iPhone OS 3.0 beta release indicating that voice recognition may be a part of the new operating system.
Even though the newest beta developer code for for Apple’s iPhone 3.0 operating system has been out for about a week, people are still finding new things in it. There appears to be hooks in the new API for both voice recognition and voice synthesis, in the form of an OS component named Jabbler, already in the new operating system, according to a PC World story.
This new OS component will apparently be used to build an enhanced Springboard application, which is the software in the iPhone which controls the home screen and launches applications. This part of the OS will also be the basis of the new Spotlight search feature. It is possible that we have already seen part of the new Apple voice functionality built into the latest iPod shuffle, which is able to read items like playlists, song selections, and other text items in a synthesized voice.
Apparently this rumor started this morning when sources close to the iPhone OS 3.0 project told ars technica about the existence of the voice recognition part of the package. It seems surprising that it had not been noticed before, since the current beta developers code has been out for a week and has been pretty thoroughly investigated. Apple has not confirmed this rumor.