CNet says that Apple contacted the San Francisco police as soon as the loss was discovered and told them that the phone was “priceless” and that the company wanted its safe return.

It was eventually tracked down via a location-tracking system built into the phone to a single-family home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights area, says CNet. But when police and Apple’s investigators visited the house, the occupant denied any knowledge of the phone, and it wasn’t recovered despite a search – with the occupant’s permission – of the residence. (The Guardian)

Tracking technology is often described as being clever and smart; this story however seems to show that it can catch the innocent too – and that should be remembered when its appropriate use by the police is debated.

A few days ago Cory Doctorow had fun digging out an old clip of HG Wells talking about the imminent demise of newspapers – in 1943. As Doctorow went on to point out, HG Wells’s error was a common one – to think that new technologies would fully replace old technologies.

In fact, very few technical innovations kill off the old completely. In the internet age, books are still with us. Long after the rise of the motorcar, horses still have a niche. Neither the jet engine nor the helicopter has fully seen off the hot air balloon or the airship.

Technologies such as telegrams, which do fully disappear, are the rare ones. Vinyl is clinging on and other data storage formats, such as floppy disks or cassette tapes may also depart. More usually, however, new technologies add to old ones.

Not only do old technologies survive, they also stick around at usage levels well beyond what you might expect if you only listened to the technology buzz. Take the humble mobile phone. The iPhone only makes up around 3% of mobile phone handsets in use in the UK at the moment, yet the other 97% is not where coverage or attention is concentrated.

The lesson from all this? If you want to catch technological buzz, the newest, latest, fastest is often the most important. But if that isn’t your prime aim, make sure you look carefully at what your target audiences are doing – because often they’ll be reading with a fifteenth century technology (Gutenberg press – 1440), dreaming of spending a birthday flying in an eighteenth century technology (first human flight in a hot air balloon – 1783) and yet also be a keen watcher of films over the internet (first demonstration – 1989).

Cross-posted from the MHP blog

Cross-posted from the Mandate blog

The latest Ofcom survey of internet usage is packed full of useful statistics and – even more helpfully – they are based on (a) proper research and (b) people in the UK. Many of the figures quoted are American – or American masquerading as global – and not infrequently are from selective sources of data.

Ofcom’s series of reports are therefore particularly welcome, with the latest one based on a quantitative survey that involved 812 in-home interviews with adults aged 16 and over from April to May 2009.

So what does the latest report tell us?

Choice of social networking platform

Amongst users of social networking, 89% have a Facebook profile (+27% on 2007), 21% on MySpace (-25%) and 19% on Bebo (-13%). Bebo and MySpace do still have particular niche strengths, but given the absolute figures and the trends, it is no surprise the Facebook is often the default choice for people looking to use social networking with their company or band.

Women more active then men

Females are more likely than males to have a social networking site profile (42% vs. 34%) and this gender gap also applies to the wider category of online content creation (i.e. creating content through a social network profile or through other services).

Overall 34% of internet users create content online (+12% on 2007), but amongst female internet users that figure rises to 39% and amongst males it drops to 28%.

There is also a clear trend across age groups, with 58% of 16-34 year olds creating content online.

Widespread content creation

The most popular form of online content creation is photo uploading (43% of internet users have done this), followed by setting up a social networking page or profile (38%) and then contributing comments to someone else’s blog (26%). The last figure is the most intriguing given how often blogs have a sea of “0 comments” messages next to posts. It suggests there is a lot more to learn about where and why people comment online.

Perhaps surprisingly, internet users in the DE socio-economic group are more likely to create content online than those in the AB group (38% v 27%), though that may be due to the younger age profile of DE internet users compared with AB internet users.

But websites, videos losing some popularity

However, it isn’t all a story of growth. For three types of content creation, more internet users now say that they are not interested in them than in 2007: uploading photos to a website (44% vs. 39%), setting up a website (71% vs. 67%) and making a short video and uploading it to a website (81% vs. 77%).

The website drop is not surprising given the other options now available for people to put content online, though the drop in interest in photo and video uploading is more surprising given that the technology to create and share photos and videos has continued to get cheaper, easier and more widespread.

It though a healthy reminder that the snapping and filming iPhone user is a very atypical internet user – and in some ways becoming more atypical.

Wrong, because Spotify has already banked one major benefit from the App, and gets a second if Apple rejects it.

The first major gain is that – despite the iPhone’s very small market share – people and the media love talking about it. Produce an iPhone App, and even if no-one ever uses it, you can get a huge burst of free publicity.

The graph, from the BlogPulse Tool, shows the enormous spike in coverage of Spotify on blogs following the news of its plans to launch an iPhone App. Even now, the level of discussion hasn’t yet fallen back to the levels of June and July:

Job number one done.

If Apple end up trying to block Spotify from the iPhone, then that’s another bonus too. Because it paints Apple as the nasty big brother, stuck in the old ways whilst Spotify is the new upstart, with clever technology that’s well designed and intended to free people from the shackles of the old ways of doing things.

That would be a fantastic boost to Spotify’s reputation and image – and, like the online buzz, one that reaches out beyond iPhone users to a much wider group of people who hear the positive noise and are attraced by the anti-big bad Apple positioning.

In fact, one might almost think Spotify could run a TV advert like this:

(TV advert also on YouTube website here)