Teen who hacked iPhone gets car for his efforts

The New Jersey teen who hacked the iPhone is going to get his wish - well, at least one of them.

George Hotz, who last week found a way to manipulate Apple’s new cell phone so that it will work on other networks besides AT&T’s, is trading one of the two phones he hacked for a new car. And, as Hotz would put it, it’s a “sweet” one at that, a Nissan 350Z.

“This has been a great end to a great summer,” Hotz wrote on his blog.

The teen said he is trading the iPhone to Terry Daidone, co-founder of CertiCell, a Louisville, Ky-based mobile phone repair company. In exchange, Daidone is going to buy him the car and will give him three brand new iPhones, which Hotz plans to hand out to members of his informal team that helped crack the iPhone.

As part of the deal, Hotz will have a paid consulting job for CertiCell. He plans to visit the company’s Kentucky offices later this week to demonstrate his iPhone hack in person.

Daidone and other CertiCell officials did not return calls seeking comment, but the company’s Web site confirmed the consulting deal.

Hotz initially tried to sell the iPhone on eBay, but said he ended the auction after it received multiple bogus bids.

Instead, he solicited a deal through his blog, which is how he hooked up with Daidone. And now he’s eagerly awaiting his new car.

“I have it in writing,” he said. “It’s all signed and good.”

Now if only he could line up that Google internship he’s gunning for

Yahoo Mail extending to mobile phone texts

Global Internet specialist Yahoo! Inc. has this week announced a widening to the range and draw of its existing e-mail service by granting online account holders the ability to stay in touch with their on-the-go friends via the dispatch and receipt of text messages to and from mobile phone handsets.

Yahoo revealed its e-mail-to-phone connection plan yesterday (Sunday, August 26), and will see it arrive as just one of many new features that the California-based giant will soon be rolling out for its 250 million account holders when the latest version of Yahoo Mail is unleashed in the near future.

Likely inspired by the phenomenal success of various user-created Web 2.0 sits such as Facebook and MySpace – and the gradual decline of traditional e-mail portals – Yahoo’s intention with its new package is seemingly to craft a more socially pliable service that offers improved communication capabilities alongside the simplicity and convenience of networked contact access.

“Our goal is to make [Yahoo] Mail a more social experience,” commented John Kremer, VP of Yahoo Mail, in a telephone interview with the Reuters news agency. “We really look at ourselves as sitting on top of the largest dormant social network out there.”

When it arrives, the newly enhanced version of Yahoo Mail will offer account holders three combined ways to interact with those gathered on their contact lists: e-mail; online instant messaging; and text messaging to friends armed with an online mobile phone handset. Yahoo has also said that the imminent communication improvements to its Mail service should be seen as a precursor to the company implementing progressively more social network components in the future.

Yahoo Mail, which currently boasts around 254 million users, 93 million of which actively use the existing Yahoo Messenger option, will be initially adding the new mobile phone text message feature into the US, Canadian, Indian, and Philippine regions. The service will function much like standard mobile texting, with the PC user entering the phone number of a friend, typing a message in the Yahoo Mail portal, and then simply sending it as if it were a conventional mail.

Other new Yahoo Mail features expected to arrive alongside the e-mail-to-phone enhancement include the ability to drag and drop email into folders, and also improved search features that enable users to look for a specific attachment, date, folder, message status, or sender.