iPhone4idiots

Update 2/6/2012
As I said before, BTjunkie was IMO the best torrent site on the web. All is not lost however. There will always be more. For those that use torrents my recommendation is to try kickasstorrents here or Extratorrents here. Both are solid and safe. Of course EZTV is a great place to find TV shows and if desperate there is always The Pirate Bay.

OMFG, I’m watching the Super Bowl like the rest of America and I go to download a movie for later tonight and this is what I see,

“2005 – 2012 This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!”

Obviously this is MegaUpload and Pirate Bay continued fallout. Very depressing. Time for a shot as a final send off to what has been the best bit torrent site on the internet for years. Dark times my friends.

Today, Sweden’s Supreme Court announced that it would not be granting an appeal in the Pirate Bay case. What this means is that the four main people behind founding The Pirate Bay can no longer appeal their guilty verdict for copyright infringment. This was an appeal of a November 2010 ruling which reduced the sentence of a 2009 gulity verdict. Yes, the legal system in Sweden is about as fast as in the United States. Now the four men face varying prison sentences of four months to one year and a total fine of about $7 million. However, apparently in the Swedish justice system it is not uncommon to deduct 12 months from any prison sentence on cases over 5 years old. Given that this case has been going on for longer than that, I would be surprised if any of the men spent a day in jail. Not to mention that at least two of the men no longer reside in Sweden. Shortly after the ruling the Pirate Bay website, which actually isn’t part of the case anymore, was redirected from http://thepiratebay.org to http://thepiratebay.se. Apparantly, the current owners of the website fear the US will seize the domain now that the court case is over. Moving to the Swedish domain puts it outside of US jurisdiction. The Pirate Bay started nine years ago and was sued for copyright infringment over five years ago. Yet today the website remains and according to Alexa ranks as the 74th most trafficed website in the world (90th in the United States). I suspect the US government will be more successful at eliminating MegaUpload.

Update 1/27/2012
Oh crap. I’m a idiot guys. As @Leggee @jcis031071 and others pointed out iTransmission won’t sync to your iOS device from iTunes if you don’t have AppSync. Duh. My only pathetic excuse is it has been so long since I’ve had a non jailbroken device I let this simple fact slip my mind. That said, if there ever was a time jailbreak it is now. All devices can be updated to 5.0.1 in iTunes and then use Absinthe to jailbreak. Find the guide here. There really is no reason not to do it. This was done over one million times last weekend so rest assured it is safe and you can’t hurt your device. Sorry for getting any non jailbreakers hopes up.

I’m going to show you step by step how to easily download and view movies and TV shows to your iOS device. With the death of MegaUpload I highly encourage any of you to try this method. It’s really quite simple and in many ways better. Best of all, you don’t have to be jailbroken to do this. If you like this post or find it helpful, please leave me a comment on it. Without further adieu let’s begin! Continue Reading…

So what if MegaUpload never comes back? There are tons of alternatives but of course none are as good, popular or fast as MegaUpload. As I wrote yesterday, many of the other popular alternatives have either blocked United States traffic, disabled sharing of links or deleted user accounts. Thus, they are as good as dead too. Filesonic, Fileserve, FileJungle and UploadStation now forbid users from downloading anything they did not upload themselves. Upload.to is blocking all USA traffic. 4shared, VideoBB and VideoZer have been deleting user accounts and UploadBox and x7.to are just closing altogether. Nevertheless, there are still a some alternatives left. At least for the moment. BTW, look for a detailed post later this week on the best and easiest way to download to your iOS device in the post MegaUpload world. You don’t even have to be jailbroken either. Enough teasing, so what are the best storage lockers left? Continue Reading…

Wow, the United States has some juice. Several European countries have been prosecuting the founders of popular torrent website The Pirate Bay for years. Not only have they not spent a day in jail, but there website is still in operation to this day. Yet, the United States convinced New Zealand to arrest a dual citizen of Finland and Germany for extradition to face copyright infringement charges. Kim Dotcom has been in jail since his arrest on Friday and I’m beginning to think MegaUpload may never return. Even more impressive is the dramatic drop in storage locker file sharing the United States has produced in less than a week. Both FileSonic and FileServe have pulled the plug on their own business fearing the same fate as MegaUpload. Continue Reading…

Like sands through the hourglass, so goes the daily drama of MegaUpload. The only good thing about the FBI’s arrest and seizure of the MegaUpload has been the interesting reading it has provided. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is quite the character. His birthname was Kim Schmitz, but he changed it years ago. A month ago in a big middle finger to the recording industry he put the MegaUpload Mega Song on YouTube. It’s a catchy song about how awesome MegaUpload is with over 12 million views that features tons of celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Jamie Foxx, Chris Brown, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Diddy, Floyd Mayweather, Jr and many others. Apparently Alicia Keys’ husband, Swizz Beatz, was negotiating to become CEO of MegaUpload for about a year. My guess is Mr. Dotcom thought it would be a good move to befriend some in the industry and it also surely helped him gather some of the singers featured in the Mega Song Video. Why Swizz Beatz would agree to become CEO was either lack of knowledge or greed. Either way it is interesting that he hasn’t been arrested or even questioned by the FBI so far. While this is intriguing the arrest of Kim Dotcom was right out of a Hollywood movie. Continue Reading…

So if you look back through my tweets you come across this gem from 7/12/2011, “@netflix just became my #1 tech stock to short! Kiss subscriber growth goodbye with that price increase.” Just 70 days later the stock price is down 50% and the destruction of this company is even a little shocking to me. CEO, Reed Hastings put out a YouTube video apologizing for screwing up the company with the price increase. He tried to explain that they know the future is streaming but letting go of the mail business which made Netflix so successful was hard to do. Instead of taking the price increase back, Netflix decided to spin off the mail order business and in a few weeks is changing the name to Qwikster. I’m sure whatever small percentage of their customers were still subscribing to both services loves that they will soon have to login to two different websites and get two different bills. And Qwikster, holy crap, what a terrible name. On top of that, the @qwikster on Twitter is some stoner who hadn’t tweeted in months. Imagine his surprise to seeing his email get slammed with over 8000 new followers in the past 24 hours. I know the mail order business is a dead man walking, but it could have kept walking for years. Mr. Hastings has damaged the brand in a way that can’t be fixed. Hulu, Apple and others should send him a thank you gift. At this point I only see one way Netflix can be saved. Quickly become the best streaming site on the web. Biggest selection with the best quality streams. It might even help if they re-branded the Netflix name to something people know and trust when it comes to quality online movies. Like maybe the Pirate Bay.

As you know I’ve been looking for an alternative to MegaUpload for awhile. I liked FileServe, but unfortunately it wouldn’t download direct to most iOS devices. Well WUpload is a new player that is gaining market share rapidly. Thus, I thought I would give it a try. I know it downloads fine to an iPhone 4 with the Downloads Lite app. Thus, you will start seeing a few files going to WUpload as I test out people’s reaction to it. It works just like all the others. Just scroll down to the right and click “Slow Download” in the regular download box. Once clicked you’ll have a twenty second countdown before a captcha box appears. Enter the captcha and click submit. You should immediately see and “Download Now” button in the same place. Click that and your download starts. Let me know what you think of WUpload.

Hey, anyone interested in writing some articles for iPhone4idiots? I’m getting a little tired cranking out two or three posts per week and am looking for a guest blogger. You can write about anything tech that interests you. iPhones, iPads, social networks, apps, games, game consoles or iOS. I’m only looking for one or two posts per week. What do you get for your time? Well, you can link back to your own website/blog or post a YouTube video to get extra views as long as it fits within the article you post. Also, you don’t have to worry about the grammar police. If you’ve read my stuff you know why. I can’t be a hypocrite, I just want something comparable. So if you are interested use the contact page to shoot me an email.

Anyone noticing the brilliant marketing campaign going on right now called Mano A Mano in el Bano? I noticed this morning there were promoted tweets (putting it at the top of my trending tweets list) about Fabio (the long haired Italian model) and the Old Spice Guy. You know from the YouTube Videos and commercials. Anyway, Fabio has challenged him to a dual. What this means, I’m not sure. The Old Spice Guy accepted in a video recent enough to take credit from bringing football back. Can’t wait to see what comes of the dual tomorrow and how much buzz this builds. Not sure how much it cost for the top promoted tweet each day, but I suspect it’s peanuts compared to its overall value. The campaign is already viral on Twitter and YouTube. It has to be popular with females, right? Back me up ladies, you like the pecs. I suspect you’ll be seeing Facebook posts in your stream this evening. I for one am rooting for the Old Spice Guy to win. Either way, the almost real-time nature of this marketing is the future. I suspect the marketing team is gathering data and the dual video or videos will be shot in the morning.