Tech news: iPhone 5, FB Music Service

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September 1, 2011, 8:17 am

Are you sitting down? For the second time in as many years, it’s been reported that an Apple employee misplaced a prototype of its newest iPhone in a San Francisco-area bar.

Are you sitting down in Cava 22, a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission district? That’s where CNET says “the errant iPhone” made off without its owner in late July, setting off a scramble by Apple security to recover it. CNET cites “a source familiar with the investigation.”

Apple — very friendly — just returned a message we left to say, “I’m afraid we don’t have anything.” They did promise to call again and let us know they really do have a new iPhone 5 to show off. Depending on whose rumor you believe, the iPhone 5 will be released in early October; customers of Verizon Wireless, AT&T and, for the first time, Sprint, will be able to have it.

CNET reports on Apple’s efforts to get the prototype back:

“Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, according to the source. When San Francisco police and Apple’s investigators visited the house, they spoke with a man in his twenties who acknowledged being at Cava 22 on the night the device went missing. But he denied knowing anything about the phone. The man gave police permission to search the house, and they found nothing, the source said.”

If all this sounds familiar, it should. Last year a prototype iPhone 4 was left behind at a Bay-area bar, and the company got it back — but not before the website Gizmodo had bought it for $5,000, thoroughly dissected it and reported the details. The legal wranglings over that just recently ended; Gizmodo and its then-editor, Jason Chen, were not prosecuted for possession of stolen property, though the young man who picked it up off the counter did face lesser charges.

Facebook's Music Service
Facebook intends to launch its long-rumored music service next month with Spotify, MOG and Rdio as three of the company’s launch partners. The music and media platform will be announced at Facebook’s f8 developer conference on Sept. 22. It will allow users to listen to music from within Facebook.com. Evidence of Facebook’s music platform first surfaced in the code of Facebook’s video chat service.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Facebook will not directly host or stream any music or media. Instead, it will rely on partners to provide the content. Facebook reportedly intends for this platform to go beyond music — for example, it’s possible that Netflix could stream movies through Facebook. However, we don’t know if Facebook will go beyond the music platform announcement at f8.

New Album from Blondie
Blondie will release their new album, Panic of Girls, on September 13 with Amazon as the exclusive digital and physical retailer. The album is the ninth studio album from the New York City band, and its first since The Curse of Blondie was released in 2004.

Singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein founded Blondie in 1974. It became one of the most commercially successful bands to emerge from the New York punk and new wave scenes. The band has sold over 40 million records worldwide and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Blondie isn’t the first major act to partner exclusively with a large retailer for a wide-scale release. Jay-Z and Kanye West recently gave Best Buy the exclusive rights to sell the CD version of Watch the Throne for the first two weeks it was available. The album won’t be in stores and will be absent from iTunes. Blondie’s Amazon partnership ensures that people will have to order Panic of Girls online.

Check out the video above for the album’s first single, “Mother.”