If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you’ve probably noticed by now that I just love to give stuff away. Unfortunately, getting the prizes to the winners seems to be the difficult part, and it’s not for a lack of trying on my part. This seems like the week of contests as I wrap a few things up and try to resolve old contest winners.

I had a winner for this contest, who I emailed and never heard from. I sent a follow-up email today, so we’ll see if I get to mail that out soon.

I had two winners for this contest, but neither responded to my DM tweets to collect, so I’m having a super fast 1-day contest again to give it away.

I held this contest last week and drew a winner who I’ve emailed today.

Finally, a previous contest winner who won a PS3 from a scam artist posing as a sponsor. After some time trying to get the “sponsor” to do anything close to forking over a prize, I went out and bought the prize winner a PS3 system myself. As it turns out, she’s looking to give that prize back out to a charity this summer, as she won’t need it.

It’s been a fun week for prizes, and I’ll have more prizes to give out soon, but I need to actually send some of these out first. Look for more contest announcements here and on Twitter as soon as I send one or two of these out.

The iPhone 3.0 software update has been out for about 10 days now and the iPhone Dev team provided hungry iPhone owners with the redsn0w tool and ultrasn0w very quickly to help us jailbreak and unlock out iPhones.

Disclaimer: Messing around with stuff like this usually voids your warranty. It’s also possible to completely brick (ruin) your phone while trying to do this. I’ve done it plenty with no problems, but use this information at your own risk.

Why jailbreak?
The biggest reason to jailbreak your iPhone is to open it up to a lot of new features. For me, the idea of customization and theming was a huge draw, but the two things my jailbreak provided me were access to my shell (as well as SFTP) and a video camera. These things are available as third-party apps installed through Cydia and you can’t get them without jailbreaking. Jailbreaking is also how you install ultrasn0w to unlock the phone.

Why unlock?
The unlock is to break free from AT&T. I have AT&T and I’m in a contract, but if you want to move to another provider like T-Mobile, you’ll need to unlock the phone. I’ve really only tried it with T-Mobile and you lose 3G when you move.

How to Jailbreak and unlock
1. Make sure your iPhone is already upgraded to 3.0
2. Back up your iPhone with iTunes!
3. Download the firmware upgrade and redsn0w (see links on the YouTube video page)
4. Plug in your iPhone via the USB cable.
5. If iTunes is up, eject the phone in iTunes and close iTunes.
6. Turn the phone off.
7. Extract and run redsn0w (follow instructions - see video).
– You are jailbroken at this point –
8. Open Cydia and let it update.
10. In Cydia, click “Manage” at the bottom. Then click “Sources”, then “Edit”, then “Add”.
11. The source is http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com (that’s a zero)
12. Once the repo is added, click “Search” and search for “ultra”.
13. Install the ultrasn0w package.
– You are now unlocked at this point –
14. Turn off 3G
15. Throw in a T-Mobile card and try it out.

I’ve also thrown all the steps in a couple videos. The download links are in those videos, too, so don’t forget to go right to the videos (part 1 and part 2). While you’re there, subscribe to my videos and rate them both 5 stars.

That’s it. Enjoy. If this how-to helped at all, share the link on Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook, etc. and if you have problems, questions or just a comment, leave it below.

I don’t talk a ton about marketing, but I know a lot of my readers are also bloggers or affiliate marketers and this Flash Drive sponsored post happens to be technology related, too, so I think most of you will like it. Flashdealer.com is a site that deals in all kinds of custom flash drives and I mean really custom like the fire extinguisher shown on the right. Every time I go to an event, I don’t mind taking home some of the freebies like the t-shirts and caps, but I love the free flash drives. No matter what size a free flash drive is, it’s always useful and it’s free. You can’t beat that. That said, it makes sense that a company would want to give the things away at trade shows. When you get someone to take (and often use) an item with your logo on it, you are essentially purchasing persistent individual advertising. The person takes that item home, uses it over and over, maybe passes it on or lends it to a colleague, and if it’s cool enough, they might even show it off to others.

Here’s where the affordable part comes in. I headed over to the site expecting to find high costs associated with having custom promo stuff made, especially when it’s custom flash drives. Instead, what I found surprised me. In one example, I found custom flash drives for as little as $3.95 per unit. The configuration options show them ranging from 64MB to 8GB which is not a lot of space, really, but for a promo item, it’s OK. You can also get them preloaded with ads or your company materials, etc. I’m not sure what the ordering minimum is, but you’ll usually want upwards of 100 when ordering promo items, anyway. I’m also not sure about the quality of the drives, but I’m guessing it’s not too bad with clients like Mercedes, Hyatt, Sears, etc.

Finally, I’d feel like I was leaving something out if I didn’t mention that they also offer custom MP3 player flash drives (around $19/each) and on a sister site, there’s a whole bunch of promo item choices, although I like the flash drive idea better than all the other promo stuff. All in all, it looks like they make some pretty cool drives for not a lot of money, so if you’re in the market, take a look.

Guess what time it is. As always, I’m starting with the Twitter suggestions. Don’t forget, if you want a link to your Twitter account, just follow me on Twitter and tweet the following:

@joetech I want a free link in your Bookmark Friday post : http://www.joetech.com/suggests/bmftw

This week, we had four people request a link:

heartnet02
Bio:
Site: http://heartnet02.evil.concepts.net

Babasfarmlife
Bio: Remodel Victorian Country Stone Farmhouse
Site: http://babasfarmlife.blogspot.com/

Michael Jackson - I wanted to start with this link as I sit here listening to some old MJ tracks and remembering how I feel every time I hear them.

IWearYourShirt.com - This is actually a great idea. Of course, if he sold only a few days and got no press or buzz, it would be a horrible investment. As it stands, though, the investment just might be worth it. I’d probably buy a December day if I had the budget set aside for it. We’ll see.

Feedly - Feedly came out of nowhere, making my Google Reader feeds just so much more awesome. My feeds total about 1,000 articles a day, so this will help me greatly in sifting through them.

IZEAFest - This is a fun annual event that I’d love to end up at this October. If you’re going, comment below.

Google Voice - Google Voice wants to give you a viable option to your cell phone and they’re opening up the phone number land rush soon. They have a million numbers reserved, so sign up for an invite.

DSLR Remote for iPhone - This is an awesome app for any one with a DSLR and an iPhone. Just be sure your camera supports Live View before buying the Pro version. Oops.

This is something I didn’t know even existed until I was already agreeing to review it. The idea is that you set it up to connect all your cell phones to it when you come in and then you just have one central phone in the house to make and receive all your calls. I really is a little more elegant than it sounds at first.

Why would you want this?
I’ll be honest… At first, it sounded cool. Then it sounded really unnecessary. After trying it out, I landed on a middle ground somewhere between pretty cool and unnecessary. So why would you want one? Anyone could have their own reasons for wanting to consolidate phone calls into a home phone. For me, it would be to have all my wife and my mutual friends be able to reach either of us via either number. It’s also useful if you want to drop your cell phone on the charger and use a set of wireless home phones while your cell charges. Maybe you have a home business with several cell phones on a group plan. You could set this up to answer any of the lines from one centralized system.

How does i set up and use it?
First, I need to clarify something I wasn’t initially sure about. This doesn’t need an existing home phone. Actually, it doesn’t really support one, either. The model I tested is the ITC-BT. For about ten bucks more, they offer the ITC-BTTN model. The core (and perhaps only) difference is that the BTTN includes an extra RJ45 connection for connecting it to an existing home phone line.

Although the instructions were all crammed onto one sheet and in multiple languages, they were pretty complete. You plug in the gateway to the wall and you connect it to a home phone via a standard RJ45 phone cable. I just used an old phone I had sitting around in my office for satellite call testing. Once it’s all connected and turned on, you connect the phones to it. Make sure your bluetooth is enabled on all your cell phones and you’re ready to connect. Note that you don’t have to connect them at the same time if the other cell phone’s owner happens to get home way later, for example. The buttons on the top of the gateway are for the three cell phone lines you can connect to it. To connect a cell phone, all I had to do was hold down one of these buttons to ready the line for pairing. Then I went into my phone’s bluetooth settings and found the gateway and paired it. I then did that for a second cell phone and used the third to test. Once the cell phones are all paired, it can be hung on the wall or set on a desk or counter top.

(Click here to see the whole photo set)

Using it is pretty simple. Inbound calls are answered just like you’d expect to answer a home phone. The phone rings and you pick it up. Simple, right? Making calls is almost as easy. To make a call, I just had to pick up the home phone and dial. It automatically connects to the cell phone paired with the first spot on the gateway. You can “flash” over to the next line in the order to use it instead. When you move the cell phone out of range of the gateway, it unpairs from the gateway and will re-pair when it is in range again. So in theory, you could leave it set up all the time near your phone chargers and just plug your cell into the charger when you get home.

From what I understand from the documentation, you can also set it up to pass on caller ID information if your base phone has a digital display and wasn’t made in the 80’s like my test phone. The one thing I would miss greatly with a system like this always in place is my contact list. If you have a newer home phone system, however, some have contact list functionality that would resolve this problem.

Conclusions
For around $89, it’s not going to break the bank. I don’t have a lot to compare pricing on, but that seems decent. The real question is of need. If the functionality the XLink provides is worth the price tag, it’s a worthwhile device. The setup and use is about as easy as you could expect for it. It doesn’t feel very sturdy, but it’s meant to be sitting in one spot the whole time, so that shouldn’t matter. If I had the need, I’d buy one.