I don’t know about the rest of you, but I personally have a deep rooted inquisitive nature which makes me want to know what is going on in the world around me. I have a need and a thirst for knowledge, and because I have a passion for technology, I love to see the manufacturing process behind things. One of my favorite television shows which is aired daily in the United Kingdom via satellite TV is ‘How it’s Made’ and basically goes through the full process about how everyday products are produced which is like some kind of heaven to me.

For those of you amongst us who are big Android and Samsung fans but who aren’t willing to part with your hard earned cash on the gigantic Galaxy Note, then it may not be that long a wait until you can get your hands on the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone. The world had pretty much set itself for the fact that Samsung would release the third iteration of the Galaxy S device toward the end of this month but this is no longer the case with the Korean electronics giant making an unexpected U-turn and decided to give the S3 its own launch event later in the year.

If you take the time to step back and take a long hard look at the technology that we have in this day and age, I think you will agree that we are a privileged generation of people. From a technological advancement point of view; there has never been a better time to be alive, with improvements to technology coming thick and fast as well as the constant introduction of new and seriously impressive gadgets and consumer electronic devices.

One of the most amazing things about the jailbreak community in our opinion, is the sheer diversity which it represents. When we talk about diversity, we mean that in all contexts, spanning from the range of tweaks available on the Cydia store, all the way to the cultural and age diversity of the developers who submit them. Cydia contains software and modifications of all genres which can pretty much tweak, theme and alter nearly all aspects of iOS, but somehow developers still manage to keep churning out unique ideas.

The official App Store is a wonderful place, full of some truly amazing applications which have been developed to the highest standard, more than worthy of their place on our SpringBoards. However, with over half a million applications currently residing in the Store, law of averages dictate that a good portion of them will be poor purchases due to the fact that they don’t work as advertised or in some instances, just don’t work at all.

The jailbreaking of an iPhone is an art which appeals to a diverse group of people for a number of different reasons. Some people genuinely and strongly disagree with Apple’s tight hold over the operating system, some individuals love the freedom to be able to install previously unavailable tweaks, modifications and themes while others need to perform a jailbreak as an intermediary stepping stone to achieving a network unlock to use the device with any carrier.

Something tells me that the next few weeks leading up to the iPad 3 announcement event will be rife with images flying around the web which sources say are components from the eagerly anticipated iPad 3. It does always make me wonder who these sources actually are, but nevertheless from a historical perspective; they generally seem to have quite high speculation success rate. This morning, we saw some images coming from MICGadget, which showed a comparison of the outer rear shells of the iPad 2 and the soon to be released iPad 3, which in summary, showed a thicker form factor, as well as a larger aperture for the rear camera, possibly pointing to an improved 8-megapixel offering.

Regular readers and jailbreak enthusiasts alike may recall an article some weeks back which related to the fact that the Electronic Frontier Foundation were petitioning for members of the public to make their combined voices heard to ensure that the Copyright Office continues to protect the exemption which makes jailbreaking a legal activity, as well as extend that exemption to include additional devices such as tablets and games consoles.

For anyone who regularly opens up Cydia and refreshes the repositories to see the most recent additions and available updates, it won’t come as a surprise that each day seems to bring a new Siri-based tweak or enhancement. When the iPhone 4S was launched, Siri was one of the driving forces behind said device, making it such a consumer success and helped Apple to announce record first day sales, as well as posting record breaking financials for the final quarter of 2011.

What kind of world would we live in without gravity? A phenomenon defined as a force by Sir Isaac Newton, something which attracts all objects to other objects, with Albert Einstein chipping in with his theory that gravity is the result of the curvature of space-time. These two theories are the most widely accepted, and although we may never get a fully complete explanation of what gravity actually is, we all know it’s a pretty awesome phenomenon nonetheless.

We have all sat patiently waiting for nearly twelve months and with the rumored announcement of the iPad 3 set for March 7th, the time is drawing ever closer where we will actually get to see the next generation iPad in all of its glory. Until that day, we will need to settle for rumor and speculation like we do numerous times a year for every product launch. So far, in this run up, the iPad 3 rumors have thrown out the possibility of a high resolution Retina display as well as a possible quad-core A6 processor and a thicker casing for the device.

One of the most talked about Cydia tweaks so far in 2012 has to be the fabulous Zeppelin modification by developer Alex Zielenski, which offers users the ability to not only set a custom image to display in place of the carrier name, but also to easily create and add their own logos of whatever they desire. Since Zeppelin was released, we have been having lots of fun with it, downloading logo packs from Cydia and seeing all of the excellent offerings which the community has created, but we thought it was about time Redmond Pie was represented in Zeppelin.

June 2007 will always go down as a momentous month in smartphone history due to the fact it marked the launch of the original Apple iPhone which set about a total change in the mobile industry. The following year saw the launch of the iPhone 3G pushed back a month until July with the next two releases of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 both following the original launch date, and coming in the month of June.

One of the hot topics surrounding not only iOS, but mobile operating systems in general is data security and privacy. Over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of discussion on the world wide web about mobile applications accessing data without permission or prior notice, as well as independent reports about users being able to launch FaceTime calls and gain access to certain contact information on an iOS device. Only last week, we were also able to view a report from the University of California which used the PiOS tool to show us that official App Store applications leaked more data than their Cydia based counterparts. When all of this information is put together, it hasn’t been a very good two weeks for the reputation surrounding iOS security.

The Cydia store contains a wide range of offerings from developers from all works of life. Some of the software in Cydia is uploaded by teenagers, some by indie developers, some by security researchers and some of the more professional pickings in Cydia are submitted by development houses who do this as a profession. One of those development houses is CocoaNuts, who are a small team of developers dedicated to creating tweaks for iOS which put powerful functionality in the hands of users.

Perhaps one of the most popular, but simple tweaks in the last few months is Zeppelin modification which is available through the ModMyi repository in Cydia. The tweak provides a small aesthetic enhancement to a jailbroken iOS device by allowing a custom logo to be set in place of the default carrier logo. Zeppelin is similar in functionality to that of Fake Operator and MakeItMine, except it allows total customization over the logo as long as the set graphic is within the space confinements.

It was only a few weeks ago that we brought you the reinvention of the YouTube application for iPhone, as imagined by developer Jonas Gessner. ProTube for iPhone is available for purchase through the Cydia store and brings a number of features and additions which many feel should have been native in Apple’s stock implementation of YouTube.

One of the main driving forces behind users performing a jailbreak on their iOS device is the fact that it gives the ability to modify the feel and appearance of the operating system. As a company, Apple are a champion of innovative design and their current range of hardware is amongst the most beautifully designed out there, but a growing number of users feel the need to modify the stock interface elements to better suit their individual tastes.

The Mac App Store is still in its infancy when compared to its older brother, the iOS App Store. Opened officially in January 2011, it celebrated its first birthday last month and has been an extremely successful outlet for Apple in those twelve months. The Mac App Store offers digital downloads of software in similar fashion to the iOS application outlet but contains software designed and developed for machines running Mac OS X 10.6.6 and later.

With the rumors still holding strong that the iPad 3 announcement event will happen on March 7th, the tension and excitement surrounding the proposed design and technical specifications of the new tablet is growing ever stronger. We all know that Apple product announcements are big news, but with the iPad growing in stature and popularity, the public attention for this launch is set to be at an all time high.