Wired: Top Stories (27 unread)
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Hypermiling 101: Convert Your Car Into a Super-Saver
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 9:00pm EDT by How-To Wiki
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Your gas budget doesn't go as far as it used to, but that doesn't mean your standard engine won't. You don't have to buy a hybrid to get good mileage. All it takes is a light touch on the accelerator and a well-tuned engine. Learn how with our hypermiling guide.
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Developers at WWDC Looking Forward to iPhone 3G Platform
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 9:00pm EDT by Gadget Lab
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Attendees at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference are looking forward to the new iPhone's features and the fact that it will enable them to create applications for corporate use. Some, however, think the enhancements don't go far enough.
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McCain's Ties to Telecoms Questioned After Wiretapping Flip-Flop
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 8:50pm EDT by Threat Level
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Telecom lobbyists, current and former, hold some prominent spots in Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's campaign. After a week of flip-flopping on the legality of warrantless wiretapping, a civil liberties group that is suing AT&T for allegedly spying on Americans is asking what that might mean.
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Gallery: The iPhone 2.0 Keynote
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 8:45pm EDT by Dylan Tweney
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: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comSAN FRANCISCO -- As conferences go, Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference ranks low on the sexiness factor. It's a good bet that, without the promise of a new, iPhone 3G, the programmer-centric conference would not have drawn the hundreds of broadcast, print and blog journalists that it did.
Fortunately, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did have a new iPhone up his sleeve, and after spending an hour selling the company's new iPhone development tools and previewing some of the platform's forthcoming apps, Jobs delivered what we all came for: the new phone.
The iPhone 3G, as it will be called, will cost $200 for an 8-GB version, $300 for a 16-GB version. Both will be available in a new, slightly rounded case with a shiny black-plastic back. The 16-GB version will also be available with a white back.
Breaking with Jobs' keynote tradition, the iPhone 3G is not yet available: Both models will go on sale July 11 in 22 countries. Apple plans to make the phone available in 75 countries within several months.
For details, check out our full coverage of the WWDC 2008 keynote, or browse these slides for the highlights.
Left: Jobs' normal "reality-distortion field" seemed to be at ebb during today's keynote, which many observers noted was less exciting than a typical Jobs presentation. Indeed, Jobs -- looking thinner than ever in his trademark black mock-turtleneck -- let his deputies take most of the stage time. More than one audience member noticed that Jobs seemed to be looking a little wan and have less energy than usual. And maybe it's time for a new turtleneck? This one was looking a little gray, not to mention baggy.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comApple's Phil Schiller, a regular fixture at Apple keynotes, touted the phone's new integration with Microsoft Exchange using "ActiveStink -- I mean ActiveSync." Was that an intentional dig at the Cupertino company's sometime competitor, sometime partner? Or was it a true Freudian slip, indicating Schiller's habitual distaste for the nearly ubiquitous Microsoft standard?
It's not clear. One thing is sure, though: Apple has provided deep and meaningful enterprise tools in the 2.0 version of the iPhone software, including the ability to "push" e-mail, calendar and contact updates. The company has also given IT managers the ability to zero out any data on a corporate iPhone, remotely -- handy when one of them goes missing.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comApple executive Scott Forstall demonstrates how easy it is to create an iPhone application using the software development kit's new tools. You just drag in this snippet of code here, drop a button there and presto! Instant contact manager.
Like other software-development demos, this one had a lot in common with cooking demonstrations on TV: So much depends on having everything set up just right, ahead of time. In real life, you'd spend half a day doing prep work before you got to do the five minutes of dragging-and-dropping that Forstall showed onstage.
Still, developer after developer testified to the ease of developing iPhone apps. It's clear that if you're used to coding OS X apps, the iPhone should be a cakewalk.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comOne of the applications shown at the March preview of the iPhone SDK was Sega's popular Nintendo DS title Super Monkey Ball. This game will be available for the iPhone for $10 -- once the iPhone App Store opens -- and will feature all four cute little monkeys and more than 100 different levels. Players control the rolling monkeys simply by tilting the iPhone this way and that.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comDevelopers who want to create location-aware applications have plenty to drool over with the new iPhone 2.0 operating system, which has plenty of support for geographic data. In addition to the first-generation iPhone's ability to do geolocation by triangulating nearby WiFi hotspots and cell towers, the iPhone 3G will also have a GPS receiver, giving the device the ability to track its movements with great precision.
In this demo by location-sensitive social network Loopt, the orange pin denotes the user's location, while blue pins show nearby friends. Looking for someone to have lunch with? Loopt can help you hook up with someone and can even help recommend a cute little local cafe. (Friends not included.)
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comMajor League Baseball's iPhone app takes advantage of the phone's fast 3-G and WiFi data connections to provide real-time game scores -- and "real-time video clips." That doesn't mean you'll be able to watch streaming video of the whole game, but highlight clips will be available for you to view within "minutes" after they happen, the MLB developer promised.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comAmong the most impressive iPhone app demos of the day were graphics-intensive ones, including a medical-imaging program and this game, called Kroll, from Digital Legends. In the demo, a fully animated character ran through a beautifully rendered fantasy landscape, battling winged demons and an immense, scary-looking giant whose steps shook the very screen.
Like the many other developers who took the stage, Digital Legends touted the ease of porting its OS X software to the iPhone -- and also provided an impressive demonstration of the phone's built-in 3-D video capabilities. In terms of graphics quality, this game looked comparable to what you might find on a PlayStation 2.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comPerhaps the biggest news of the day was a three-digit number: $199, the price of the 8-GB iPhone 3G. That's a significant drop from the current price for the 8-GB first-generation iPhone ($399), and a huge drop from the $600 that it cost when Apple first introduced the iPhone a year ago.
As if the mere figure weren't impressive enough, Jobs had the price stomp onto the screen with massive booming sounds, saving him from having to actually say the word Boom.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comThe new iPhone 3G comes with a shiny black-plastic back, in contrast to the current model's matte aluminum. If you decide to spring for the more capacious 16-GB model (which will cost $299), you can also choose a shiny white-plastic back.
The iPhone 3G itself doesn't appear to be any smaller, thinner or lighter than the current version, although it has tapered, slightly rounded edges, which will either make it feel thinner or make it feel more like a bar of soap.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comJobs made his customary brief appearance in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by burly bodyguards, after the keynote wrapped up. However, he didn't spend any time chitchatting with the hoi polloi, and no one got any hands-on time with his shiny new gadget.
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Physicist Debunks Cellphone Popcorn Viral Videos
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 7:40pm EDT by Underwire
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Gadgets can pull off some pretty amazing feats these days. But popping corn? That's a bit beyond the scope of even the hottest feature-packed mobile.
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Rising Gas Prices Finally Kill the Once-Mighty SUV
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by Autopia
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They've had a good long run, but after almost two decades on top, SUVs are dead, done in by rising gas costs and consumers' desire for more fuel-efficient cars. Good riddance.
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How to Plant Trees to Cool Your Home and the Planet
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by How-To Wiki
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Hammock owners rejoice, planting trees isn't just for tree-huggers any more. Studies show it can save you money by shading your home. Get your hands dirty without a green thumb by using our guide. Read more...
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Blind Teenage Hacker Arrested for Intimidating Verizon Security Official
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by Threat Level
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Barely a month after turning 18, a blind phone phreak in Boston faces federal charges after showing up uninvited at the home of a Verizon security official who tried to turn off his phone.
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Scientists Think Like a Hurricane to Beat the Next Katrina
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 5:30pm EDT by David Axe
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When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in late August 2005 and the levees around the city broke, flooding the city and killing hundreds, Ed Link was as surprised as everyone else.
He shouldn't have been. As one of the nation's foremost hurricane experts, Link, a professor at the University of Maryland, had access to the government's most sophisticated mathematical models for predicting damage from big Gulf Coast storms. But those models weren't accurate because the data they were based on were incomplete, out of date or just plain wrong.
As the floodwaters receded and the Army Corps of Engineers rushed to repair the levees, the government asked Link to lead a team of engineers and scientists from the government and private sector -- 300 in all -- to recode those old models. The goal of the vaguely named Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force was twofold, Link told Wired.com: first, "to get that knowledge built back into the levee repairs so the same vulnerability wasn't built into the system again. The second was to come up with a 'risk assessment' looking forward."
In other words, to have a much better idea, grounded in solid science, of who might be killed or have their property destroyed in future Gulf Coast hurricanes.
The levees have long since been fixed and upgraded, but the risk assessment -- based on a mind-boggling 2 million equations -- is just now nearing completion. As the math came together beginning in 2007, the task force began publishing color-coded, interactive maps in an effort to show Gulf Coast residents what kind of danger they likely faced from hurricanes. The Google Earth-based maps can be found on the Army Corps website.
The ultimate "risk" map, the culmination of the task force's work representing tens of thousands of square miles from Florida to Texas, is slated for release this week.
Gathering the data for the levee upgrade and the risk maps took three years of back-breaking, mind-numbing effort by hundreds of team members using a surprising mix of high technology, old-fashioned detective work, trick psychology and, when all else failed, intuition. The results have revolutionized authorities' understanding of Gulf Coast hurricanes.
But whether the public will pay heed is another matter.
Katrina dissipated on August 30, 2005. In early September, rescuers had just begun going house to house in New Orleans looking for the living and the dead. But Link's team was already on the ground collecting what he called "perishable" data, such as the depths and locations of floodwaters.
For many team members, data collection was dirty, dangerous, thankless work -- and it meant short-shifting their day jobs. "A lot of people just quit what they were doing and basically worked full-time" on the new storm model, Link told Wired.com.
But for one key team member, it wasn't just about sloshing through flooded streets. Don Resio, a scientist working for the Army Corps of Engineers, went hunting for old data sets from decades-old storms, in hopes that historic hurricanes might whisper hints about future ones.
Resio told Wired.com that his hunt mostly involved polite requests to cooperative government agencies like the National Weather Service. But other, equally vital reams of data were locked in the safes of the Gulf Coast oil companies, who, with billions of dollars invested in offshore drilling platforms, were especially concerned with the high winds that come with big storms.
Resio needed that data, but it wasn't his to demand. His solution? "I made 'em feel guilty," he recalled with a laugh.
Slowly, the data came together, culled from more than 150 storms dating back a hundred years. Key figures came from new, high-tech microwave sensors installed aboard "hurricane-hunting" C-130 and P-3 airplanes operated by the Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A scale-model levee was stress-tested in the world's most powerful centrifuge.
Courtesy Army Corps of EngineersTo create entirely new data from scratch, the task force built a detailed model of New Orleans and flooded it, essentially recreating Katrina on a nonlethal scale. And to zero in on the levees, the team built a miniature earthen levee inside the world's most powerful centrifuge. They added water and spun the centrifuge at speeds duplicating hurricane-force wind and waves, looking for when, where and how the levee would fail.
There were some surprising revelations in the course of the task force's investigation … some of which helped explain why Katrina had taken so many people by surprise. For one, Link's team found that the existing elevation maps of New Orleans were way off and would have to be totally redrawn. "We found things two feet below where people though they were," Link said. Obviously that made the city more vulnerable to flooding.
Also, in tightening up and rewriting the old mathematical models, the task force gained a clearer understanding of the limitations of modern science. "There's a lot we just don't know," Resio told Wired.com. But, as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, there are "unknown unknowns," which are bad, and there are "known unknowns," which are somewhat better. Finally the hurricane task force knew the basic outline of what it didn't know.
But when it comes to math, even known unknowns can be tricky. Resio said that for some equations, he and the other researchers needed figures, any figures. So they had to guess. That meant thinking like a hurricane, trying to intuit how wind and water might behave under certain conditions.
Necessary educated guesses aside, Resio told Wired.com that uncertainty is a key parameter of the new storm models -- especially as global warming whips the planet's fundamental weather patterns in unpredictable ways. The team knew they had to capture this unpredictability mathematically and build it into the models.
Spinning at speeds duplicating a hurricane, the scale earthen levee turns to liquid and disintegrates.
Video courtesy Army Corps of Engineers"We did a bunch of numerical tests to determine variability," Resio said. In other words, they looked at the surprising behaviors of past storms. Were winds unusually fast? Or was the ratio between the size of the storm and wind speed different than the norm? "We added that variability back into the model as a random function," Resio said, so that when officials use the new models to predict hurricane damage, they get a range of predictions. It's one of the new models' greatest strengths, Resio said.
After three years of labor by hundreds of engineers and scientists, emergency managers now have a much better understanding of what kind of damage a major storm might cause. But that doesn't mean that the people most at risk -- Gulf Coast residents -- take these predictions seriously.
Sometimes all the mathematical models and colorful maps in the world won't change a person's mind, which is why many New Orleans residents have rebuilt destroyed homes in exactly the same place, and to the same construction standard, as before Katrina.
To combat public ignorance and complacency, Resio's team includes "risk communicators" -- basically, PR reps for hurricanes. Ironically, the high-tech storm models and sophisticated maps that the risk communicators rely on might actually undermine their work, according to one academic who has studied storms.
"The technologically enhanced discourse of prediction conveys the sense that weather media viewers can be prepared," Marita Sturken, from New York University, wrote in 2006. She called this a technological "selling of preparedness."
Resio is aware of the challenge in making potential hurricane victims believe that they're at risk, even when the world's most sophisticated storm models insist they are. "How do you convince people they need to be concerned?" he said, sighing. "The risk communicators have their hands full."
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GPS-Equipped iPhone Could Enable New Citizen Science
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 4:00pm EDT by Wired Science
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The iPhone's new price and geolocation tools could bring a new army of data-collecting citizen-scientists to bear on the world's environmental problems.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica to Follow Modified Wikipedia Model
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 4:00pm EDT by Epicenter
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It may not exactly be a sign of the Apocalypse, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica is dipping its toes in wiki waters with a plan to invite the general public to contribute to its online version. Not just anything will get into the main version, mind you, and comparisons to Wikipedia may be exaggerated, but the invitation to "lay contributers" is a first.
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Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 3:30pm EDT by Danger Room
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The Pentagon's most-prestigious scientific advisory panel is spooked about "enemy activities in sleep research," neuro-pharmaceutical performance enhancement, "brain-computer interfaces," and other ways adversaries could "exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security."
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WWDC: Location-Aware iPhone Tools Set to Flood the Web
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Web Monkey
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If the rumors are to be believed, Apple is going to announce new iPhones — possibly GPS-enabled — at the company’s WWDC event, set to kick off later today. For iPhone fans it could mean access to all kinds of useful, location-aware data. One interesting possibility is a new service by the name of CitySense.
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TSA Nixes Flying Without I.D.
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Threat Level
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Airline passengers will no longer be able to fly without identification starting June 21, unless they convince a Homeland Security employee they lost it, according to rules announced Friday. The new rules change a little-known policy that let civil liberties-minded individuals choose extra screening over showing identification, but they don't close the biggest airport security loophole.
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Play Chickenfoot With the DOMinoes of the Web
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Webmonkey
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Chickenfoot, the scripting tool with the funny name, lets Firefox users build automated behaviors for their favorite sites. Some see it as an improvement over the more popular Greasemonkey, in that Chickenfoot code is simpler to understand. Find out for yourself with Webmonkey's getting-started guide.
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Metallica Kills Blogger Reviews. Will They Never Learn?
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 1:57pm EDT by Listening Post
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So near, and yet so far. Metallica got some cred last week for releasing on the internet, a turnabout from their eight-year jihad against fans downloading their music. But when a pig flies ... this week they forced bloggers to pull reviews of their album. Did we mention that the bloggers were invited to a listening party? Did we mention there was no nondisclosure agreement?
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The Lost Space Colonies of NASA
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 1:05pm EDT by Wired Science
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A Swinging '70s take on space colonies, courtesy of the (paisley) suits at NASA.
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Sometimes, It Takes a Thief to Catch a Thief
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 1:00pm EDT by David Critchell, Portfolio.com
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Subscribe to Portfolio magazineApollo Robbins won't say whether he's ever stolen anything in his life, but it's clear he could if he wanted to. Having grown up in Missouri with three half-brothers who were all involved in various criminal activities (one of them is in the witness protection program after testifying against former colleagues of his), the 34-year-old Robbins was indoctrinated at an early age into the finer aspects of pickpocketing and con games.
He eventually developed those skills into a successful career as a sleight-of-hand artist and performer in Las Vegas. His latest act, though, has him starring as a corporate security consultant. In this role, it is less his dexterous hands that appeals to his clients than his mastery of all aspects of criminal cons, grifts, and social-engineering ploys.
"When you're trying to steal something, you find the weakest link and work that," Robbins says. "Nowadays, as technology gets better and security systems get harder to break through, the weakest link in any system is the human running it."
Robbins founded his consulting operation, Whizmob Inc. (the name comes from the street term for a team of pickpockets working together), two years ago while still performing full-time.
After doing a show a few years back in which he pickpocketed Secret Service agents accompanying former president Jimmy Carter, the resulting publicity led several law-enforcement agencies and other groups to contact him about his techniques.
"At first, I'd refer them to security people I knew," says Robbins. "Then I realized that instead of being a referral service, I could capitalize on this."
It was a good time to get in on the act. Information security consulting, which barely existed in the mid '90s, has become an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion business as the need to protect sensitive information stored on computers and servers has become a more central concern.
Today, Robbins counts the N.F.L., TNT, and several Fortune 500 companies among his customers. He recently advised the N.F.L. on information security protection at this year's Super Bowl in Phoenix to combat the expected flow of thieves and con artists lured by all the deep-pocketed spectators coming to town.
His work included getting a major hotel to upgrade its WiFi security so that fake access programs known as Trojans couldn't extract valuable data and password information from unsuspecting guests' computers. And at the stadium where the game was held, Robbins and his team identified areas where pickpockets would most likely operate—specifically, places with lots of traffic where bumping into people would be customary, and easy access to exits for escape purposes.
Besides the shadier elements of Robbins' childhood, his father, a blind minister, instilled in him a strong sense of morality. "It was like living in two worlds," Robbins says.
In many ways, he still is living in two worlds, since he keeps in regular contact with some professional thieves he knows in order to stay abreast of the latest cons. (While he doesn't pay them, Robbins says that "a lot of these guys are really good at what they do but they can't exactly discuss it with a lot of people.") But increasingly, Robbins is spending time in the more staid settings of the corporations that hire him to vet their security systems.
"It's a good time to be in the business," he says.
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Live Blog: Steve Jobs Keynote at WWDC
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 9:30am EDT by Gadget Lab
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When Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage at 10 a.m. Pacific time, Wired.com will be there to bring you the latest news as it happens. We'll bring you photographs, too, just as fast as we can upload them via Sprint's EVDO network.
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AC/DC and Wal-Mart: A Marriage Made in Heaven?
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 8:58am EDT by Listening Post
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OK kids, time to weigh in: AC/DC is going exclusive with Wal-Mart, which may be the number-two music retailer in the world but is as hip as child-sized polo shirts made in Malaysia and discount cat food. Is this a good idea? Take the Listening Post poll.
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Teen Driver Cell Restrictions Ignored, Unenforced
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 8:14am EDT by Associated Press
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Several states have laws that prohibit teens from using a mobile phone while driving, period. But, it should come as little surprise, these laws are widely ignored and, because of handsfree technology, difficult to detect. The solution? A new insurance study out today argues that enforcement and parental influence are just as important as new laws.
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Icahn's Big Yahoo Bet Hinges on Microsoft Sale
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 8:11am EDT by Associated Press
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Carl Icahn came to town with $4,000 in poker winnings and parlayed that into about $14 billion with a mixed record of corporate takeovers. But he's seldom made as big a bet as the $1 billion he has on Yahoo. And, arguably, his winning hand can be made by only one card in the deck: a purchase by Microsoft -- which has already left the table once.
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Boeing Throws Its Weight Behind Algae
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 7:37am EDT by Autopia
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Boeing's bet that algal fuels are the future of aviation could provide the money and the muscle to accelerate the commercialization of biofuel as an alternative to kerosene.
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Willie Horton Admaker Goes Web 2.0 With Attacks Against Obama
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Threat Level
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Community organizing and peer-to-peer communications have worked out well so far in Barack Obama's presidential campaign. So well, in fact, that one group of conservative activists is co-opting one of the Obama campaign's online communications strategies to use it against him.
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What's Good for Apple Is Better for Everyone Else
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Betsy Schiffman
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As Apple prepares to launch the iPhone 2 on Monday, competitors like Palm and RIM are not worried. On the contrary, they are licking their chops, preparing for a surge in sales, even though Apple expects to sell millions of new iPhones worldwide.
"The way I look at it is there are 1.2 billion cellphones out there, and we're just scratching the surface," said Mike Laziridis, CEO of Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, the iPhone's closest rival.
Steve Jobs is expected to announce the second version of the iPhone on Monday morning during a keynote speech kicking off Apple's annual Worldwide Developer's Conference.
The iPhone 2 has already been dubbed the "BlackBerry killer." It promises to be faster, slicker and cheaper, boasting features like fast 3-G networking, Exchange support and even carrier subsidies. If the rumors prove true, it will be the iPhone many buyers have been holding out for.
It's a standard line for companies to say they "welcome competition," but it's usually a throwaway meant to deflect attention from strategic vulnerabilities.
In the case of the iPhone, however, competitors earnestly have reason to welcome Apple to the market. Sales show that what's been good for Apple has been verrrry good for smartphone makers. Retail sales of the BlackBerry, for example, are up 38 percent in the year since the iPhone's introduction.
It didn't initially look that way. When the iPhone 2 rumors first surfaced, nervous investors sold off shares of RIM under the assumption that the company would get creamed by Apple. Instead, RIM's market share of smartphones in the United States has actually swelled from 35 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 45 percent in the first quarter of 2008.
"The fact of the matter is this," said Pablo Perez-Fernandez, an analyst with Global Crown Capital. "There were a lot of BlackBerrys in those stores where iPhones were selling, and there were people who may not have thought about a smartphone before, wanted the iPhone, thought it was too expensive, and bought a BlackBerry instead."
And for smartphone makers like Palm, Nokia and RIM, Apple helped whet the market's appetite while they went in for the kill, helped by discounted prices and a choice in carriers.
Palm says the sell-through rate on smartphones over the last two quarters has climbed 21 percent to 833,000 units in the third (and most recent) quarter, from 686,000 in the previous quarter (although the sell-through rate was 689,000 in the first quarter).
"The Centro has played a critical role in moving our transformational efforts along at a fast pace," said Ed Colligan, CEO and president of Palm, in a March conference call. He added that more than 70 percent of Centro buyers are traditional cellphone users who are purchasing a smartphone for the first time.
"What the iPhone did was make it cool to use smartphones," said Ramon Llamas, an analyst with research firm IDC. "Before, you had the BlackBerry, which mostly just resonated with enterprise users or business people. Now, there's a whole new market of smartphone consumers . Before the phone came out, I actually asked guys from companies like Nokia and RIM how they were going to respond, and the answer was unanimous -- it was, 'Welcome to the party, hop in the pool, the water's fine'"
It's an odd phenomenon because it's not as though Apple invented the smartphone or any of its features – touch screen devices have been around for years and lots of mobile phones already had music capabilities on phones. What Apple did was package it -- and market it -- in a way that made it attractive to mainstream consumers.
"The fact that it looks cool and sexy has helped Apple, and has called attention to a portion of the market that had been under the radar for a lot of people," Llamas said.
In many ways, the iPhone's effect on the market can be compared to what the iPod did for MP3 players.
Before Apple rolled out the iPod, the portable audio market wasn't doing much. In 1999, there were really only a handful of MP3-player makers and unit sales were marginal. Just a couple years after Apple rolled out the iPod in 2001, an industry was born.
Total sales of MP3 players in the United States jumped from a paltry couple million (depending on whose data you use) up to tens of millions over the last few years, as less-expensive models have become readily available.
"The combination of Apple's iPod device and its iTunes Store for music downloads has energized the music industry," gushed a JupiterResearch report in 2003.
Now we'll have to see whether the iPhone will have the same effect on the smartphone market.
Senior Editor Dylan Tweney contributed to this report.
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June 9, 1902: First Automat Restaurant Opens
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Randy Alfred
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1902: Joe Horn and Frank Hardart open the Automat at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. It's America's first coin-operated cafeteria.
Customers would put nickels into slots, turn a knob and open a little glass door to get their food. Horn and Hardart used Swedish-patented equipment they'd imported from Berlin, which already sported a successful "waiterless restaurant."
Some sources place opening day on June 9, others June 12. What's not in dispute is the place was a bargain. The price of a cup of coffee stayed at a nickel from 1912 (when it was worth about $1.10 in today's money) until 1950 (a mere 45 cents today), before it inevitably rose to two nickels.
The company branched out to New York's Times Square in 1912 and continued to expand its operation. The firm also designed its own improved automat equipment.
Employees serving as "nickel throwers" at the head of the line exchanged currency or large coins for the nickels you'd need for the coin slots. One nickel for coffee, five for the turkey and gravy, another nickel for pie. You'd also have your choice of other diner-food favorites, including a famous macaroni and cheese, chicken potpie, Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes, creamed spinach and baked beans. Desserts were also renowned: huckleberry, pumpkin, coconut-cream and custard pies, as well as vanilla ice cream with real vanilla beans, and rice pudding with plump raisins.
It was all prepared in centralized, assembly-line kitchens using standardized recipes that called for quality ingredients. This, plus 85 locations in Philadelphia and New York, made it America's first fast-food chain.
The famous coffee that poured from coin-and-crank-operated dolphin-shaped spouts was never more than 20 minutes old. Irving Berlin composed "Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee" about it, and the ditty became Horn & Hardart's theme song.
That's not the Automat's only spot in American culture. Edward Hopper painted it in 1927. The original Broadway set for The Producers incorporated some of the Automat. And then there's the Concerto for Horn and Hardart by P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele).
Price increases eventually replaced knuckles full of nickels with quantities of quarters and even special tokens that you had to go get from the cashier. All this reduced both the efficiency and the charm of the Automat, because efficiency and economy were in fact the very heart of its charm.
The chain finally succumbed to the ever-rising price of ingredients for its original recipes, changing tastes and of course the growing popularity of fast-food chains like McDonald's and Burger King, as well as New York & Philadelphia's plethora of pizza places. Philly's last Automat closed in 1990, and New York's (on East 42nd Street) a year later. The company closed its last bakery cafe in 2005.
The Automat lives on in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. There you can see an elaborately decorated, 35-foot section of Philadelphia’s original 1902 Horn & Hardart, complete with mirrors and marble. It ain't your father's fast food, but it may be your great-grandma's comfort food.
Source: Various
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Gallery: A Century of Automated Food Service
Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jose Fermoso
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: Exactly 106 years ago, Frank Hardart and Joseph Horn opened the first Automat restaurant in the United States, at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. It had no tables, no waiters and only a single counter with 15 stools. For the first time in American restaurant dining, customers served themselves. Although this idea was groundbreaking, the restaurant had two more killer features that would make it a success and help launch a fast-food nation: The meals were cheap, and it was quick.
Unlike fast-food restaurants today, the original Automat was an attractive and socially acceptable place to be and be seen. During the Depression, the Automat also became an attractive value proposition: A plate of beans or macaroni and cheese cost only a few nickels.
Click through the gallery to see images from the first Automats and their current emulators.
Left: In the first half of the 20th century, the Horn & Hardart Automat in Manhattan was a culinary landmark.
Photo: HO/AP/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
: Photo: Berenice Abbot/HO/AP/Courtesy Museum of the City of New YorkRich, poor, young and old -- practically everyone in New York ate at Horn & Hardart Automats.
During its heyday, the Automat fulfilled some of the most fervent expectations about American efficiency and ingenuity -- if we could build high-quality Fords through an assembly line format, why couldn't we do the same for food?
: Customers would purchase a basic meal (such as sandwiches) through coin-operated machines. The windows hid a kitchen that would prepare food throughout the day. The novelty of inserting a few nickels, pulling the lever and sliding the clear window (usually sideways) to purchase a meal was an attraction in itself. Diners often found their food enveloped in cheap, waxy paper.
Photo: HO/AP/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
: An early postcard shows an Automat at West 57th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York.
Photo: HO/AP/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
: Photo: Warren Jorgensen/APA customer buys a cup of coffee at what was then the last Horn & Hardart Automat eatery in midtown Manhattan, in this AP file photo dated June 8, 1987. Now a fading memory, in its mid-century heyday Horn & Hardart Automat served up lamb stew and pie to millions of New Yorkers who dropped a coin into a slot and opened a small glass door to fetch their food.
: The first Automat in the United States opened at 818-820 Chestnut St., Philadelphia.
[This image is in the public domain.]
: Photo: Tina Fineberg/APThe classic automat format returned to New York City in 2006, with the opening of the Bamn food automat in the East Village. Owners David Leong and Nobu X have added a little bit of Asian style to the experience, with Japanese beef sliders, and hot-pink lights. Just drop a few coins into the slot and you can get a burger, a pizza or even tasty pork buns. Bamn is open 24 hours a day.
: Tina FinebergConvenience and supercheap prices are the biggest draw for Bamn. Most dishes run between $1.50 and $2.50, and according to most reviews (from the tough-to-please foodie crowd to regular Yankee-bleacher creatures), the food is surprisingly good. So how do they make sure the buns are constantly fresh and the slots always well stocked? A full, working, chef-led kitchen lies behind the wall of glass.
Photo: Tina Fineberg/AP
: Photo: Evert Elzinga/APThe original Automat was a Swedish invention manufactured in Germany. Today, FEBO automats in Amsterdam are known for their highly caloric McKroket burgers, which are thick ragout or gravy covered in breadcrumbs and then deep-fried. Then there's the spicy Satékroket beef with peanut sauce -- "It's delicious!" (That's the FEBO slogan.) Mmm.
: Baggers is a recently opened restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany, that serves its meals to customers through a winding steel rail system, getting rid of the need for waiters, or really, the need to talk to anyone while you eat.
So how do they do it? Through the wonderful magic of gravity, of course. After each meal is ordered on a touchscreen (where you can check your e-mail while you wait), the fully staffed kitchen on the second floor prepares the meal, covers it with a silver stainless plate cover and pushes it down along the rails, slowly careening it to your exact seat.
This technology not only looks cool, but saves the owners a lot on the man-hours of waiters waiting and people haggling over the tips.