Hacking a phone not only makes us feel powerful and important, but it lets us benefit due to added features and  a performance boost. There is a big difference between owning a phone which lets you make calls and download apps to being fully in control and having the ability to make your own rules. Think Matrixversus I, Robot.

Hacking into your phone is not new; iPhones started to get hacked soon after they were released by a process called jail breaking.’ Androids go through a similar process often referred to as rooting’. This process may sound dangerous and not worth the risk but if done successfully you can install new features which were customised by the hacker crowd, improve your phone’s speed and feel like you belong to your very own tight knit community.

So without further ado, here are 5 android phone hacks that you could perform:

1. Change the Desktop Interface

Give your phone a makeover. Android has long been considered the most adaptable phone on the market, and its versatility is mainly due to the vast number of customisations you can implement. If you want to customise your desktop and change how your phone looks and feels, there are plenty of applications out there that can help you. Apps such as Home ++, LauncherPro and GDE are some of the most popular and with these you can install wallpaper, personalised icons and even widgets. As always you can find these apps on Android Market.

The actual how to video can be found here

2. Install Performance Enhancing Features

Not many people know that un-hacked phones are only performing at a limited capability. You can rev your engine and improve your phone’s performance by installing a ROM named CyanogenMod.  CyanogenMod is a free, community built collection of phone model-dependant ROMs that greatly improves the capabilities of your Android.

Once CyanogenMod is installed on your device, it boosts performance and speed, among other things. Here is a video tutorial explaining how to root your android with CyanogenMod

3. Run Android on your iPhone

Yes, you did read that correctly, this can be done. Some people are even coining it iphodroid’ which sounds remarkably similar how the Hollywood press refer to celebrity couples.

If you have ever wanted the features of an Android but prefer the design of an iPhone, now you can combine the best of both worlds.  Although there are some disadvantages, once the hack has been done you need to implement power-management functions as otherwise a fully charged iPhone will last only around 60 minutes before the battery is drained.

Read this article for the full guide

4. Fully Controllable Media Centre

You will no longer have the frustration of wanting to listen to a song on the move but realising you haven’t uploaded it to your phone yet. By installing an app named G Mote you can turn your Android phone into a media remote for your computer.

As long as you have Wi-Fi streaming the application will allow you to access your entire media collection. So what does this mean? It means you will have a portable and fully functional media system which supports music files and films.

5. Save Battery without Turning your Phone Off

Wouldn’t  it be cool if you could have the option of saving your battery in times of need? Turning your phone off and on is a thing of the past. One clever hacker has created a hack that does just that. The hacking community are calling this a night visionhack as they discovered that by restricting the phone to use only red pixels can help reduce the battery power by 35%. To go into night vision, you need to separate the colour channel pixel elements, the hacker, Jeff Sharkey, found using red works best. It will take your eyes a little while to get used to it but in times of an emergency it is a great hack to have handy.

See his video to gain a better insight into how it works

==== About the Author ====

This article was written for  My Phone Deals, who are continuously on the look-out to provide you with the cheapest phone deals, ranging from iPhone, Blackberries or  Android phones for 2011.

KinectEDucation is a community-driven initiative for developers, teachers, students, and other education stakeholders to promote the use of Kinect for Xbox360 for gesture-based applications for teaching in classrooms. The project aims to pioneer this new dimension of learning in education and invites the community for making contributions, whether it be an idea, code, suggestion, or anything else relevant to the use of Kinect in education.

The project is a brainchild of Johnny Kissko, a leading expert at integrating innovative technology in existing learning environments. The project was inspired by KinectHacks with a vision of gesture-based learning applications in classrooms within the next few years.

As yet, FAAST, a free software developed by the Institute of Creative Technologies was recommended. The software allows anyone to develop Kinect-friendly applications by creating key bindings. Now that the official Kinect SDK (Software Development Kit) is available for PC, developers can develop their own applications for the PC and Xbox that employ Kinect’s gesture-based functionality and can transform learning in classrooms.

The project aims to take existing applications like Google Earth or calculator or even a piano and integrate them with Kinect. This would help develop and deliver gesture-based learning opportunities with the bank of software already in existence.

The project is open-source and involves the community for the benefit of public education. Integrating educational Kinect applications represents a blended classroom model, where innovative learning opportunities can be explored within the controlled setting demanded by the structure of public education. You can contribute to the community in several ways:

• Download and post Kinect applications for education
• Participate in forum discussions
• Showcase real-life examples of Kinect in education

KinectEDucation

FaceNiff is an Android application that lets users access web sessions profiles over Wi-Fi networks, easily hijacking into the connected Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon and other accounts.

FaceNiff is developed by Bartosz Ponurkiewicz who created the Firefox extension Firesheep, that lets users hijack Facebook and Twitter sessions over Wi-Fi networks. Unlike Firesheep, FaceNiff works on WPA-encrypted Wi-Fi networks also.

FaceNiff is an Android app that allows you to sniff and intercept web session profiles over the WiFi that your mobile is connected to.  It is possible to hijack sessions only when WiFi is not using EAP, but it should work over any private networks (Open/WEP/WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK)

Bartosz says on his website that the app is for educational purposes only, and urges users not to install it if it is illegal in their country.

To get started, you need to download and install FaceNiff from the official website here.

The application is limited and can only be used to hack 3 social profiles. Users can donate via PayPal for an unlocked version of the application. The app is confirmed to be working on the following devices.

• HTC Desire CM7
• Original Droid/Milestone CM7
• SE Xperia X10
• Samsung Galaxy S
• Nexus 1 CM7
• HTC HD2
• LG Swift 2X
• LG Optimus Black – original rom
• LG Optimus 3D – original rom
• Samsung Infuse

Here’s a video of FaceNiff in action

P.S. Turn on HTTPS browsing if you haven’t already. Learn to enable HTTPS support on Facebook and Twitter

The prospect of home automation came into our collective consciousness about the time Bill Gates finished his mansion in Seattle around 1995.  Widely publicized in the press, visitors would wear pins specifying their preferences for heat, art, music, and lighting and, as they passed through the house, these preferences would manifest themselves.

15 years later and with some individual components widely available, we are only beginning to see IP based home control systems that take this on for something less than a $100 million mansion.  Enter the iPad, accommodating programmable appsthat can be installed to drive many systems and devices.

So take a device that is in large demand for its beauty, coolness, portability, and functionality, install a flush mount charging station that doubles as a central control board, and voila… home automation on steroids.

First introduced in April of 2010, within months, many a home entertainment specialist (the guy you bring in to make your universal remote work) had been converted, recommending the iPad as the wise decisionin controlling your mess of remotes and more. The bleeding edge operators are finally seeing a path to sell a wide assortment of automation functionality.

The company Savant has introduced an in-wall, charging, docking station for the iPad and the iPod touch.  It’s framed, it looks good, it magnetically attaches the iPad, and allows easy removal for regular use.  Savant has a home control app called TrueControl.  With their entire product line OSX based, Apple talks to Apple so to speak not a bad thing!

Crestron, a company that established and has led the industry in touch-screen controllers and many home automation products has created the Mobile Pro GiPad app allowing installers to custom configure each system for the homeowner.  Their iDoc is a sleek, modern, built-in, wall mounted charger/controller for your iPad.

Control4′s My Home for iPadapp offers access to all your home automation systems.  Offering a total solution, their systems are easy to install, scalable, and simple to use.

Here’s a laundry list of just what’s possible… now today. Using an iPad for a central control station and an iPod touch or your iPhone here and there for home entertainment controls or unlocking your door, you can:

• Control music through iTunes or using a player to access music subscription services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Last FM, or Sirius Internet Radio. The system can be configured for guest access (listen to your own playlist), and allow various access and control levels for other services. Listen to different music and music sources in different areas of the house.
• Control multiple entertainment centers with shared access to audio and video files.
• Control thermostats for total climate control by zone and time of day.
• Control lights view a layout of any room or landscape controlling individual lamps or activating preselected setting combinations.
• Utilize as an intercom throughout the house.
• Check garage door status and activate.
• Lock and unlock doors.
• Control your irrigation system.
• Turn on or shut down your fireplace.
• Control automated window coverings.
• Manage your total home security including alarms, cameras, video recording, and remote alerts sent to your phone or email.

Home entertainment needs often provide the impetus to beginning or expanding your home control system.  Adding control to lights will require special switches and wireless outlet controls.  If you already have a security system, check with your provider for new apps that give you more extensive and remote control.  And, if you’re just shopping for one, make this a priority.  Your system can be programmed to access all of these features remotely through Wi-Fi or 3G.    And, whether an iPad or another brand of tablet computer, the time is here for home automation with the potential to substantially bring down costs.  Home automation is a proven energy saver allowing you to better manage the power consuming systems in your home.

====

Authored by Michael Samsel of StylishHome.com

Although it does not really work yet. So do not get hyped yet.

XDA member deeper-blue ported the preview SDK version of the next iteration of Google’s mobile OS Android 3.0 on the Barnes & Noble eBook reader, the NOOKColor. Android 3.0, codenamed Honeycomb has been developed with tablets in mind. This means that when properly streamlined and optimized for tablet computers, Honeycomb will take the mobile computing scene to newer heights.

Deeper-blue initially described his port of Honeycomb on his NOOKColor kernel as a zombie. That was because although the system booted and ran fine, there was no touch input or hardware acceleration. So… not only was it incredibly slow, it could not have been useful at all.

However deeper-blue managed to hack away at the code and managed to get the touch input, orientation sensor and even the graphics libraries in order. So, for now, the NOOKColor can be used to some extent.

Needless to say, he/she has the entire XDA forum (composed mostly of geeks, technophiles, hackers and other synonyms for technology-lovers) drooling. If deeper-blue manages to successfully port Honeycomb on the NOOKColor, it could very well be the cheapest Android 3.0 tablet in existence as well as being the only Android 3.0 tablet in existence, for now. Ha!

As hackers get smarter, computers get more powerful; nation’s security is at stake. The same is true for your own personal and financial information transmitted by phone or over the internet.

The work of hackers is surely not going to be easy any more, with the invention of laser security system.

Two Israeli scientists have made use of existing fibre optic and computer technology. It is found that by transmitting binary lock-and-key information in the form of light pulses, the device ensures that only the sender and receiver, and absolutely nobody else can unlock a key.

The data can reach over 3,000 miles without any serious parts of the signal being lost.It is done by transmitting the signal in a binary code (the key bearer) in the form of 1s and 0s, but using light and lasers instead of numbers.

For further information click here.

If you have a iPhone or iPod Touch running iPhone OS 3.1.2 jailbroken with Blackra1n, which keeps asking you to restore your phone on reboot or restart, here is a handy fix. Just run the Blackra1n jailbreak once again without running restore and your iPhone or iPod Touch should be back to normal. It is a minor inconvenience, but hey it fixes the problem.

This works 100%, I tested it few months back, but someone emailed me to ask for a solution, so here goes. I do not endorse jailbreaking, but I certainly entertain tech help requests. You can always use the contact us form to find help for your tech related problems.

Google today announced the beta version of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux along with the launch of Google Chrome Extensions gallery. However, unlike Linux and Windows version of Chrome, the Mac version does not have support for Chrome extensions yet.

Thankfully TechCrunch discovered a hack which will allow users to install Chrome extensions on the Mac Version of Chrome.

For complete instructions, visit this page and drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar. Whenever you visit an extension page, click on the bookmarklet to enable the Install extensionbutton.

Note: You need to use the development version of Chromium on Mac for this to work.

Maemo5

The best part of Symbian OS is customization. Startup animations were one part that could always be changed. I’m really glad to see that Maemo hasn’t changed much in this aspect.

Here’s  how to change your N900′s boot animation:

• Copy the video to /usr/share/hildon-welcome/media
• Go to /etc/hildon-welcome.d/ and edit the default.conf file or create a similar one (the videos will play by the alphabetic order of the .conf files)

Since N900 supports most of the video formats, you don’t have to worry about  converting them first. Also, there’s no need to overwrite the existing Nokia video. You can also play images and sound in sequence if you want. It reads all configuration files in the hildon-welcome.d folder and interprets them in alphabetical order. So, if you want, you can even play multiple videos.

After this mod, I completely fell head over heels for all the customization that N900 offers. To any guy who likes to tinker with his cellphone, N900 means nothing less than complete control.

Recently Kaspersky released their 2010 range of products. With all the new security features in the updated suites, Kaspersky also changed the way their applications are activated.

Previously, to activate the software, the user had to input a key file that he’d purchased. But now, following a method similar to that of Adobe and Norton products, users needed to input a string of numbers and get the license validated through the internet.

This method, although decreases chances of piracy of the software, creates an unnecessary hurdle for those users who don’t have an internet connection where they plan to install the security suite.

Incidentally, the WebTrickz blog has come up with a nifty trick that lets you use the old way of installing and activating a license through a key file. You need not knockout anything, or break into any freakish Windows registry. All that you’ll need to do is enter a beta key string (when disconnected), the setup will try to connect to a server and when it will fail, you’ll get an option to browse for a key file. Read the blog post for all the details.

How to activate Kaspersky 2010 products using a key file | Webtrickz.com