Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10...orsPicksArea.0


Quote: If Google wasn't Google, there's a fair chance that its new mobile application for the iPhone wouldn't be allowed in the App Store.

That's because Google Mobile is tapping into iPhone technology that is supposed to be off-limits to third-party developers.

The latest version of the search giant's mobile iPhone application has been well received, but it might be impossible to duplicate or improve upon the application, unless developers are willing to break Apple's rules for iPhone applications.

When you make a phone call on the iPhone, a proximity sensor detects when the phone is right next to your head, and it turns the screen off to prevent you from inadvertently hanging up the phone with your face.

Google's application also uses the proximity sensor to detect when the phone approaches your head. That is is kosher under the iPhone application guidelines given to developers, as long as it is used solely for that on-off functionality. But Google uses it to let you search the Web with your voice, just as if you were making a phone call.

Google's application both activates the proximity sensor and delivers an audible prompt to voice your search terms, and the only way it can do this is by using an API that isn't part of the public list Apple has put together for developers, according to Gruber. Think of an API as helpful code that an operating system shares with an application to make it easier for that application to get things done.

But further research done by Sadun shows that Google is actually going beyond its use of unpublished APIs in the Google Mobile application to call on so-called "private" frameworks that are supposed to be strictly off-limits to anyone but Apple, an offense that can result in banishment from the App Store. A framework is a more general set of building blocks for an application that requires more custom development work than an API.

Of course, Google Mobile can still be found on the App Store.

So what can we conclude?

One, as we already knew, the App Store approval process doesn't make sense: applications that don't violate any public guidelines are rejected for nebulous reasons, while applications that violate the rules sail through.

Two, if you play by the rules of the developer program, your application won't be able to compete against those created by developers who violate the rules and get away with it because either Apple missed the violation or because they are politically connected industry titans.

"If regular developers are forced to play by the rules, but Google is allowed to use private APIs, just because they're Google, the system is rigged," Gruber wrote.

Three, since Apple is under no obligation to support applications that make use of unpublished APIs or private frameworks, future firmware updates or operating-system releases could break those applications.

Google, of course, is a little different than your average iPhone developer. CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board of directors, and the company has received favorable treatment before from Apple with regards to the iPhone, such as Apple's decision to grant YouTube and Google Maps prominent placement on the home screen of the iPhone before the device was officially open to third-party developers.

Based on most accounts, Google Mobile is an excellent iPhone application. But would a similar application created by an average developer have been allowed to make it onto the App Store?

It seems that Apple has been rejecting applications that compete with its future plans. Might the company also be extending that courtesy to favored partners?
Hmmm... interesting read


(if this is wrong section please move) sorry :o

At first it seemed that the approval process for new apps for the iPhone App Store were pretty cut and dry. You know, they can't duplicate the functionality of the on-board apps like Mail and iPod,...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/bdemailer.jpg" width="481" height="321" style="display:block;" /At first it seemed that the approval process for new apps for the iPhone App Store were pretty cut and dry. You know, they can't duplicate the functionality of the on-board apps like Mail and iPod, they can't use too much bandwidth and they can't cause a security hazard. That first rule is why apps like a href="http://gizmodo.com/5053232/apple-rejects-mailwrangler-app-for-leading-to-user-confusion"MailWrangler/a and a href="http://gizmodo.com/5049325/app-store-blacklist-podcaster-too-itunesy"Podcaster/a were given the boot; they were too close to those built-in apps. But now, an app called BdEmailer, which is basically a straight-up email program, is available in the App Store. Just what the hell is going on?/p pLook, we think it's awesome that BdEmailer is available. The more choices, the better, which is why we wish MailWrangler and Podcaster were available. BdEmailer lets you type emails with the landscape keyboard, for god's sake. But at this point, it's completely unclear as to what keeps an app out of the store. Was this a deliberate move, or will it get yanked from the store in a matter of hours, the result of a sleepy gatekeeper letting it through accidentally?/p pWe're hoping this is not an accident but a sign of more leniency from Apple in terms of what they'll allow in the App Store. But I doubt it. Get this one now while you still can, folks. [a href="http://web.me.com/alanc/BdEmailer/Information.html"BdEmailer/a via a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/22/apple-approves-third-party-email-client-for-the-app-store-viola/"Engadget/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c522b72fd821073f0d9b18a97d44d7a8p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c522b72fd821073f0d9b18a97d44d7a8p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c522b72fd821073f0d9b18a97d44d7a8" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=NbqHXwRz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=42HTojNk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=eLo2fUc7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=eLo2fUc7" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=SInJJIrG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=SInJJIrG" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/sl3YLlpTWcc" height="1" width="1"/

Recently we were sent a PR email about an iPhone app called BdEmailer. No big deal, press releases about new iPhone applications show up in our box in large bundles every day -- but this one was different. According to the release, the program is the "the first wide email iPhone app that supports client SMTP." That means, in essence, that it duplicates an exact function of Apple's Mail application on the iPhone and touch. That's kind of a huge deal, because up until this point we've been led to believe that this duplication of functionality is one of the company's red flags when it comes to approval. Now mind you, we're not complaining. The idea of having more apps to choose from for doing things like sending email is a great idea, but Apple... what the hell is going on? You refused MailWrangler and Podcaster for similar reasons, yet BdEmailer passes through your review process, SMTP functionality intact? This means one of two things as far as we can tell -- either you've relaxed your policies on duplicate functionality, or you've gotten incredibly lazy when it comes to approving applications. We're inclined to believe it's the latter, as BdEmailer has a fair share of bugs that need working out, but really, people need some clarification here on what will and won't pass -- and moving the goalpost all the time isn't going to help.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/22/a...p-store-viola/

Recently we were sent a PR email about an iPhone app called BdEmailer. No big deal, press releases about new iPhone applications show up in our box in large bundles every day -- but this one was different. According to the release, the program is the "the first wide email iPhone app that supports client SMTP." That means, in essence, that it duplicates an exact function of Apple's Mail application on the iPhone and touch. That's kind of a huge deal, because up until this point we've been led to believe that this duplication of functionality is one of the company's red flags when it comes to approval. Now mind you, we're not complaining. The idea of having more apps to choose from for doing things like sending email is a great idea, but Apple... what the hell is going on? You refused MailWrangler and Podcaster for similar reasons, yet BdEmailer passes through your review process, SMTP functionality intact? This means one of two things as far as we can tell -- either you've relaxed your policies on duplicate functionality, or you've gotten incredibly lazy when it comes to approving applications. We're inclined to believe it's the latter, as BdEmailer has a fair share of bugs that need working out, but really, people need some clarification here on what will and won't pass -- and moving the goalpost all the time isn't going to help.

Filed under: Cellphones

Apple approves third-party email client for the App Store, violates its own policies originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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div align="center"a href="http://web.me.com/alanc/BdEmailer/Information.html"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/11/bdemailer.jpg" //abr //div Recently we were sent a PR email about an iPhone app called BdEmailer. No big deal, press releases about new iPhone applications show up in our box in large bundles every day -- but this one was different. According to the release, the program is the "the first wide email iPhone app that supports client SMTP." That means, in essence, that it duplicates an emexact function/em of Apple's Mail application on the iPhone and touch. That's kind of a huge deal, because up until this point we've been led to believe that this duplication of functionality is one of the company's red flags when it comes to approval. Now mind you, we're not complaining. The idea of having more apps to choose from for doing things like sending email is a great idea, but Apple... what the hell is going on? You refused MailWrangler and Podcaster a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/25/engadget-cares-save-us-from-apples-groundbreaking-developer-s/"for similar reasons/a, yet BdEmailer passes through your review process, SMTP functionality intact? This means one of two things as far as we can tell -- either you've relaxed your policies on duplicate functionality, or you've gotten incredibly lazy when it comes to approving applications. We're inclined to believe it's the latter, as BdEmailer has a fair share of bugs that need working out, but really, people need some clarification here on what will and won't pass -- and moving the goalpost all the time isn't going to help.pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/cellphones/" rel="tag"Cellphones/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/22/apple-approves-third-party-email-client-for-the-app-store-viola/"Apple approves third-party email client for the App Store, violates its own policies/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:39:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://web.me.com/alanc/BdEmailer/Information.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/22/apple-approves-third-party-email-client-for-the-app-store-viola/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1380074/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/22/apple-approves-third-party-email-client-for-the-app-store-viola/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iFp-xbX5izCfQL3z9bgGHwvDVH0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iFp-xbX5izCfQL3z9bgGHwvDVH0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=Fa4Bs0XE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=Fa4Bs0XE" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=gcfH0QwY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=gcfH0QwY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/5gX6NqlRg88" height="1" width="1"/

iScrapbook 2.0

iScrapbook, the easiest way to design and print beautiful scrapbooks. iScrapbook is a digital scrapbook tool designed for both novice and professional scrapbookers. Its class-leading assortment of design tools are sophisticated, yet so easy to use that everyone can achieve stunning results. iScrapbook manages then entire scrapbook process from page design to album organization.

iScrapbook will help you get more scrapbooking done in less time with more professional results than traditional scrapbooking.

WHAT'S NEWVersion 2.0:

• iScrapKit browser manages your artwork and makes it searchable
• VIew pages side-by-side to see exactly how they appear in books
• Two-page spreads for creating dramatic layouts
• Share your memories with a full-screen animated slideshow
• Dramatic speed improvements to loading pages, printing, and exporting
• Export albums in TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and PDF formats
• Trim To Page hides objects outside the page for a quick preview
• Six shapes are ideal for cropping photos for use with photo corners
• Hold down the space bar and drag the mouse to scroll the canvas
• Multiple objects can be resized together without grouping
• Paste and Match Style feature matches the style of text nearby
• Added Duplicate Page, Duplicate Album, Delete Page and Delete Album menu commands.
• Added page selector popup control that shows the number of pages in an album and can instantly jump to a specific page number.
• Added minus buttons above page and album tables

REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.4 or later.
DEVELOPERChronos L.C.
DOWNLOADS3387
DOWNLOAD NOW (33 MB)
More information

Got this via the website’s mail form:

Hi, Sorry to bother you, I was wondering if you would be able to help me. I play an online MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online and a program called windows packet editor recently came to my attention I was wondering if you’d be able to spare a few moments to give me a better understanding of WPE and how it can be used to *ahem* alter packets of data so I might be able to say duplicate items or alter certain in game values in DDO. Kindest regards, [name redacted]

Sure, here’s the answer:

No.

The reasons:

• Unless there are egregiously bad security problems with the DDO protocol, hacking packets on your end should only change the way things look on your end. See my previous post “How to hack an MMO.”
• Virtual world developers do not actively help destroy the virtual worlds of their colleagues.
• 

pFiled under: a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/utilities/" rel="tag"Utilities/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/windows/" rel="tag"Windows/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/freeware/" rel="tag"Freeware/a/pa href="http://cyber-d.blogspot.com/2005/10/cyber-ds-auto-delete-101.html"img hspace="4" height="292" width="250" vspace="16" border="0" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.downloadsquad.com/media/2008/11/auto-delete.jpg" alt="Auto Delete" //aEarlier today we showed you how to a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/help-how-do-i-tidy-up-a-disorganized-hard-drive/"keep your hard drive organized/a with tools to remove duplicate files and clean up your file and folder management system. But what if you want to just delete all the gunk you download and never use? That's what a href="http://cyber-d.blogspot.com/2005/10/cyber-ds-auto-delete-101.html"Auto Delete/a is for.br /br /This free Windows utility lets you automatically delete old files in a given folder. You can fine tune the settings to delete files that have been hanging out for a day, a year, or somewhere in between. Files can be moved to the recycle bin or permanently deleted. And you can choose whether to include subfolders or not.br /br /It might be a good idea to set Auto Delete to monitor your web browser's default download directory. Odds are if you haven't moved a file out of that directory after a few weeks, you're not really going to use it and it's just taking up space on your hard drive.br /br /[via a href="http://shellcity.net/?egg=a"Shell Extension City/a]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/keep-your-hard-drive-clean-with-auto-delete/"Keep your hard drive clean with Auto-Delete/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com"Download Squad/a on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://cyber-d.blogspot.com/2005/10/cyber-ds-auto-delete-101.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/keep-your-hard-drive-clean-with-auto-delete/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/forward/1379662/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/keep-your-hard-drive-clean-with-auto-delete/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8O3Dj3C4SoWnAq6CVRSFNxBWQYs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8O3Dj3C4SoWnAq6CVRSFNxBWQYs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=TD6McOfW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=TD6McOfW" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=RRelgYj4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=RRelgYj4" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~4/pQBD0SqvHAU" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/utilities/" rel="tag"Utilities/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/windows/" rel="tag"Windows/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/productivity/" rel="tag"Productivity/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/freeware/" rel="tag"Freeware/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/ask-dls/" rel="tag"Ask DLS/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/search/" rel="tag"Search/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/64484304@N00/347060028/"img hspace="4" height="352" width="500" vspace="4" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.downloadsquad.com/media/2008/11/flop.jpg" //a/div br /DS Reader Jamie wrote recently looking for some assistance, saying:br /br /emI'm not the most disorganized of individuals: my music is in my music folder, etc. etc., but i have a fatal flaw. I put random stuff on my desktop, then it gets cluttered. My solution has been, in a word, poor. I put all the random stuff into a folder that usually goes by the name of strongmisc/strong or strongsort this out later/strong. I was wondering what kind of advice you'd give for someone in this situation other than, "strongGet off your ass and go through it all/strong!!"br /br //emFor starters, Jamie, you hit the nail on the head - but don't fret, chum, you're not alone. Though I've planned ahead far enough to partition my drives on the laptop I'm using to post this article, the D: drive is a nightmarish mess of downloads, old backups, ISO images, and other files.br /br /Let's get started by downloading your choice of duplicate file finders, like a href="http://www.easyduplicatefinder.com/"Easy Duplicate Finder/a or a href="http://www.clonespy.com/"CloneSpy/a. Both work well, and will save time by getting rid of unnecessary files before we start organizing. For the rest of the work, we're going manual - we created our messes that way, so that's how we're cleaning them up!pa href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/help-how-do-i-tidy-up-a-disorganized-hard-drive/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emHelp! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive?/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/help-how-do-i-tidy-up-a-disorganized-hard-drive/"Help! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive?/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com"Download Squad/a on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/help-how-do-i-tidy-up-a-disorganized-hard-drive/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/forward/1379218/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/21/help-how-do-i-tidy-up-a-disorganized-hard-drive/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/GEEudy_H4SFtjw-oQB3R0DvH1E4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/GEEudy_H4SFtjw-oQB3R0DvH1E4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=5nX6pmww"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=5nX6pmww" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=9ZCuFfrY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=9ZCuFfrY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~4/PQTsmOgWGMY" height="1" width="1"/

dhcpcd is an RFC2131 compliant DHCP client. It is fully featured and yet lightweight: the binary is 46k as reported by size(1) on Linux i386. It has support for duplicate address detection, IPv4LL, carrier detection, and a merged resolv.conf and ntp.conf for which other DHCP clients require third party tools. hr / strongLicense:/strong BSD License (revised) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release no longer sends a ClientID by default (which mirrors the in-kernel DHCP client). pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/mM6ojxPORTO7C89A3KeKXAUr1cY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/mM6ojxPORTO7C89A3KeKXAUr1cY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/_ybzzofT3dw" height="1" width="1"/

dhcpcd is an RFC2131 compliant DHCP client. It is fully featured and yet lightweight: the binary is 46k as reported by size(1) on Linux i386. It has support for duplicate address detection, IPv4LL, carrier detection, and a merged resolv.conf and ntp.conf for which other DHCP clients require third party tools. hr / strongLicense:/strong BSD License (revised) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release no longer sends a ClientID by default (which mirrors the in-kernel DHCP client). pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/eC9cVbLKvEX7BME4Ub5Pyq7cgMM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/eC9cVbLKvEX7BME4Ub5Pyq7cgMM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/_ybzzofT3dw" height="1" width="1"/

After school today, Matt and Anthony came in with Anthony's busted Ipod Video. They asked me how good I was at fixing iPods. Never having been inside an iPod before, I replied, "well let's see what you've got." It appears that the back came off the ipod, and now it was bricked. Anthony was pretty upset, wondering if all his songs would be missing, and what he would do without his beloved tunebox. It would not power up at all. He showed how it could be opened by grabbing at it with his nails and separating the back. so much for specialized antimar tools.

We did a few searches on replacing ipod batteries. One page that looked promising turned out to be about the wrong generation. Not knowing which model it was, we looked up the various models to get the generation right. His turned out to be a 5th gen iPod.

Next we needed to know what to expect inside. I could see a couple of ribbon cables that appeared to have just pulled out of their fittings. If they could be placed properly back into their slots, that would be fine. They needed to go back into place in such a way that the back could actually be reattached.

Inside, there was a bunch of cool stuff. The 80gig hard drive was incredibly small. I couldn't believe how much capacity could be stuffed into such a small package. The screen was neat too. Real thin, backlight coming from the top. There was some foam and spacers in there to keep things from flopping around. Everything was held together with ribbon cables.

The ribbon cables would be fine as long as they did not get torn. I found the fitting for one of them on the side, and saw that there was a flip latch to hold it together. After securing that one, the next was the one at the bottom. We got it to go into the slot, clicked the case together and hit the power button. About this time, Anthony got about his 50th text message of our short session. The Ipod would not fire up. Anthony was upset. Then his father called. He explained that he was in the middle of fixing his iPod. There was some discussion of Best Buy and their warrantee policy. I was pretty sure that there was no chance of this relic being still covered.

While they were talking, I cracked the thing open again and took a look at the second fitting, down near the charger port. It was stiffer, with reinforcement of a piece of white plastic. I figured that it had to be that the fitting was not all the way in. I used my Warrantee Voider to get the ribbon into the fitting all the way. Once I got it running, I showed it to him, and he reported happily to Dear Old Dad that all was well.

On looking at the catches on the case, we could see that one of them was more worn than the rest. I figured that it would be good for a while, but it would eventually pull apart, so I suggested that we make a skin for his newly functioning Ipod. He said he had nothing planned, but I could tell that now that his iPod was running, his daily routine was about to resume. We didn't have a whole lot of time.

First we looked up the dimensions for the 5th generation iPod. The thing I was looking for was a good, full dimension drawing that I could use to make the image for the skin. I wanted to make it so that the sticker on the front would reach over to the back and hold the two together. The image and dimensions did not jump out of the browser at me, so we grabbed a ruler and went over to the computer to design up a skin.

We used CutStudio, which comes bundled with the Roland CAMM1. I don't like the software much, but it ports right to the cutter. Once you have the thing designed, you can only cut it, I have not been able to find a way to export it for editing in a more powerful program like Gimp or Inkscape.

Rather than having him do the design work, I chose to do it myself. His texts and calls were coming with increasing frequency, and I knew word had gotten out that he no longer had an excuse to be absent from his pressing duties. We had to work fast. A couple of quick measurements, some alignment of shapes, and the overall design was done. To add tabs to the sides so they would reach over the back, I had to trace over the outline and duplicate most of the shape. Anthony was impressed that it was possible to design something that was so close to the outline of his beloved.

When I sent the file to the cutter, it was done in a few seconds. He couldn't believe it when I showed it to him. Then we weeded it and put it on transfer tape. It took a few tries to get it onto the iPod squarely, but eventually it went on fine. In looking at it, I told him that it wasn't such a great fit, and looked kind of unprofessional, but would keep the back from falling off. I invited him to come back on Monday to make a better looking skin, maybe with a picture that he made on it as well.

He cruised out the door about 45 minutes after coming into my room for the first time ever, happy as can be with his resurrected iPod in one hand and buzzing phone in the other. Problem solved.

Do you have tales of repairs and making things right? How about advice on how to get the right patterns for skins to fit various models of phones or audio players? Would you like to make new skins for your laptop, digicam or even dashboard? Share your ideas in the comments or add pictures and video to the Make Flickr pool.

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/anthonys_busted_ipod.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/anthonys_busted_ipod.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/anthonys_busted_ipod.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/diy_projects/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in DIY Projects/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F11%2Fanthonys_busted_ipod.htmltitle=Anthony%26apos%3Bs%20busted%20ipodbodytext=%20After%20school%20today%2C%20Matt%20and%20Anthony%20came%20in%20with%20Anthony%26apos%3Bs%20busted%20Ipod%20Video.%20They%20asked%20me%20how%20good%20I%20was%20at%20fixing%20iPods.%20Never%20having%20been%20inside%20an%20iPod%20before%2C%20I%20replied%2C%20%26quot%3Bwell%20let%26apos%3Bs%20see%20what%20you%26apos%3Bve%20got.%26quot%3B%20It...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a