If you’ve previously unlocked your iPhone, or you are considering doing it in the future, you should probably hold off updating your phone for the moment. Apple’s recent 1.1.1 firmware update has been bricking hacked phones, and though there’s a method for downgrading back to 1.0.2, the telephony portion of the device will remain broken (well.. until someone resolves this, hopefully soon).

Hackintosh has this quick summary:

1) If you have unlocked your phone at all, regardless of whether it’s to use another sim / carrier or even just for fun and you’re still using the AT&T sim, DO NOT UPDATE to 1.1.1 unless you want to render your phone useless. It will not work afterwards as things stand at the moment.

2) If you haven’t unlocked your phone and you haven’t jailbroken it and want to update to 1.1.1, you will not be able to jailbreak it afterwards as things stand. Until someone does Jailbreak 1.1.1, this will not change.

3) If you are still using Firmware 1.0.2, you can still synch with iTunes. If iTunes suggests you update your iPhone, just say no. In Preferences, you can turn off the setting to look for updates automatically so iTunes won’t even bother asking.

4) Your 1.0.2 Phone will not just brick itself. Apple can’t beam an auto bricker to your phone….You have to help them by trying to update to 1.1.1 after you’ve hacked it. Apple warned you, there’s countless tales of woe on these forums that should serve as a warning….JUST DON”T DO IT!!!

5) If you haven’t hacked your phone in anyway whatsoever and you want a cute Starbucks logo to appear everytime you’re near one (as well as the other updates) then you should be fine, as long as you’re aware of point 2.

As I mentioned, if you’ve already performed the update, you can restore the previous os firmware. None of the phone features will work, but at least you’ll have your applications and WiFi connectivity back. Methods for restoring the phone’s original baseband firmware, as well as an unlock method for the new firware are in the works, so my recommendation would be to just hold tight with the 1.0.2 firmware until the kinks are worked out.

Downgrade from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2 – Link
Want to update to FW 1.1.1? READ THIS FIRST! – Link

When you’re on an untrusted or unencrypted network, everything from what you browse to the email and IM messages you send can potentially be snooped by a third party. Sure, some sites use https and you can use ssh to connect to a remote server, but what if you want to jack in and enjoy the relative comfort of knowing _all_ of your applications are communicating over a secure channel?

For that, you need a secure proxy. By setting up a SOCKS proxy, you can have your applications route all of their network communications through a secure connection to a network you trust. Gina at Lifehacker put together a quick guide for setting this up, and once configured in OS X’s System Preferences, most of the default apps like Safari will just start using your proxy and you’re good to go.

A lot of your favorite applications–ie. Firefox and Adium–need to be manually configured to use the proxy, however, as they don’t pull this information automatically from the system preferences. This is straightforward to do, but it means that every time you cruise over to the local coffee shop, you need to set up your proxy configuration in multiple places.

Albert Lee came up with a nice solution to this problem. An application profile manager called rooSwitch and some quick Actionscript is all you need to make a couple of command line scripts that will set up or tear down your proxy, as well as switching all of your application preferences.

If you save this script with a .command extension, then you can run it by double-clicking on the icon in the Finder like a regular application. When it runs, it will change the location, switch your profile, and start up the SSH tunnel. Enter your password and off you go!

I should mention that his script also introduced me to a useful mac command line utiliy called scselect. By typing scselect [locationname], you can switch your Mac’s location straight from the command line.

Safer Surfing on Untrusted Networks (Mac Edition) – Link
How to configure an SSH SOCKS proxy @Lifehacker – Link
rooSwitch – Link