iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Thursday, August 28, 2008
News Category: Mix

Vimpelcom, the second-largest carrier in Russia, has announced that it has signed a distribution deal with Apple to sell the iPhone 3G in Russia. “Vimpelcom announced today it has signed an agreement with Apple to bring iPhone 3G to Russia, expected later this year,” the company said in a statement. Last week it was reported that all three major Russian carriers, MTS, Vimpelcom, and MegaFon, has signed iPhone deals with Apple; Vimpelcom is the first to make an official statement confirming an agreement.

More labels are considering keeping new release albums off iTunes in a bid to increase full album sales, according to a Wall Street Journal report. iTunes policies prevent artists from selling their music in full album format only, requiring songs to be sold as singles, on which they see less profit. The article points to Warner Music Group, which kept Kid Rock’s latest album “Rock ‘n Roll Jesus” off iTunes and has seen sales increase in 19 of the past 22 weeks, recently pulled an album by R&B singer Estelle from the iTunes Store the same week that one of its songs entered iTunes’ top 10 best-selling list.

Bloomberg News inadvertently published a pre-written obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, only to retract it a short time later. While the lengthy document contains little to no new information on Jobs, it discusses various people that the organization would contact for comment, and highlights a number of career and personal events. Gawker has saved and reprinted it in its entirety. It is quite common for major publications to have obituaries on hand for high-profile people such as business leaders and politicians; thus, the appearance of the obituary likely has little to do with recent concerns of Jobs’ health.

Flickr user and iPhone 3G owner eastrain has posted an interesting series of photographs taken with an iPhone camera that has been modded to change its focus for more up-close photography. Explains eastrain, “Both iPhone models have the same style generic mobile phone camera module with a screw style focus adjustment which has been glued at infinity in the factory. Once you break this glue, you can turn the lens counterclockwise to bring the focus closer.” Note that attempting to modify the iPhone in this way will likely void any remaining warranty with Apple.