Apple’s iPhone 3G launched today in 21 countries, at precisely 8:00am in each local time zone. The logistics of pulling off such an event are absolutely insane to ponder, and preliminary market reports of activation issues are being trumped now by stories of out-of-stock warnings around the world. Hong Kong has a history of literally maniacal mob scenes when a major product is introduced, so Apple took no chances and hired guards in kevlar vests and helmets with shotguns. For a phone.

This is the point where I stick my tongue out at the people who told me Apple was going bankrupt in 1997 and wouldn’t live to see 1998!

Nielsen BuzzMetrics, the Internet “conversation” tracker, released some stats on iPhone 3G’s online presence, which, admittedly, are not that interesting to view.

However, it appears the peak in the online buzz came a few weeks before launch, specifically between June 9 and 13, the time of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference during which Mr. Jobs detailed the new iPhone features and specs. This is what conveys a true latent demand in the smartphone market, and I wish Apple all the best of success, though it appears I won’t need to:

“iPhone buzz is through the roof. One out of every 100 new blog posts is about the iPhone - more than Barack Obama or John McCain. And while the blogosphere may pay special attention to new technology, this buzz underscores the important role the iPhone is playing in raising awareness of and interest in multimedia phones,” said Nic Covey, Director of Insights, Nielsen Mobile.

In an attempt to capture stories that didn’t receive much face time on most news sites, here are this month’s “Between the Cracks” picks:

Fortune Cookie Payout (via AZ Central)
One hundred ten people from 26 states won from $100,000 to $500,000 each in the U.S. powerball lottery (totaling $19 million) by betting on a series of numbers they found in a fortune cookie. It made for an expensive night for Powerball, with winners beating the odds in a game with a 1 in 3 million winning combination.

‘Ginormous’ Tops Non-Dictionary Word List (via Yahoo!)
The editors of Merriam-Webster dictionaries got more than 3,000 entries when, in a lighthearted moment, they asked visitors to their Web site to submit their favorite words that aren’t in the dictionary. First place went to “ginormous” — bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous — followed by “confuzzled” for confused and puzzled simultaneously, and “whoot,” an exclamation of joy. A “lingweenie” — a person incapable of making up new words — placed 10th. I’m guilty of using ginormous as often as humanly possible.

Xbox 360 Demos Running on Macs (via CNet)
Yup, just a week after Microsoft’s Bill Gates blasted Apple’s iPod as being “toward the end of its life” (among other anti-Apple statements), Microsoft released a statement saying that they, in fact, were using Apple G5 desktop computers to power their demonstration video illustrating the powers of the new XBox 360. The statement read, “We purchased a number of Apple G5’s because very specific hardware components of the G5 allow developers to emulate some of the technology behind future Xbox products and services.” What the heck does that even mean?

Have more to contribute? Leave a comment, per favore.

I had to repeat this story just to give it more face time. Credit to Boing Boing and Engadget for posting the original.

Jasper Rine is a professor of genetics and development at the University of California at Berkeley, and recently had his laptop stolen by a student in his class. Apparently, the student believed that s/he would be able to copy the exam questions and solutions from the laptop prior to the next exam, and return the laptop without much consequence.

As this recorded webcast of Professor Rine’s announcement to the class on April 15th will show you, the student now has a bit more to worry about. To get to the pertinent part of the lecture, forward the RealPlayer file to 48:50. (Update: Apparently UC Berkeley didn’t like all of us viewing the speech, so the video has been cropped.) For those who don’t want to deal with RealPlayer, Sean Graham made a very lo-fi mp3 of the audio from the ‘good part’ of the lecture.

You can also read a transcript of Professor Rine’s speech.

I was thinking about the whole concept of blogging the other day and how it is such a far-reaching technology. Before you comment on how much free time I must have, I’ll preface my brain dump with an article that I was reading about last November’s election. One analyst mentioned that the blog enabled candidates and their teams to do “front-line” reporting and provide up-to-the-minute news and analysis to anyone who was willing to read it. Rather impressive when you realize that the concept of blogging has been around for more than eight years, but only widely used within the past two.

Not only is blogging the new pasttime for anyone and everyone with something to say, it is also a growing technology for building user communities and establishing connections worldwide. Take, for example, the concept of Technorati. This is a web application whose purpose is to connect readers to others based on similar interests or categories. Pretty impressive, and definitely sitting in the front car of the idea train. There are other sites devoted to tracking blogs, like Blogwise and Blogdex. Heck, there is even a site for figuring out which blogs are geographically near to you based on your global position. And, more interestingly, there is a fake stock market for trading shares of blogs and helping to increase their virtual value. People seem to use and reference these sites - a lot.

Writing in blogs can be so all-consuming. I find myself getting caught up reading other people’s blogs (David, Halley, RSN, FA) and then think, “wow, there are another six to ten million of these out there.” That truly blows my mind.

Well, have you?

OK, perhaps I should be more specific.

Did you see the new, über-cheap Mac mini announced by Apple yesterday afternoon? It has quickly become the most heavily blogged new Apple product in less than a day and has been winning praise from review houses like c|net. I think it’s the coolest thing, considering how it is only 6.5 inches square and stands only 2 inches tall. You can literally stack seven of them next to your desktop computer, provided you’re feeling crazy and can drop $3500 to get them. But, then again, it’s only $3500 and you would have the most impressive desktop cluster in the neighborhood.

Among other Mac news shared at Macworld San Francisco, Apple announced that they sold 4.5 million iPods in the previous quarter, up from 733,000 in the year-ago period. The primary reason Apple didn’t sell more iPods was that it couldn’t keep up with the incredible holiday demand. Apple posted their earnings report just a few moments ago and stated that they quadroupled their profit from a year ago to 70 cents/share and beat analysts expectations of 49 cents/share.

MacNuts have long been speculating the company’s next great move. Paul Nixon has concocted a pretty decent approach to figuring out Apple’s market strategy.