U.S. buyers snap up iPhones from coast to coast

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Brandon Saunders, 16, had been saving his allowance and birthday money for months to get one of Apple Inc.'s coveted iPhones.
He waited in line with his 70-year-old grandmother for about eight hours Friday in front of a San Antonio AT&T store and left sunburned but grinning, shopping bag in hand.
"It's worth it," he said. "It's like Christmas in June."
The teen was among the first to get his hands on the coveted gadget from Apple, joining throngs destined to become braggarts of and guinea pigs for the latest must-have, cutting-edge piece of techno-wizardry.
Apple is banking that its new, do-everything phone with a touch-sensitive screen will become its third core business next to its moneymaking iPod music players and Macintosh computers.
The doors of East Coast Apple and AT&T stores opened promptly at 6 p.m. EDT with cheers from employees and eager customers. Stores farther west followed suit as the clock struck 6 in each time zone. In San Francisco, customers sang "Auld Lang Syne" following a countdown, as if heralding a new era in telecommunications. (Watch people wait at a New York Apple store to be the first to own an iPhone )
Patrons at the Apple store in Palo Alto, California, were treated to a very brief appearance by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He momentarily posed for pictures before leaving.
"I'm glad it's over," said Carlos Sanchez, 19, at Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York City, clutching shopping bags containing two iPhones -- the maximum allowed per person. "I don't have to sleep outside anymore."
Techies, exhibitionists and luminaries -- even the co-founder of Apple and the mayor of Philadelphia -- were among the inaugural group of iPhone customers.
The handset's price tag is $499 for a 4-gigabyte model and $599 for an 8-gigabyte version, on top of a minimum $59.99-a-month two-year service plan with AT&T Inc., the phone's exclusive carrier.
Customers ready to get started
Because Apple designed a new way for customers to activate the cell phone service from AT&T, by logging onto Apple's iTunes software from their computers, many buyers headed straight home to christen the device.
In Newton, Massachusetts, Khu Duong, 30, said he was excited but "afraid to open it. You want to sit down and relax."
Fellow customer Nick Seaver, 21, couldn't wait. He flipped open his Mac laptop right in the mall and paid $5 to use the wireless network and activate it. But because his current service contract with Verizon was set to expire the next day, Seaver got a computer message from iTunes that he would have to wait 24 hours before his iPhone worked.
Will all the waiting have been worth it? For many, it didn't seem to matter.
"I just love getting new stuff," said retiree Len Edgerly, who arrived at 3 a.m. Friday to be first in line outside an Apple store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It's the best new thing that's come along in a long time. It's beautiful."
Even Steve Wozniak, the ex-partner of Jobs, showed up at a Silicon Valley, California, mall at 4 a.m. aboard his Segway scooter. He helped keep order in the line outside the Apple store.
The other customers awarded the honorary first spot in line to Wozniak, who planned to buy two iPhones on Friday even though he remains an Apple employee and will get a free one from the company next month. He said the device would redefine cell phone design and use.
"Look how great the iPod turned out," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "So who wants to miss that revolution? That's why there's all this big hype for the iPhone."
A bumpy beginning for some
Apple's media blitz wasn't without its glitches.
On NBC's "Today" show, co-host Meredith Vieira ran into problems trying to get the iPhone to work, laughing that "this is why gadgets drive me crazy."
With a team of Apple representatives hovering off-screen, Vieira was supposed to receive a call from co-host Matt Lauer in London. The iPhone -- billed by Apple as the most user-friendly smart phone ever -- displayed the incoming call, but she couldn't answer it.
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment.
The gadget, which Jobs has touted as "revolutionary," has been the focus of endless anticipatory chatter and has been parodied on late-night TV. Since its unveiling in January, the expectation that it will become yet another blockbuster product for Apple has pushed the company's stock up more than 40 percent.
Apple has set a target of selling 10 million units worldwide by 2008, gaining roughly a 1 percent share of the cell phone market. It's expected to go on sale in Europe later this year and in Asia in 2008.
In addition to the cost of the phone, for those currently using another cellular provider, there's also the cost of switching carriers.
Some bullish Wall Street analysts have predicted sales could hit as high as 45 million units in two years.
"That's nuts," said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst with The Enderle Group. "Over-hyping this thing just puts it at risk of being seen as a failure.
"Apple will break [sales] records for a phone of this class," he said, "but selling tens of millions of units so quickly is going to be tough. First-generation products always have problems that you don't know about until the product ships."
More likely, Enderle and other analysts said, Apple will grow iPhone sales by refining its models and improving the software features -- much as it did with the iPod, which has fueled record profits for the company.
But unlike its foray into digital music players, Apple faces competition in cell phones from deep-pocketed, well-established giants, such as Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.
Apple has not disclosed how many iPhones were available at launch. But analysts expect them to sell out by early next week -- between sales rung up at retail stores and online through Apple's Web site, which has been a major distribution outlet for other Apple products.

Google wants U.S. help fighting censorship

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is seeking help inside the Beltway to fight the rise of Web censorship worldwide.
The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs.
Google sees the dramatic increase in government Net censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms.
"It's fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that we face," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy and government affairs. A Google spokesman said Monday that McLaughlin has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative's office several times this year to discuss the issue.
"If censorship regimes create barriers to trade in violation of international trade rules, the USTR would get involved," USTR spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said. She added though that human rights issues, such as censorship, typically falls under the purview of the State Department.
While human rights activists are pleased with Google's efforts to fight censorship, they harshly criticized the company early last year for agreeing to censor its Web site in China, which has the second-largest number of Internet users in the world.
The company defends its actions, saying the Chinese government made it a condition of allowing Chinese users access to Google Web pages. China has an Internet firewall that slows or disrupts Chinese users from accessing foreign uncensored Web sites.
Censorship on the rise
Censorship online has risen dramatically the past five years, belying the hype of the late 1990s, which portrayed the Internet as largely impervious to government interference.
A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship. That's a dramatic increase from the two or three countries guilty of the practice in 2002, says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, who helped prepare the report.
China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore and Thailand, among others, are increasingly blocking or filtering Web pages, Palfrey says.
Governments "are having more success than the more idealistic of us thought," acknowledges Danny O'Brien, international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Still, even government filtering isn't always successful. In a brutal regime like Iran, which filters Web content, there are nearly 100,000 bloggers, making Farsi "one of the most blogged languages in the world," says Palfrey.
Google's YouTube has become a common target for thin-skinned rulers. Turkey in March blocked the video-sharing site for two days after a complaint that some clips insulted Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Thailand continues to block YouTube after several videos appeared in April, criticizing the country's monarch.
Bloggers in Morocco said in late May that they could not access YouTube shortly after videos were posted critical of that nation's treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco took control of in 1975. A government spokesman blamed a technical glitch.
Law school paper may have sparked idea
One likely source for Google's censorship idea is a paper written two years ago by Timothy Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, who argues that downloading a Web page hosted in another country effectively imports a service.
Drawing on that concept, Google envisions using trade agreements to fight back. The negotiated pacts would include provisions guaranteeing free trade in "information services." As is true of most trade pacts, the provisions would call for arbitration if there are violations.
The U.S. has a trade agreement with Morocco and began negotiating one with Thailand in 2004, although those talks were suspended early last year after a military coup.
Columbia's Wu said the trade pact approach is likely to be more effective when governments are guilty of blocking entire Web sites or applications, such as Internet phone-calling, than when they filter specific content.
Under World Trade Organization rules, countries can limit trade for national security or public moral reasons, Wu said, exceptions that authoritarian governments would likely cite when filtering politically sensitive material.
The company's trade initiative reflects Google's increasing acceptance of the value of federal lobbying. The company didn't hire a lobbyist until 2003, according to public filings, but paid the high-powered Washington-based Podesta Group $160,000 last year to work on Internet free-speech, tax and other issues.
Effort seems sincere
Human rights groups say Google's censorship efforts seem sincere, albeit motivated by bottom-line incentives.
"Free expression is a unique selling point" for a company like Google, O'Brien said. Filtering and censorship "diminishes the value of their product."
Yet last month at the company's annual meeting, Google's board recommended investors vote against a shareholder resolution urging Google to renounce censorship.
The resolution was defeated, although Google is already acting on some of the proposal's ideas, including working with other technology leaders, such as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., to develop a set of principles on how companies should respond to censorship and other human rights violations when doing business abroad.
Human rights advocates, academics and corporate social responsibility groups are involved in the project, announced earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Google's global growth efforts continue. YouTube said Tuesday that it plans to expand into nine other countries, including Brazil, France, Spain and Poland, offering local-language Web sites and highlighting videos of domestic interest.
In China, where Google is the No. 2 search engine behind the domestically based Baidu.com, the company said in April it will increase its investment as it works to create more content of interest to Chinese users.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Fathers and kids bond playing video games

(AP) -- When Will Nickelson and his daughter want to spend some quality time together, they fire up Nintendo Co.'s Wii and play a few rounds of "Wii Sports" or "Mario Party 8."
"It's kind of difficult picking a game for a 7-year-old girl, but she really likes to beat her dad at bowling," says Nickelson, 30, a stay-at-home dad from Huntsville, Alabama.
He's certainly not alone.
The generation that grew up with "Pac-Man" and "Pong" are now having children of their own. And across the nation, fathers and their kids are finding the virtual worlds of video games a popular place to bond.
Many fathers say the games bring them closer to their kids by providing a safe, convenient way to stay in touch and talk to their children on their own terms.
A national survey released last year by the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry group, found that 35 percent of parents play video games, of which 80 percent play with their children. Mothers, too, were part of the study.
Though he considers himself a lifelong gamer, Nickelson said the time spent with his daughter, Sara, matters much more than the games themselves.
"It's more of a chance to have time with her," he said. "Being a divorced dad, I don't get the time that I would like with her. It's just fun to sit down together and try to have fun together."
Sara says the friendly competition doesn't hurt, either.
"I like the Wii baseball because it's just so fun because I always beat him," she said. "Sometimes I beat him at Wii bowling. He gets kind of mad."
One expert said video games equalize the physical size differences between fathers and their kids. That means children often have the edge in a video game, and they may feel more willing to communicate.
"You're on the kid's turf," said Dr. Arminta Jacobson, director of the Center for Parent Education at the University of North Texas. "Anything that's fun between fathers and their kids I think is a really good thing."
But Jacobson also warned that limits are necessary because video games don't encourage reflective thinking skills, language development, social skills or physical activity.
"Fathers could set aside a time each week to play video games but also set aside times to read, take walks and just talk," she said.
Some dads have made a career out of video games and parenting.
"This is a way to bond for the people who don't go out in the sun so much," joked Andrew Bub, a father of two whose Web site, Gamerdad.com, reviews video games from a parent's perspective. "Taking an interest in what your kids do will always make you a better parent. And, you'll have a better idea about what to buy them for Christmas."
For Guy Buckmaster, a marketing director in Clearwater, Florida, gaming with his six children began in the late 1990s with "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction."
He still plays with them about two nights per week on another game, "Guild Wars," where they can chat, hash out personal issues _ and yes -- defeat others in online computer battles.
"It's allowed me to be a continuing influence and provide guidance in their life, and that's important to me," said Buckmaster, 55. "This has been an instrument that is unparalleled."
At John Idler's home in Moorestown, New Jersey, a dining room has been converted into a gaming center with three computers linked to the Internet, so he and his sons can play online PC games while sitting side-by-side.
It's also right next to the TV room, so the whole family can still talk, even if his non-gaming wife and daughter would rather watch television.
He said the fun of video games is certainly part of the lure, but it's really just an excuse to spend time together.
"How many parents complain they don't have anything to talk about with their kids? It may be geek talk, but we're still communicating," he said. "How many parents sit down and do things on a consistent basis with their kids? I think it's a great way to share some time."
One of his sons, 19-year-old Matthew Idler, plans on keeping video games a family tradition for years to come.
"It will be something I do with my kids when I have them," he said, "and my dad will be invited to play with us, of course."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google to digitize Big Ten school books

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Twelve major universities will digitize select collections in each of their libraries -- up to 10 million volumes -- as part of Google Inc.'s book-scanning project. The goal: a shared digital repository that faculty, students and the public can access quickly.
The partnership involves the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which includes the University of Chicago and the 11 universities in the Big Ten athletic conference (yes, there are 11): Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.
"We have a collective ambition to share resources and work together to preserve the world's printed treasures," said Northwestern Provost Lawrence Dumas.
The committee said Google will scan and index materials "in a manner consistent with copyright law." Google generally makes available the full text of books in the public domain and limited portions of copyrighted books.
Several other universities, including Harvard and California, already have signed up to let Google scan their libraries.
But Google still faces a lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild over its plans to incorporate parts of copyrighted books.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Apple iPhone available June 29

NEW YORK (AP) -- Apple Inc.'s highly anticipated iPhone will be available June 29 in the U.S., according to TV commercials broadcast Sunday and posted on the company's Web site.
The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device will retail for $499 and $599, depending on configuration. It will be offered exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T Inc.'s wireless division, formerly known as Cingular.
The iPhone, which sports no keypad but instead a touch-sensitive screen, was unveiled with great fanfare in early January by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
He said it would appear in stores in June but gave no specific date.
Sunday night's ads showed off several of the gadget's features and ended with the pronouncement that the phone will be available "Only on the new AT&T" and "Coming June 29."
Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, confirmed the June 29 sale date. An AT&T spokesperson did not immediately return a phone call.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Robot grooves to its own beat

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A Japanese robot twists and rolls to music from an iPod in an intricate dance based on complex mathematics, a technology developers say will enable robots to move about spontaneously instead of following preprogrammed motions.
Tokyo-based venture ZMP Inc.'s 14-inch long Miuro robot -- which looks like a white ball wedged between two halves of an egg -- wheels about in time with music from the iPod player that locks into the machine.
At a demonstration in Tokyo on Thursday, the 11-pound Miuro pivoted about on a stage in time to beats of a pop music track played through its speakers. The dance wasn't preprogrammed, but generated by the robot itself.
Scientists involved in the robot's development believe the technology could lead to robots capable of spontaneous motion. Miuro uses algorithms, or mathematical rules, to analyze music and translate the beats into dances, said ZMP President Hisashi Taniguchi.
"We aim to create a new form of life that moves freely and spontaneously in ways human beings can't predict," Taniguchi said. "We're hoping to turn Miuro into the ultimate virtual pet."
Unlike older Miuros, which hit stores last August, the prototype is fitted with software based on what scientists call chaotic itinerancy, a mathematical pattern similar to the movements of a bee circling from flower to flower as it collects nectar.
That allows the new Miuro to act spontaneously and unpredictably -- "just like a child playing," said Tokyo University researcher Takashi Ikegami, who developed the software.
Other improvements will let users set the Miuro like an alarm clock so it wheels into the bedroom and blasts music at a certain time. Future versions of the Miuro will also use built-in sensors to seek out people to play tunes to, Taniguchi said.
ZMP has already shipped 500 units of the original Miuro, which isn't equipped with the intelligent software but instead responds to a remote-control handheld manipulator.
The 108,800 yen ($895) original Miuro can also receive wireless signals from a personal computer to play iTunes and other stored digital files. Separately sold options add a camera that beams images to PCs or lets owners control their Miuros by mobile phone.
Miuro, short for "music innovation based on utility robot technology," is only on sale in Japan. ZMP did not give a date for the release of the prototype.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.