The news has been plastered with stories of the loss of an iPhone 5 prototype in a bar in San Francisco. Sound familiar anyone? This story just happens to be following the exact trajectory of the lost iPhone 4 prototype last year. This time though it appears to be an elaborate marketing ploy by Apple to boost the profile of it’s new smartphone. The original news report claimed that after being found the prototype had been sold on craigslist for $200. Apple supposedly reported the phone as stolen, though the police have denied involvement in any investigation.

There’s no denying that it has got people talking about the iPhone 5 on every news network, though it feels like a tired repeat of last years incident. Copying something that happened last year isn’t exactly groundbreaking; they should be thinking of original ways of promoting their products. That’s my Apple rant over for the day really, and there isn’t much else going on over here.

I did however finish my article for the paper, and I just have to proof read it and put it together with some photos and it’ll be done. There was also some excitement on Thursday, when my friend Jaime got his hands on the HP Touchpad for only £89! He was one of the lucky ones, and despite initially cancelling his order, the carphonewarehouse eventually fulfilled it. The Touchpad is a really nice machine, and hopefully people will keep developing for WebOS, despite HP no longer retaining it’s WebOS hardware division. I’m keeping an eye on the progress of the final production run. At that price it really is a steal.

UPDATE: This is completely unrelated to the other stuff in the post, but I’ve got a cool reverse video clip on vimeo. I was thinking about using this technique after I saw Memento, but I don’t know where it would fit into a film. The link is here.