Tech website Gizmodo’s Jason Chen may have scored the industry’s biggest scoop this month, with the exclusive on Apple’s next generation iPhone 4G, but nothing could have prepared him for the aftermath.
This morning we reported on rumors that the police were investigating Gizmodo’s purchase, for $5,000, of the lost iPhone. Now, Gizmodo has revealed that Chen’s home was broken into by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team last Friday. The cops, part of a task force that investigates crimes related to high-tech businesses, proceeded to seize four computers and two servers from Chen’s home.
The cops were in possession of a warrant from a San Mateo judge, but Gawker Media, the company that owns Gizmodo, claims that the cops’ warrant was invalid. Gawker argues that the search-and-seize action violates California’s journalist shield law.
In his original scoop, Chen dished the details on Apple’s upcoming phone using a prototype that the company bought from the mysterious person who found the device, which had been left behind in a bar by an Apple employee. Gizmodo then coughed up the $5,000 to get its hands on the phone–which has since been returned to Apple after the company’s lawyers formally claimed it and asked for it back.
As everyone in the tech-savvy world knows, Gizmodo scored a major media coup earlier this month when it obtained a prototype of Apple’s next-generation iPhone 4. The fancy piece of hardware had been left behind in a bar by a hapless Apple engineer (his last Facebook post before his fateful memory lapse: “I underestimated how good German beer is”), and Gizmodo paid $5,000 to the person who found the phone.
Apple officially reclaimed its phone last week, but that may not be the end of the story. Now reports have surfaced that Silicon Valley police are investigating the incident, as purchasing the lost property may have violated criminal statutes.
Apple has spoken to local police about the incident and the investigation is believed to be headed by a computer crime task force led by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, the source said.
A guy walks into a bar, but instead of the customary lame joke or flat beer, this guy actually finds the next, unreleased generation of the iPhone, according to Gizmodo.
The phone, apparently retrieved from a bar in Redwood City, California was camouflaged to look like a regular 3GS phone. Since reports later surfaced that Apple was indeed missing an experimental iPhone 4 from its offices, Gizmodo is now convinced that this is the missing prototype.
Tinkering around with the prototype, Gizmodo found a lot of new and improved features. The happy investigators report that the prototype not only sports a front-facing camera for video chats, but also boasts an improved regular back camera with a flash and larger lens. The display is reported to be better, and the unit pops out a Micro-SIM instead of a standard SIM card. Gizmodo adds that there are split buttons for volume, and notes that the power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic in color.
Sadly, they didn’t get a chance to suss the operating system out, as Apple remotely disconnected the phone.
So, what else can you expect from the new iPhone? Gizmodo describes:
Apple has asked the political cartoonist Mark Fiore to resubmit an application for his iPhone app “NewsToons” after a controversy erupted over the company’s earlier decision to reject the app. The initial rejection suggested that Apple put political satire in the same unacceptable category as pornography.
Earlier this month, Fiore created history by becoming the first online-only cartoonist to win a Pulitzer for his editorial cartooning on SFGate–the San Francisco Chronicle‘s news Web site. While the cartoonist impressed the Pulitzer jury sufficiently to grab journalism’s highest award, his work apparently didn’t charm the gatekeepers at Apple’s app store.
In December, they rejected Fiore’s bid to offer iPhone users the NewsToons app, an app based on his editorial works. In its rejection letter, Apple said Fiore’s satirical work “ridicules public figures” and was in violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which bars any apps whose content that in “Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory,” reports the NeimanNieman Journalism Lab.
A Texas doctor claims that you can now kill your acne while you chat on the phone with your friends. Houston dermatologist Greg Pearson says that his AcneApp, available at Apple’s app store for $1.99, is a great way to clear your mug of unseemly spots.
The AcneApp emits alternating bursts of red and blue light from the iPhone’s screen. All users have to do is run the program then hold the phone up to their faces.
Dr. Pearson says the phone needs to be held to the face for about two minutes a day, and callers have to remember to switch sides for maximum benefit. He isn’t quite sure of the results, and he can’t promote the app’s medical benefits because it hasn’t been FDA-approved. Nevertheless, Pearson told Fox TV that the app has been designed with “some science” in mind.
You can get directions, make dinner reservations, break up via text and now, thanks to the latest app, you can get live streaming mugshots on your phone! Wait–is that mom?
Arrested! Mobile Mugshots prides itself on “Real People! Real Arrests! Real Mugshots! We collect mugshots from jails all over the USA and post them for you to view.”
The iPhone app, gratis on iTunes, serves up police pics from around the United States with full names, birth date, age, the date and time of arrest as well as the alleged crime.
Finally, a way to track Lindsay Lohan’s movements!
A Newsweek writer better known as Fake Steve Jobs is so fed up with AT&T’s service for his iPhone that he’s calling on his fellow AT&T customers to clog up the 3G wireless network today in protest of AT&T’s plan to impose service fees on “bandwidth hogs.”
Dan Lyons, blogging as Fake Steve Jobs, has called on AT&T users to show their service dissatisfaction by trying to overwhelm the network with data-intensive tasks. “Operation Chokehold”, as he called his incitement to flash-mob mischief, hopes to shut down the US AT&T 3G network at 3pm today and appears to have gained some support from the iPhone rabble.
For those too busy (or self-important?) to pocket the iPhone while walking down the street and too safety-conscious to blunder out into traffic while texting, we’ve got just the app for you, via Gadget Venue:
The application is called Type and Walk and makes use of the camera on your iPhone to push video in to the background of an application where you can type on top of the video, thus being able to see obstacles as you are walking.
Type n Walk was designed to work with your favorite apps — not try to replace them. Use it to compose your email, text message, status update, or tweet and paste it into your target app (or the browser) to send.
Yes, the app shows you the same thing you’d see if you just looked ahead of you without the iPhone, the same way people have for thousands of years, and animals before them for millions of years. Is it genius? A signal that our species has really, finally gone too far with this technology thing?
You’ve just robbed someone and taken their iPhone, now what do you do? Why not snap a pic of yourself brandishing your weapon?
Well for one, it could lead to your arrest, as a Philly teenager found out recently. Philly.com tells how a tech-savvy mugging victim was able to turn up the pressure on her mugger:
The 20-year-old woman had programmed her phone so that it would automatically send photos to her home computer. Some time after the robbery, she received a photo of a young man holding a large handgun to his head.
Shortly after seeing his picture plastered on the evening news, the gun-wielding cell phone bandit, eighteen-year-old Kadeem Cook of Philadelphia, turned himself in to police.
Look, it’s a recession, and you gotta do whatever you can to get your name out there. Ashley Towns, the 21-year-old Australian student who crafted the first iPhone worm, used the notoriety to land a job building iPhone apps with the Australian developer Mogeneration.
Though this might seem an odd way to land a new gig, Towns is just the latest in a long line of hackers turned legit. And his worm was tame by comparison to its followers: Towns’ code simply rickrolled “jailbroken” iPhones—those hacked by their owners—by changing the phone’s wallpaper to a glamor shot of singer Rick Astley. Some subsequent iPhone worms are far from harmless pranks; one steals banking information.
Despite the relative harmlessness of Towns’ rickroll, the idea of rewarding bad behavior doesn’t sit well with some developers. Wired.com reports:
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said the move sends the wrong message to hackers.
“What disheartens me is that Towns has shown no regret for what he did,” Cluley told TechWorld. “Now his utterly irresponsible behavior appears to have been rewarded. There are plenty of young coders out there who would not have acted so stupidly, and are just as worthy of an opportunity inside a software development company, and are actually quite likely to be better coders than Towns who made a series of blunders with his code.”
Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.
Tech website Gizmodo’s Jason Chen may have scored the industry’s biggest scoop this month, with the exclusive on Apple’s next generation iPhone 4G, but nothing could have prepared him for the aftermath.
As everyone in the tech-savvy world knows, 
A Texas doctor claims that you can now kill your acne while you chat on the phone with your friends. Houston dermatologist Greg Pearson says that his AcneApp, available at Apple’s app store for $1.99, is a great way to clear your mug of unseemly spots.
A Newsweek writer better known as 
You’ve just robbed someone and taken their iPhone, now what do you do? Why not snap a pic of yourself brandishing your weapon?
Look, it’s a recession, and you gotta do whatever you can to get your name out there. Ashley Towns, the 21-year-old Australian student who 
