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Appears a user tracking component from Pinch Media used by devs in a variety of apps in the app store is sending back a little more info than some people are happy with. You know, like your birthday, age, hardware ID and exact geographic location! (full overview here)

I have to admit, when I click the button to allow the device to use my location it’s never even occurred to me that this was a two way street and this info was being sent out and harvested somewhere. Naive perhaps but I’ll think twice from now on.

If you’re concerned about this issue, a good blog to keep an eye on is http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/, which reviews apps based on their privacy. They also have a hosts file available (jailbroken phones only of course), which may be a better option than the suggestion from Pinch Media that we simply use all our apps in Airplane mode!

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is a very handy (free) website that helps organise your travel plans. You simply forward all your confirmation emails to the site; airline, hotels, car hire etc, and it automatically builds a single itinerary for your entire trip.

I’ve been using it for a few years now and find it invaluable for keeping everything in one place and easy to access. It also adds handy meta-info such as weather at your destination, maps, routes from the airport to your hotel etc. You can then share this info with others, see who’s going to be travelling at the same time, and export the entire thing to your calendar.

The only down side was, when actually on your trip you used to have to access the site to see your plans on your iPhone, which meant finding a wifi hotspot or internet cafe, or paying costly data roaming charges.

Which is why I was happy to find out that they just launched an app for the iPhone that stores all your trip details offline.

TripIt for iPhone gives you…

Easy Access: See all the details of your TripIt itineraries, whether you’re online or offline.

iPhone Integration: Link to airlines, hotels, restaurants and more, right from your itinerary.

Maps and Directions: Get maps and directions straight from your itinerary at the tap of a finger.

Quick Phone Calls: Direct dial phone numbers from your itinerary on your iPhone.

It’s kinda basic (doesn’t include all the meta-info for example) but functional, and the timing couldn’t be better for me as I’m in the middle of a trip to S.E. Asia at the moment.

If you travel a lot (or at all) you really should try Tripit. Feel free to add me (oldskool73) as a contact.

Tripit App for iPhone

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Ever since Apple so kindly updated the iTunes database encryption key with the v2 firmware it’s been impossible to sync an iPhone with anything other than iTunes.

Yesterday I found a site describing an extremely simple hack that appears to re-enable syncing to older software simply by tricking the iPhone into reporting it’s still running an old database version. I’ve done it on mine (fw 2.2) and it appears to work brilliantly, I can now synch with gtkPod or Amarok in Ubuntu, and if I (have to) boot back into XP iTunes doesn’t seem to complain and I can still do backups and AppStore sync’s as normal.

Using Amarok and other iTunesDB compatible software with the iPhone 2.x @ Abort,Retry,Hack

Excellent, f**k you Apple (again)!

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