Apple and AT&T took more than two months to sell the first million iPhones. The iPhone 3GS matched those numbers in just three days, making it the biggest sales weekend for AT&T, ever. AT&T celebrated the milestone with...a company wide memo. Yay?

We still don't have any hard and fast numbers on the 3GS, and we won't really until Apple releases their quarterly earnings information. AT&T said they sold "hundreds of thousands" of phones through pre-orders, but there's still no official word from either camp.

Here's the full text of the memo:

iLaunch day 2009 was one for the record books, as AT&T customers scrambled to get their hands on the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet.

Here’s a look at some of the milestones we achieved:

* Best-ever sales day in our retail stores
* Second-largest traffic day in our retail stores
* Most transactions processed via our IT systems in a single day
* Most upgrade eligibility checks in a single day
* Largest order day in att.com history
* Largest features sales day in att.com history

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008–all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

Source: AllThingsD

Koji Suzuki likes to scare people. The famed Japanese author has written bloodcurdling tales like "The Ring," which have been adapted into films in Japan and Hollywood. Suzuki has a new idea for scaring people, one which involves the time you spend on the toilet.

Suzuki has teamed up with Hayashi Paper Company, which makes novelty paper products for public restroom, to print his novella "Drop" on toilet paper. The story is about a goblin living in a public restroom, making the horror all the more real as you sit on a chilly seat.

The story is nine chapters long, with multiple copies on each roll, so you can pick up where you left off without too much trouble. I'm sure green activists will have something to say about encouraging waste through the product, but I'd still back the product. Who said it can't be printed on the biodegradable stuff, right?

Each roll costs 210 yen, which is about $2. Think James Patterson will be releasing any toilet paper thrillers any time soon?

Alright, so the headline is a little bit misleading, but in a sense it's true. The Dev-Team has had an exploit for the iPhone 3GS set and ready to go, but they want to wait until 3.1 so that Apple doesn't immediately patch their hole. George Hotz got tired of waiting, so he's releasing the jailbreak himself.

As of yet there aren't many details, and not many folks have tested it, but those who have are reporting a successful unlock. GeoHot, or George Hotz, has the necessary file listed on purplera1n.com. After the jailbreak, you should be able to use ultrasn0w for the unlock.

I think the best part of this whole saga is Hotz's comments regarding the Dev-Team decision to hold of on release. I'll send you off to backup, jailbreak, and unlock with his words:

Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the "last" hole in the iPhone. What last hole...this isn't golf. I'll find a new one next week.

Well said, George. Good luck jailbreaking - enjoy your holiday.

As smartphones become more popular we're going to see more and more hacks designed to exploit any vulnerability within the phone. As long as the iPhone's been around, and as widespread as it is, it's surprising we've not seen more news like this.

Though the first of its kind in a while, this iPhone vulnerability is pretty serious. OS X security expert Charlie Miller says through an SMS exploit, attackers could run code using the messaging service. Such an exploit could allow an attacker to track the phone via GPS, enable the microphone for eavesdropping, or even use the phone for a botnet or distributed DOS attack.

At just 140 bytes of data per message, SMS is one of very few ways a hacker can access an iPhone wirelessly. Attackers can send multiple messages to the phone to recompiled once on the device for the exploits mentioned. The real danger is that SMS can be used to send binary to an iPhone, removing user interaction from the equation.

That's a whole lot more than most iPhone users probably think their phones capable, which is what makes fixing the vulnerability so important. According to Miller, Apple should have the hole patched later this month, before he gives a presentation on the hack at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

I made a post a couple days ago about the downright zany information leaks about an upcoming MID from Dell. Employee comments were all over the place, which made it hard to figure out if Dell has been blowing particles of mercury through their air ducts or if they're just panicking over their slippery market share. There's more news this week, which has me leaning toward the mercury theory. I'll start with the least crazy of the two.

Yesterday Dell announced a new option for their popular Mini line of netbooks: the Wireless 700 card. The card adds $69 to the price and adds GPS capability to your handy little netbook. Alan Sicher, senior wireless product manager at Dell, had this to say:

Smartphones already have GPS capabilities. We are now bringing it to...

Okay, stop. Yes. Smartphones already have GPS. So why are you putting it on netbooks? More and more phones, smart or otherwise, are adding GPS capabilities every day, with increasingly robust feature lists. Sorry I interrupted.

We are now bringing it to netbooks so the devices know where you are and can help you where you want to go.

Alright, stop. I'm going to cannibalize an old photographer's saying for the sake of argument here. The best GPS is the one you have with you. Why would I want to carry a netbook when my phone can do what you're suggesting? Can you imagine walking around downtown with your netbook out? People would wonder if you'd found Zack Morris' old smartphone.

With new features on netbooks I always ask one question - how will this affect battery life? Early estimates from Dell say you'll see a 5% drop in overall battery life. That doesn't sound like much, but where was it tested? Where satellite reception was crisp? One of the touted features is usability where your cell may be roaming or where satellite signals are weak. You can bet it will drain more power in that sort of rural environment. For a computer that reportedly sees between two and three hours battery life even 5% hurts.

The GPS will allow people to do things like geotagging or finding a nearby restaurant from a coffee shop, but again, other devices, like phones and cameras, can already do this. At the very best this is a stopgap, and may pick up a few customers who don't want a smartphone until GPS software becomes standard on cellular devices. With the hardware already in place, that day is close at hand.

Remember when I said that was the least crazy of the Dell news. Brace yourself for some typographic hilarity.

Dell's Taiwan branch recently listed a 19-inch monitor, which normally runs for $150, for just $15, and it stayed that way for 8 hours. Over the course of those 8 hours, the company sold 140,000 units. The snafu isn't all that uncommon, but the Taiwanese government is demanding Dell honor all 140,000 honors in compliance with fair trade laws (I'm not real sure how that one works).

Dell apologized and said it would compensate buyers for the mistake, which probably means no $15 dollar monitors. Was it a smaller order count, you might have seen them honor those prices, but it's not likely at 140,000. The number does beg the question, though, how did they not catch this? Seems like there should be some sort of inventory control in place that reminds you that you're selling in the red when you set that price. You kinda feel for the company, but then again they didn't catch the thing until 140,000 units were placed. That's more internal problems than just a typo.

Michael Dell really needs to tighten the reins, especially where product announcements are concerned. Sicher's press comments are practically a sales pitch against netbook gps and the buzz around the MID sounds like the crazies are running the nuthouse.

I hate to sound alarmist, because it's not like Dell is imploding. They are clearly struggling, though, and not handling it well in public. It's like the couple you see at the bar every weekend yelling at each other over dinner. They'll probably work it out, but it's hard to look at them when they're finally smiling and not remember all the times they sacrificed one another's dignity over a Cobb salad.

A photo purportedly showing a naked 15-year-old has made its way onto the iPhone App Store through an app called BeautyMeter this week, despite Apple's strong stance against objectionable content in the store.

Last week the application "Hottest Apps" was quickly pulled from the App Store due to "objectionable content," namely, female nudity. It was adult female nudity, though, unlike today's whopping PR nightmare for the iPhone.

BeautyMeter allows users to upload photos of themselves and subsequently rate one another on body, face, and clothing appeal. If you've been to Hot or Not, you get the idea. Today, an iPhone app review site called KRAPPS found a picture of what appears to be a 15-year-old girl topless and partially nude below the waist in BeautyMeter. Nearly 5,000 users have voted on the picture.

As of this posting, the application is still available in the app store, though the picture may have been removed. I would expect the app to at least get pulled for review before day's end.

According to the developer's website, funnymals.com, they do not review submissions on a photo by photo basis. Rather, they go in and clean up "from time to time." This certainly gives plenty of room for photos like the illegal nude in question to slip through. Users have even commented in the app store that, "There shouldnt be 14 year olds nude on there [sic]."

The developer does supposedly capture your iPhone's unique device ID when you upload a photo, making it possible to track down anyone who has posted illegal content. Neither Apple nor Funnymal will likely have legal liability in this case, though it does raise questions as to how Apple will handle user-generated content in future applications.

Update:BeautyMeter has officially been pulled.

Image from Wired

Apple has released both the OS 3.1 SDK and the firmware beta for developer testing. As you might expect, it's not just developers fiddling with the update. iPhone enthusiasts are compiling the changes, which include some nice improvements for on-the-go video editing and even native MMS buttons.

Here's a quick list of 3.1 updates:

* Non-destructive video editing - When you edit a video in 3.1, you'll get a prompt to save the edited version, or save both the edited version and a copy of the original.
* Voice Control over Bluetooth
* Vibration when you enter home screen editing
* OpenGL and Quartz improvements
* APIs to allow third-party application access to video controls and editing

OS 3.1 also updates the AT&T profile to 4.2 and updates modem firmware to 5.08.01. The profile update will hopefully allow MMS messaging when the full version is released. Beta testers have found they can create MMS messages but can't send them.

I'm glad to see Voice Control over Bluetooth since, you know, being hands free is kinda the point of Bluetooth. I'm not sure why the vibration feature is necessary. It's pretty clear when you enter home screen editing, but hey, maybe not for everyone. As for the rest, looks like we'll have to wait to see what developers can do with them.

This is one app decision I understand from Palm. They released webOS 1.0.4, which fixes the security hole that made homebrew apps available. Yes, that also means homebrew apps are no longer available.

This one's probably a good thing, because that security hole was kinda huge. It allowed users to install applications via a link in the email. Still, it sucks to kill the simple homebrew scene when the SDK for the app still isn't live.

Users can still use previously installed homebrew applications, and of course there's always rooting if you want to install your own applications. You can find a quick guide on rooting your Pre, with a quick and dirty Linux tut, at the pre dev wiki.

Energizer's Energi To Go line has some pretty sweet stuff, including a solar battery charger for just $50. They're adding another device to the line later this year that's turning some heads - the DSLR/camcorder battery USB charging clip. I really hope they have a better name.

This nifty little toy looks great. Two prongs hang from the top of what is essentially a chip clip with a usb stick attached. The prongs line up with the contacts on most DSLR/camcorder batteries, giving you an ultra portable way to charge on the go.

The only setback is that the clip may require one of Energizer's USB-equipped battery packs, but even so, it's USB, and that's awesome. Now if we could just get universal charging adapters for our cell phones.

Energizer has yet to release pricing and availability for the clip, but I'd guess it'll fall somewhere around $20. Watch for it in Q3 this year.

Source: Gearlog

Palm's Pre sales numbers just continue to grow, and the latest report holds one mind-jarring statistic. The Pre has sold nearly as many phones in a month as Palm sold as an entire company last quarter.

Those numbers aren't coming from Palm, who remains quiet where specific figures are concerned. They're from Edward Snyder at Charter Equity Research, who thinks the Pre could sell as many as 1 million units within its first quarter. That looks small compared to the latest iPhone release, but it's a full 300% improvement over last quarter, and that's just for the Pre.

Palm isn't out of the woods yet, though. Regardless how many phones they sell, they still need to back those phones up with decent support, and that's what has some people worried. Their are already droves of complaints of shoddy construction and significant phone damage from relatively mild use.

I wrote an article yesterday about the importance of application support, which is where Palm is looking the worst. They've still got just 30 apps. Even if half of them are excellent, daily use type apps, that won't be enough to keep a million users interested for long. Palm needs to release the SDK in a bad way, and it's looking like a couple months before they do

Smartphones used to be the domain of supergeeks and tech professionals - people who needed or desperately wanted the functionality of a full computer in a tidy mobile platform. As the devices became more popular and the desire for on-the-go web capabilities grew you could almost smell the storm coming.

Then the iPhone came out and sold millions, spurring competitors to make their own touchscreen wonderphone. We've now got the Blackberry Storm, the HTC G1, the Palm Pre, the Nokia N97, and the Samsung Jet, all running on a different operating system. While the manufacturers tout the hardware features that make their phone the best (physical keyboards, a screen that clicks, a camera with a flash), consumers are starting to look to the software that runs the phone, and the applications they're finally able to install, to make a decision.

Apple has been most successful with third party application sales and support due to their App Store, which opened in mid-July, 2008. Since release, the App Store has seen more than a billion application downloads and now showcases more than 50,000 third party applications. From games to translators, finance tools to ereaders, the Apple App Store has an app for almost anything, leaving its competitors lagging far behind.

It's taken nearly a year for competitors to get their mobile application stores up and running, time during which Apple has continued to lure consumers with the promise of a robust app catalog. As Business Insider points out, consumers aren't just investing in a phone, they're investing in a platform, with application quality and quantity as a major component of that investment. In a similar article, BI adds that time users spend with applications is replacing time spent on the web. Apps like Yelp allow users quick access to restaurant reviews, where before they would have been using Google.

This isn't just good news for Apple, it's an important statistic for developers. As more and more users turn to applications, developers are making decisions about which platforms to support, and which to ignore. Though there's no direct competitor to Apple's App Store, other platforms have made a decent start. Google's Android, for instance, has nearly 5,000 applications, which puts them at a 5:1 advantage over their closest competitors, Nokia and RIM's Blackberry. Palm, which launched the Pre in early June, has a meager 30.

As I mentioned earlier, though, it's not just quantity that counts, so Palm may not be out of the race. Application stores are continually adding features, like the ability to recommend apps to friends. The best apps are sure to see increased traffic as it gets easier to share your favorites.

There's also ease of development to consider. Developer support for the iPhone has been mostly good, though the application approval process can be a bit unclear, which could frustrate some developers away from the platform. WebOS, which runs the Palm Pre, is based on web technologies like Java and HTML, meaning developers already know how to write for the phone. They just need access to the SDK.

Lastly, developers have to think about upgrade paths. While WebOS may offer a familiar development language, what will the upgrade path look like in 3 years? Will the next WebOS break current applications? Will WebOS still be around? I would love to say yes, but it's hard to bank on something like that when WebOS is a first-of-its-kind OS from Palm. They may reverse their thinking on the platform come their next major hardware release.

However young, the application marketplace is extremely volatile, and it will have an ever greater effect on consumer choice as store offerings grow. Can the Palm App Catalog keep the Pre alive and well? Is Windows Marketplace a mistake? Is Android the way of the future? I'll be following all the latest developments here, so be sure to check back often.

According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday, Dell has been developing an iPod Touch-like device, capable of accessing the internet but leaving out phone capabilities. The device could be released as early as the end of the year...or not.

The WSJ talked to a couple engineers closely involved with the project. They claimed the device would be running Android and comes in just a bit bigger than the iPod Touch. The confusion, at least as far as release is concerned, comes from this:

Another person who was briefed on the company's plans said Dell may begin selling the device later this year, though this person said the plan could be delayed or scrapped entirely.

Delayed, okay. Scrapped entirely? Like completely do away with the project's release date? That just doesn't make any kind of sense. The story gets stranger.

According to the article, people at Dell have been working on the device for the past year or so, following a botched attempt to compete with Apple in the mp3 market. They wanted to what now? I realize Dell is the second largest computer manufacturer in the world (for now), but directly compete with the iPod? I don't know who thought that would work, but that person should probably be fired. Going toe-to-toe with something as entrenched as the iPod is silly, unless you have some seriously compelling differentiators, and something tells me Dell does not.

On this new MID, people from Dell have also claimed potential plans to sell the MID through mobile carriers, and I can only think of one reason to do that: 3G capability. Unless they want to market the thing with T-Mobile/AT&T hotspots, which is totally ridiculous. Dell employees go on to say Dell is also working on a few Android based smartphones for release later in the year.

Is it just me, or is this one giant PR nightmare? You've got employees at all levels of the company, from engineers to folks intimately involved with release plans, spilling their guts about in-development projects that could potentially compete with the iPhone/iPod Touch and yet none of them sound coherent enough to actually believe.

Are we seeing the early onset of an upcoming death rattle from Dell? Are they trying to stay solvent as desktop sales plummet? Why don't they have a tighter lid on this MID thing? They've certainly got me speculating, though I'm more worried about the company planning than interested in their new mobile device, whether it be MID, smartphone, or something else entirely. I won't be holding my breath.

After six months off due to a couple medical conditions, Steve Jobs is back at the helm of his beloved Apple. The company announced today that Jobs is back at work several days a week and will work the others from home.

Obviously you've heard every twist and turn of the Jobs health rumor mill, but fret no more, at least for a bit. That Steve's back to work means he's made significant leaps since his liver transplant, and hopefully we won't have to hear much more bad news from Cupertino (at least as far as Jobs health is concerned).

Though Apple stock has been effected in the past, this latest news in California had no effect on company shares. Investment analysts attribute the change to investors getting more comfortable with other people running Apple. It probably helps to see that Tim Cook can sell a million iPhones in a weekend.

This article from the BBC's The Magazine is quickly making its rounds and it's definitely worth the read. The author, 13-year-old Scott Campbell, was given a Walkman by his father. The near ancient artifact was meant to replace Scott's iPod for a full week, after which he could return to his digital life.

Scott had some interesting observations/struggles in dealing with his old technology. Here's a few excerpts:

*It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape.
*As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter.
*[on battery life]; it is nearly completely dead within three hours of firing it up. Not long after the music warbled into life, it abruptly ended.

We're probably not too far from seeing those things all but extinct, as in, unable to find almost anywhere. I have to wonder, should I be saving my 3rd generation iPod to show my son someday? What will his music experience look like?

I'm lucky enough to live up the street from a store called Big Fun that sells old toys, video games, and general nostalgia, so I can get my paleolithic tech fix whenever I want. Where do you get yours?

It's been more than a week now since the new iPhone launched and we've heard a couple reports of trouble with the new hardware. For a launch, though, the phone seems fairly bug free, along with the Palm Pre and even Nokia's N97. Here's what we've heard:

Activation
Enough people experienced extended activation times (as long as 96 hours) to warrant a response from Apple. The 3GS manufacturer is sending out $30 iTunes gift cards to say I'm sorry to affected customers, giving up $30 of apps to tend to their understandable frustration.

TetheringWhile tethering is still unsupported by AT&T it is possible to enable the feature via a quick hack. Some users have seen errors reminding them that the feature is unsupported. Uninstalling and reinstalling the hack seems to fix this problem.

GSM NoiseBoy Genius Report was the first to put out the GSM Noise...report. Apparently some sounds on the iPhone trigger a high-frequency "whistle," typical to GSM phones running near magnets (hello, compass/speaker).

White Burns PinkThe latest trouble comes from french site nowhereelse.fr, where a tipster sent pics of his white 3GS that had apparently been "burned" when it got to hot while running GPS on a 3G connection. The burn looks like a light pink ring around the perimeter of the phone. This is the first and only report we've seen of this problem.

Had any trouble with your phone? Leave us the info in the comments.