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

Jailbreaking, once the domain of hackers and the tech elite, has rapidly become a force to be reckoned with. It attracts a much wider crowd these days, thanks to easy-to-use tools put out by both individual hackers and teams of hackers. Some, like the recently launched JailbreakMe.com, don't even involve software downloads. All a user has to do on with JailbreakMe.com is open its URL on their mobile device to begin the jailbreaking process.

The benefits to jailbreaking are plentiful. Although the activity has been associated with application piracy in the past, many jailbreakers simply want access to the apps that Apple rejected or wouldn't permit in the App Store. In the past, these have included things like mobile hotspot tools, themes, widgets, replacements or upgrades to core apps, changes to the device's default functionality and other such tweaks. But more importantly, jailbreakers have a sense of control over their devices, and a sense of ownership.

If there's something a device doesn't do that you wish it would, there's probably a jailbreak "app for that."

Even Apple itself seems to be warming up to the jailbreaking community of late. The company recently hired well-known jailbreak app developer Peter Hajas, whose "Mobile Notifier" app appears to have served as the inspiration for iOS 5's new notifications center. Does that mean the jailbreaking scene will now be the testing ground for new iOS features? Considering the wide range of innovations that emerge there, we hope so.

MyGreatFest: The First Ever Jailbreakers' Convention

For those who have watched the community from the sidelines, following well-known personalities like @saurik or @P0sixninja on Twitter, the new jailbreaking conference MyGreatFest will put them up close and personal with their favorite hacking idols. And for fellow hackers, who often jockey for position among their peers, as hackers tend to do, it will offer a venue where they can show off their skills, maybe even get into a coding grudge match in front of a live audience. Meanwhile, fans who really want to meet the hackers one-on-one will have the opportunity to buy tickets to a VIP area where they can "have lunch" with the developers, or just hang out and chat.

There will also be a series of presentations from big names in the jailbreaking community, where they will tackle subjects like the piracy problem, and whether or not DRM (digital rights management) should be included in the jailbreaking tools provided to mainstream users. In addition, the event will offer Q&A sessions, giveaways, vendor booths and everything else you would expect from a traditional conference.

First Official iOS 5 Jailbreak May be Revealed at MyGreatFest

And there may be one more big event at the upcoming show: the first official iOS 5 jailbreak, says MyGreatFest organizer Craig Fox. Although the beta of the OS has already been jailbroken, until the commercial release, there's no way to know if the exploits used will still be available when the new iPhone launches.

However, there's a good chance the next iPhone will arrive before the conference's start date of September 17th, 2011 in London. Fox says that if that's the case, it's very likely we'll see the new iPhone jailbroken right there at the event.

Interestingly enough, Fox (pictured, right) isn't a developer, hacker or event planner by trade - he's a carpenter. Cearly, a jailbreaking enthusiast, too. It's a testament to him that he's been able to pull this event off at all, much less attract the big-name developers as both speakers and attendees.

The London event is only the beginning, Fox tells us. By October, he will be ready to announce the dates of future events here in the U.S., as he plans to bring MyGreatFest to both coasts by 2013, starting sometime in spring 2012 with an event in the San Francisco Bay area.

In the meantime, despite the distance, the first jailbreakers' convention has attracted a wide audience of attendees. Tickets have have been sold all over Europe, North America and even India and Singapore. For those who can't make it, sessions will be both livestreamed and posted to YouTube.

The conference has a very grassroots feel, which is makes sense, given that jailbreaking itself is very much a grassroots movement. But now that jailbreaking has its own convention, Apple is stealing jailbreak app developers and the jailbreaking user base is numbering in the millions, this activity is rapidly losing its niche status in favor of mainstream success.

Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing, if you ask us.

For more info on the event, check out MyGreatFest.net.

For those unaware, the term "jailbreaking" within the Apple community refers to hacking a device to allow for the installation of third-party applications outside the official iTunes App Store. While often, and sadly, associated with piracy, not all jailbreakers are interested in stealing apps - some just like the tweaks, hacks, widgets, themes and unapproved apps offered by jailbreak app stores like Cydia, Icy and ThemeIt.

Apple used to discourage jailbreaking among its customers, but with the recent hire of jailbreak app developer Peter Hajas, whose "Mobile Notifier" app looks remarkably similar to iOS 5's new notifications center, it seems Apple may be warming up to the jailbreak community. In addition, the first-ever convention just for jailbreakers, MyGreatFest, is taking place this September in London, further indicating how this popular hacking activity has now gone more mainstream.

How JailbreakMe Works

JailbreakMe version 3.0 was accidentally revealed earlier this month, when a working beta of the hack went live for a few minutes on JailbreakMe.com. For those who caught it in time, the hack reportedly worked.

Now that the hack has been officially released to the wild, the expectation is that this updated hack will also prove successful, and, most importantly, as easy as ever.

How to Use JailbreakMe.com

The way JailbreakMe.com works involves using a PDF-based exploit that works on iOS.

The following firmware versions are supported:

• iPhone 4: 4.3 - 4.3.3
• iPhone 4 (CDMA): 4.2.6 - 4.2.8
• iPad 1: 4.3 - 4.3.3
• iPad 2: 4.3.3
• iPhone 3GS: 4.3 - 4.3.3
• iPod Touch 3G: 4.3, 4.3.2, 4.3.3
• iPod Touch 4G: 4.3 - 4.3.3

The process of jailbreaking your device is incredibly simple when using JailbreakMe. The steps are as follows:

1. Go to JailbreakMe.com on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad's mobile Safari Web browser.
2. Tap the "Free" button next to the Cydia icon, just like you were installing an app.
3. Tap the "Install" button.
4. That's it - the rest is done automatically!

If you prefer a video tutorial, check out RedmondPie.com.

Thanks to @comex for providing this easy-to-use jailbreak, along with @chpwn and @saurik.

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.

Homer, who goes by @WillFour20 on Twitter, tweeted a proof-of-concept based on his hack last week, showing a simple "Hello World" widget, showing the text . He has also posted templates for creating these notification center widgets online at GitHub for other developers to access.

Settings Widget

One of the first widgets to take advantage of this hack has now been released. This tweak, created by a 14-year old Italian developer known as qwertyoruiop, allows you access to basic settings, without having to launch the Settings app and delve into System Preferences. This is similar to the functionality provided by SBSettings, a popular jailbreak app that allowed for quick access to commonly used functions.

According to the blog RedmondPie, this widget lets you turn various functions off or on, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, plus adjust the brightness and volume, and reboot, power off or "re-spring" the phone (refreshing the homescreen after applying jailbreak tweaks or themes).

Note: RedmondPie has installation details here.

Music Center Widget

A second custom widget known as MusicCenter created by developer Aaron C. Wright (@WrightsCS on Twitter) is also on the horizon. This widget will show you what song is currently playing in your Music app, along with the album artwork. Wright says additional features like "Tap to Tweet," music controls and other track information like rating and duration will come in later versions. This widget is not yet available for download.

With iOS 5, Apple has taken great pains to remove many of the temptations that once intrigued the jailbreaking community, from Wi-Fi sync options via iCloud to the pull-down notifications list itself and more. But with these custom widgets, jailbreakers looking for a richer experience than what Apple allows for out of the box will once again find a reason to hack their phones.

Image credit: Settings - iPhoneItalia.com; Other sources: iClarified, RedmondPie

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.

As proof of the jailbreak, @MuscleNerd posted the following screenshots of a jailbroken iOS5, showing the Cydia (jailbreak app store) and iSSH icons on the iPod Touch's homescreen. You can tell that this is iOS5 because other new icons are present, too, including "Newsstand," the new home for your newspaper and magazines subscriptions on iOS5, and "Reminders," a simple to-do list application.

However, it should be noted that just because the beta version is unpatched, things could change when the commercial release ships later this fall. By that point, this jailbreak may no longer work.

Will You Still Jailbreak?

In addition, while committed jailbreakers and unlockers (those who run their iPhones on unsupported cellular networks) will probably continue to hack their phones, many more casual jailbreakers may be happy enough with iOS5 to leave it as is this time.

After all, several of the most popular tweaks and enhancements are now core to the OS itself. One notable example is that of Mobile Notifier, an alternative notification system for iOS devices. In fact, the application's creator, Peter Hajas, was hired by Apple only days before the reveal of iOS5. The similarities between the jailbreak version and Apple's striking. For now, Hajas only has "intern" status at Apple, but his hire may serve as inspiration for future hackers looking to move from the jailbreaking world to the Apple design team itself.

Hmm, maybe that's why Apple isn't patching the exploit?

Jailbreaking, for the uninitiated, is the act of hacking your iPhone (or iPod Touch, iPad or Apple TV) in order to run unapproved third-party applications. While some associate jailbreaking with piracy, the truth is that many jailbreakers, like those who root their Android phones, simply do so to gain total control over their devices. Jailbreaking allows you to install and use far more customizations on your device than currently allowed by Apple, including the installation of themes, skins and even widgets. You can also install the unapproved third-party applications which are not allowed in the iTunes App Store. Some popular ones involve adding new features to core apps, or giving you the ability to use your iPhone as a Wi-Fi hotspot without having to sign up for a hotspot plan with your carrier.

These applications, themes, skins, widgets and other tweaks, are, for the most part, housed in Cydia, an app store for the jailbreaking set. Cydia merged with the another popular jailbreaking outlet called RockYourPhone last fall, effectively becoming the de facto home to jailbreakers.

But now, Icy is making a comeback. Those who have been jailbreaking their iPhones (and other devices) for some time will remember Icy from the OS 3.x days. Back then, its main selling point was the speedier user interface and faster load times. The new Icy installer, maintained by the Infini-Dev team, is still supposed to be faster than Cydia - up to five times faster, the developers claim.

For those interested, Icy is available for jailbreakers from the repos maintained at: repocydia.myrepospace.com/Polarbear and repo.ispazio.net.

Also from the same dev team is a new, browser-based installer called Lima/fr0st. This will be a fully browser-based installer, where all an end user will have to do is visit a website using the Safari browser in order to have access to these installable jailbreak applications.

Although Lima is not yet finished, the team has posted a YouTube video that shows it in action.

Why Does This Matter?

Jailbreaking is often written off by the mainstream news and tech community as a niche activity only undertaken by a small portion of iPhone (and other Apple device) owners. While that may be true, when you're dealing with as large an install base as Apple has, it's still a notable group.

According to Cydia creator Jay Freeman's website, there are over 2 million jailbroken devices using his software. However, a more recent figure he gave to The Washington Post ups that number to 4.5 million. He also says that the Cydia operation now nets $10 million per year.

Freeman recently sat down for an interview with Rackspace's Robert Scoble to talk about why users should jailbreak their iPhones. That video is available here on YouTube.

Sources: Appadvice, Redmond Pie,

• 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

What links did we miss? Let us know in the comments.

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.

Redsn0w or Pnwage Tool?

PwnageTool is the jailbreaking software that iPhone unlockers (those who run the phone on an unsupported mobile network) need to use. However, the Dev Team says that the accompanying software (ultrasn0w) is not yet ready for iOS 4.3.1. For now, unlockers need to hold off on using the new jailbreaking tools, or they will lose their unlock. When an updated version of ultrasn0w becomes available, unlockers will want to then use the PwnageTool app if on Mac, or Sn0wbreeze, the unofficial version of the tool for Windows.

For everyone just waiting to jailbreak, but not unlock, their mobile devices, redsn0w is ready now and is also much easier to use, says the Dev Team.

How to Jailbreak iOS 4.3.1 on Windows or Mac

1. Download the redsn0w software for Windows or Mac. (A list of unofficial mirrors is also available here).
2. Extract and run the executable (Windows) or the .app file (Mac) from the Zip file you downloaded.
3. Download the custom iOS 4.3.1 firmware (IPSW file) which you will use to restore your device using redsn0w. iClarified.com, which the Dev Team itself recommended, has a download available on this webpage. The direct link to the IPSW file from iClarified is available here. You can also download the IPSW file from iTunes itself, but be careful to "Download Only," not update. Note: RedmondPie, a go-to resource on jailbreaking, says only official firmware is supported.
4. Launch redsn0w and browse to the folder where you saved the custom firmware file you downloaded in step #3.

   

5. On the next screen, make sure "Install Cydia" is selected, then click "Next."

   

6. You will now need to turn your device off and plug it into your computer.
7. Once off, click "Next."
8. Follow the onscreen instructions that explain how to put your device into DFU mode. This involves a series of button pushes. Hold down power for 2 seconds, then press the Home button for 10 seconds. While still holding down the Home button, release the power button. Keep holding down Home for 15 more seconds.



9. Redsn0w will then detect your device, reboot your device and jailbreak it. When the process completes, click "Finish."
10. When your device reboots, it will be jailbroken.

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?

Why Jailbreak Apple TV?

For those new to Apple TV jailbreaking, there's a software suite from fireCore that may tempt you over to the dark side. The package known as "aTV Flash," available for both the older and the newest generation of Apple TV products, includes a Web browser designed for HDTVs (Couch Surfer Pro), access to weather forecasts, Last.fm, and RSS feeds - the latter two provided by Apple TVs first jailbroken app NitoTV. Also included in the bundle is media center app XBMC.

With NitoTV, you can create playlists and play additional media file formats via your AppleTV beyond those supported by Apple. On newer Apple TV devices (the smaller, black units), this list now includes support for .m4v, .mp4, .move, HE-AAC, AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV, with more on the way.

Older Apple TV devices can play even more formats: .avi, .divx, .eyetv, .flv, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpeg, .mpg, .ogg, .ogm, .rm, .rmvb, .wmv, .xvid, VIDEO_TS/VOB, ISO, AAC, AC3, DTS, FLAC, MPEG3, MPEG4, VBR MP3, WMA, SSA and SRT.

Meanwhile, with the Web browser provided by Couch Surfer Pro, you can access Google search on your Apple TV, save bookmarks, view your browser history and even use your Apple Remote, USB mouse or Loop pointer to navigate the Web.

aTV Flash for older Apple TV units also includes additional software programs in the bundle, like Keyboard Magic, AirControl, XBMC, Boxee, Sapphire and others.

The process for jailbreaking your Apple TV with Ses0npass is documented in detail here. Although those instructions still assume a tethered jailbreak, the overall process is similar.

"This is war," he says in the first post, arguing that Sony has declared war on hackers. Indeed, Hotz has been in the middle of a heated fight with Sony over the his release of a jailbreak for the Playstation 3. Sony claims that this violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as the Computer Fraud Abuse Act, and that the jailbreak released by Hotz would enable users to play pirated video games on their consoles.

That last argument is an important part of Hotz's legal defense, as he contends that the Playstation should be viewed no differently than a mobile phone, which under DMCA regulations, is legal to jailbreak. However, the DMCA regulations do not mention gaming consoles specifically, which has left room for Sony's legal efforts against the jailbreaking. Those efforts have included a restraining order against Hotz, forcing him to take down all mention of the jailbreak from the Web.

Hotz notes that battling Sony has been costly. "Sony has five lawyers, I have two." He started a fundraising effort via the blog over the weekend, which has been so successful that he's already closed the "first round of donations." "Things are looking up money wise," Hotz writes, saying he expects to be able to hire more lawyers.

Clearly Geohot is not going down without a fight.

Today, an update to the jailbreaking tool Sn0wbreeze may have addressed this issue, according to reports from mobile bloggers and Twitter.

DRM Breaks iBooks on Jailbroken Phones

The problem with iBooks, in case you missed the news, has to do with e-books protected by FairPlayDRM (digital rights management). When Apple updated iBooks last week, it also introduced code which allowed it to detect jailbroken devices. When a jailbreak is detected, a dialog box appears, reading: "There is a problem with the configuration of your iPhone. Please restore with iTunes and reinstall iBooks."

Apple introduced this feature (err...bug?) to protect books whose content was locked down using DRM technology. Not all e-books have DRM, so the problem isn't necessarily affecting all jailbreakers at this point - only those whose library includes DRM-protected titles.

iBooks Fixed?

The update to Sn0wbreeze reportedly fixes the problem, although we cannot verify this here on our end. (Please comment if you've tried it!) However, according to some forum postings, there is mixed success in using the new software. One person wrote "all is good," while another shouted "it doesn't work!!!!" In other words, proceed with caution, folks.

Sn0wbreeze is a different variation of jailbreaking tool that the others we typically cover (greenpois0n, redsn0w, etc.) as it allows you to create custom, jailbroken firmware files in advance of the hacking attempt and then update your device using that new firmware. For those who also unlock their phones (unlocking, or "SIM unlocking," lets you use your phone on other carriers' networks), sn0wbreeze is often the preferred method because it won't affect the iPhone's baseband.

Regardless of whether or not Sn0wbreeze is the tool that fixes the issue with iBooks, it's only a matter of time before the jailbreak community as a whole addresses the problem. Of course, we have a simpler solution ourselves: just don't use iBooks. Amazon Kindle and a host of others provide reasonable alternatives to Apple's iBooks e-bookstore and reader app. You can live without it.

Update: A clarification on this. @iH8Sn0w implemented the fix within the app Sn0wbreeze. The fix itself was created by @comex.

According to Social Apples, the iBooks app will no longer launch on a jailbroken phone: "Today marks a new realization for me as a jailbreaker: Apple deliberately crippled my device."

By jailbreaking a phone, you allow it to run unsigned code - that is, code that Apple hasn't approved. If you try to run a Cydia app on an un-jailbroken phone, for example, it won't launch.

Interestingly, it appears as though Apple has protected iBooks with a variation of this strategy. According to iPhone (jailbreak) developer Comex, "It seems that before opening a DRMed book, iBooks drops an improperly signed binary, tries to execute it, and if it works concludes that the device is jailbroken and refuses to open the book."

Presumably, Apple has instituted these measures to both protect the DRM content of its books and to discourage jailbreaking. However, as there are other places to get e-books (with and without DRM restrictions) and as jailbreaks are constantly responding to these measures, it's likely that this isn't the last stand - from Apple or from the jailbreaking community.

"Lemme guess, you sank my battleship?" read the tweet from @TheKevinButler, who then retweeted the code that'd been directed to the account by @exiva.

That account, Travis La Marr's according to his Twitter profile, gave the code with a message to Sony: "come at me."

While the legalities around jailbreaking and intellectual property are one thing, Sony has added more fuel to the fire, arguably, with what Wired describes as "aggressive pretrial discovery demands." Sony has demanded that Google turn over the IP addresses of those who have viewed or commented on the jailbreak video on YouTube. It has also demanded that Twitter provide the identities of those who revealed the hack.

Sony has been granted a temporary restraining order against Hotz, who's removed his information about the hack from the Web. For its part, Sony appears to have deleted the tweet containing the code. But as the company may be realizing with its failure to shut down Hotz, it's not so easy to delete information from the Internet.

Earlier this month, brave, screwdriver-wielding developers got an early jump on creating Android apps for Google TV when a group of hackers figured out a hardware root for the device. Now, the day they were waiting for - the opening of the Android Market for Google TV - looks to be one step closer.

According to one keen-eyed developer, the Android Market servers received a Google TV-related update today and it could be a sign that the app marketplace is soon on its way.

Android Community and Boy Genius Reports both picked up on the story, with BGR writing that "Google has not yet confirmed that the new 'android.hardware.touchscreen' filter is directly related to Google TV, but the writing is certainly on the wall - or screen, as it may be."

Android Community notes that the new feature "checks whether an app requires a touchscreen; that's something you'll find on an Android smartphone, but not on a Google TV device such as Logitech's Revue."

A Google spokesperson said "We've never given a specific timeline on access to the market, but we're still on track with our overall plans to launch the market this year."

This past week, the jailbreaking community hacked their way into Google TV, combining a hardware hack with a lengthy software hack to finally root the device. The jailbreak came months after Google TV and the Logitech Revue device hit the market. Apple TV, on the other hand, was jailbroken just days after release.

Still, the jailbreak was a bit complicated for the average consumer. Now, a new tool called Seas0nPass has stepped in to make jailbreaking your 2G Apple TV as simple as installing an app on your computer.

Lifehacker describes the steps:

Just like any other iOS device, you put it into DFU mode (in the case of the Apple TV, this is done by holding the MENU and PLAY/PAUSE buttons down for seven seconds) and restore the device and restore using the created IPSW. What's especially nice about Seas0nPass, however, is that it will pretty much automate most of this process for you. It'll even download the latest IPSW it needs to patch so you don't have to find it yourself or worry about grabbing the wrong version.

Once you've successfully completed the jailbreak, you just need boot tethered and you're done! So what can you do with a jailbroken Apple TV? You can install Plex and incomplete-but-functional versions of Last.fm and a web browser called Couch Surfer.

As PCWorld noted when the Apple TV was first jailbroken, "the real delight will come in the weeks and months ahead, as hackers and developers start figuring out what to do with Apple's liberated set-top box." We discussed a similar idea the other day when we looked at the Google TV jailbreak, noting that innovation occurs with developers. Making a jailbreak simpler means it will become more mainstream. What do you expect to see available on your Apple TV? And if you've jailbroken already, what are your favorite apps?

For full instructions, downloads and caveats, check out this page.

At the end of November, Android developer Howard Harte announced that he would give $1,000 to the first person who could jailbreak the Google TV. Just over a month later, the $1,000 has been collected and Harte says he is now "having a lot of fun" coding on his hacked unit...and likely watching some free Hulu.

A group of developers called the GTVHacker dev team cracked the code on January 5, opening up the Google TV platform to brave, screwdriver-wielding developers everywhere. (Video proof inside.)

Don't expect this hack to be widely adopted by Hulu-loving GTV fans everywhere, however. Jailbreaking the Logitech Revue unit involves opening up the box, soldiering some wires onto the circuit board, and then going through a relatively lengthy software hack.

"The most important thing for developers though is that they now have full access to developing for the platform well in advance of Google releasing the tools," wrote Harte. "Now, it should be possible for Rovio to port Angry Birds [...] to the Google TV."

The GTVHacker dev team recorded a video of its jailbroken Logitech Revue unit, showing off "bypassed content block and custom application install." Take a look at Hulu on Google TV and more:

Update: Harte contacted us with a few minor corrections, writing "the actual bounty paid was $500, since the rooting process involved a hardware hack. The $1000 bounty was for a software-only hack, which unfortunately did not happen. The original terms of the bounty stated that 'a partial consideration of $500 will be given for a hardware hack' and that a hardware hack is defined as any hack which involves opening the Google TV device. One other minor correction, I don't use it to watch Hulu, I only use it to develop apps..."

What, if not free Hulu, does a jailbroken Google TV mean, then? First off, it's likely that someone will come up with a software-only jailbreak at some point in the future. Beyond that, however, giving root access to daring developers means that, when Google finally opens its Google TV marketplace, developers will have had a head start figuring out the ins and outs of the system. We're curious to see where Google TV could go with the innovation of the developer community.

For those of you interested in all the geeky details, here's Harte's explanation:

The GTVHacker dev team consists of five members, and was started by Zenofex, who was able to connect a terminal to the Revue's UART1 serial port. This involved opening the Revue and soldering three wires, so it qualifies as a hardware hack. After connecting the serial terminal to UART1, Zenofex found a root shell running in Recovery Mode. With that, he had root access, but no way to install apps.

Zenofex enlisted the help of four other software hackers to assmble a toolchain for compiling the necessary tools to add "ADB" support to the Revue. Adding ADB, which is the Android Debug Bridge, allowed installing apps with standard adb commands over the network interface (either Ethernet or WLAN.)

With that complete, Apps that were written in Java would run fine on the Revue, and they had "Astro File Manager" running in short order. At this point, Zenofex contacted me to get a copy of my "Better Terminal Emulator Pro" app, which was required to be shown running on the Revue in a YouTube video under the terms of the "Root Bounty" offering.

It turned out that Better Terminal Emulator Pro, which relies heavily on Native (CPU-specific) code did not run on the Revue. What was needed was Google's Android Native Development Kit (NDK) for Google TV. Since that was not officially available, one clever GTVHacker member was able to combine the NDK from the Android-x86.org project with Intel's toolchain to produce a working NDK for the GTV. With this done, they recompiled the native shared library used by Better Terminal Emulator Pro for the GTV, and BTEP installed fine on the Revue and works.