iPhone gadget suite?

I was thinking, isn’t it nice to have someone holding up my iPhone for me. While I’m working on my desktop, I have my Mini Me holding up my iPhone, so that I can watch my video! What a Personalized iPhone Holder!

So you're still buying an iPhone? I though the reality distortion field was too intense for you.

All the tech world needs: another device.

What's wrong with just having a fracking laptop and mobile phone?

Storing personal information on tiny devices and then walking around with them is dumb. My Linux laptop largely stays at home, but when I close the lid, the entire hard drive is encrypted. I have years worth of writings and thousands of photos. Now, I back them up routinely with not one, but two external hard drives for redundancy, but I still fail to see how tiny gadgets are fun.

Fast forward a few years now... when they develop a pair of sunglasses that lets me surf like a virtual reality machine while walking and talking and using my eyes as a mouse, I'll buy into that... until then, all this is bunk. Who the hell wants to watch movies on a 3" screen? My home theater system sounds so much better than an iPod ever will. I listen to music in two places: home and in the car.

To me it is not an ethics issue at all. Scoble's blog has always been commercial in nature, be it his book or Microsoft or PodTech, there has always been a sales pitch here. I actually like that as opposed to TechCrunch, where there are all these grey areas, but when your pitches fall on deaf ears, don't blame the other sites for not helping you spread your pitch.

Engadget has now posted about Zink:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/30/zink-bringin...


Guy

At risk of over-simplifying things - ethical behaviour (which is what I think we're talking about) is a continuum. At one end there is totally non-commercial behaviour that is altruistic and gives no profit to the person that carries out the action. At that end there are people like Mother Teresa.

At the other end are folks that make you think they're un-biased and purport to be reporting or acting for the public benfit but are really trying to profit by being sneaky. In Australia, there was a court case recently where two leading and very influential radio personalities (there are the guys the Prime Minister talks to when he wants to get a message or idea publicly aired) were accused of using their influence to promote particular products and services. The problem stemmed from the fact that advertising and editorial were not clearly separated. Nobody could tell that when one said "I get great service from carrier X" whether that was a personal view or an ad. The personal endorsements these guys made were worth many millions of dollars.

I'm not here to defend RS (he's a big boy and can look after himself) but he freely admits (even promotes) that he's sponsored by Seagate, I'd be more concerned if he started telling us how great his new Acme Computer was and *then* we find out that it was a paid endorsement and not an unbiased opinion.

Sure he was upfront, but it is still advertising using his social media clout, just like the paid crisis management work he did when Seagate's CEO admitted that part of their business was about porn.

Robert, see, here's the difference between you and a writer with a clue.

What is there to write about DAVE?

It's a small portable hard drive with wireless and USB that can talk to a phone.

Now, once the tech specs are released and there's some real information out there, you know, besides OMGTEHKEWL!!111, then you'll see more news about it.

But right now, you're crowing because you were the first with...a data free PR bit.

Woo.

Hoo.

Fear the Mighty Scobleizer.

Although neither D.A.V.E nor Zink are iPhone specific accessories, the fact that others (not just RS) are seeing them as iPhone accessories points an entirely new ecosystem, just like the one around the iPod.

BTW Garth (Comment 6) - RS was very upfront about being sponsored by Seagate. I'm not in the US but in my little corner of the world (Australia) it's very tricky to know what stories (particularly on TV "current affairs" shows) are nothing more than paid-for product placements.

On the question of timing - if you want to get in ahead of the wave of "me too" reporting then broaden your blog-reading horizons to writers in different time-zones. The blogosphere is 365/24/7 and stuff breaks all over the world. I don't want to toot my own horn but I've covered stuff on my little blog several hours before the big sites. And I link and quote sources ;-)

There are three listings for this DAVE thing on techmeme, a podtech sponsored post, your scobleshow post and your link from here at scobleizer. The amount of paid promotion that you are doing probably gives sites with journalists pause about posting your advertising.

Wow. Now you're attacking blogs for posts they haven't even WRITTEN yet? What's the deal, Robert?

Ron: maybe they are waiting for the New York Times to write about it. :-)

Schweeet, you are still giving it to 'em! Glad to see you aren't backing down...

well they are trying to find who they should link to first

Haha, awesome! I'm not sure I'll need either piece of hardware, but it's nice to know it's available.