I've had this particular post saved as a draft for quite some time, decided to go back through and tweak a few odds and ends to more accurately describe my experience in San Francisco thus far. 

If you read Hackernews or any startup related news sites, you've probably heard it a thousands times before, if you're trying to manage a start-up and not living in San Francisco, you are making it hard on yourself. Just move to San Francisco already. Although my CO-founder, my awesomely supportive girlfriend and myself only just recently moved here, I already feel as though our startup is going to have a much better chance at being successful, at least more-so than it could have ever been had we'd settled in Vegas.  Here are some things I've noticed since moving here as well as some random tidbits of information I think might be useful to someone looking to relocate to San Francisco in the near future or even for someone already living here.

5 reasons San Francisco is better than Las Vegas:

1. Every corner has an awesome, trendy cafe with free wifi and some cool dude building a startup or working on a project of some sort
2. I've seen more parks within walking distance of our house in SF than I have in 22 years of living in Las Vegas
3. People are friendly.  Sure you get your fair share of bat-shit crazy homeless people, but the nice ones definitely outshine and outnumber them
4. *Mostly* everything is within walking distance or at most a short MUNI (SF bus, streetcar and metro) ride. Unless you are going from Market/Mission towards the Fisherman's Wharf, in which case things will take a bit longer
5. Weather.  Going from 110 degrees to ~60-70 on average is a huge change, but undoubtedly a welcome one

Telling someone in Las Vegas that you run a web startup is likely to attract a blank-stare or skepticism at best.  This couldn't be further from the truth in San Francisco.  The whole atmosphere of the Bay Area is infinitely more encouraging for a small startup like ours.  Everywhere you go you're sure to find a fellow hacker working enthusiastically on his most recent project and happy to provide criticism and feedback in exchange for the same.  

 

Finding a place to live

Housing in San Francisco is significantly more expensive then it is in Las Vegas. Rent for a two-bedroom place is approximately twice the cost of a house in Las Vegas.  Also, buildings here are old and squeaky.  We were fortunate enough to find an extended stay place on Airbnb, amidst all of the recent controversy, (most of which I think everyone has forgotten about by now).  Although it was initially pretty difficult to find a place with extended availabilty that wasn't asking an arm and a leg for rent, eventually we settled on a place just outside of The Castro.  

This brings me to another important finding, I highly recommend fully exploring the city before settling on a permanent residence, seriously. We had our sights set on the downtown SOMA district of San Francisco, however after being able to really spend some quality time walking through many of the (very different) neighborhoods SF has to offer, I really dig the cozy park-on-every-corner feel of some of the more suburban areas. Not to mention a trip downtown is quite literally a short 10 minute MUNI ride that you can catch outside your door.  Particularly Noe and Hayes valley and The Mission are super trendy, cool neighborhoods with a ton of different restaurants, cafes and bars.

Places I will avoid in the future:  The Tenderloin district

 

Hackers, Pizza and beer

Although Josh and I have been incredibly busy and haven't had as much time as we would have liked to explore different events, we were fortunate enough to attend a "Hack and Tell" meetup at the insanely cool offices of Opentok.  What's a Hack and Tell you ask?  A company invites you into their office, provides you with free beer and pizza and all the while gives you the chance to network with other hackers and share interesting projects you are working on.  Josh and I actually (rather unexpectedly) ended up presenting SEscout to great response in a room full of other people all working on their very own startups.  

Not only did we get some awesome feedback and input, other hackers were actually impressed by something that we have been passionately slaving away at for nearly 10 months now.  Talk about encouragement.  This simply would never have happened in Las Vegas.

Seriously, just take a look at the list of startup-related Meetups happening in San Francisco.  The networking opportunities are endless.  

I also have a new favorite beer, Lagunitas IPA.  Mmm....

Thanks Opentok!

Opentok dinosaur...

Cafes and work spots

Based on the suggestions of other hackers and wonderfully useful google maps, we've already been able to seek out a pretty wide variety of different cafes, co-working spaces and all-around awesome work places.  I've put together a small list of some of my current favorites, although I'm sure I will need to expand on it in the near future as I get the chance to further explore the city.

The Work Club - The Work Club is unique in the sense that it is both a CO-working spot and also home to Second Life founder Phillip Rosedale's latest venture, aptly named "Cofee and Power".  Josh and I spent a solid week or two working from The Work Club on a daily basis.  Here are a couple stand-out and also some maybe not so great things about the place. There are literally enough outlets to power a small village in here, unlike many cafes in SF, you won't ever have trouble plugging in here.  The atmosphere is overall pretty relaxed and open, although there typically wasn't very many other people in there with us, those who were are more than willing to chat about the latest in tech or inquire as to what you are working on.  Which leads me to a few cons, there really wasn't a lot of other people there on any given day.Typically you'd find about 5 or 6 other people not including the Cofee and Power team (they work in the up-stairs area secluded from everyone else).  There is only one restroom and it is located upstairs, it's hard not to feel intrusive walking through a team meeting to have to get to it.  All things considered,  meeting Phillip Rosedale and getting our first taste of a CO-working spot definitely makes The Work Club a must-visit spot for anyone looking for a cool place to work from.

A typical day working at The Work Club

Epicenter Cafe - This place is notorious for having startups, and it certainly lives up to its reputation.   Located in the heart of SOMA, Epicenter is a super trendy little cafe filled to the brim with other hackers.  The food here is seriously awesome.  Although power didn't seem to be an issue, we didn't really get the chance to stick around to need it. The WIFI happened to be crawling this particular afternoon, it wasn't clear if it was from the sheer amount of computers on the network or whether they were just having connectivity issues in general.  I'm definitely looking forward to checking this place out again, in fact, MongoDB is hosting a meetup there in a few days.

Epicenter has an awesome menu

South Beach Cafe - Our hidden-gem at the moment,  South Beach Cafe is located on the south-end of the Embarcadero just before ATT park. Although it isn't a very popular hacker spot, the WIFI here is blazing fast and the food is awesome.  Power is rather limited, but if you happen to get the right table, you can easily spend an afternoon here hacking away.  

Conclusion

San Francisco has probably surpassed every expectation I had of it and then some.  The networking opportunities out here appear endless.  I don't think you can pick a better city to try and build a startup in, it truly is the ideal place.  

Please note the official jailbreak is released now.  Head over to jailbreakme.com and follow the instructions there.  I will leave this guide up for reference only.

*DISCLAIMER - This is an experimental BETA version of the newest Jailbreak. Jailbreaking and/or unlocking an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad is a complex process that requires technical skills (in most cases). It's for experienced, technologically savvy users. It can also cause problems on your devices or open security holes, both of which Apple may not help you fix. If you unlock or jailbreak your iOS device, you're doing so at your own risk and you may be on your own to fix any problems that arise. You were warned. 

My iPad is a 32GB Verizon 3G black model.  I have no idea if this will work with any other model or version of iPad 2!

A quick background on the iPad 2 jailbreak

A few days ago someone by the handle of appreviewerwill managed to get his hands on a working version of the previously unreleased iPad 2 "jailbreakme" files.  He quickly leaked a video with instructions on how to run the jailbreak and link to a site owned by Ryan Lobbins. 

The jailbreak remained live and functioning for a number of hours before Comex caught on and subsequently removed the files from the offending server.   

After a bit of digging I happened across a relatively inconspicuous comment that lead me to believe that the "unable to download jailbreak files" was attempting to connect directly to Comex's server (located at 157.22.252.87) in order to download the existing jailbreak files. However, the files attempting to be downloaded were the exact same files that had already been leaked earlier in the day, they simply existed in a separate location.   

My first thought was to spoof a local webserver with the same IP that the jailbreak is connecting to in order to make it look for the files there instead.  After a bit of tinkering around I finally managed to bypass the 403 error and successfully jailbreak my iPad 2!  

Here's how to do it yourself:

My setup is as follows:  Macbook Pro 2010 running the latest Lion GM build.

I see no reason why this wouldn't work on any version of Snow Leopard and can probably be easily tweaked to work with windows as well.

Setup your router

First you need to set your router to use the following IP - 157.22.252.1 with the subnet mask 255.255.255.0.

Simply login to your routers existing IP and look for the option to change it.  This is very straightforward.

Setup your computer

Next you will need to change your actual computers IP address to match that of the IP the jailbreak is seeking out - 157.22.252.87 

I'm using the latest Lion GM build, but it should be exactly the same for snow leopard.  

First go to your network settings, choose your active connection and click advanced:

Next click over to the TCP/IP settings and fill them out to match the following:

Now click over to the DNS tab and fill it out with your router IP as follows:

Finally hit "OK" followed by "Apply" to save your new settings.  Confirm that you can still access the internet.   

Next go back to the main system preferences panel and switch over to "Sharing".  Click the box to enable "web sharing".

Click the button that says "Open computer website folder".  

Backup (to somewhere else) any files that exist in this directory and delete them all.  You will likely be asked to confirm your password while doing so.  

Download and extract the following file: http://cl.ly/323Y2Y1I2V3G403X1l2K

Go inside the extracted folder called "jb".  Go back into your system preferences and click the "Open computer website folder" button again.  Move the contents of "jb" (not the root folder) inside of your computer website folder.  

It should look like the following:

Open your browser and type 157.22.252.87 in the browser.  You should see the following:

If you don't look over the previous steps again and modify as neccessary.  

Setup your iPad

Now, on to the iPad.

Open your settings and click over to the "Wi-FI" tab.  Modify your settings to match the following:

OK.  Now open Safari and confirm you can still access the internet.   We are nearing the end!

And to finish it off!

Finally type 157.22.252.87 into Safari on the iPad and load it.  You should see the same directory listing as you do when loading it on your computer.  

Click into the directory called "Saffron".  Now you will need to select the PDF file specifically for your iPad 2 version and type.  This will differ depending on what iPad 2 you have, as far as I know clicking on the wrong one will simply close Safari with no other effects.  Again I take no responsibility if something goes awry.   

For the iPad 2 Verizon 32gb edition on 4.3.3, I used the "iPad_4.3.3_8j2.pdf".  Your browser will close and Cydia should start loading on your home screen.  

Once it is done loading, you WILL HAVE TO RESTART YOUR IPAD.  

Congrats!  You've made it through and now have a fully untethered jaibreak for your iPad 2! 

Troubleshooting

If you received an "error unable to load jailbreak files" or a "403 error", you did something wrong.  Go back through the guide and make sure you followed every step exactly as listed.