24 IN SWABIAN GERMAN

For all my fellow American colleagues die wo auch Audoles bauet: Martin has found some 24 episodes dubbed to Swabian German (yes, some people in my home state talk like that!).

I also found a news report (Youtube) from a local TV station (SWR) about this topic.

Update: The video clips are deleted faster than I can update this page, so just try to search for “24 schwäbisch” or “24 swabian” on Youtube…

IPHONE CITY MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA

You just got yourself a nice iPhone and are upset because of the lame speed of your AT&T EDGE connection? Move to Mountain View, CA where Google provides its free WiFi network almost everywhere in the city!

No, I’m just kidding. You don’t have to move unless you really want to, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of open WiFi hotspots in your neighborhood, too – but consider living in Mountain View if you get a job offer from Google, Mozilla, Sun, Yahoo, … etc. 😉

This city is just a great place to live. And surfing the web over Google’s WiFi (the unencrypted SSID is broadcasted, but I also managed to use their WPA2 encrypted network) on your brand-new iPhone is a lot of fun! (No, this still is not my own iPhone. Chain-yourself-to-AT&T issue. Will consider getting one when they introduce a 3G/UMTS version in Europe)

7-ELEVEN IN KWIK-E-MART OUTFIT

Some 7-Elevens here in the U.S. have been redecorated and repainted to fit Kwik-E-Mart look in preparation for the oncoming Simpsons movie.

I visited the Mountain View Kwik-E-Mart yesterday and my friend got some Buzz Cola, but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me. Luckily, this is the internet: flickr user mlaaker did take some pictures of the Mountain View Kwik-E-Mart.

IBRICK

Function: noun

1. An iPhone you want to use with a SIM card from any other network provider than AT&T
2. An iPhone you have activated through iTunes deciding to transfer your phone number from another provider. Useless for (at least) the first 24 hours (that’s what the customer support e-mail says).
3. An iPhone using AT&T’s darn-slow EDGE network to browse the web.

Oh, and by the way: Sushi came up with some interesting calculations on wasting money while waiting for the iPhone.

WOOT. HERE'S THE IPHONE

32.151.xx.xx blog.jeanpierre.de - [30/Jun/2007:05:31:53 +0200] "GET /wp-content/themes/pool/style.css HTTP/1.1" 200 7613 "/2007/06/30/buzz-word-of-the-day/" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3"

Welcome, iPhone.

(If you’ve never bought an Apple product: that’s actually the facial expression when you open the package and start using your new toy for the first time!)

I have to say: it’s damn sexy. It’s amazing. It’s just. Awesome!

A colleague of mine waited in line at the San Francisco Apple store since about 7:30am to get the iPhone and brought it back to the office. After playing with it for a while, we decided to drive to the nearby AT&T store to get another one (for another colleague). There were only a few people waiting (a lot less than in front of the Apple store in downtown Palo Alto) and they seemed to have a massive stock of iPhones there (we went there at 8pm).

I was so close to get one for myself, but unfortunately there are some disadvantages:

• The 2-year AT&T contract (I’m leaving the US in a few months) – I know, that you could cancel the contact for $175, but read on…
• There is absolutely no way you can use another SIM card in the iPhone at the moment than the one you activated through iTunes 7.3 – neither another US AT&T or T-Mobile card nor a German T-Mobile card.

So, no iPhone for myself, but at least I can play with those that are around in the office 😉