Getting Synced

I have a personal Gmail account which activesync's Contacts, Mail and Personal Calendar. Problem is I have two other seperate work related calendars on a different system and they don't sync to my phone.

The first is my business Google Apps account where I receive lots of Calendar invites next I have my work laptop Outlook account which is critical but only while I am in this client's engagement.

So with all these various data sources I thought it may be too difficult to patch together all the Calendar and event sources into my single wimpy iPhone. It really wasn't that hard at all, read on:

Personal Gmail - Outlook Active Sync to "m.google.com" (Sync Calendar, Contacts, Mail)

story: When Jess quit her job to move to a competitor she gave me a heads up about the company taking her blackberry, within 15 minutes and while driving :) we set her BB to bi-direction sync (just type m.google.com into the BB browser and download app over the air). We then removed the sync app, wiped her contacts from the phone and repeat the process to pull down contacts onto her new BB. If you ever stress about losing your phone and contacts this is your best solution regardless of your phone choice.

Work Google Apps Account - This is standard IMAP connection to my iPhone, and an additional CalDAV account for syncing the additional calendar! This I did not think was possible until doing some research.


Client Outlook Account - Download the Windows Google Sync utility and set it up to PUSH from Outlook TO one of your Gmail accounts already on your phone, pick the one with the most potential conflicts then you can pull it up in the browser and re-arrange/re-schedule.

That's it, I will hopefully never be late to another meeting again! (yea right)

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak the iPhone 3G

I am blogging right now through my newly jailbroken iPhone 3g with 2.1 firmware... using some blogging application and typing on the tiny keyboard you may ask? Not today, I am infact using PDAnet a free Internet sharing app for jailbroken iPhones which allows you to connect your laptop pc (any variety) to your iPhone via ad-hoc wireless networking and then gain access to the Internet through your phones 3g or edge connection.

I can say this app alone is reason enough to jailbreak your iPhone... I mean, Starbucks coffee is expensive enough, paying for their Internet access is a slap in the face.

So what other wonderful goodies are available exclusively to a jailbroken iPhone? Well this is an Information Security blog so how could I not talk about the excellent new Stumbler Plus app. It is a full featured wardriving and wireless network auditing tool (GUI) and it is really quite sweet. Here are some features:

1. Finds hidden SSID's
2. Reverses AP MAC Addresses automatically to the Vendor name (COOL!)
3. Records Signal Strength, Encryption Type, and Long/Lat via GPS!

Only downsides I have found is there is no automatic feature to keep scanning while you drive, it requires you to repeatedly hit the scan button, also it doesn't seem to have a save or email results feature.

So those are the two killer jailbreak apps currently out for the iPhone 3g. I am sure some of you will wonder why I didn't mention nmap and metasploit, but if you have tried to use either on the buggy xterm app and tiny keyboard, it is not something to be desired. Maybe I will create a one button GUI version of metasploit that uses autopwn... hrmm my list of projects are getting out of control