July 26, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- With security researchers set to reveal details of a critical security flaw in the iPhone at the Black Hat 2007 conference next week, Apple Inc. now has fewer than seven days to patch a critical vulnerability in the product.

The iPhone hack is one of several disclosures planned that could lead to fireworks as more than 3,000 hackers and security professionals converge at Caesars Palace Las Vegas for the annual confab. More...

Now that the euphoria surrounding the launch of Apple Computer's iPhone has died down, the gizmo's once again made it to the headlines... and how?

SPI Labs' security researchers have cautioned iPhone users not to use the 'Web Dialer' feature that allow them dial telephone numbers over the Web through iPhone's Safari browser. More...

Steve Jobs’ keynote at the WWDC has come and gone, with a few Leopard spots uncovered and Safari for Windows released – but will the iPhone snatch victory – or defeat – from the jaws of the marketplace?

As the launch of the iPhone draws ever closer, hard news from Apple and Steve Jobs himself has been hard to come by, released only in dribs and drabs at shareholder meetings, the D5 conference and now Apple’s own WWDC, mixed in with a rich speculative brew from the best and worst minds of the Internet. More....

If you haven’t noticed (or even if you have) the iPhone mockup on the Apple site has only 11 feature icons.
In this case, evidence of absence is no absence of evidence. It would be so unlike design-obsessed Apple to leave all that space there.

Now Gizmodo thinks that 12th space could be held in reserve for YouTube. Not out of the question: YouTube is making nice with the H.264 codec that Apple uses. And of course, Google and Apple are certainly not adverse to working with each other. Both share a common foe- Microsoft.More....

Yes, the countdown to Apple’s iPhone is on, this is, if you are a 30-something educated man with cash to spend.
Take a gander at the results of an online survey of U.S. customer below by Solutions Research Group.

Three-quarters of those “definitely interested” are men, and 94 percent are between 15 and 49 years old with an average age of 31. Almost 60 percent finished college and those interested have a $75,600 per year household income. Close to half, no surprise, live in New York and California.More....

A proven inside source of mine points me toward his posting on a forum describing his hands-on with the iPhone. Here's are his non-fanboy impressions along with some new details:

•"It does have email and it is already set up for AOL/GMAIL/HOTMAIL etc.. and you can use your own POP email address."
•"Not worth the $500-$600 IMHO maybe half that."
•"I must say it has very fast response to input and very good resolution on the LCD it is very crisp and vivid."More....

An AT&T employee who works on Operations tells us that the carrier ordered a last-minute beefing up of its EDGE throughput, latency and coverage in anticipation of the iPhone. The operation, internally referenced as "Fine Edge" will continue until June 15th, and has been going on for as many as 6 weeks.

EDGE is slow, but at least at AT&T, the implementation isn't limited by the protocol itself. Rather, the limiting factor is, according to our source, the data backend and the way the towers are configured to allocate bandwidth to data and calls. More....

Apple iPhone watchers breathed a collective sigh of relief yesterday when TV commercials shown during 60 Minutes revealed the June 29 release date at long last. From our perspective we don't know what's better--finally putting an end to five months of rumors or actually getting more information about a cell phone that has sent people into hysterics (yes, I'm including Crave in that group).

Though the commercials didn't tell us much more than what we already know, they do let us get a look at the device in action. Here's what we saw. More....

Announced in January for a June release, Apple’s iPhone finally has a street date: June 29, 2007. In a series of three commercials now found on Apple.com, and beginning to air on television, Apple announces the date while touting the phone’s versatility as an iPod, cell phone, and mobile Internet device. The commercials, “Never Been an iPod,” “How To,” and “Calamari,” show the phone switching effortlessly from feature to feature, rendering easy and straightforward transitions from media playback to e-mailing, web browsing, and Google Maps.More....

AT&T executive Glenn Lurie was still relatively new to the organization when he was put in charge of one of the company's biggest and most secret operations in recent memory: its partnership with Apple to develop the iPhone. "We're hiding it, hiding it, hiding it," he said. "We're all very excited about it and what it can be. But bottom line is no, we're not showing it around and are being very secretive with it."
A little more than two years ago, Glenn Lurie's new bosses at Cingular Wireless put the Portland, Ore., native in charge of a super-secret project: Negotiating the rights to be the exclusive wireless carrier for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) long-awaited iPhone.More....

Look here, folks: Apple has no intentions of going all “Linux” and everything anytime soon; though many people have expressed interest in developing third party programs for the iPhone, was Steve’s assurance that Apple would be willing to work with them just campaign rhetoric? I think the day Apple opens up completely to third party support for the iPhone is the same day we wave buh-bye to the all-star security and reliability that will sell the iPhone in the first place.More....

"It is interesting how in the final days before the iPhone Arrival Storm, the other cell phone manufacturers and cell phones networks seem to think all is well," TWO A DAY blogs.

"After all, this system has served them well for 15 years, a lifetime for bureaucrats. And long enough to fool many analysts who make proclamations such as the iPhone will not equal the success of the iPod … that is sort of like saying, the Moon is not the Sun - they are right but then they’re really not saying anything at all," TWO A DAY blogs.More....

As the day for the Apple iPhone launch draws closer, more details are surfacing. Since January 2007, we have been bombarded with a lot of iPhone news that barely qualifies as such. In fact, along with such rumors, the wireless wars between AT&T and Verizon have also been heating up.
Since the iPhone is to debut in June 2007, we now have some confirmed news regarding the phone’s applications. AT&T, the iPhone’s sole provider in the U.S. has said that several Google applications will definitely be present on the much-awaited handset.More....

CNBC claiming June 20th is the day the Jesus Phone rises from the mist formed from the sputtering of millions of rabid fanboys. Almost all the gadget and Mac sites are writing about this, and incorrectly saying the source was an analyst. That's just not true. Watch the clip.
Their source? NOT an analyst like the Mac blogs are reporting (from a message board). No, they got it from a Cingular phone store employee, which is not exactly a fountain of certain info. Of course, you'd expect the iPhone launch date rumormongering to come from Giz (proudly) and other gadget blogs, but look, CNBC didn't even label this a rumor.More....

Shares of Apple Inc. rose Friday after a media report stated the company's much-anticipated iPhone will be released June 20.
Apple shares added $1.83 to $112.52 in afternoon trading. Apple's shares have been rising steadily over the past year, hitting an all-time high of $115 on Wednesday. Growth in recent months has been fueled by speculation and consumer excitement over the hybrid phone and media player.More....

Verizon, like a vengeful rival, is planning to fight AT&T's Apple iPhone release with their very own iPhone killer. Late this summer, as if trying to make up for the fact they turned down Steve Jobs and Apple as the first choice for iPhone exclusivity (they apparently didn't like Apple's demands for control of distribution, pricing, marketing, and more), Verizon is going to release their own "gotta-have-it" phone.
Verizon Wireless VP, Jim Grace, says that, "We said no [to the iPhone offer]. We have nothing bad to say about the Apple iPhone. We just couldn't reach a deal that was mutually beneficial."More....

Apple Inc. will show off new MacBook Pro notebooks along with a full demonstration of the next operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 (a.k.a. Leopard), at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), a Wall Street analyst predicted yesterday.

PiperJaffray analyst Gene Munster rejected rumors that Apple will tout its iPhone at the conference, which opens June 14 in San Francisco. Instead, Apple will launch the new cellular phone in late June. More....

Top U.S. phone company AT&T said it will step up its rebranding campaign at Cingular Wireless stores, seeking to raise AT&T's profile ahead of the launch of Apple's iPhone.
The company will replace the Cingular name with AT&T in the interiors of its 1,800 shops on Monday, ahead of the iPhone launch in late June.

AT&T acquired BellSouth last year, a move that consolidated its ownership of the two companies' wireless joint venture, Cingular, which is being rebranded as AT&T.More....

With the stateside launch of Apple’s iPhone just weeks away, questions have begun to emerge surrounding the device’s European launch. Despite the handset being months from hitting store shelves, almost half of European iPod owners would consider the iPhone as their next mobile, according to a survey conducted by Canalys, a Reading, England-based research firm. A key factor in which carrier will offer the iPhone in Europe is whether or not the European version of the handset includes 3G mobile network technology. More....

Tomi T Ahonen, self-proclaimed "world's leading 3G strategy consultant," unabashedly declares:

Much like the Western calendar marks time from before and after Jesus Christ, and how the computer world changed totally by the Macintosh—remembering that Windows is Microsoft's copy of the Mac operating system—I am certain that the mobile telecoms world will count its time in two Eras. The Era BI: time Before the iPhone, and the ERA AI: time After the iPhone.More....

A recently discovered patent filed by Apple in 2004, seems to point to a new feature that could help protect your portable electronics from getting stolen.

By utilizing the accelerometers built into devices such as the iPhone or MacBook, this new feature can look for certain movements that are characteristic of theft. In the event of your iPhone or MacBook being stolen, it could either turn on an alarm, lock itself up or even a combination of the two.More...

Despite not being a huge fan of standard pink gadgets, this powder pink Zune is turning out to look snazzier than we thought. It's a different shade of pink than the limited edition Willy Wonka Zunes we saw last year. That was a super-limited edition only for employees who worked on the Zune and 100 lucky contestants who found them in standard Zune packages.

Instead of retina-scarring pink, it's a soft baby pink that makes you feel oh-so-pretty.
We're digging this one.Catch more nicely photographed shots over at Zune Scene.

Well, Sansa's done it again, beating the competition at their own game. The way they've implemented their Wi-Fi is so superior to Microsoft's they shouldn't even be considered the same type of thing.
The Sansa Connect's Wi-Fi is something I might actually use, whereas I've never once turned on the Wi-Fi receiver in my Zune. So what do you think? Is this the Wi-Fi implementation you were hoping for in the Zune, or another example of close but no cigar?