interview

Remember Kristen Sloan from the Apple commercial? Sloan was featured in one of the early iPhone commercials in which she relays her experiences updating her blog with the iPhone.

I just found it interesting that she was recently profiled in the New York Observer.

Her blog saw an immediate burst in traffic from 2,000 hits a day up to 48,000 on the first day of the ad. Traffic has since settled down to 15,000 hits/day. Sloan does not reveal how she was chosen for the ad.

“How did Apple find her? Next question. “I can’t even tell my friends,” she whispered. (If only Mr. Jobs could lock up the phone itself so easily!) But who cares? Before the commercial, in which Ms. Sloan’s beauty is only slightly muted by a shapeless brown dress, The Winger had been getting about 2,000 hits a day; the day the ad first aired, the site got 48,000 hits. (It has now leveled off at a respectable 15,000.) YouTube commenters speculate eagerly if ungrammatically about her flexibility. The Web site kickedinthenuts.com recently offered to pay her cash… more...

I’ve never met Paul Otellini, but I would imagine him using a Blackberry, or perhaps a Palm. Surprisngly, he is a Mac fanboy and love his iPhone.

His wife also has one too. In a recent interview with BusinessWeek, Paul Otellini admits to using Apple products for personal use, though he does try to cover up his his confession a little by saying that he still carries a ThinkPad for work.

“My wife and I both have iPhones. My wife came in with a jacket for her phone. She was all excited. It’s a flimsy little thing. It cost $39. It probably cost 6¢ to make.” He adds that he uses a ThinkPad for work and a MacBook Pro for his personal life, including his personal photos and music.”

I love it!

Matt Lu has an excellent interview on TUAW with Andrew Welch of Ambrosia Software. Ambrosia is the company that created iToner the custom ringtone app for the iPhone.

In the interview, Welch comments on the latest Apple update, which, like every other third-party app on the iPhone, wiped out his program, iToner. When asked, “...do you feel that Apple has wronged Ambrosia in some way?” Welch said:

I’m frustrated, honestly. With iToner, we worked very, very hard to make sure we did things the right way. We didn’t hack into the phone at all, we didn’t “jailbreak” it - we used the same APIs that iTunes uses to put files on the iPhone, and we put those ringtones in the user area of the phone. This is why iToner ringtones survived OS updates.

Then Apple rolled out their iTunes music store sale of ringtones… and they broke iToner. The way they broke it seemed excessive, but understandable from a programming point of view, so we rapidly came out with a fix. The first few weeks of iToner’s life… more...

When it comes to the Steves, you have Jobs, the showman and Woz, the introvert. Sure Steve Jobs will get you all hot and bothered with his “And one more thing"s and “Boom!"s but when it comes to actual computing insights, i go with the man himself, the creator of the Apple 1 and 2, Steve Wozniak.

So when I read that the Woz finally broke his silence and told USA Today tech writer Ed Baig what he thought of his iPhone, I was all ears.

[Woz] loves the appearance, human touch, Safari Web browser, and messaging on iPhone — plus the fact that the device is “more like my computer and less like other smartphones I’ve used.”

That’s cool. He loves what I love. he loves what most people love about their iPhones. But then Woz, whom I assumed was a “Live Apple or Die” type of guy pulled a Gap Band and dropped the bomb on me when he admitted that he still uses his Motorola RAZR for talking.

Yes. You heard correctly, “His RAZR”. Woz finished up… more...

Recently we caught up with Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol. myFUNAMBOL enables iPhone users to get mobile email on your phone, backup contacts and calendar over the air, and use contacts and calendars from desktop mail clients.

iPhone Matters: What is Funambol?
Funambol is the mobile open source company and is the leading provider of open source push email and PIM sync for consumers. Funambol is supported by a global community representing more than 1,000,000 downloads and 10,000 contributors in more than 200 countries.

iPhone Matters: What problem is it trying to solve for iPhone users?
Without Funambol software, iPhone users have two ways to get contacts on their device: 1) enter them manually; 2) use a cable to sync contacts from Outlook, Yahoo!, etc. Neither are convenient for migrating contacts from an older phone or for ongoing updates, especially for contact data such as email addresses that change frequently.

With Funambol’s mobile contacts iPhone app, a user can wirelessly access their contacts, synced from Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution, web mail, even other mobile devices. For example, if someone… more...