Rakesh Agrawal’s 3 year old daughter devised a clever means for watching instructional videos on her father’s iPhone using common refrigerator magnets to mount the device on the fridge. Positioned for just her height, the industrious little scamp uses her iPhone to learn Yo-yo techniques by watching How-to videos from Veronica Belmont of Mahalo Daily. I’m betting Mom and Dad won’t be so proud once the 3 year old realizes her invention is patentable and a lucrative product market, enjoying fabulous wealth while her parents are left staring at a empty refrigerator.
She’s not the only one learning lessons from Veronica. I kid…Veronica is awesome, and wonderfully entertaining. I’ve always enjoyed her ebullient personality since her days at C|net, co-hosting Buzz Out Loud and Crave. She’s in my Facebook and Pownce friends lists for a reason.
Someone has snapped a picture of the iPhone with the 3rd party application installer.app icon at an Apple store. It’s kinda funny, it really hits home that jailbreaking right now and installing 3rd party apps is as simple as pointing an iPhone at jailbreakme.com.
Boys and girls, let me tell you it ain’t easy living without your iPhone for more than a week. The phrase Testicular impact comes to mind. It feels like eternity has passed since that dreaded day my inquisitive mind and impatient nature claimed the life of my iPhone. Rather than wait around for iPhone Dev Team to create a resuscitative baseband update, I applied my $100 Apple Store coupon towards the puchase of a second iPhone and succumbed to the siren call of Marimba ringtones.
So here I am, back in business. Never again shall I tamper with iPhone’s inner plumbing or perform half-assed hacks - at least not on THIS unit. The bricked unit will become my official Frankenphone for testing purposes. Let’s just hope that I can tell these two apart and not accidently monkey with the wrong phone. I’ve already walked out the door with the wrong iPhone in my hand, twice! Fun times.
Time Warner is building an iTunes competitor. You know, sometimes I get irked when I see websites use the word “competitor” so loosely. The geniuses at Time Warner Cable have had a long time to think about music and they’ve had a long time to watch Apple’s iTunes and mirror its success. So, they’ve unveiled a service that is:
Not iPhone compatible.
Not iPod compatible either.
Half as many songs as iTunes.
Not compatible with Macs at all.
Windows Media format only, plus DRM.
Subscription only, $9.95 / month
It’ll sell like gangbusters. This competitor is pretty much a license to print money. It’s the lost formula to turn lead into gold. It’s the missing link that will make the Zune sell like hotcakes.
AT&T has modified their Terms of Service to bar their customers from griping. Their new terms of service now includes language that states they can terminate your connection for doing things that “tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.” An important distinction: the threat gag is just for the DSL portion of AT&T, aka BellSouth.
I don’t expect it to work; actually, I expect it to backfire. Case in point, I’m going to slur the name of AT&T in this very sentence when I would not have otherwise:
the halls of AT&T are nothing more than a powder room for dandies, johnny-come-latelies and fops; the same is equally true if not more so for AT&T’s parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries.
The glove is thrown down, AT&T; your honor has been impugned. [via]
I don’t know who shares the most blame in this triad of technical blunders; Apple for it’s strong arm tactics…iPhone Dev Team for their malfunctioning anySIM unlock app…Or myself for ever engaging in this exercise. A pragmatist would say I am solely to blame, but I am anything but pragmatic.
Nope, I blame the aforementioned parties for this debacle. I was merely innocent bystander. Right? crickets chirping in the background
figure 1: I spent so much time hunched over Legos that it’s a miracle I don’t have a hunchback
Lego artist Nathan Sawaya put together a rather awesome Lego iPhone. His art piece is available for just $399. Of course, just buying the Lego pieces individually would cost you dramatically less, but exactly how much less depends on the weakening strength of the U.S. dollar against the Euro. Of course, Sawaya’s review of the iPhone is short and sweet:
“It is just about actual size. The service is spotty. And before you ask, yes, it costs $399.”
Woot.com mocks Steve Jobs’ open letter to early adopters. It seems they were selling Zunes at $149, then dropped the price to $129, and they got three angry emails. So, they figured that they’d write mock open letter, get a price cut, and get mentioned on some blogs. And it’s worked, since here we are. After the break is the full content of their open letter, preserved since I can’t find a permanent link to the page. It’s witty and cutting, as you might notice in the quick quote posted below:
“If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product. I mean, why should you? Truth is, you don’t really need any of this junk. We’re afraid you’ll catch on to that fact and overpaid frauds like me will have to go back into fields like telemarketing and burrito construction. Fortunately, most of you continue to languish in a consumerist stupor, wallets spread wide for us to plunder as we please.”
In other news, the Zune guy got his 3rd Zune tattoo. He gets progressively happier with each tattoo; with the first tattoo he looked positively bewildered.
Update: Zune guy’s name is Steven Smith. If I just call him Zune guy, he’s just as soulless as the company that his tattoos embody. But there’s a person behind those tattoos. Sure, he’s totally confused. The Zune sucks reportedly sucks pretty bad. Maybe Zune 2.0 won’t suck? No, unfortunately — by the time Microsoft comes out with a decent Zune, all the logos and slogans he’s currently got inked on him will be obsolete.
Bill Maher throws it all at the iPhone early adopters in his show which recently began airing on HBO. Some enterprising viewers have encapsulated his tirade in a YouTube clip.
“New rule: stop bitching that Apple cut the price of the iPhone. Early adopters always pay a premium. Early adopters being a business term meaning dips***s who stand in line for 6 hours for a freaking phone. It’s not a price cut, it’s a repeal on the nerd tax. If you didn’t have to be the first on your block to have the latest gizmo, you’d now have an extra $200 to spend on your imaginary girlfriend.”
Awwww… sounds like someone’s jealous. Maybe he tried to get one two days after they went on sale (Sunday July 1st) and they were sold out.
Well known comedian, and marijuana advocate, Bill Maher humiliates iPhone fanboys still rabid over iPhone’s $200 price cut. Maher goes on to call angry early adopters “dipshits” for having stood in line for a hours to buy a phone, and tells us to stop our bitching. His commentary is delightful and insulting, as always.
Sorry, Bill. I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome my iPhone is.
figure 1: Woz is now apparently openly dating Kathy Griffin. Just humor me, I’m sick.
Steve “Woz” Wozniak, Segway-Polo-playing co-founder of Apple, brokered a handshake at the 2007 Emmy Awards celebration. The handshake marks the end of formal Kathy Griffin / America Ferrera hostilities. This handshake will likely go down in history as one of the more famous handshakes — right up there with Sadat-Rabin.
In a rare candid interview, we sat down with Fake Ed Colligan, chief executive officer of Palm Computing. Ed graciously agreed to a conversation with us to discuss a number of relevant issues including Palm’s troubled past and market missteps in the handset industry. So let’s get to it.
TIB: Ed, first off I want to thank you for taking time out from your schedule to speak with us. I’m sure you’re a very busy guy these days, what with the board transition, the Elevation Partners deal, and shareholder approval.
Ed: Oh, not all. My pleasure. In fact I’m really not that busy these days.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes that the iPhone sales have tripled since the price cut. There’s also a fun trail of percentage errors, too. It’s like followingbread crumbs! Business2 has already fixed their error, but information week hasn’t yet. So let me show you Eric Zaman’s error:
figure 1: his errors. let me show you them.
Remember folks: math is hard. An increase x2, aka “double,” is 100%. Triple is 200%. It’s okay to say that it was 300% of original sales, sure. But it’s not a 300% jump. Pedantry out.
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
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