Weekend news roundup: 9-11 November

On the same day it was released, the iPhone's firmware version 1.1.2 was hacked

Since its release in the US, Apple has been grappling with hackers to stop iPhone unlocking and hacking. And, while the company succeeded for a while with its release of firmware version 1.1.1, hackers soon found a way around the new firmware.

To try once again to stop the hackers, Apple released iPhone firmware version 1.1.2 on Friday to coincide with the launch of the popular device all over Europe. Unlike the previous iterations where hackers needed time to find exploits, the jailbreak procedure was announced almost simultaneously with the new firmware version.

Process is not simple

According to hackers, the new process starts in recovery mode and takes you through a multi-step process that involves the use of the command line and jailbreakme.com to prepare the iPhone for its hacking.

Upon installing the new firmware version and running a software package, hackers simply reboot to get a hacked iPhone running smoothly. So far, a graphical interface for this hack has not gone live, but it should be coming down the pike quite soon.

SimCity coming to OLPC

Electronic Arts announced on Friday that it will be making the original SimCity computer game available to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Children all over the world will be able to play the game on their OLPC XO laptop.

Now that EA has gifted the game to the OLPC project, Don Hopkins - the man who originally ported the game to the UNIX platform and has been instrumental in porting it to OLPC - hopes the open-source community will take ownership of the popular game and turn it into an educational tool for children.

Pack Bell gets fresh

Packard Bell has announced two new media players called Eclipse and Fresh. The Eclipse is slightly more sophisticated than the Fresh and is capable of playing both music and video. It supports MP3, WAV and WMA audio, while displaying MP4, WMV and XviD movie clips. It will come in your choice of 2GB, 4GB or 8GB capacities, but no word on pricing or availability so far.

For those just looking for audio, the Fresh is your choice. It comes in sizes of 1GB or 2GB and runs on a single AAA battery, which should allow for 12 hours of continuous playback. The Fresh will pump out MP3 audio and runs quite cheap at $44 (£21) or $59 (£28) depending on size.