Cui – On My Way

[iTunes Store]

CCTV, the biggest video content owner of China and the state-owned tv station, has released its official free application for iPhone platform: CCTV National Mobile TV.

Built upon CCTV’s news, sports, entertainment, music, animation and other content, this product provides you with a brand-new experience of watching TV programs from China Central Television (CCTV).

凭借着CCTV旗下新闻、体育、娱乐、影视、音乐、动漫等强大的资源优势，该产品为您提供了内容丰富的各类精彩节目。CCTV手机电视会对国内外各类热点 事件，各类重大体育赛事，各类综艺节目进行详细的播报。您可以随心随意选择，随时随地收看CCTV众多拥有独家版权的精品节目。

I’ve tried it yesterday. My first try is in the morning and it’s a failture ‘coz all the videos cannot be played at all. However later in the evening when I tried again, the video played very smoothly. All that I can say is it’s not as stable as expected.

So far all the content are not live, but VoD. However, the news part are updated so frequently, which makes it almost ‘live’(almost as soon as it’s played on TV).

The videos are from 32 well-known columns covering 8 channels(CCTV 1~5,CCTV-7,CCTV-12 and CCTV-News) . Besides, there are also 9 topic-centered videos including Shanghai EXPO and 11th National Sports etc. As to the Top chart, it’s just another view of the 32 columns.

It’s not as good as expected, but better than nothing.

I’ve been using whiteasmilk theme on this blog for a long time. I myself do love those kinda simple but classical themes,you know, text-centered, very few colors, eye-friendly fonts etc, just like whiteasmilk.

However, in order to make this blog a little bit ‘holiday’ with the coming long National Day Holidays, I decide to get a new theme for celebration.

That’s why you see Redtopia, my final choice after hours of googling and testing.

The big/small roses are for the country’s 60 birthday. The main red-only color seems just in time for my celebration purpose. So that’s it.

Hope you enjoy it as i do.

Title says all.

Source from the iCosta official blog(Chinese) here, which says the update fixed the bug of the iCosta’s easy crash when not-enough system memory left.

I myself did see a few crashes by icosta before, esp. in the SMS.app when I wanna reply and ready to type in the input box. That kinda crash really drove me crazy.

Hopefully it wouldn’t happen any more.

Update(Sep.17,2009): title modified based on the author says 1.2.8 also works on the latest 3.1 too.

Update(Sep.22,2009): the install source is http://iphone.freecoder.org/apt, fyi.

Update(Sep.28,2009): iCosta 1.2.8 works well on the latest iPhone firmware 3.1.

I’ve been waiting for it for a long time, really. I love it so.The reason? I’ve talked it before, not mention so many new features has been added in this release.

To quote a few, brand new UI design(i think it cooler), full screen browsing, support direct installation from .deb,.pxl,.ipa, support music(.3gp,.mp3) and movie(.mov,.mp4)) download and playback, last session restore…

I myself still haven’t enough time to digg deeper into it yet. To get more, you better try it out by yourself. Just give it some patience ‘coz it’s still in beta and buggy, from from as stable and user-friendly as Safari.

However, it IS worth of a try.

Cydia/Icy source is: http://wap.ucweb.com/iphone/cydia.

Compatible Firmwares: 2.0 | 2.0.1 | 2.0.2 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.2.1 | 3.0 | 3.0.1

Here’s the new home and a downloaded mp3 ready to play.

.

Update(Sep.28,2009): UCWEB 6.7 beta rocks on iPhone firmware 3.1!

News by Sina: 详讯：联通明日发布苹果iPhone手机事宜

It said China Unicom will announce the coming of iPhone tomorrow, i.e, Aug.28 of 2009. The exact date that customer can get the phone would be in someday of Oct. The model would be iPhone 3G 8G and 16G, while 3GS has been delayed until perhaps Oct. And the price would be lower than the unofficial price of related iPhone 3G which is currently 8G by 3000RMB(439USD) and 16G by 4000RMB(586USD).

It also mentioned China Unicom has spent 10 billion RMB(1.46 billion USD) to get 5 million iphones from Apple, who has given up the revenue-sharing-contract model in this deal.

Unfortunately the imported iPhone has been ‘customized’: No wifi module, no iTunes and App Store applications.

So the question is: would you buy it?

Maybe you already know that Google Mobile Team has made lots of improvements on the page of search results for the mobile devices like iPhone(link created by online proxy zend2.com, ‘coz blogspot has been blocked by GFW), here’s what I’ve found on what the details are on Google.cn.

1. Universal search for sure

I’ve checked the search results one by one by taking a comparison with g.cn on my laptop searching for the same keyword.

Yes, they are the same.

2.Mobile formatted

Absolutely my favorite feature, always. ‘Coz that will take a big cut the traffic and reduce much cost accordingly when I use it on the China Mobile’s network.

Strongly recommend it, esp. when you use iphone a lot to surf the net in the cellular network.

This is tested in my iphone 2G using China Mobile’s GoTone(全球通) service by my Windows Xp laptop.

1.Install ActivateMMS2G via Icy or Cydia by adding manually this rep http://cydia.alpden.com . Credit goes to hackint0sh user ‘micked’ on this post.

2.Install this customized carrier bundle CMCC_Cui via iTunes by following this tutorial by iclarified.

This installation is to fix the issue of cannot saving the MMS APN settings after the step 1.

Besides, i’ve just updated the carrier logo for China Mobile. See the screenshot above, on the top-left corner, the icon, which originally is chinese characters of 中国移动.

And one more things, for all Windows users that still haven’t find a tool to edit the .plist file, here’s the one for you: pledit.exe.

3. Check your Settings->General->Network->Cellular Data Network, make sure everything goes the same as the picture below shows.

4. Go to Settings->Messages, turn MMS Messaging on.

5. Reboot and enjoy.

Seems iPhone coming to China becomes much closer, from the announced approval by State Wireless Inspection Center of China. See picture below. Source query page is here.

The device is marked as ‘GSM/WCDMA/蓝牙移动电话机’ ,which means ‘GSM/WCDMA/Bluetooth Mobile Phone’, not the famous ‘iPhone’. But is any other phone devices made by Apple?!

PCWorld has a detailed report here. But what I’ve learned is from Sina News(Chinese).

It even says due to the Apple’s nonnegotiable attitude on his business model of revenue sharing with the carrier China Unicom has become not so eager and enthusiastic as used to be.

Besides, to enter the mainland market there’s another barrier: WIFI module. ‘Coz MIT officially doesn’t allow the existence of such a mobile device with WIFI  function.

Update(Jul 13,2009): Sina says Apple has agreed that China Unicom will be the one that will sell iphone to the market. As to when and how, just a matter of time. And no wifi for sure.

Quote(from WWF official website)

Turn off your lights and join people around the world to help fight global climate change.

I’m a little bit late to this great activity, but fortunately not too late.

Maybe I cannot turn all of my home lights off due to my four-month-baby Taotao, but I’ll try my best.

Save the planet, save us.

Not as easy as i expected, actually. But finally, i made it.

There ARE some discussions in the Dev Team community on this topic here, where I learned the confirmed fact that the first generation iphone could be updated to the latest iPhone OS 3.0 safely. In summary, the basic steps are: DFU downgrade to 2.0.2, pwn it(unlock) by QuickPwnRC2, then UPDATE to iPhone OS 3.0. Done.

So this afternoon i decided to give it a try(I know it’s in beta and buggy, but its new features(official version here) are really attractive, esp. just after i watched the presentation).

Some screenshots below, to give you an idea of what the latest iPhone OS 3.0 will look like.

Now let’s back to the topic of how I managed to get there.

But before that, let me explain where I am: firmware 2.2.1, iTunes 8.1, and an very old iphone(BL 3.9, 4G capacity).

I first downgraded the phone to 2.0.2 in DFU mode(here’s the youtube how-to video in case you need it). Then I downloaded QuickPwnRC2.zip(download link). Until now, everything is fine. But when I launch QuickPwnRC2.exe to start pwning, the problem came.

I stucked in the ‘select firmware’ screen.  I tried re-downgrade, find another QuickPwnRC2 download link , but no luck.

I then decided to give QuickPwnRC3 a try(‘coz at least someone said it worked too). Of course the pwnage process went successfully as expected.Then I shift+update to iPhone OS 3.0(iPhone1,1_3.0_7A238j_Restore.ipsw, torrent file(3G OS 3.0 included as well) here: http://tinyurl.com/chycn5).

And here came the ‘unexpected surprise’(‘coz most guys said RC2, not RC3,is the real magic): my iPhone, with OS 3.0 installed, kept activated

But I just celebrated too early. ‘Coz when I started to rename the phone(untitled playlist to Cui) and hit enter to confirm, the phone suddenly rebooted. And after it came alive, the screen  became the emgercy-call one, which means I failed: activation is needed

Even though i don have a backup phone, and normally I used my phone most in the Monday, I still wanna give it a second try. By it, i mean, QuickPwnRC3. At that time, i thought perhaps I would make it after the first failed DFU-downgrade-then-upgrade try. You know, I do had similar experience before in the unlocking steps..

So I put the phone into DFU mode again, downgrade to 2.0.2, then make QuickPwnRC3 to unlock the phone(actually the phone has been keeping unlocked all over. Here choose unlock is actually to take use of RC3′s activation actions). Then launch iTunes and shift-update to iPhone OS 3.0.

The iPhone kept activated and unlocked when done, not surprisingly. Then I synced with iTunes after announcing it as a new phone. Sync finished successfully. I then played a little on the new OS. Well, features are there. sweet. Just some functions, sometime, are a little bit slow. Well, beta, understandable, right?

In the end, I thought perhaps I should try a reboot and see if this time the phone would be locked or not. I then pressed the on/off key, slide to power off, waited the spinning icon going off for a while, then power it on, wait until the spring board launched.

Now guess what? No emergency-call screen, just down to the home screen! Yeah! I’m done! Cheers!! 

So, if you wanna do the upgrade yourself, please make sure your phone is the 2G version. and you’re fully prepared.

Good luck.