We'll make this brief. Orange spokesperson Therese Wenger told the SDA news agency that it has secured rights to release the iPhone (3G version, presumably) in Switzerland and more than 10 other countries -- take that Swisscom! Other countries include Austria, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, and Romania. And France of course where it's already on sale. See, that was quick and leaves room for a dozen or so other iPhone related announcements today.

Update: Official Orange press release now out.

[Via 20minuten, thanks Pascal M.]

derStandard, the same publication that announced that the iPhone would be sailing into Austria via T-Mobile is now reporting that the same carrier will be testing the 3G iPhone in the aforesaid country. During a press conference in Vienna, T-Mo Austria reportedly affirmed that a UMTS version of Apple's handset would "soon be available," and that Austria would be the "testing ground" for the new mobile -- not to mention "among the first countries in the world with the UMTS iPhone." Furthermore, bigwigs stated that "more flexible" offers would be made available, but details beyond that were scant.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

As we expected, Apple just loosed the iPhone into Ireland and Austria. €399 nabs the 8GB model while €499 takes the 16GB unit home. T-Mobile has the honors for Austria as it does in Germany while O2 carries the flag in Ireland as it does in the UK. Interestingly, Irish subscribers are not entitled to Visual Voicemail or free WiFi even though you get both on O2 UK -- neither country offers an unlimited data plan. Tsk tsk. Regardless, early adopters from those countries already had their unlocked iPhones months ago which makes the launch just a formality at this point.

[Via MacRumors]

Read -- Austria
Read -- Ireland

Yeah, teaching a canine how to operate a computer may sound pretty complex, but considering that one such animal was actually trained to sniff out and snag cellphones for its dubious owner, we guess it's not too difficult to conceive after all. In a recent study published in Animal Cognition, researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria taught four dogs to use computer automated touch-screens in order to carry out classification tests, theoretically eliminating any "potential human influence." In experiments that sought to see if dogs could indeed visually categorize pictures and transfer learning to new scenarios, the four subjects "were shown landscape and dog photographs and expected to make a selection on a computer touchscreen." Eventually, the authors concluded that using computers in animal testing could open up new windows of opportunity in testing cognitive abilities, but c'mon, you know those pups were just clicking around to see if their testing station would in fact play Doom.

[Via TheInquirer, image courtesy of Itchmo]

The Pong Dress, created by a pair of Austrian artists, smacks of something that their German-speaking bretheren at the Chaos Computer Club might concoct -- but the Vienna-based Ludic Society beat 'em to it. Max Moswitzer and Margarete Jahrmann combined a dress with a 5 x 7 inch screen to play a a game of Pong on the wearer's body. The joysticks are quite the coup de grâce, however: dueling old-skool NES controllers, plugged in at hip level. How do you keep track of the score, you ask? The scoreboard can be found chest-high. (Don't blame us, we didn't design it.) The dress is now on display at the Pong Mythos exhibition in Leipzig, Germany -- we assume with Moswitzer wearing a stuffed bra to go with it.

[Via networked_performance]