Then a strange thing happened. I took a photo at work using iFlickr, and I discovered a mysterious place in cyberspace that to my knowledge was never disclosed by William Gibson. This place is a field outside of rural Lebanon, Kansas, known by some on Google as the Cowboy Stencil Capital of the Universe. In the 2000 census, this small rural town had a population of 300. It is also apparently known as a community suffering from rural flight as documented in a 2006 New York Times article. However, to date, 836 photos have been geotagged to a field about a mile and a half to the northwest of the town center, 3 or more photos probably for each of the remaining citizens of Lebanon. Ostensibly, this is some bug in the iFlickr code where the app gets confused and default to this quaint locale, or, perhaps it is a little joke by the creator of the app. I would like to think that there is some more profound reason, and that this could be a William Gibson plot unfolding before our eyes. Regardless, this is an interesting spacial meta-tagging glitch – when you view my photo on the map, it looks as though tall buildings have sprouted from a field…

The first steps are to jailbreak your phone, and install a few of the necessary apps, including BossPrefs, the BSD Subsystem package, and the OpenSsh client. Once you do this, you can disable Edge, make sure WiFi is enabled, and enable the SSH service. You will want to do both, as the “alpine” password is well known, and you might as well be as safe as possible about this.

I found the file I needed to change under the /var/mobile directory on the iPhone. When you have started SSH on your iPhone and connected to your wireless router, check the ip address in BossPrefs under WiFi. Fire up the Terminal on your computer also connected to the same network, and enter the following (replace xx.xx.xx.xx with the IP address of your iPhone):

scp root@xx.xx.xx.xx:/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist

You will need to enter “alpine” when prompted for the password. Now check to see if GlobalPreferences.plist is now on your Desktop. Now you can edit this file in two ways. Most importantly, in this file, you need to change the “AppleKeyboards” node to also include a node for “ja” in addition to “en_US”. You can convert the plist to an XML text file by running the following in the Terminal, and edit the file in your favorite text editor:

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist

Change the block of text that looks like:

<key>AppleKeyboards</key>
<array>
<string>en_US</string>
</array>

and add the “ja” node so it looks like:

<key>AppleKeyboards</key>
<array>
<string>en_US</string>
<string>ja</string>
</array>

Then to convert it back to binary (the format that it was in), run this in the Terminal:

plutil -convert binary1 ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist

However, the *easier* way to edit the file, is to double-click it, which in OSX, should open the file in Property List Editor. Once in there, click the triangle next to “AppleKeyboards”. You will see one String with the value “en_US”. Click the “New Sibling” button in the editor and type “ja” in the new field provided. Then save.

Once you have edited your prefs file, you need to stick it back on the phone. Run this in the Terminal:

scp ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist root@xx.xx.xx.xx:/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

You will again be prompted for the same password. Once the upload is complete, go to BossPrefs, and turn off SSH and turn back on Edge. Restart your iPhone. You should now be able to type Japanese characters. Go to Notes. You should see a little globe icon next to the space bar. If you click this it will squash the keyboard down some and when you type, you will see options in Japanese charaters for what you are typing. It behaves similarly to typing Japanese on your Mac keyboard. For example, when you type “hanashimasu”, you will see “はなします” as an option in the space above the keyboard. Click the globe to toggle between modes.

I also had a difficult time getting my contacts and calendars to sync. If you are viewing this post with that same problem, I was able to remedy the problem by opening iSync, going to the iSync preferences, and under Advanced – click the “Reset Sync History” button.

The best part about the iPhone is its ability to connect to the internet via any available WiFi hotspot. I navigated all around SF last weekend using the maps functionality and 511.org and hopped around multiple hotspots in the city. Using Muni in this city has never been easier. I have to say, this more than makes up for the lack of speed on the Edge network (at least in a place like SF). AND, I say this with moderate excitement — BART WiFi is available in some BART stations. I don’t know if it is available in all stations, and I don’t know why I would ever pull a laptop out of my bag at a station, but its pretty great if you have a WiFi enabled phone.

Of course, the first thing I had to do, mostly out of principal and secondly out of burning curiosity, was to jailbreak the phone. I kept reading posts about “bricking” one’s phone that made me a bit timid, but I am 90% sure now that unless you do some serious mischief on your phone, everything is fixable with a restore.  I ended up using ZiPhone 2.6b for my jailbreak operation, which was super smooth. Note: I used only the “Jailbreak” option, the one that says “Best choice for ‘official’ carriers;”  that is all I know, and I can’t help you past there. It did work for me, however, and worked very well. The next thing that was required was to install the community sources in the Installer application loaded onto the phone, which gives you access to the “official” list of 3rd party apps for the iPhone and iPhone Lonely Edition (iPod Touch).

I have to say though, with all the booing that enthusiasts did regarding the iPhone not yet enabling 3rd party apps other than web apps, the web app functionalities are rather nice.  More on that later, but just to say, my favorite web apps so far for Home bookmarking are the most simple, such as google, AA.com (kudos to American Airlines for getting that one right),  and although I don’t use it, Twitter has a nice simple interface. Most of the third party native apps are still in their infancy and not terribly impressive. There are a couple that are pretty nice though.

BossPrefs and PocketTouch I think rank as my number 2 best third party apps. PocketTouch aptly allows for simple iPod functions for volume and next/previous functionality using swipe gestures on the touchscreen. It also features a silly but kind of cool function that allows you to play a random track by shaking the phone. (so the next time you see someone on the train shaking their hand in their pocket, don’t be so quick to judge…) BossPrefs is great. It does what it is supposed to do, namely that it allows you to turn off and on various network services on your phone, including OpenSsh, if you have that installed.

My number 1 pick so far, however, is MobileScrobbler. If you participate in the whole LastFm thing, you already know what LastFm is and I don’t need to explain it; if you don’t check it out — you may or may not like it, but anyway… MobileScrobbler is one of the the most mature apps I have seen so far, and allows you to stream radio via WiFi. Very nice. It probably kills your battery life, but hey…what are you going to do…