The iPhone in Spain, and a question about podcasting

If you're not into geekdom, move right along to the next post...

Apple's iPhone has not yet officially hit Spain, but one of the Spanish bloggers at the conference had one anyway - he used a popular hack to unlock the phone, which permitted him to use his Spanish cell phone account on the iPhone. According to the blogger, it was a bit of a pain to dial, but still, it was worth having the phone. They're due to hit the market in France, the UK and Germany some time soon, and at least in France the phone will be unlocked (per French law). It still remains to be seen whether Apple (forced by spy-agency-front A&T) will somehow jigger the phones so that Americans and others won't want to buy them (i.e., make the language only French, or some other such thing).

One of the Spanish geeks I introduced you to yesterday, David, was quite literally giggling while playing with the iPhone for the first time. Every time he'd discover a new function on the phone, he'd squeak. I grabbed a quick video of David's first iPhone experience, but unfortunately didn't catch any giggles.



In other geek news, attended a podcasting workshop (taller) at the conference, and it got me thinking. I've been trying, for a while, to figure out whether and how I could/should use videoblogging and or audioblogging/podcasting on this site. And it's been difficult, because I feel like doing a video or audio "show" would simply be reiterating what we're already written on the blog. I.e., what's the value added of doing video (and I don't mean posting videos of different things, like the above - I mean doing a regular actual AMERICAblog video show or podcast show. Curious what you guys think. One thing that caught my eye during the workshop, a NYT article from two years ago about some creative podcasts people created of their own tours of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. What a fascinating idea, create your own irreverent tour of something local and just post it. It helped expand my horizons a bit as to the potential of this medium, though I'm still a bit stymied as to its applications for us. Again, I welcome your thoughts.