When fring announced the pre-release of voip using
skype and other messaging services for iPhone, I just had to try it out. Installation via Installer was
pretty straight forward.

I’m using 1.13 ZiPhone over wifi. Set up of skype was simple, though it was annoying that if you touch skype again after its set up (to see if its really set up), it deletes the config info you just entered.

The contact / buddy list for skype seems to update pretty slowly compared to its PC counterpart.
You cannot add new skype buddies from the iPhone interface. You have to update your contact list on the PC.
The iPhone to PC skype voice call is usable.. there is a slight delay and some echo, but it works.
I wasn’t able to get the iPhone to ring while sleeping if I called it
from the PC. The chat is pretty responsive.

The iPhone battery seems to burn out pretty fast.. i’ve never had the charge go all the way to
the red while using it.. my guess was this was about 45 min of talking..

Considering that the program is free and pre-release.. its a whole lot better than… nothing..
A great proof of concept that one would presume Skype should have come up with first. I
can only see fring getting better. Until the official version comes out ( I suppose when the
iTunes store has it ) I’ll be fring’ing my friends.

Since the TMO togo t-mobile prepaid plan comes with GPRS internet access to t-zones,
you can access t-zones using the iPhone without any additional cost.
First, configure the iPhone to access the t-mobile network.

Use Installer and install Tweaks(1.1.3)/T-Mobile 1.1.3 TZones Hack

The EDGE APN should be wap.voicestream.com
The username and password are blank.

You will only be able to access the t-zones internet sites:

http://wap.myvoicestream.com

http://wap.t-zones.com

and the links that they link to. Its useful to get ABC news and your account balance,
but ESPN doesn’t work and CNN news is in wml which safari does not render.

If you can live with text quotes in wml, its useful to get 20min delayed stock quotes using

http://mobile.cnn.com/wml.ne/en/p/m/quote.jsp?type=wml&symb=aapl

If the website is not allowed, you will get the “COMVERSE: Internal error You do no have acces to the site” ERROR

Note that access to t-zones only works via EDGE and that if you try to access the links with
normal WiFi it either 404s or redirects you.

If you want to switch Mac’s that you sync to, or just keep a backup in case your Mac dies, you can copy the iTunes folder to another Mac. Sync your iPhone first, then copy the /home/yourusername/iTunes folder to another Mac. You also need to copy /home/yourusername/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/

The other databases like Notes and i Cal are stored in the other Application Support folders and can be reconciled when iTunes detects conflicts and will try to merge the data into the new sync.

If you lose your iTunes on your PC, your music files maybe stranded on your iPhone because iTunes on another computer will ask to erase everything off your iPhone before it syncs everything. You can at least recover the underlying music files by copying off the music files via ssh,

ie. cd to Media/iTunes_Control/

then scp -r Music name@hostname:destinationfolder/

although the music files are renamed as a four letter code. The music is located in /var/root/Media/iTunes_Control/Music/ in various folders named F00 to F13 on my iPhone. The resulting files might look like TGYZ.mp3 UGPE.mp3 YHOS.mp3

I suspect that the mapping of the real name is in the iTunesDB file, but it is a binary. Theoretically, you could reconstruct the file name if you knew which fields contained the original file name and the new file name.