So some banks are so poor now that they can't even afford to pay for your Blackberrys and there's a chance RIM might even go out of business as a result and I feel for you, I really do, but you know how it is...not so bad for DealBreaker, not so bad for Bess. What I'm getting at is that our publisher has decided I need to be able to check in with the tips line more frequently because you never know when Citigroup's going to announce a 350 billion dollar writedown or Jim'll want to get high and he (our publisher, but Jim, too) just really feels that I need to be accessible at all times in more ways than currently offered by my Razr. (This whole thing actually would've been a lot more satisfying if it had played out more like "Hey, Bessiecakes,* a busy and important person like you needs a wireless handheld device that allows you to check your e-mail and browse the Web for unique and interesting Craigslist postings (FOR THE PURPOSES WRITE-OFFS) whenever/wherever" than "Can I have a Blackberry?" "Yeah, sure," but whatever, I don't care. I really don't.)

Only thing is, I can't decide which one to get. (Obviously I've ruled out a Sidekick, because I'm neither a 14 year-old girl nor a 'mo of any age (not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just not) and the Treo, because (in my mind only) I'm not a loser). You people know Blackberrys and you've made it this far (down the post) anyway, so I just thought, how about a poll? And here we are. I have a few notes, which aren't intended to inform your pick, just things to keep in mind: The Curve strikes me as very soccer mom, but I don't know, maybe I should run with that? I like the weight of the 8700, but prefer the look of the 8800 (in black). I've more or less rejected the Pearl out of hand because it's called the Pearl but I'm trying to step outside my comfort zone in all aspects of life and one might say that this would be a good place to start (though I'm asking as a friend: please don't). I'm not going to include the 7130 because I know some people won't be able to help themselves from voting for it simply because I think it's a hideous eyesore and wouldn't that be hilarious. But if there's anyone out there with strong feelings for the model, please share. Alright, so you pick one for me now, and later, we'll help Carney decide which finish he should use for his head shots (I say matte, he's holding out for high gloss).

*in this scenario Keith, who's the only one who calls me that, still works at DB.

It goes without saying that here at DealBreaker, we judge people. Obviously looks, arrogance, dental records and the ability to swing a racquet are all taken into account when there's sizing up to be done, but how do we decide who should be summarily dismissed from our line of vision? Two words--finger dexterity. Are you a good person? Intelligent? Kind? We don't care. Can your appendages move with speed and competence? This is the stuff that matters to us.

Which is why, when WallStrip asked if we'd like to enter Myrna Moss into its annual Ms. Blackberry Pageant '07, we willingly shoved her in L. Campbell's direction. Of course we wanted Moss to be a contestant, if only to see if she's up to snuff, re: our aforementioned litmus test. Despite having some suspect difficulties with a keg of cheese balls that must be indicative of a much deeper personal problem, the mistress of RIMM put in a very respectable show, not necessarily reflected in the outcome of the contest. (Sorkin--you've got our number.)

Apropos, the Wi-Fi here at Promises is really quite impressive.

Or spend on babes, or light on fire--JUST 'CAUSE HE CAN.

Breaking: Apple Offering $100 Store Credit For All iPhone Owners [Gizmodo]

The rumors that today Apple would introduce a redesigned iPod featuring no buttons, knobs or screens of any kind, instead employing newly-patented mind-reading technology for functionality; produce a force-field causing all Zune products within a 200-foot radius to immolate, rendering them as useful as they are in non-burned-to-a-crisp state; and come with videos personally damning to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, preloaded did not pan out, and for that Jobs-y Boy is paying dearly. Sure, we got a custom ring-tone maker; slashed prices on the iPhone; a 2.5 inch screen video Nano in red, silver, blue, green and black; a new name for the iPod: iPod Classic; 160 gigs (that's 40,000 songs, 20 more than there are in existence); a touch screen; Wi-Fi; and Safari / GOOG / YHOO browser (basically: an iPhone without the Phone), but it wasn't enough--shares are down 3.5%.

Are we asking too much? All the news was good news (except for the price cut on iPhones. That announcement was not good and by not good we mean "bad," for those of you--Cliff Mason--who spent $599 for your iPhone on June 29 instead of $399 this weekend, and for AAPL investors, despite SJ's spin of, "it's so popular we want more people to afford it!" Just like houses. Little subprime humor? That's okay, I'll let myself out) but it wasn't the kind of huge gains/NO RIGHT CLICK BUTTON ON YOUR MOUSE news we've come to expect from Senor Jobs. He did, however, change the color of his mock, swapping brown for black, and perhaps that'll be enough to get things up by the end of the day.

Apropos of AAPL, it was also announced today that Apple will have a wireless music deal with Starbucks, which can only mean this thing is about to drop like a bag of dirt.

Apple iPod Special Event: The Live Blog [CNBC]
Apple announces new iPod nano [engadget]
Apple's new iPod Classic [engagdet]

Nokia doubled Q2 profit and increased penetration of its global market share to 38%.

Spurred by lower cost high-end devices like the N95, the Finnish company saw a 29% increase in mobile phone shipments to 101 million units. So much for the instant impact of the iPhone, although most of Nokia’s market share gains were attributable to Motorola’s losses. Analysts predict Nokia will command 40% of the market by the second half of 2007.

The numbers, from the Journal:

Nokia said that net profit for the three months to June 30 increased to e2.828 billion from e1.14 billion the year before. Nokia's earnings per share also increased to e0.72 cents from e0.28 cents, although diluted, excluding special items, this came in at e0.32, still ahead of analyst expectations of e0.28. Revenue increased 28.3% to e12.587 billion from e9.81 billion the same period of the previous year.

Nokia's Net More Than Doubles On Strong Sales, Bigger Market Share [Wall Street Journal]

In the latest video from TheStreet.Com TV, James "Uncle Jumbo" Cramer defends his alleged nephew Cliff Mason's review of the iPhone. Uncle Jumbo explains that all the talk of the phone being a "babe magnet" was really just Cliff's way of explaining the buzz around the phone that is driving sales and Apple's stock price.

We were trying to decide what we thought of this rationale so we went back to Cliff's original video, in which he shows the phone to the fetching host of the program, Farnoosh Torabi. "Can I touch it?" she asks. And yes, of course Cliff lets Farnoosh touch it. Who wouldn't?

Uhm, what were we talking about. Oh, right. The Cliff Mason-iPhone Incident. We think maybe Cliff was telling us about the buzz using some of the lingo of these crazy kids. But then again, maybe he just meant that it's a babe magnet. After all, one of the first text messages we ever got from an iPhone read: "Chicks dig it.

The Cliff Mason-iPhone Incident made Page Six headlines on Sunday. "Mason, in a streaming-video feed, says he bought the gizmo because he 'wasn't doing anything at the time' and had 'money to burn,'" Page Six explains. "It was worth it because he was soon surrounded by curious women. Asked by thestreet.com's Farnoosh Torabi about the required iPhone switch from Verizon to AT&T, Mason shrugged and said his dad paid the bills."

[Editor's Note: we're extinguishing the comments option for this post because getting raked over the coals by both Bess Levin and Page Six in the course of just a couple of days is enough punishment for anyone. No need to pile it on any further.]

Correction: The purchase of an iPhone did not land Cliff Mason, Jim Cramer's nephew, his first date. It just got the ladies on the street (dot com) to stand up and take notice when he whipped it out (are you picking up what we're throwing down? Does anyone else think DealBreaker should close at noon on summer Fridays? For everyone's sake?). Whipping out his iPhone was much more effective in getting the opposite sex to say "I'd like a piece of that young-looking James Cramer" than Cliff's BlackBerry was (hint: don't wear it in a holster, toots). For instance, in line at J.Crew:

Picture this: I'm just standing in line [at the J.Crew near my apartment], answering some email, when the fetching cashier who's ringing me up begs to "see" my iPhone and then asks me half a dozen questions about how I like it.

As soon as she gets her hands on the thing, the cashier next to her catches sight of it and flashes me a look of what I can only describe as sheer ecstasy before asking if she, too, can take a look. When the two women on either side of me and the one in line behind me realized there was an iPhone owner in their midst, they reacted like I was one of the Beatles, circa 1964.

Like a Backstreet Boy circa 1996. Like a member of N'Sync circa 1997. But we digress. Now tell us about the waitress at BLT Burger:

I had a similar experience when I went to BLT Burger, which I cannot recommend too highly, and my waitress couldn't take her eyes off of it. Sadly, my girlfriend was with me, so I couldn't empirically test the full extent of the iPhone's magnetic capabilities.

On another note, we'd like to offer Cliff an apology. Not because we called out the lack of disclosure about him being Cramer's nephew, or for calling attention to his own admission of the fact that his father pays his Verizon bill, but because he will now apparently be forced to call Cramer 'Uncle Jimbo,' in the biblical sense. For the rest of you, take this as a warning: you disclose or you get the hose.

An iPhone: The Best $600 You'll Ever Waste [thestreet.com]

The Street spells it out in simple chapter and verse today: scoring tail is our bottom line, and you can do this, via the iPhone. Who did they enlist to test out this theory? Why it's "Street Dot Com Staff Writer" Cliff Mason, who they don't tell you is also Jim Cramer's nephew. It wasn't that nepotism is the name of the game at TS.com, but that Cliff was quite obviously the perfect candidate to prove that no matter how seemingly dorky, inept vis-à-vis the ladies (the exchanges with Farnoosh Torabi, "Street.com correspondent" are particularly revealing) and Cramer-brand smug you are, with the iPhone in hand, you will attract the opposite sex, no questions asked.

Other reasons Cliff bought the mobile? Well, first of all, he "wasn't doing anything" at the time and he "has money to burn," which is why he "really didn't think about it too much." What about switching plans, did that pose any problems or headaches? Nah. Cliff was on Verizon but he really didn't think twice about switching over to an AT&T contract. His dad, Mr. Mason one presumes, is still paying for the Verizon one.

The iPhone Equals Babe Magnet [Thestreet.com]

Bonus post for those of you still stuck in the office! I was left behind here as the rest of the DealBreaker team left for the beach.

You may have noticed others here at DealBreaker hinting toward my iPhone coverage around launch time at the end of last week in a couple different posts, and now I present to you what resulted.

The lines outside the Apple stores at the Fifth Avenue and SoHo stores slowly grew from Monday onward and I made sure to be right there to document the madness history-making launch. As you all know, Greg Packer, dubbed the iLoser, a compulsive line-sitter, was at the forefront at the Fifth Avenue Apple store. He even has his own blog now. Second in line was David Clayman (his blog here) who, after changing his story a couple times, decided he was buying the phone for charity.

Over at the SoHo store first in line was the "Keep A Child Alive" foundation who is auctioning the Jesus Phone iPhone off in a package on eBay now. They of course wanted to wait at the flagship Fifth Ave. store but since Greg beat them to the punch, they decided to mope at the SoHo store instead. After talking to them on numerous visits to the store (close to the office, conveniently), I found out they had five people in line (working shifts of only 4 hours) and each was buying two 8GB phones, but one wonders if the other nine have vanished into their pockets since only one is up on eBay now.

Filming the entire event live was Mogulus.com at the special website iPhoneLaunch.tv. They interviewed me briefly as I scouted the location and aired it live on the site (unfortunately not archived for my self-referential enjoyment). Supposedly on launch day they had four cameras out and about filming the event, but their site couldn't handle all the traffic (max 800 viewers?!), so I can't verify.

Through downpours and sweltering heat, hundreds of people camped out for this revolutionary (Jobs's words, not mine) device for many days and I was forced sure to cover it all. On launch day I visited both stores but stuck to the Fifth Ave. store (which had unreal amounts of press) for coverage of the opening at 6PM. After the jump are two slideshows of my attempts at photojournalism, the first one of the Fifth Ave. store and the second of the SoHo store.

The best iPhone review I have read (which says the Mail app is terrible) for those of you who still haven't gotten your hands on one of these can be found here.

Round of applause for Apple, which not only "Think[s] different" by marking up its product 55% but also strips (some) iPhone purchasers of the one constant thing in their lives, their cell number. Yes, Yale anthropology doctoral candidate Allison Alexy stood in line for hours on Friday, bought the iBomb and then found out she couldn't transfer her Sprint number to AT&T, a minor problem, given Apple's exclusive contract with the carrier. She received a message from the fruit that her number wasn't elgible for transferring but didn't get into the how's and why's.

Her boyfriend, a lawyer, got on the computer and looked into the problem for 30--count 'em, 30--minutes and found out that "wireless numbers can only be transferred from one wireless carrier to another within the same metro area." Wanting to avoid a "hassle," Alexy sucked it up and switched numbers. The long term affects of this event are unclear at this time.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris commented that "There are a small percentage of iPhone customers who've had a less-than-perfect [activation] experience." But it doesn't really matter either way, because the entire premise of this phone is based on Jobs's supposition that "people will sacrifice a lot-- $499-599, their old numbers, their pride, etc, to be card carrying members of the shit-eating grin club." So there you have it.

Some Users Of iPhone Lose Their Numbers [WSJ]

Wouldn't it suck if you paid $50,000 for a cell phone/iPod combo and then couldn't activate it? Perhaps we should ask the 2% of iPhone purchases who suffered such a fate, which, according to estimates by Steve Jobs, translates to roughly 1 billion people.

Jay Gurfein bought his mobile Friday night at an Apple store in Nassau County (...). As of Sunday afternoon, he hadn't been able to use the device. And just to make things interesting, when the Jay-man-LI initially tried to activate his service, AT&T immediately ended service on his existing BlackBerry, leaving him alone in the world for "more than 45 hours.". By late Sunday night, AT&T, having had a spark lit under its ass by iGod himself, had gotten Gurfein's phone on and given him a $150 credit for ruining his life.

In Louisiana, pretty much the same deal happened to Jaci Russo, except she also dropped two calls. In Murray Hill, one disgruntled user reported his iPhone's failure to get him laid, even after whipping it out Joshua Tree and asking several female patrons if they'd like to touch it. Steve Jobs--sleep with one eye open.

Some iPhones Are Stuck on Hold [WSJ]

The first iPhone teardown report is in, and Infineon looks to the be the big winner. Infineon, which has a market cap of around $12 billion, makes at least two vital components of the phone, according to the teardown. Shares of Inineon were up 3.5% this morning. Semiconductor Insights was commissioned by EE Times to break open the iPhone and find out what makes it tick.

You can watch the video of the teardown above. Parts made by Broadcom, Marvell and Balda all have a role. Samsung and Intel make the flash memory components. Many of the components are branded as "Apple," possibly concealing the names of the actual manufacturers.

So how is the iPhone doing after it's big opening weekend? Among our friends in finance and tech, the iPhone is performing better than expected. Former Gawker media boss, turned Curbed.com entrepreneur, Lockhart Steele and Razorfish user experience expert Kevin Kearney purchased iPhones on Saturday. Zach Klein of Connected Ventures, who are responsible for CollegeHumor.com and Vimeo.com, bought one on Friday night. Two former Lehman brothers traders--one bond guy and one equities--also admitted caving into the temptation. In our completely biased sample, the purchasers skewed heavily male.

"Chicks dig it," one buyer told us.

The message boards for Apple stock are a blaze on the news that the company's shares are down about 1% in morning trading. Demonstrating what some have described as the cult-like status that the company seems hold for some consumers and investors, many seem to be taking the downward movement personally. "Why are we being punished like this?" one investor asked.

Infineon a big winner in iPhone teardown [ZD.net]

Call options of Marvell Technology have been trading at four times their usual volume today. Apple's iPhone is widely rumored to use a wi-fi processor manufactured by a company Marvell bought last year. Shares of Marvell traded up 5.81% for the day, with nearly twice the average number of shares changing hands.
One analyst we spoke to said he did not believe that the surge trading volume in the options and shares indicated anything suspicious.

"Some people are definitely trading on hopes that the stock will get a bump once the teardown analysts release their reports on the iPhone," the trader told us. (He asked to remain anonymous because he wasn't authorized by his employer to speak on the iPhone.) "But I don't think this pick-up is due to someone having inside information about what's insider the iPhone."

Marvell is still priced well-below the highs it hit in early 2006. Since then the company has faced an stock options scandal that lead to the resignation of its chief financial officer. Its most recent quarterly results came in below estimates.

But it hasn't all been bad news for Marvell. Nasdaq announced this week that it was holding off suspending trading in Marvell's while Nasdaq's board reviewed allegations against the company. Marvell was recently added to the Russell 2000 index.

"There's other news on this company besides the iPhone," the trader told us. "But today's interest is definitely trying to get in pre-teardown."

Of course, it's not just speculating traders who are excited about the iPhone. Nerds are excited too! Our reporter on the scene, Scott Bressler, says that there are approximately 362 people on line at the Apple store in Soho. At noon there were about 280, up from 68 at midnight.

(Photo: Waiting for tonight's iPhone launch outside the Apple store by Scott Bressler).

Last night we sent DealBreaker intern Scott Bressler to scout the scene at the Apple stores in NYC. In Soho he met the folks at the front of the line, who are broadcasting their standstill adventure at iPhone Launch TV. They plan to be the first to buy the iPhone, which they will auction on eBay for charity. (Scott made an appearance on their webcast last night, and we'll be posting his pictures later today.)

So the bleeding hearts are selling the iPhone for charity. We're sure that's sweet of them. But what we want to do is get our hands on one of these babies and smash it.

That's the only way we're going to get real answers to the question that has Wall Street traders speculating, whispering and rumor-mongering today: Who makes the components of the iPhone? Some rumored parts makers are Marvell Technology, Broadcom, Samsung, Infineon Technologies, FoxConn Technology and Cambridge Silicon Radio. Apple won't say who is manufacturing the guts of the new phone, and none of various players are commenting to the press.

But that hasn't kept the stocks from moving. Marvell technology seems to be a favorite. The stock is up nearly 3.5% today, and just halfway through its trading day it has almost reached the three-month average for trading volume. Broadcom is down a bit, after rising earlier in the week. Infineon has been up and down all week, and is currently trading about where it started on Monday.

Clearly we need to learn who makes what inside the iPhone as soon as possible. And the only way to do it is to break the phone open.

The market expects Apple to sell as many as 1 to 2 million iPhones today.

Update: It looks like we're not the only ones who want to break the iPhone.

In anticipation of June 29--THE DAY THE iPhone COMES OUT--Steve Jobs announced this morning that the billion dollar mobile will exceed expectations, re: only lasting 2 hours before needing to be charged and work for a whopping eight hours between charges. Of course, this estimate works under the construct that from the second you turn your phone on at make a call--one call--you can talk for eight hours. But it doesn't take into account that you might want to make use of some of the features you paid $500 for, like sending email, listening to music-- scrolling through songs, etc.

But let's just take eight hours at face value--are we the only cynical, OCD assholes who would just as soon listen to music on iPods and email on Blackberrys (which last 16+hours), rather than pay for a screen that'll probably go to black at the most inopportune time and that's going to have so many finger prints on it it'll drive us insane (and: carry 80 things at once, since most of you are contractually obligated to carry a BBerry anyway, and it'll be a dark day in hell before the banks start issuing iPhones)? I don't think so.

Why then, are Wall Street's analysts calling Apple at 160 and up and predicting that the 'Phone will sell more than 40 million in 2009, lifting revenues more than 30% and earnings by 40%? A confluence of things, including the success of the iPod and the Mac, the monetization of geekdom, a growing segment of the population united in their hate of keyboards and the fact that Jobs, despite his laid back Mock Turtleneck/sneakers/501s demeanor, is a bit of an asshole, and assholes usually get what they want.

This is neither a judgment (if you know one thing about us it's that assholes are our heroes) nor a statement not based on fact: John Heilemann writes today in New York that the "most common descriptor applied to [Jobs], by friends and foes and even Jobs himself is 'asshole'." His response to the question by a Wired writer, "If you could go back and give advice to 25-year-old self, what would you say?" was "Not to deal with stupid interviews--I have no time for this philosophical bullshit." When he was asked by US assistant attorney general Joel Klein to get involved with the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, he asked, "Are you going to do something serious? Or is it going to be dickless?"

Mouthing off to U.S. Attorney: Assholeish or Heroish, you make the call. (We pick: C. All of the Above, but you know how us girls are attracted to assholes). And does it make you want to buy that thing?

Apple improves iPhone battery estimates [InfoSync]
Steve Jobs in a Box [NYM]
All-in-one How Big Will The iPhone Be? [BusinessWeek]

[via]

If you're like us, it's pretty hard to get through your day without cellphones, AIM, BlackBerrys and Bloomberg terminals. Whether it's a message to say, "Hey, story in the Times about bestiality at Bear," a quick buzz to see if anyone wants to come to get confrontational with the security guards at 85 Broad, have cyber sex or insider trade, without these forms of electronic communication, we'd all be at loss for what to do with ourselves (though that's an idea). Unsurprisingly, the N.Y.S.E. and NASD, full of non-stop hate, are trying to strip us of our rights to do any of the aforementioned, in an effort to police (state) how written information is spread via internal and external exchanges.

Last night we had dinner in the West Village with a partner at a law firm, his wife and four young women. After a few too many blood orange margaritas a debate broke out among the women about exactly when a French-fluent Midwestern girl named Sandra had moved to France for her Paris office. Someone said September. Someone else said October. We ordered another Michelada.

So the did the usual thing we do when we have unresolved questions: we blackberried for an answer. It was still a bit early for Sandra to be awake in Paris but only just. We were confident we'd get an answer over after dinner drinks.

Cut to an hour and half later. We've been joined by a couple of more friends. One Merrill guy who spends an unlikely amount of time rock-climbing. Another guy who works somewhere that no-one ever remembers. The bartender serves a fourth round of cocktails. We take the top off ours, then the bottom. Time seems to be moving very quickly but somehow none of our songs have come on the jukebox.

"That's strange," the blonde who is trying to grow her hair out after years of wearing it in a severe short chop. "My emails aren't sending."

No-one had received any emails for the past couple of hours. Someone wondered if the bar had some sort of blackberry interference device operating. But that wasn't it.

It was only this morning we learned that blackberry maker Research In Motion's entire network in the Western hemisphere had gone down. We woke up this morning with our cell phone ringing with the news. Our cell phone never rings in the morning.

"If a banker sends a blackberry and no-one reads it does he really exist," the caller said.

This is going to be an interesting morning.

Let us know your Blackberry Blackout stories in the comments section below. Or send them to tips@dealbreaker.com Is yours working? When did it go down? What sort of chaos was caused by the sudden cut-off in instant, everywhere emails?

9:01 Update:Some readers are reporting that their messages are coming through. Others still are waiting. It seems the backlog of messages may be jamming the pipes that make the blackberry magic work.

9:21 Update:DealBook reports that some banks have service while others still have problems. "BlackBerry owners at J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup said they were getting service as usual; a worker at Deutsche Bank reported problems accessing e-mail via BlackBerry," DealBook says.

9:41 Update:The latest twist is that outgoing messages seem to be going, well, out but the incoming messages are still backed-up for a lot of service providers.

10:00 Update: Best reader comment: "Right in the middle of earnings season blackberry shuts down. Greatest disclosure of product risk ever."

[The picture above is of DealBreaker's landlord Pearl nervously chewing her blackberry, waiting for the network to return.]

We're not in the business of watching the Today show so thank goodness somebody at Gawker is. Otherwise we might have missed this segment of Forbes managing editor Dennis Kneale breaking down into tears after being deprived of his email, cell phone, laptop and blackberry for 40 hours.

It's entertaining stuff but we've got to admit that we're just about at the end of our patience with this entire genre of anti-blackberry, anti-cell phone journalism. Sure its annoying when someone sends emails or texts while you're trying to have a conversation with them, or chats away on a cell phone while you need some peace and quiet. We applaud saloons, restaurants and private clubs that have banned using the devices indoors. (By the way, the New York Athletic Club and the Ear Inn seem to have struck the perfect balance by leaving in their old phone booths, with the phones stripped out, and restricting cell phone and blackberry use to the booths). But this is all going a bit too far now.

Mobile phones and blackberries are very useful devices. When one the DealBreaker staff was recently "mowed down" by a hit-and-run driver on the lower east side, an ambulance arrived in amazingly short order, thanks in part to the fact that someone on the scene summoned them with a mobile phone. When that same staffer was confined to the hospital for several days, we gained new appreciation of the benefits of mobile communication.

We've found blackberries and mobile phones useful in far more mundane ways as well. Back when we worked on deals that sometimes involved long periods of waiting around doing nothing at all while we waited for some documentation to be produced or new financial models to get worked out, we made it a habit of skipping out to a movie. We'd sit comfortably in a theater with stadium seating, having set our voicemail to forward to our cell phone and our knowing we'd get our emails instantly on our blackberries. It often meant walking out of a movie once our services were needed but it was far more pleasant than shuffling papers in a conference room. And, we later discovered, our constant practice of removing ourselves from deal rooms in such situations created the impression that we were very busy, and thus very important people.

But the benefits of mobile communications might go even further, as Steve Sailer has recently pointed out.

What device that spread throughout society in the 1990s made it radically easier for witnesses to report street crimes to the cops while they were happening, thus discouraging young people from making a career of being a street criminal?

Right: the cell phone.

All this blackberry and cell phone hating is starting to look like yet another reformist campaign against a practical and useful innovation. And, of course, it's being done in the name of our own physical and psychological health. We've had enough of that, thank you.

Dept. of How Stupid of Me Not to Have Thought of That Before [iSteve.com]

Video blog star Amanda Congdon is said to be totally addicted to her blackberry. No wonder she is apparently resorting to extreme things like Tasering herself to generate orgasms. According to Forbes, constant connection to the work world is ruining everyone's sex lives.

According to therapists and psychologists, around-the-clock access to the office often results in fatigue, a lack of intimacy, resentment, increased conflict and even premature career burnout. All of which are enough to crater a less-than-solid marriage or relationship. Robert Reich, the former U.S. secretary of labor, popularized the term "DINS couples" (double income, no sex) when he discussed the hazards of work overload in a 2001 speech. While the comment drew laughs, it also brought to light a developing problem: People are working too much to have sex. In 2003, the Kinsey Institute reported that today's women are having much less sex than their 1950s counterparts.

Is Your BlackBerry Ruining Your Sex Life? [Forbes]

We warned you today was going to be a big day in backdating coverage. Here's a bit more.

Yesterday we speculated that one probable effect of yesterday's iPhone announcement from Steve Jobs would be to divert attention away from backdating at Apple and the backdated stock options Jobs received. Today's news coverage pretty much bears this out. In fact, Peter Cohan at Blogging Stocks even goes so far as to criticize the Wall Street Journal for not paying enough attention to the iPhone and its implications because the "editorial page editors' rage at Al Gore and Steve Jobs kept that from happening."

So how did the major business newswires and dailies handle the iPhone versus backdating stories? After the jump, a quick rundown of how the news sections (leaving out the editorial pages) dealt with the Apple story.