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This afternoon it’s hitting the web that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, held a meeting this morning and announced to all Apple employees that everyone who has been working there for at least a year would receive a free 8GB iPhone. Other internet rumors are suggesting even Apple store employees are getting in on the action.

This move, in my eyes, is a unbelievably smart in many ways. Not only does he reward everyone at Apple for their hard work, he instantly made thousands of people into instant iPhone evangelists. How can you talk about (and sell) a product if you don’t have first-hand knowledge of what it is like to live with it day-to-day? Stevie J just recruited lots of little salespeople with his grandiose move.  Also, it builds in employee loyalty, something that cannot be measured!

I have worked at tech companies before and suggest that they give employees a reward similar to this. I think the benefits outweigh the Bill of Materials cost that would be assumed.

Now I wish I worked at Apple even more!

Press release.  I swear, some people just don’t get it.  Verizon and T-Mobile are about to have their worlds rocked by a cell phone that’s actually easy to use.

Press Release: Verizon Wireless Stores Open All Day June 29 for Customers to Test Network, Buy Music Devices

Verizon Wireless Stores Open All Day June 29 for Customers to Test Drive the Nation’s Most Reliable Wireless Network, Purchase Any of 18 Multi-Media Music Devices

Free Music Essentials Kit with Purchase of LG VX9400

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., June 28 — On June 29 Verizon Wireless stores and kiosks will be open until 9:00 p.m. in most markets to give customers plenty of time to Test Drive the leading wireless company with the most reliable voice and data network. Customers will be able to pick up the latest in hot devices including, the LG VX9400 for $99.99 after a $50 rebate with a two-year contract and receive a free Music Essentials Kit that gives them all the tools they need to take their music with them wherever they go. Packaged for immediate fun, the Music Essentials Kit includes a stereo headset, a cable for music transfer from a PC to the LG VX9400 and a 2GB memory card that can store up to 1,000 songs.

Tunes and Tones Direct to the Handset

Regardless of when shoppers visit any of Verizon Wireless’ 2,300 stores nationwide, they will be able to choose from 18 different models that let customers search from more than two million songs from the V CAST Music library and immediately purchase and download their favorite tunes directly to their handsets. For customers who want to spend a little more time browsing, they can visit the V CAST Music library from their PC. Selected songs can be stored on a 1GB, 2GB or (for select phones) 4GB memory card. Of course, any Verizon Wireless customer wanting to download songs from their personal library can do so, quickly and easily using the RIP software when they register for V CAST Music on a PC. Copying and saving unprotected music to a memory card has never been so easy. Songs play directly from the memory card on any Verizon Wireless V CAST Music phone.

Name that Song
Music discovery has been taken to an entirely new level with Verizon Wireless V CAST Song ID. Whether at a party, a club or just kickin’ it with friends, customers can download Song ID to their V CAST Music-capable phone, hold the phone up to a speaker and within seconds identify and purchase most of today’s popular music. Song ID is quick, fast and totally designed for music aficionados who want their music now. And, with every handset purchase of a V CAST Music song, customers get two copies — one to the handset and one to the PC.
Directions to the Party
Being directionally challenged doesn’t mean missing the party. Every Verizon Wireless V CAST Music phone also comes with the ability to download a host of features that can be used immediately on the handset. One of the more popular downloadable applications, VZ Navigator(SM), provides turn-by-turn directions to millions of U.S. destinations and can get most customers to the locations of their choice using the shortest and the quickest routes.
Say “Cheese”

Capture the moment on any V CAST Music-capable phone with a click of a button to take a photo or capture a 15-second video that can also be ent
to friends within minutes.
Priced for the Party Animal
Verizon Wireless phones won’t empty the pockets of any party animal. Popular models are affordably priced — many under $100 — so customers can select a mobile phone that fits their style, their mood and best of all, their wallet. V CAST Music songs are 99 cents from any Windows(R) XP PC, or $1.99 for two copies when downloaded to a V CAST Music-capable handset. (The second copy is sent to a customer’s V CAST Music PC account.) VZ Navigator is priced at $1.99 per month, and Unlimited In Messaging Plans for Text, Picture, Video and Instant Messaging begin at $10.

About Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s most reliable wireless voice and data network, serving 60.7 million customers. The largest US wireless company and largest wireless data provider, based on revenues, Verizon Wireless is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with 66,000 employees nationwide. The company is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). Find more information on the Web at http://www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at http://www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.

Apple and Cingular came out with a press release early this morning with the iPhone data plan prices. All I can say is WOW that’s cheap!

Briefly, here’s the breakdown.

• $60/month for 450 minutes, unlimited data, 200 text messages
• $80/month for 80 minutes, all the rest as above.
• $100/month for 135o minutes, all the rest as above
• a family plan for $80/month

Man! Now I really want an iPhone! For minutes plus data on Verizon Wireless, who I have now as my carrier, it would be $80 for me alone - not counting my wife’s phone! Verizon is such a rip off and Cingular is raising the bar in terms of expectations on data plan prices.

I’m excited for anyone who takes advantage of this mobile data package.

Hello Verizon Wireless are you listening!? Probably not.

Here is more detail

37signals, a fantastic web based software company, took a huge leap forward today in allowing OpenID as a sign-on option for two of their products, Basecamp and Highrise.

For those of you who don’t know what OpenID is check out my previous coverage and this page on OpenID.  The basic idea is that it is single sign-on for the web.  No seperate login and password for google, yahoo, msn - ONE username and password that YOU control.

I’m glad 37signals is on the bus, once again proving they are a forward thinking company.  I love their key phrase on their blog about OpenID, “Once you go OpenID you won’t go back.”  Very true.

This is huge (and great) news! According to Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, Google has acquired Grandcentral, a service I’ve discussed many times before. This would be a big development in the VoIP world, in my opinion.

Grandcentral has a great offering and it will complement Google’s other efforts including gmail, gtalk, and VoIP very well.

Good Job Grandcentral!

I seriously don’t understand this. According to this article in the Boston Globe, Cingular (now AT&T, again) is going to charge an early termination fee of $175 if you cancel your service agreement before the 2 years are up. Um WHAT?!

See in the United States, we pay nearly nothing for most cell phones. This is because they are ’subsidized’ by the telcos such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and the like. The early termination fee is charged if you leave before your contract is up to cushion the telco from losing money on the subsidy to you. But since AT&T is NOT subsidizing the cost of the iPhone (hence the $499 and $599 price tags) - they HAVE NO RIGHT to charge an early termination fee.

So I guess the moral of the story is - if you chose to buy an iPhone, you better know you’re going to like it!!!

PS As I’ve said before, I wish we had the European model of cell phone usage. They purchase their phones at full price (even if it means paying $200-400 per device) and get pre-paid SIM cards for GSM phones. When I get released from my service contract with verizon, I’m going this route. I’ll find some cool phone I like and just go pre-paid. Service Agreements suck

In this blog post, Grandcentral talks about how they have added ways to call out and have your Grandcentral number show up as the originating CallerID. This is a feature I’m very excited about, but I don’t like their methods so far which include:

1) calling out by clicking a button, which requires being signed on to their site

2) calling out using your mobile smart phone, which requires a $40/month data plan on your mobile

or 3) while in a voicemail that someone has left, hitting 2 to call them back.

What I’d like to see is: a way to dial outbound while NOT being tied to either a PC or smartphone (I have neither). How about being able to dial in to your GC number and then dialing out again through some sort of tone-sensing system?

That would be a great feature.

NOTE: I tried to submit this comment on their blog, but it hasn’t shown up yet. Perhaps they didn’t like the comment?

PS: is there a way to “GrandCentralize” my voicemail? this was eluded to by Craig Walker of Grandcentral on TechCrunch back in April.

On Saturday, Sean, Leo, and I conquered 40 miles of the Historic Columbia River Highway. It was an awesome bike ride that was more strenuous than Reach The Beach. The hills were steeper and we were biking into a 35 mile an hour west wind. That was brutal!

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
We had a wonderful time and I can’t wait for next year! Next ride I’m going on is the Summit to Surf on July 28th.

Here are more photos.

Well I had so much fun doing the Reach the Beach ride that I’m doing another long ride this weekend!  While we were at the Reach the Beach, my wife saw a flier for the Gorge Ride.

This weekend’s ride is a 40 mile trek from The Dalles to Hood River and back on the Historic Columbia River Highway.  I’m doing the ride with my brother so it should be a lot of fun!  We’re going to go through the Mosier Tunnels and have a combined ascent of 2900 feet.  Yikes!

I wish I had a road bike as this ride is all on-road.  Either way it’ll be a lot of fun!

Flickr has added 7 new languages to their site including French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese, with other languages to follow. 

On another note - Zooomr just launched Mark III, their new user interface loaded with 250 new features.  It’s no secret that Zooomr has a very excited and fanatic user community.  One facet about zooomr that people love is that it’s been localized to so many different languages.  I think Flickr’s internationalization is, at least in part, a response to zooomr.

Congrats to Kris and Thomas for keeping them on their toes!