Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

If you recently unlocked your iPhone 3G and found after going through the whole WinPWN / Cydia process that T-Mobile Edge settings only work for Mail, but not for Google Maps, or other important services, you’re not alone. It’s also quite easy to fix, and continues to work with location services and other apps from the AppStore.

1) Install SSH

Assuming you have Cydia, you should install the OpenSSH package onto your iPhone. Just scroll down to OpenSSH, and hit install:

2) Download WinSCP, connect to iPhone

You can download the latest version of WinSCP and install it. Then it will prompt you to connect to your iPhone, which you should have running on your local Wifi. Note that the default username and password for the 3G iPhone will be root/alpine. If you don’t know the IP address you can either guess in the 192.168.0/1.* range, or just logon to your router and see.

3) Verify / Update Proxy.pac

Use the file browser to verify that a file called ./private/var/preferences/proxy.pac exists, and contains the following:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
if (isInNet(myIpAddress(), “10.0.0.0″, “255.0.0.0″))
return “PROXY 216.155.165.50:8080″;
else
return “DIRECT”;
}

You could just run these commands:

Kiwiii:/ root# find -name proxy.pac
./private/var/preferences/proxy.pac
Kiwiii:/ root# md5sum ./private/var/preferences/proxy.pac
8c9a4f4b1692cd3519ce7bcf180c66a4 ./private/var/preferences/proxy.pac
Kiwiii:/ root#

4) Verify preferences.plist

Next you need to hunt for /private/var/preferences/systemconfiguration/preferences.plist, and make sure it contains this section:

<key>Proxies</key>
<dict>
<key>ProxyAutoConfigEnable</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>ProxyAutoConfigURLString</key>
<string>file:///private/var/preferences/proxy.pac</string>
</dict>

You should put it on the same level and after the Interface key/dict pair for the network interface which contains your WAP settings, which for T-Mobile’s $5.99 T-Zones are just the WAP APN wap.voicestream.com with no username or password. Save the file, restart your iPhone, and you’re set!

Yep, it found me! Yay! Google maps is working!

Farecast now runs to over 55 different cities, and is no longer in private beta. They’ve also added a literal host of new features, including the following liberal trip planner:

You can input a number of cities, and within those five destination cities, your departure city, and a 30-day window, Farecast will find the cheapest place to visit. I can see this being useful for vacationing on the cheap!

Yahoo announced recently that they have added global satellite imagery to their beta maps project. The US is covered at 1m per pixel, the world at a minimum of 15m per pixel. Now you can view Tibetan monestaries while at the same time cruising the streets of Phoenix. Even more, their images are blended seamlessly and color-corrected to match each other. This is a huge problem with Google and MSN Maps, which show seams and mismatched colors.

Now, let’s take a look at what Cornell University looks like in all three systems. Comparing or benchmarking these various web 2.0 mapping applications is important. First up is the gross-anatomy, a section of Ithaca at roughly the same zoom level:

Google Maps is already pixelated, chunky, off-color, and generally unreadable. I can tell there’s a lake and urban structure here, but little else.

Windows Live Local shows much greater resolution, but the color is black-and white. There’s also a noticeable contrast change across a stitched section.

Yahoo Maps is beautiful. There’s natural color, no stitching, and good resolution. Let’s take a look at how the three big players handle maximal zoom:

Google can’t get any closer. Its database of images sucks. No high res here!

MSN is very, very clear, but black and white. It’s probably a little better than the Yahoo offering, but the lack of color is quite irritating.

Yahoo has decent resolution and very good color. Although not quite as clear as MSN, here consistency matters more than patches of high-resolution.