Advanced Tutorial to Hacking and Tweaking GPS

Here a great tutorial for who wants to hack GPS systems for educational purpose only. This downloadable tutorials is about how to modify, tweak, and hack their GPS to take it to new levels. Here around the 30 million GPS receivers currently in use.
Most electronic devices contain hidden diagnostic screens or setup menus that are used by the manufacturer to diagnose faults and possibly remedy them. GPS receivers are no different, but because of their limited number of buttons, numerous complicated keystrokes are often needed to access such menus so that users don’t accidentally find them.

This great tutorial in PDF format in 358 pages include exploiting secret keycodes, revealing hidden features, building power cords and cables, hacking the battery and antenna, protecting a GPS from impact and falls, making a screen protector, and solar-powering a GPS. 

Potential power users will take the function and performance of their GPS to a whole new level by hacking into the firmware and hacking into a PC connection with a GPS.

You are unlikely to get any tech support for any of the undocumented features of your GPS unit, and these screens offer plenty of opportunity to cause problems and mess up your unit.Take care and don’t make any
changes unless you are sure of what you are doing.


This Includes Following Chapters:
Chapter 1: GPS Secrets
Chapter 2: Building GPS Data Cables and Power Cords
Chapter 3: Power Hacks
Chapter 4: Antenna Hacks
Chapter 5: Protecting Your GPS 
Chapter 6: Hacking the Firmware
Chapter 7: Making Connections
Chapter 8: GPS Data
Chapter 9: Examining the Data
Chapter 10: More Data Tricks


Fear not! Any potentially dangerous mod (to the device) is clearly labeled, with precautions listed that should be taken.
Game time! Readers can check out GPS games, check into hacking geocaching, and even use a GPS as a metal detector

New smartphones give instant access to Facebook

Mobile phone giant HTC has launched two handsets – called Salsa and ChaCha – that will provide instant access to Facebook.

By punching in the ‘F’ logo, users will be able to instantly share photos, music and even their exact location on an inbuilt map from their mobile phone.

At the moment, owners of iPhones and similar products have to use a touchscreen process to access pages on the popular social networking site.

In a clear attempt to target the teenage market, the Taiwanese phonemaker called the two phones Salsa and ChaCha, the Daily Mail reports.

Salsa is a touchscreen-only phone with a 3.4-inch screen. ChaCha has 2.6-inch touchscreen with a separate keyboard, which looks a lot like a Blackberry.

Parents faced with children badgering them for one of the new gadgets may only have weeks to save up the cash as the phones may be on sale in Britain in April.

HTC and Facebook have spent two years developing the two phones. The devices have Facebook built into their contacts system, allowing users to see Facebook friends and message them.

When taking photos, the user simply has to press the F button and the images will appear on their Facebook profile. Similarly, when using Google maps, owners of the phone can press the F button to give friends their exact location.

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, said: “We wanted to create the ultimate socially connected phones with mass market appeal.”

We’re making money: Twitter

Twitter has said it had become profitable, disclosing that its live messaging service is carrying 130 million daily tweets, or short messages, from its members.

The US-based company, which has been one of the fastest-growing social-networking services, said 40 per cent of tweets are transmitted by mobile devices, typically smartphones.

“We’re making money,” chief executive Dick Costolo said in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress expo, but gave no figures.

Twitter sets a size limit of just 140 characters on each communication. Each tweet goes to a user’s mixed collection of followers.

Founded in 2006, Twitter has been slow to develop a sustainable business model, with its originators opposed from the start to heavy advertising for fear this would put users off.

Costolo has ushered in a more advertising-centred approach, partly focussed on charging companies to tweet. He said further products to earn revenue would be coming up this year.

Past statements suggest Twitter now has 200 million registered users worldwide, and newspaper reports say the company has told investors it hopes to build its market value to $8 billion-$10 billion.

Costolo told reporters in Barcelona that Twitter’s latest traffic record was set on New Year’s Eve in Japan, when it was handling 6,000 tweets per second. During key US sports events such as the Super Bowl, it has peaked at 3,000 per second.

Twitter was driving people back to watching TV shows live instead of using video recorders to time-shift viewing, Costolo said: “People want to talk about the shows with their friends.”

He said the service was about to launch an instant translation facility. This would allow people to input a tweet in English and have it broadcast in Russian and other languages.

Google To Launch ‘Nexus One’ Phone Next Year

Google plans to begin selling a cellphone directly to consumers as soon as next year. Called Nexus One, the phone was designed inside Google and will be sold, at least initially, without being subsidised by a wireless partner. According to reports, the phone will run on the search giant’s Android operating system and will be sold online. It is being manufactured by HTC, which also built the first Android phone to hit the market, T-Mobile’s G1 phone. The phone’s pricing, along which countries Google initially will target for the device, couldn’t be learned.

Yahoo Valentine Doodle – Cute Overload

Earlier today, Keith wrote about the latest Google Doodle, and he spared them no mercy when he said “Google’s Valentine Day Doodle Is An Eyesore”. I agree with Keith to a certain extent. I didn’t hate the new Doodle, but it’s definitely not as good as I’ve come to expect from them.

Here you can see Google’s latest exercise in poor taste.

On the other hand, Yahoo has a much better graphic on their home page. In celebration of Valentine’s day, Yahoo posted nice flash animation with two birds falling in love.

Here you can see an animated gif, I created from a screen capture.

You can also see this as a Youtube video that I uploaded.

What do you think? Isn’t that a cute overload? I’m confident enough in my manliness, to admit that I like it far better than Google’s lame graphic.

Here’s wishing you all a great Valentine’s day, or a belated one if this post reaches you too late

Google’s Doodle Just Get Better; Celebrates Thomas Edison’s Birthday

Google Doodles have been getting better with every new one they come up with. This week the celebrated the birthday of Jules Verne’s birthday with an innovative animated Doodle.

Today, they have put up a new Google Doodle to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Edison, the inventor and scientist who developed many devices that form the base of technology today; including the Phonograph which then went on to become the record player and gramophone and is today available in the form of CD, DVD and Blu Rays; motion picture camera which was used to create movies and shows; and the electric bulb because of which we have light in darkness today.

The Google Doodle for Thomas Edison feature all his innovations which go on to form the word Google. The animation is done in GIF and also features a light bulb which turns on and off. Pretty cool.

Google has definitely started to give their Doodle’s a lot of attention after they came up with the Pacman Doodle, and many of them have been simply brilliant. The Thomas Edison Google Doodle will be viewable wherever it is February 11.

What do you think? Which has been your favorite Google Doodle till date? Do let me know.

Micropayments and Friending Facebook Looks Good For PayPal

A micropayment is the best method of getting users to pay. It is easier, faster and can be integrated into any service so well, users might just think it is a part of the service. It is seen that micropayments for a part of a service pays off better than paying for the service itself (look at all Facebook’s social games).

Facebook still has scope for a better micropayment service and PayPal just filled the void with its PayPal for Digital Goods.

The new solution from PayPal is a two-click process and does not even need you to leave that page. It was hinted in October last year. At just 5% + 5 cents for payments under $12, the payment service is charged at a minimal cost. This payment for micro amounts looks cheap and has huge conversion rates from users.

The PayPal labs defines this process as,

Save big with PayPal’s micropayments price – designed for merchants who process low-value transactions (typically under $10 in value).
Sign up for micropayments pricing and you’ll get the 5% + 5c rate with all of PayPal’s payment solutions, like Buy Now buttons, Express Checkout, Website Payments Pro, Send and Request Money (learn more about our different payment solutions )

PayPal outlines the payment scheme as,

According to PayPal, this payment process is the:

online equivalent of dropping a quarter in the slot to buy a newspaper or play a video game.

With a lineup of big-shot partners like*Facebook, Autosport.com, FT.com, GigaOM and Ustream, the new payment scheme is on a perfect launchpad.

Messing With Anonymous Brings You in A Never Ending Line of Fire

When you are up against the most notorious faction on the Internet that has continuously brought down top websites over years and has a long-standing experience of raising mayhem, the least you can do is not make vague immature claims and try to become a hero in front of the media. That is one mistake Aaron Barr, the CEO of security company HBGary Federal did and it took his whole joyride down an anticlimax to an “aw, snap!” moment where he had to say,

lol..ok guys well u got me right.

This guy will be remembered as a bad example.

He lost much more than his job, pissed off quite a few people, became laughing stuff at work, lost his email ID, twitter account, valuable company emails, a TB of backup data and got his iPad wiped. Barr got the attention of Financial Times who did a story on him and his research claiming the identity of Anonymous members. Now that Barr was high and flying, he got a bit proactive too but took a wrong turn. He tried making contact with Anonymous. As you have figured by now, it did not end too well.

Attention seeker Barr got Anon’s attention and landed his company in trouble 6 days before a scheduled meeting with the FBI. After this, the best he could do, was say,
CommanderX. This is my research… I am not going to release names I am merely doing security research to prove the vulnerability of social media so please tell [redacted] and [redacted] or whoever else is hitting our site to stop.

HP Bringing WebOS To ‘Connected Devices’ Including PCs and Laptops

HP just dropped a biggie at their never-ending on-going event in San Francisco. The company said that it is “thinking beyond today” and aims at bringing the webOS platform to other connected devices including printers, scanners, MFDs, cameras and PCs and laptops.

The company did not share any more details but, they did promise to share more details about this “throughout the year”.

It will be interesting to see as to how HP intends to implement a touchscreen OS on a PC/Laptop. I expect that webOS will be limited to only the touch based PCs and laptops from HP. On laptops, webOS will act as a great secondary OS when a user just intends to do view some pictures or check his emails.

WebOS is expected to arrive on PCs and laptop sometime later this year. It will be interesting to see if any of the latest HP PCs or laptops will be supported or not. The company definitely lived up to its tagline of ‘the computer is personal again’ with this move.

HP TouchPad Announced; Features Tight Integration With WebOS Running Handsets

HP announced the ‘big brother’ of the Veer and the Pre 3 – the TouchPad. As we reported earlier, the TouchPad is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor running at 1.2GHz. The tablet will sport a 9.7-inch XGA (1024×768) display and will be 13.7mm thick. The tablet will pack 1GB of RAM and will be available in capacities of 16GB or 32GB.

The usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass and a 3.5mm audio jack are also present. The tablet will also feature Beats audio technology which will be complemented by the stereo speakers. Sadly, the TouchPad will only have a single front-facing 1.3MP camera for video calling.

The TouchPad will run on webOS v3.0 and will feature tight integration with other webOS devices like the Pre 3 or the Veer. Users can read their messages received on their webOS powered handsets right on their TouchPad! The tablet will also be able to multi-task easily. At the event, the tablet was shown running a full screen streaming Flash 10.1 video without breaking into a sweat.

Many of the inbuilt apps of WebOS have also been redesigned to take the advantage of a bigger screen on the TouchPad. These applications include the Mail app and the Photos app. Users can comment on photos on Facebook right from within the Photos app.

Users can also share data between the TouchPad and any of the latest webOS running handsets by just touching them. *Users can even answer calls coming on their Pre 3/Veer right from their TouchPad including video calls!

The size of the virtual keyboard can also be increased or decreased depending on the users preference.* Accessories available for the TouchPad at the time of launch will include a case-cum-stand, keyboard and a new Touchstone dock.

The Wi-Fi version of the HP TouchPad will hit the shelves by summer this year, with the 3G and the 4G versions following. *Sadly, HP did not mention anything about the price of the TouchPad.