Well, we hate to be the bearers of bad news but, looks like the Droid 3 will not be shipping with the unlocked bootloader Motorola promised us. According to a Motorola support forum manager the latest, landscape QWERTY slider from the company is not sporting the new unlockable firmware found on the Xoom. Now, before everyone gets up in arms, lets remember that Moto said it wouldn’t be offering the new bootloader till “late 2011,” and it’s entirely possible the Droid 3 could shed those shackles with a future software update. So, we understand you’re a little disappointed but, patience is a virtue friends.

Droid 3 sadly shipping with locked bootloader originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just as it was during the recent uprisings in Tunisia, the role of social media in the recent upheaval in Egypt has been the subject of much debate since the unrest began on Thursday. Daily Show host Jon Stewart on Friday poked fun at the idea that Twitter might have played a key part in the demonstrations, and there are many observers who share his skepticism. The real trigger for the uprisings, they argue, is simply the frustration of the oppressed Egyptian people — which is undoubtedly true. But it also seems clear that social media has played a key role in getting the word out, and in helping organizers plan their protests. In the end, it’s not about Twitter or Facebook: it’s about the power of real-time networked communication.

Foreign Policy magazine columnist Evgeny Morozov has argued that Twitter and Facebook should not be credited with playing any kind of critical role in Tunisia, and suggested that doing so is a sign of the “cyber-utopianism” that many social-media advocates suffer from: that is, the belief that the Internet is unambiguously good, or that the use of Twitter or Facebook can somehow magically free a repressed society from its shackles. Morozov, who has written an entire book about this idea called Net Delusion, made the point in his blog post after the Tunisian uprising that while social media might have been used in some way during the events, tools like Twitter and Facebook did not play a crucial role — that is, the revolution would have happened with or without them.

Zeynep Tufekci, a professor of sociology who has also looked at this issue, described in a post following the revolution in Tunisia how professional observers distinguish between what she called “material,” “efficient” and “final” causes — in other words, things that are required in order to produce a certain outcome, and things that are nice to have but are not a requirement. Tufekci argues that social media was a crucial factor in Tunisia, while Jillian York of Global Voices Online believes that social media tools are useful, but not necessary. Ethan Zuckerman, one of the founders of Global Voices Online, has also written about how the uprisings in both Tunisia and in Egypt have more to do with decades of poverty and repressive dictatorships than they do with social media.

But is anyone really arguing that Twitter and Facebook caused the revolutions in Tunisia or Egypt, or even the earlier public uprisings in Moldova or Iran for that matter? Maybe cyber-utopians somewhere are doing this, but I haven’t seen or heard of any. The argument I have tried to make is simply that they and other social media tools can be incredibly powerful, both for spreading the word — which can give moral or emotional support to others in a country, as well as generating external support — as well as for organizational purposes, thanks to the power of the network. As Jared Cohen of Google Ideas put it, social media may not be a cause, but it can be a powerful “accelerant.”

Did Twitter or Facebook cause the Tunisian revolt? No. But they did spread the news, and many Tunisian revolutionaries gave them a lot of credit for helping with the process. Did Twitter cause the revolts in Egypt? No. But they did help activists such as WikiLeaks supporter Jacob Appelbaum (known on Twitter as @ioerror) and others as they organized the dialup and satellite phone connections that created an ad-hoc Internet after Egypt turned the real one off — which, of course, it did in large part to try and prevent demonstrators from using Internet-based tools to foment unrest. As Cory Doctorow noted in his review of Evgeny Morozov’s book, even if Twitter and Facebook are just used to replace the process of stapling pieces of paper to telephone poles and sending out hundreds of emails, they are still a huge benefit to social activism of all kinds.

But open-network advocate Dave Winer made the key point: it’s the Internet that is the really powerful tool here, not any of the specific services such as Twitter and Facebook that run on top of it, which Winer compares to brands like NBC. They have power because lots of people use them, and — in the case of Twitter — because they have open protocols so that apps can still access the network even when the company’s website is taken down by repressive governments (athough they didn’t mention Egypt or Tunisia by name, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and general counsel Alexander Macgillivray wrote a post about the company’s desire to “keep the information flowing).

In the end, the real weapon is the power of networked communication itself. In previous revolutions it was the fax, or the pamphlet, or the cellphone — now it is SMS and Twitter and Facebook. Obviously none of these things cause revolutions, but to ignore or downplay their growing importance is also a mistake.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):

• Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
• Lessons From Twitter: How to Play Nice With Ecosystem Partners
• What We Can Learn From the Guardian’s Open Platform

Post and thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user Ahmad Kavousian

GigaOMTech

Ever since Iomega announced the iConnect Wireless at CES we’ve been thinking long and hard about our NAS usage. Do we really want a NAS with built-in drives? Why can’t we be free of NAS hegemony?

Well, the $99 iConnect promises to break our shackles. It’s a NAS without a drive. Here’s a quick hands on and we’ll do a full review this week. The press release, for your edification, follows.

Iomega’s New iConnect Wireless Data Station: Share Files, Manage Torrents,
Access Your Data Remotely, Backup Your PC and Mac
And Much More for Only $99
***
Transform Your USB Hard Drives and Flash Drives into “Smart” Network Storage

SAN DIEGO, January 5, 2010 – Iomega, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC) and a global leader in data protection, today announced the worldwide launch of the Iomega® iConnect Wireless Data Station, a powerful and yet inexpensive device that provides a simple way to bring all of your USB storage into your network, allowing you to connect, share and access files anywhere, even over the Internet – all for only $99.99.

On display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (Booth # 31823, South Hall 3) in Las Vegas, the iConnect Wireless Data Station has no onboard storage, instead allowing users to bring all of their desktop and portable USB storage into their network. Connect the Iomega iConnect device to your router in either a wired or wireless configuration*, and it’s as easy as plugging external USB drives or USB Flash drives (any brand) into any of the four USB ports on the Iomega iConnect device, making the drives automatically connected to and accessible from any computer on your network or remotely via the web.

With that simple set up, users of the iConnect Wireless Data Station not only have incremental storage on their network to save, share and enjoy, they also enjoy such capabilities as a UPnP™ DLNA Certified AV Media Server that streams photos, audio content and videos to a variety of media devices; a torrent download manager for managing peer-to-peer file transfers; Time Machine® support for Apple® users; device-to-device replication for data protection; print serving to the network and much more.

“For computer users with plenty of USB-connected storage devices, the new Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station is great way to save money and make your USB storage drives ‘smart’ at the same time,” said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC. “For less than $100, users now have a NAS device that offers everything from remote access to torrent download capability to a built-in iTunes and media server. The iConnect Wireless Data Station is a great way to utilize what you already own in a whole new way.”

Benefits and Features of the new iConnect Wireless Data Station
The new iConnect Wireless Data Station utilizes the acclaimed EMC LifeLine™ software, a fully-developed Linux operating environment and suite of applications that is designed for cross-platform support with Windows®, Mac® and Linux computers. Users of the iConnect device interact with an easy-to-understand interface that provides all the latest in multimedia serving as well as remote access features, making it a breeze to access your own data, whether in the office, the home, or anywhere else in the world.**

Among the many value-add features of the iConnect Wireless Data Station:

• Easy file sharing, data backup and print serving from any networked Windows® PC, Mac® or Linux workstation.
• Gigabit Ethernet and wireless connectivity by connecting directly to your router in either a wired or wireless (802.11b/g/n wireless protocol) configuration.
• Remote access allows you to connect securely from anywhere in the world and get full access to pictures, videos, files – everything stored on the connected USB drives. An added bonus: remotely access and administer the iConnect device through a personalized web address.
• Simple expandability means you can add storage capacity by simply connecting more or larger external USB drives.
• Device-to-device replication for data protection allows you to define a job to copy and/or synchronize files to and from the connected USB drives or any other shared storage on your network. Iomega makes it easy with one-touch copying with the QuikTransfer button on the front of the iConnect device.
• Print Serving with intelligent print sharing capability for up to two USB printers.
• Time Machine support allows Apple users to easily backup any Mac computers running OS X (10.5 or later) using Time Machine.
• UPnP™ DLNA Certified AV Media Server provides the ability to stream photos, audio content and videos to a variety of media devices, such as game consoles (Microsoft Xbox® 360, Sony PlayStation® 3), audio bridges, iTunes® players, networked digital picture frames, Iomega® ScreenPlay™ products and more.
• Photo slideshow capabilities with an integrated utility based on the Cooliris™ technology for quick browsing of pictures stored on the connected USB drives.
• Torrent download manager allows the iConnect device to manage peer-to-peer file transfers without the need of a dedicated PC.
• Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) provides no touch, automatic transfer of photos from digital cameras via one of the four USB ports on the iConnect device.

Backup and Security Software for a Total Data Protection Solution
The new Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station comes complete with a portfolio of backup and security software, including native security support with robust username and password authorized access. RSA® BSAFE® encryption security technology is included, too, for protecting installs and upgrades from viruses or malware. RSA is the security division of EMC that protects digital data at many of the world’s largest banks.

Also included with the iConnect Wireless Data Station is the Iomega Protection Suite of software. Available via download, the Iomega Protection Suite includes Iomega QuikProtect for simple scheduled file-level backup; a choice between EMC® Retrospect® Express or Express HD to back up your data, plus applications and settings; and a free subscription to a market-leading software that protects your PC with anti-virus, anti-spyware, and web security protection.

Compatibility
The iConnect Wireless Data Station is compatible with Windows®, Mac OS®, and Linux® PCs. The interface is localized for 11 languages (including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, German, and Russian).

Price and Availability and Warranty
The new Iomega® iConnect Wireless Data Station, on demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show (Booth # 31823, South Hall 3), January 7-10, in Las Vegas, will available worldwide starting in February for $99.99. (Pricing is U.S. suggested retail.) The iConnect Wireless Data Station is backed by a three-year warranty (with product registration).

All the 404 listeners out there will be very happy to see our own Natali Del Conte in the hot seat today. Our favorite guest just returned from a trip to the U.K. and, of course, Wilson is indulging himself in a bottle of Beck’s Beer, so we foolishly decide to guess Ms. Del Conte’s actual body weight. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I’m not one to let things spoil, so you’ll have to watch the video below to witness me, Jeff, and Wilson making idiots of ourselves.

And of course, since Natali is here, we have to make things as uncomfortable for her as possible, so the first story of the day is about an LA sperm bank offering celebrity lookalike donors to their exclusive clientele. Each donor goes through an extensive scanning process to determine the celebrity they resemble the most, and the clients certainly love it: the service has been available for only a week and their Web traffic is already up 50 percent! We grill Natali for a second about which celebrity she would choose, but now that she’s gone big time, she manages to weasel her way out of it.

After a few more stories that let Natali shake off her BOL-shackles, Jeff poses an interesting question to the group, by way of Reddit.com: When we get to be the age of our parents, will our generation be just as technologically inept, or will we retain our tech-savvy? This conversation actually stemmed from a rather painful iTunes tutorial that I overheard Jeff giving to Big Lou, and it’s the perfect diving board for our show. All of us have varying opinions, but the general consensus is that because we’ve actually grown up with technology and computers (unlike our parents who were forced to adopt it later in life), we’ll always have those building blocks to help us navigate through newer technologies, whatever they may be. Or we might just be bitter old luddites pecking away on our Jitterbugs, bemoaning a time when 140 characters ruled the world.

EPISODE 438

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Want to break Apple’s hegemony over your headphone choice when using the new iPod Shuffle? This $18 dongle adds all of Apple’s functionality into a little thing that sits on top of the Shuffle rather than inline on the headset, thereby freeing you from the shackles of fear that hold us all down and, in the end, will kill us. After all, even the birds are chained to the skyway.

Anyway, it’s a really simple little dongle. This thing had to appear sooner or later.

via iLounge

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak? That IS the question. Whether it is nobler to remain under the hawkish glare of Apple omnipotence or cast off the shackles of UI oppression and embrace customizable interfaces, 3rd party apps and video-streaming!

So you’ve had your iPhone for a while now, and things, like in any relationship, are getting a little stale. The app store isn’t the treasure trove of fun and surprises it once was. You’ve played one tilt-to-drive go-kart game, you’ve played them all. What are you going to do? You’ve heard people talking about this thing – jailbreaking. You know people with jailbroken iPhones, you’ve seen them playing ROMs of California Games and Super Mario World; texting without closing down the app they’re in; running several apps at the same time. And you want that. Who could blame you? It’s not wrong to want that. But you want to know the risks. TO JAILBREAK No one likes to feel like someone else own’s their phone. With Apple thats how I started to feel. It started with the iRail app – a free train time app that was unceremoniously axed from my phone without my permission. I thought it was a software error, but then other apps started disapearing, my tethering app, a poor-taste game. What was going on? An hour of googling later and I was miffed. Apple, in their infinite wisdom had anexed them and this trend contiuned. It seemed that Apple’s reign over their App Store was becoming at best, undemocratic and at worst tryanical and oppressive. It was the tethering that broke the camels back for me. I needed tethering for work, and if I’m paying £45 a month for unlimited data, surely the means by which I view that data is incidental. I broke free. I jailbroke free. The process is relatively painless, just download the appropriate version of QuickPWN, plug your iPhone into a USB and follow the instructions and minutes later you’re free. If you’re anything like me, after you’ve jailbroke, you’ll feel like a massive badass, the underbelly of tech-society, a renegade living outside the law – Arnie in Total Recall, Tom Cruise in Minority Report, Will Smith in Enemy of the State, Peter Sallis in Last of the Sumer Wine. Rebooting your phone for the first time you’ll find two new App tiles. One called Cydia and one called Installer, these are your gateways to a world of Apps to which Apple said, “no”. Some because they stretch copyright laws, roms and emulators, dtunes (a torrent downloader (and awesome)) and other because they were pretty flat out illegal. But some just because Apple think they know best. With no opportunity to customize your interface, the Apple springboard eventually becomes a dull and desolate place. Winterboarder – available from Cydia allows it user to customize their springboard entirely, installing themes and backgrounds of whatever they like. And that’s just the beginning. Once jailbroken the scope and the real potential of the iPhone soon becomes apparent. What becomes less apparent though is why Apple would stymie the genius of some developers, blocking their Apps and forcing them to resort to flogging them to the jailbroken underbelly.

Intelliscreen being the most pertinent example. An app that allows you to view your email and SMS inboxes, Calendar and RSS feeds in neat little boxes on your phone’s locked page. Its awesome and ridiculously handy. Its the kind of thing that if it had been on the App store everyone would have it, it would be one of those ubiquitous Apps, like Remote or Air Mouse. But it’s not, it’s been cast out, like a lame fawn, to the cold, and it doesn’t make sense. Top 3 Jailbroken dos 1. Do get Flixwagon – free live video streaming. The applications of which are potentially enourmous. Your own live web-TV show anyone? 2. Do download Cycorder a free video recorder for the iPhone. 3. Do ROM your ass off with ZodTTD’s emulators. NOT TO JAILBREAK So sheepishly, after exhausting all the free alternatives, you return to your local Apple store, hoping for some redemption. And in the shop you feel like you don’t belong. You remember how it felt to belong. But now you’re an outsider. You broke away. You book yourself a time with a ‘genius’ and patiently wait, looking at the prices of all the software you’ve torrented – which makes you feel better. “My phone’s not working, I woke up this morning and it just wouldnt turn on,” you lie. They look at you and you know they don’t believe you, but you persevere as jovially as possible. “Can you guys just wipe it and restore it or something.” Anything would do now, all your jailbroken goodies, all your music, it can go aslong as you can get your little iPhone back working. They plug it in and press some short cuts – they wait. The tension is unbearable. “This is a…jailbroken iPhone?” You’ve been rumbled. You’ll feel like you should take a hostage, they’re going to grab you. “I’m sorry we can’t help you” – bit of an anticlimax. Out on the street again you wander through those back-street mobile phone shops, none of them know what you’re on about, no one can help you, and all of a sudden your sexy 21st century media and communication device is gone and you’re holding £100 paper-weight. Top 3 jailbroken don’ts 1. Break your iPhone. 2. Drop your iPhone. 3. Break your iPhone. SO WHAT YOU GOING TO DO PUNK? When all is said and done it really is up to you. Either you’ve got the ball or you haven’t. The advantages of jailbreaking are numerous and palable and when it’s working a jailbroken iPhone is a massive improvement on the normal iPhone. But you’ve got to be prepared for the fact that if things go wrong, and they might, it’s gone – forever and ever and ever and Apple won’t lift a finger to help you. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Jailbrokenland and find out how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Smug as Frenchman who’s just found a bag of horizontally striped t-shirts in just his size, you galivant about town showing off your new jailbroken iPhone with its 5 App dock to your lame, normal or “oppressed” iPhone friends. Until one night, probably drunk, you drop it. You’ve dropped it loads of time before. It’ll be okay. But as you turn it over the screen is blank. Pants! Pants o’clock! It’s okay, it turns on, but just that Apple icon, two minutes later still the Apple icon, five minute later, 10, still the Apple logo. It’s broken. And the Apple logo is mocking you. It’s saying: “You turned your back on me, you thought I was gone, but I’m still here, you’ll never get rid of me…I know all your secrets.”