Last year a man named Brian Hogan found a prototype iPhone 4 in a bar and sold it to tech news site Gizmodo. CNET reports that Steve Wagstaffe, San Mateo County District Attorney, has just announced that Hogan will be charged for theft and that another man named Sage Robert Wallower is being charged as well. Gizmodo, its staff and its parent company Gawker Media are not being charged in any way. The relevant California law states that any person who finds lost property and knows who it belongs to and “appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.” [image via Gizmodo]

The HTC Status, an Android 2.3 phone, is a “Facebook phone.” It looks much like your average smartphone. It has a QWERTY keyboard and a 480 x 320 touchscreen, and has both a standard camera and a front-facing camera. But there’s one little difference: a Facebook button at the bottom, right where your Facebook-loving thumbs can find it. Gizmodo’s review says, “I found myself posting and updating and chatting more just because it was so easy to do so.”

The Facebook button functions differently depending on what you’re doing with the phone: when you’re on a webpage, pushing the button offers you the option to share the link on Facebook; when you’re on your homepage, the button opens up a blank status update ready and waiting for your input. It apparently does location updates when you hold the Facebook button down.

Gizmodo criticizes the phone’s unusual display, which is too small and isn’t standard enough to work with many Android apps. However, they do recommend buying it as an inexpensive Android phone that just happens to have some Facebook shortcuts.

image via [htc.com]

Google no longer allows users to log onto multiple accounts in the same browser, but Gizmodo’s Mat Honan discovered a way around the issue. There is an option to enable multiple accounts, which provides most of the same functions previously available.

We understand that it will be controversial to release these photographs. But identifying features have been eliminated. And fortunately for those who walked through the scanner in Florida last year, this mismanaged machine used the less embarrassing imaging technique.

Yet the leaking of these photographs demonstrates the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and x-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future. If you’re lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family.

[Gizmodo]

Was the device confiscation legal? That question can be answered if “bloggers” can be considered “journalists” according to the law

Gawker Media, parent company of Gizmodo stated that the search warrant on Chen’s home is invalid due to section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code which states “No warrant shall issue for any item or items described in Section 1070 of the Evidence Code.” Section 1070 of the Evidence Code states that there is limitations on the seizure of property that belong to journalists if the property is related to news gathering activities.

“Are bloggers journalists? I guess we’ll find out,” said Gawker founder Nick Denton.

Gizmodo even received a legal letter from Apple asking for the device back. “Dear Mr. Lam, It has come to our attention that GIZMODO is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple. Please let me know where to pick up the unit.” Signed by Bruce Sewell, SVP and General Counsel of Apple Inc.

Looks like there will be no surprises when the new iPhone is announced. It appears that Powell deleted any traces of finding him on the Internet now. His Facebook account is gone, Flickr account is gone, his Twitter account is gone, and so is his LinkedIn profile. But there are Facebook Pages being created that support Powell for losing the device. The I’m With Powell Facebook page says that 159 people like it and the Save Gray Powell page currently says 11 people like it [Facebook search on Gray Powell].

Below is an excerpt from Judge’s blog:
“We couldn’t resist taking a stab at classifying the seven types of Gizmodo bloggers, but then we realized there’s really only one type of Gizmodo blogger. Here’s that description:

You’ll find this guy on his couch, sporting an ironic t-shirt with a delivery-food stain of some kind. He ‘commuted’ minutes earlier by rolling out of bed and over to his laptop in his shoebox-sized Brooklyn (Williamsburg) apartment littered with empty Redbull cans. He came to Gizmodo 9 months ago after deciding that “traditional media” wasn’t edgy enough (read: required pants and didn’t like it when he powered down walls of TVs). He only puts on pants in order to put electronics down them, and he gets very upset if you mess with his Star Wars legos. He genuinely believes that the hot PR girl is into him and not just trying to get a post. He overuses the word ‘fail.’”

[via Gizmodo]