The 3G iPhone Cometh

Apple’s iPhone success is unusual in one very lucrative-for-Apple respect. The hype around the product is enduring, to the point where it is easy to believe that it is actually hardwired. Nothing else can explain the current buzz around this remarkable product, which Apple is about to upgrade according to the Apple-dumpster-divers. These obsessive/compulsive Apple watchers have latched on to the fact (if it is a fact) that Apple stores are running down their inventory of iPhones, which can only mean that a brand new 3G iPhone is going to be launched at the June Apple developer conference.

So it’s time to speculate. What will the new iPhone features be – aside from the fact that it will:

be 3G, have GPS, a higher resolution camera, a Bluetooth wireless keyboard, function as a games console and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

It will also be available in pink.

The strange thing about hype-generated speculation is that no matter how impressive the iPhone upgrade turns out to be, the one everyone dreamed about in their speculative blog postings is sure to be much better. That’s why hard-wired hype is such an invaluable feature, because it means that the speculation will return for iPhone 3.0 no matter how much of a disappointment iPhone 2.0 is.

Music 2.0

Is this a 2.0 too far?

I suspect so, but let’s see. Korean computer engineers have invented a digital music format with separate controls on the sound volume for each musical instrument; guitar, strings, drum, base and voice. The only advantage I can think of to this is that you can turn the voice off and you’ve got yourself a Karaoke track. I guess if you’re a musician you can turn an instrument off and “improve” a recording. And if you’re me, you’ll be happy to ignore the capability completely and play music as it emerged from the recording studio.

So the question is, will this take off?

The new format is actually trademarked Music 2.0 and has file extension MT9 (as opposed to MP3). It was selected as a possible new digital music standard at an April meeting of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international body of the digital music and video industry. As the file format improves the versatility of music files, I guess there’s no reason not to use the new format. Maybe iPhone 2.0 will support Music 2.0.

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

What a virtual world we travel through sometimes. A (relatively) innocent marketing ploy designed to draw in backlinks for a financial services comparison website in London has stirred up media attention ranging from the front page of Digg to coverage on Fox News.

The story 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers was a fake, but not really a hoax. It was a parody that was a little too true-to-life, where the term true-to-life means written in the modern sensationalist reporting style. It was so good that www.money.co.uk who posted the fake story has now been obliged to put up the warning:

NB: This story is a parody and is not intended to be taken seriously.

The fake story got on to the front page of Digg, with just under 2,500 diggs and was reviewed over 200 times on StumbleUpon. It generated thousands of backlinks and was read by hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide and, to nobody’s surprise, it got coverage on Fox News. Well it would wouldn’t it?

Lyndon Antcliff, Internet marketeer and the author of the story told Wired magazine “The thing is, I tried to make it as ridiculous as possible so it would be obvious that it would be fake” (Especially to Fox News, which always checks the accuracy of its stories.)