While this may appeal to some people, I’d argue this isn’t all that big of a deal.  You still have to pay full price for the phone, you just don’t have a contract with the phone provider.  Functionally, this means that you could quit using AT&T whenever you wanted.  And then you’d have an iPhone that was connected to….well, nothing.  And, because of hardware limitations, you can’t used your iPhone on a competing network.  So, contract or not, you have to do business with AT&T.

Why is AT&T and Apple doing this?  Probably to move this aging inventory out the door.  What’s going to replace it?  Our guess is it’s going to be the iPhone 4G, and that’ll drop this summer.

Anyway, back to the story.

Sitting with his wife, Christina, in Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, Dan Woolley showed the notebook to TODAY’s Meredith Vieira via satellite hookup Tuesday. Trapped for 65 hours under tons of wreckage in the lobby of his hotel by Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake and knowing he could die, Woolley had written notes to his two young boys and his wife.

I’m pretty sure I’d be too busy screaming and wasting precious oxygen to write any notes.  However, the next time I’m stuck in an elevator shaft after a horrendous earthquake, I’ll be sure to keep this man’s story in mind.

Woolley had taken refuge in an elevator shaft, where he used an iPhone first-aid app to treat a compound fracture of his leg and a cut on his head. He had already used his digital SLR camera’s focusing light to illuminate his surroundings, and taken pictures of the wreckage to help find a safe place to wait to be rescued — or to die.

Ok, looking up that app now.

And thanks to the iPhone first-aid app he’d downloaded, he knew how to fashion a bandage and tourniquet for his leg and to stop the bleeding from his head wound. The app also warned him not to fall asleep if he felt he was going into shock, so he set his cell phone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes.

And then for 65 hours, he waited for whatever fate had in store for him.

Woolley attributes his survival and rescue by a French rescue team to divine providence.

FRENCH RESCUE TEAM???!!!!  That’s crap!!!  It was the iPhone gods that saved him!!!!  Everyone know’s the truth!!!

link via TheDailyWhat

As someone who is currently driving from California to the east coast (posting sporadically from my iPhone), I can definitely add my experience to this debate. The bottom line? AT&T’s coverage the entire way has been pretty darned spotty. In a number of places, there was not a cell tower in sight. However, there were land lines a plenty, but who uses those anymore? *snicker, snicker*

Overall, our cross-country cellular experience has been dodgy. We only got 3G coverage in the bigger cities. The rest of the time we had, on average, about two bars on AT&T’s older, slower Edge Network. In some places, we had nothing….no cell service at all.

AT&T really needs to step up their game. They’re going to need more than Luke Wilson throwing a bunch of post cards across the US map if they’re to continue to compete against the other networks, especially now that the DROID and other Google phones offer a viable alternative to the iPhone.

I was searching the net and happened up a really solid review of Google’s Android, and while I’m very happy with my iPhone 3GS (you’ll read my reasons below), it does seem that the Android has become a worthy competitor.

The hardware design is merely par for the course; it’s well-made but has some rough edges. The hardware specs, however, combined with Android 2.0, makes this a good enough device to be a solid competitor to the iPhone 3GS. This is the hardware that Android should have shipped with. In some areas it is better, in some areas on par, and some areas slightly worse than the iPhone or other high end smartphones.

While the review is great, your own personal desires as to what you like in a smart phone come into play.  The interface looks a little archaic to me and the iPhone 3GS is still faster on a couple of key levels.  Engineers and designers still haven’t figured out a way to increase battery time and it sounds like the Droid suffers from it as much as the iPhone.  In my personal opinion, it’s still not a good enough phone to get me to move from AT&T back to Verizon, however, here’s the complete review from Ars Technica to read for yourself.

**UPDATE**

Found the marketing video from Motorola.  Looks like they’re bashing the iPhone.  Wonder what apple is going to do to attack back?

This was just too good not to put up. This guy is super serious about his music and the stylophone.

If you want your own stylophone so that you can start your own 80’s one-hit wonder band, you can get them from here, on your iPhone, or right here.

What makes the iPhone so unique and consequently, desirable, is their apps.  There’s an app for cooking, cleaning and shopping.  Suppose you have an unruly dog, there’s an app trainer for that.  If you have cancer, there’s an app to cure it.  Ok, maybe not cure, but certainly cope.

Now, there’s an app to help you blow out the candles on your asthmatic grandma’s birthday cake.

No, really, there’s an app that blows.  I’m serious, here’s how it works:

I figured you’d want to know how the app works before you make the leap and spend the last ninety-nine cents in your bank account, so I purchased it.

Verdict? Not worth it.

Your asthmatic grandma has far more wind to blow than this little gizmo.  However, if you close your eyes really tight and put the thing up against your ear, you’ll get the feeling that you’re right next to the turbine engine of a badly refurbished B-52 struggling to make lift-off.  Seriously folks, it made the family cat run around the house like an insane maniac.  Don’t get it.

Check out our video review:

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With millions of people logging in every day, there’s ample amount of opportunity for strangeness & pirating to run rampant like bad dialogue in an episode of Saved by the Bell.

One  example of this is the recent banning of over 1 million Xbox live accounts. It appears that with the big release of Modern Warfare 2, there were a lot of pirates who also wanted to join in the fighting. Using modded systems to avoid DRM protection, they downloaded and played pirated copies of MW2. Microsoft decided this was a great opportunity to test out their ban-hammer, and they did so relentlessly. It won’t stop pirates from playing the game offline, but depending on their level of pirateness, the ban could be anywhere from a day to permanently and it effects your entire gamertag, not just online play for that game. Ouch.

Next is a new indie title coming up for download on Xbox live, it’s uniquely titled Bible Navigator X. We’re not sure if it’s trying to sound like a cool anime character, if it’s the tenth version, or a bad attempt at extreme marketing. Bible Navigator X will provide users with full digital versions of both the old and new testament with search options AND animations.

An executive producer of the publishing company responsible for Bible Navigator had this to say; “The Xbox isn’t just secular entertainment anymore,”

Hm, I didn’t know the Xbox was trying to be secular. This does open up the question of how far down-loadable Xbox content will now go, as this seems to be more like an educational app then a game. We all know how well apps worked out for the Iphone… Although we aren’t sure how many people will want to brush up on Biblical studies after killing zombie Nazi’s. You can check out a video on Bible Navigator below!

[Pic]

PepsiCo released a new iPhone app recently (a video is embedded below), and it’s chock full of tasteful ideas.  Essentially, the app aims to assist men “score” with women of 24 different types.  For example, if a young man meets a “book worm”, the app suggests strategies that he could use when approaching her.  The app also suggests restaurants, brush-ups on what to talk about, etc.  In case you were wondering, yeah, some people found it a little offensive.

Pepsi has apologized, claiming that the app was actually an over-the-top attempt at humor.  Probably true, but so poorly executed that it was bound to cause a stir.  I wonder who, in their marketing department, approved this idea.

[via 1, 2, 3]

I haven’t seen this video yet, because I posted it as soon as it was sent in.  It’s supposedly a brand new technique to get a free computer!  I’m so excited!  In fact, I’m told that this works so well, it’s possible to get up to 23 free computers, 9 free iPod Touchs, and 14 free iPhones, all at once.  Let’s check it out together:

Hmmmm.  Maybe I should have screened this one before posting…

You know, the iPhone sure is handy.  I mean, what a great tool to make your ex-girlfriend realize that you’re the man for her, and that the doctor she’s been dating is a loser, all in a completely non-creepy way!

[via boingboing]