Looks like the Danny Ocean of Belgium and his friends decided to hit CEVA Logistics where it counts: their iPhone vault. An unknown number of burglars cut a hole in the roof of one of CEVA’s warehouses and ran away with $3 million worth of iPhones (2 million Euros worth). The burglars got to the roof by climbing up a fire ladder. However telecommunciation company Mobsistar could track down the serial numbers for those iPhones and make sure to deactivate them. This way the customers that buy iPhones from the black market will not benefit from the lower than retail prices.
Britney Spears and her marketing team has released an iPhone application that allows you to add your face to one of her back-up dancers. The application was developed by Snappy Apps LLC and Brandcasting Unlimited LLC. Other features of the application that will be added include exclusive images of Britney, wallpapers, and messages. There is also tweet messages from Britney’s account that is connected to the app. How much does this app cost? The “It’s Britney” app sells for $1.99 [iTunes link].
Ashley Towns is the first person to have created an iPhone virus, or so he claims. He does not regret writing it and he made sure to remind people that Rick Astley is here to stay. The iPhone virus is called “ikee” and it changes the wallpaper of iPhones to a picture of 80’s pop singer Rick Astley. A message on top of the wallpaper states “ikee is never going to give you up,” a pun on Astley’s popular song “Never Going To Give You Up.”
Towns, 21, said he created the virus out of boredom and curiosity. “I had just formatted my iPhone and it told me to set the password in bold, big letters and I wondered how many people have actually done that,” stated Towns in an e-mail to ComputerWorld. “So I ran a scan on my [Optus] 3G network and there was 26 phones running the service that’s vulnerable, and out of that 26, 25 hadn’t changed their passwords.”
Then he scanned the Optus 3G network and found 26 phones that were vulnerable. Of those 26 phones, 25 of them did not have changed passwords. Many jailbroken iPhones have a Unix utility running called SSH (Secure Shell). SSH runs using the iPhone default password, “alpine.”
Towns stands by his virus because it does not do anything malicious, even though it is a form of vandalism. He initially started by spreading the virus on the Optus network in Australia, but then he started targeting networks on Vodafone and Telstra. Towns even claimed he heard a report about his virus hitting a phone in China too.
Gameloft is a gaming company that designed Earthworm Jim and Shrek Kart for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now their latest game has more of a political theme. The new game is called Bailout Wars and it allows players to kill bankers by throwing them into the air or shooting them. Another option is to shake them to the point that their clothes fall off.
There is a free and paid version of the game. The paid version sells for $0.99. “Take revenge on bankers in this fast-paced castle defense game. Defend the White House and save the US taxpayers’ money before it gets stolen! It’s time for you to give them what they deserve!” states the game description. Above is a video clip. What do you think about the game?
In the United States and several other countries, Apple has sold millions of iPhone devices. But in China there has not been a good number of sales whatsoever. China Unicom reportedly sold only about 5,000 iPhones in a week. Two of the biggest problems with selling the iPhone in China so far is that the price is too high and it does not come bundled with WiFi.
The iPhone costs $1,025 in China while it costs $299 in the United States with an AT&T contract. China Unicom is selling the iPhone for a price that is 26% higher than what it is selling for in Hong Kong.
“We believe that eventually China will emerge as a major market for iPhone sales, but it could take a year or two to gain meaningful unit traction as it did in the U.S.,” stated Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster.
The Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone is now available in China through the China Unicom telecommunications company. The problem with the iPhone in China is that there isn’t any built in WiFi. Apple did this in order to comply with a government regulation. In China the iPhone costs between 4,999 yuan ($730) to 6,999 yuan ($1,025).
Given the high price in China, it seems unlikely that the phone will be as big of a hit there as it was in America. That seems unfortunate considering that the iPhone is manufactured in Shenzhen. WiFi was banned by the Chinese government in order to replace it with WAPI technology. WAPI stands for WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure. WAPI was rejected by the ISO and was one of the reasons for a U.S. and China Trade dispute.
“We are talking with Apple and expect the problem to be solved by the end of this year,” stated Unicom spokesman Yi Difei. Do you think that this will hinder people in China from buying the device?
Kris Rowley is the CISO of the state of Vermont. While she went hiking, a bear had approached her. Rowley backed away slowly, but the bear come coming closer. The only thing Rowley had to toss at the bear to distract it was her iPhone.
“In a semi-panic, I threw the phone at the bear,” stated Rowley in an interview with CIO.com. It turns out that there was an “app for that” bear. Because the phone distracted the bear while Rowley had a chance to escape. Later on Rowley wanted to get her phone back so she took a bat and went back to the scene. It turns out that the iPhone was not edible enough for the bear. The iPhone was laying in place where it was thrown with teeth and claw marks all over it.
Rowley took the iPhone to the Apple store to see if there’s anything they can do. But the Geniuses at the Apple retail store did not believe her story. “I had to buy a new phone or forfeit my contract if I canceled, so I purchased a new phone at full price,” added Rowley. “While saddened about my mangled iPhone, better the phone than me.”
Directed Electronics has launched an iPhone application that allows users to start their cars remotely. This is a perfect application to have if you live in a place where it snows during thte winter. The application is free [iTunes link], but having a Viper remote system installed on your vehicle will cost you.
Some of the features built in to the application includes unlocking, locking, a trunk opener, panic button, and alerts. You can also manage multiple cars assuming all of them have Viper is installed on them. It is assumed that the application works through satellite because the company claims the range is “virtually unlimited.” Let’s say that you leave the state and forgot that your car at home was unlocked, this would be a good app for you to have.
However the cost of the SmartStart systems is rough on the wallet. The SmartStart system has a retail price of $499 and the SmartStart module costs $299 for existing Viper customers. The Viper SmartStart can be bought from Best Buy as of right now.
When 38-year-old Donald Goodrich walked into the Apple store at the Kenwood Towne Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio he probably did not know he was going to end up being arrested shortly after. Goodrich was upset that his iPhone was not working properly and he told an Apple employee that he was upset. As a matter of fact, Goodrich stated he was, “So mad, I could pop a 9mm at it.”
The Apple employee told the employee that there wasn’t a need for shooting the iPhone. Goodrich insisted “I’ll do it right now. Look!” After that, he took opened his shirt which had a 9mm hand gun in it. The employee said that she’d get the iPhone fixed, but told the manager to cal the police. Goodrich was charged with aggravated menacing and causing fear of harm to the employee.
Goodrich was also charged with a concealed weapons charge for not telling the police he had a gun. However Goodrich did have a concealed weapons permit. The incident took place on October 1.
When Manoj Gupta walked into the Apple store in the SoHo area of New York, he did not expect the employees at the Genius Bar to tell him that his phone is acting normally. Gupta came in to find out why his iPhone was dropping so many calls. It turns out that the average iPhone user in New York was seeing a 30% dropped call rate, while Gupta’s iPhone was seeing about a 22% dropped call rate.
The Genius Bar at the Apple store found out how Gupta’s iPhone was performing by doing a stat dump. Since Gupta’s phone was acting normally, they could not really do much to fix his phone. AT&T does plan on launching a service to improve the wireless service within a household or office by using 3G micro cells, but improving the overall service around the country will take the telecommunications company some time.
Essentially what this means for iPhone users in New York is that you are getting the shaft. However AT&T does plan to add wireless spectrum to the Big Apple as announced earlier this month. If you live in New York and have an iPhone, please let us know what you think in the comments section of this post.
China Unicom is planning to start selling the Apple iPhone in the most populated country in the world starting October 15. The price is expected to be 1,999 yuan ($293) to buy the phone for an 8GB model. And the 16GB model is expected to be 2,999 yuan ($439). Both of the models will need a 2 year contract to buy the phones at those prices. The phone plans will begin at 186 yuan ($27) making it very affordable. Apple and China Unicom have a 3 year agreement.
The communication regulators in South Korea has officially approved the Apple iPhone. Before the country had a ban that blocked the product from entering the country. The Korea Communications Commission made an exception to a rule that require mobile phones in the Asian country to use domestic technologies for location based services.
Telecommunications company KT Corp. has been having discussions with the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) about bringing the phone to the Korean country. Bringing the iPhone to Korea will be interesting because the market is already saturated by Samsung and LG mobile phones.
South Korea made the rule exception shortly after China did. The exception was made months after consumers were pressuring the Commission.
iMo is a startup that launched out of the TechCrunch50 conference that aims to make the iPhone or iPod Touch act as a gaming controller for PC games. Most PC games use a mouse and keyboard to play but sometimes people prefer to play with a wireless controller. This is where iMo’s future application comes in. iMo’s application would make the Apple iPhone or Apple iPod Touch work as a wireless controller.
The application would communicate with the PC through a WiFi or Bluetooth connection. iMo will cost $0.99 on the Apple App Store and the application will be available on the Google Android Market in the future too. Below is a video demo of the presentation from TechCrunch50.
Previously Apple announced that MMS will be available to iPhone users for a monthly fee starting on September 25th. However there are reports indicating that some people now have access to the feature. The MMS roll out has been extremely random for select phones to perhaps determine the type of load that AT&T will be dealing with when there is a full roll out. Users in Europe already have access to the MMS feature since iPhone OS 3.0 rolled out about 3 months ago.
A man was able to retrieve his possessions from a few armed robbers thanks to his iPhone and his MobileMe account. The victim was not identified by the police. Here’s how it all went down.
Around 1AM near the intersection of Amberson Ave. and Amberson Pl. in Pittsburgh, a man was robbed at gunpoint. The two men asked for his wallet, PIN number for his credit cards, and his iPhone. After taking the man’s possessions, they ran off towards Ellsworth Ave.
Officers arrived at the scene while the man was cancelling his credit cards. And then the victim used Apple’s MobileMe service to determine the location of his iPhone. It turns out his iPhone was tracked down at the Wal-Mart in North Versailles where the police started following the suspects. The suspects purchased items with the stolen credit cards and then moved over to an Eat’n Park restaurant on Route 30.
The suspects were arrested there and had a black pellet gun along with stolen cash, IDs, and credit cards. The three men charged include Bryant Rather (pictured above), Brent Ray Potter, and Myron Knox Jr. They will be charged with two counts of access device fraud, receiving stolen property, possessing instruments of crime, and conspiracy. Rather and Potter are also being charged with robbery.
