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If you rushed into upgrading your iThing to v5, you may be one of those that are having regrets. Your phone or tablet may be running slower, or draining its battery faster. Or there might be some apps that just don't run at all under v5. Apple will basically say, "too bad." Because you can't downgrade your iOS to an earlier version - not without jailbreaking your phone or running some dubious software, and even then you might have problems.

I upgraded my iPad 2 last week when iOS 5 was released, and I thought all was well, until I came home from work that evening and my wife wanted to run her favorite app: the local St. Louis Post Dispatch newspaper. Nothing but a blank screen. An email to the newspaper went unanswered, and then later the paper's deputy managing editor posted a note saying that its app was one of several that wasn't compatible with v5 and to hang tight until they could fix it, with no ETA (thanks Apple for that one, since they have to approve all new apps too). So what to do, other than getting the dead trees edition?

Jailbreaking, the act of hacking an Apple mobile device to allow for the installation of unapproved, third-party apps, is often seen as a niche activity undertaken by only a small subset of users. But the truth is, when you're dealing with Apple devices, even a small subset equates to a large number. According to Jay Freeman, who runs the largest jailbreak app store Cydia, around 10% of all iPhones are jailbroken. In total, he says there are approximately 10 million jailbroken devices in the wild, including iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices.

And now, this rapidly growing user base will have their very own conference: MyGreatFest, the world's first convention for the jailbreaking community.

JailbreakMe.com, the easy-to-use browser-based jailbreaking tool for Apple mobile devices has just gone live with version 3.0. What this means is anyone can now jailbreak their iOS device running the 4.3 software (or below, in some cases), including the iPad 2. There is no software to download on your computer; nor does your phone, iPod Touch or iPad have to be physically connected to the computer for this to work. Instead, all the jailbreaking is done via the JailbreakMe.com website, thanks to a PDF-based exploit.

A Microsoft-approved "jailbreaking" solution for Windows Phone is on its way soon, promises a recent blog post from the creators of ChevronWP7 Labs, a new site for Windows Phone enthusiasts and developers. The service will be provided by longtime Microsoft fans Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh and Long Zheng in partnership with Microsoft, who, last year, notably decided to embrace its hacking and homebrew community, instead of outlaw it.

In Apple's next mobile operating system iOS 5, there are now integrated widgets for core apps like stocks and weather available in the operating system's new Notifications Center. This Android-like drop-down list of updates, accessible by swiping down from the top of the screen, alerts you to things like new emails, missed calls, voicemails and other updates from your installed apps.

But developers hoping to include their own widget-like notifications in the center were disappointed to find out that their only option was for text-based updates. However, thanks to a hack from developer Will Homer, there is now a way for jailbroken phones to run third-party widgets within the Notifications Center. Some of the first examples of these widgets are already out, and are ready for testing.

Good news, iPhone jailbreakers! Less than 24 hours after iOS5 was announced at WWDC, Apple's developer conference taking place in San Francisco this week, a member of the iPhone hacking collective known as the Dev-Team confirmed that the new operating system (OS) has been jailbroken.

The hackers already have their hands on the developer beta of the OS, which launched yesterday. It appears that this version of iOS is still susceptible to one of the existing exploits they use to provide jailbreaking tools to end users.

There will soon be two new app stores available to iPhone jailbreakers, it's being reported. In addition to the Cydia app store, the default home to jailbreak applications for Apple mobile devices, it looks like the once-popular Icy store will also be making a comeback. The other new store is called Lima, and this one will be a browser-based alternative to Cydia, as opposed to a downloadable application.

• Toyota Kills Scion iPhone Jailbreak Theme After Apple Complains http://bit.ly/gCpkpL via @dailytech
• California's CTO: If government agencies spent 10% of their time on social media, "it would be the equivalent of hiring 10 to 15 staffers." http://bit.ly/dR8IaL via @ohmygov
• "What are we building? We are building augmented reality glasses for the masses." http://bit.ly/gWtkvV via @augmented
• Tumblr's Mark Coatney: Do Most Websites Treat Commenters As Second Class Citizens? [Video] http://bit.ly/elVLxF via @neilvidyarthi
• Examiner.com will use "peer reviews and incentive pay to increase the professionalism of its content." Content farm? Not us! http://bit.ly/fm01o1 via @davidaKaplan

Over the weekend, the group of iPhone hackers known as the Dev Team released two new tools to jailbreak the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 4.3.1. Both the PwnageTool and the tool called redsn0w allow users to perform an "untethered" jailbreak, which means that when rebooting your mobile device, it doesn't have to be connected ("tethered") to your computer in order to keep the jailbreak in place.

These jailbreaking tools were made possible by an exploit found by German security researcher Stefan Esser, who provided details regarding the exploit to the team.

Ses0nPass, the jailbreaking software for the Apple TV media center, has been updated. The new version now allows for the much-desired "untethered" jailbreak - meaning, the device does not have to be connected to a computer during startup. At present, the software is only available for Mac users, but a Windows version is said to be "coming soon."

But why would you want to jailbreak your Apple TV? How about access to streaming music from Last.fm, an HDTV-optimized Web browser, RSS feeds, weather forecasts, Twitter, additional support for video file formats and more?