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Free legal advice: don't ask Siri where to hide a body
"Siri, read him his rights..." If you happen to murder someone, it's just common sense: do not ask Siri for help on where you can hide a body. Early on, Apple's intelligent assistant used to come back with locations like quarries, swamps, and dumps. Well, according to various news sources, a man accused of killing his roommate allegedly asked Siri "I need to hide my roommate" and of course got those responses. Police in Gainesville, FL produced Siri's response to his question as evidence in the trial of 20-year-old Pedro Bravo. Something's a bit fishy with this story, however. It turns out that Bravo has an iPhone 4 -- which, of course, cannot run Siri -- but he did have a screenshot with that Siri query stored on his device. There's more iPhone data that is also being used as evidence in the trial: On September 20, 2012, the flashlight function of Bravo's iPhone was on 9 times for a total of over 48 minutes (which is an odd forensic tidbit, unless he was using a standalone flashlight app). Police also note that the locations tracked by the iPhone on that date don't match where the suspect says he was. In case you're wondering, Siri now answers the question about where to hide a body with slightly different answers -- like "I used to know the answer to this," and "What, again?" The trial should wrap up later this week. There's no word on whether Siri will be offered a job as a prosecutor or expert witness in other cases. To keep up with the trial, you can follow TV reporter Stephanie Bachara on Twitter.
Sprint LTE spreads its wings to four more areas by Labor Day
Sprint may have played slightly fast and loose with its definition of a 15-city LTE launch this month -- some of those areas were mighty close to each other -- but it's taking that expansion a little further down the road with its next stage. Hand-in-hand with its second quarter results, the pin-drop network has outlined plans to revisit its 4G hometown in Baltimore as well Gainesville in Georgia, the Junction City-Manhattan area in Kansas and the Denison-Sherman region in Texas, giving them all LTE by Labor Day. The expansion will certainly please Georgian Galaxy S III owners; unfortunately, it still leaves many major cities fending with EV-DO 3G until later in the year, if not 2013. Maybe Sprint's Hitchcock-inspired nightmares are to blame.
Verizon adds 4G LTE to nine more cities, expands coverage in Chicago, Philadelphia
Verizon Wireless customers will be able to jet on to the LTE network in nine new cities, taking advantage of lightening-fast speeds on their HTC Thunderbolts and 4G mobile hotspots. The expansion includes Mobile and Montgomery (AL); Greater Fairfield and New Haven (CT); Gainesville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee (FL); Fayetteville-Lumberton (NC); and Bryan-College Station and Temple-Killeen (TX). We also have access in Albany, though VZW has yet to confirm launching LTE in New York's capital city. The carrier has also expanded coverage in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, so if you haven't been able to connect in the past, dust off that enable-4G button and give it another shot. This week's additions bring the list of LTE cities to 55, so we're just over the 35 percent mark towards the carrier's goal of 147 cities by year's end.
Midnight Launch Event: Gainesville edition
I pre-ordered months ago, and finally the night had come. A few days ago GameStop robo-called my phone to tell me to come down at 11:00, so they could pre-process the transaction and make the whole thing that much smoother. Anticipating lines and general hilarity, I got to the mall around 10:30. It took me a while to find the part of the mall where the line was; here's what I saw when I stepped out of my car.
