Joe Dowdell was the first in line at the Mall of America Apple store, was first out of the store with his new iPhone, and was first to do an unboxing ceremony for iJustine right outside the store.
I think Justine may have been more excited about this than Joe, but this could be caused by Joe’s sleep deprivation at the time.
Congratulations to Joe on being the #1 buyer and for sharing this moment with us.
For more on the story of Joe’s trip to the first place in line, check out Your Tech Weblog.
WCCO, the Minneapolis CBS affiliate ran an iPhone story by their techno-geek, Jason DeRusha, which featured iJustine and the voice of Technology Evangelist’s Cariann Higginbotham (off camera when Justine is explaining the awesomeness of the iPhone to the camera).
It’s worth checking out what someone who’s capable of using 17,000+ text messages in a month in a month is all about. Yes, it’s time for unlimited texts.
Here is a quick look of the line forming outside the Apple store at the Mall of America.
Only 6 minutes to go until launch.
Less than 15 minutes to go until the launch of the iPhone.
Here is a shot of the line growing outside the Apple store at the Mall of America. It’s not outgrown the three turns they thought they’d need to contain the crowd.
And here is the line for the iPhone forming outside the AT&T store at the other end of the Mall of America. So, if you’re at the MOA and want to snag a phone without a wait, head up to the 3rd floor to the AT&T store.
We’re not down to around 10 minutes to launch.
What are iPhones going for on Ebay? Find out for yourself by checking the “Competed Auctions” section of the iPhone cell phone page.
Right now, it looks like Buy it Now auctions are closing in the $999 - $1299 range based on promises. People are advertising that they’re, “In line right now!!!!!” and people are buying on faith:
Would you buy a product the seller doesn’t physically have yet?
People came prepared for a long wait with their laptops, surfing the web for the latest updates on blogs, watching APPL stock, and talking about why they’ve taking time out of a beautiful Friday to spend it inside a mall, standing in line.
This is one of the last shots from the Apple store at the Mall of America before is went dark at 2pm local time.
By 3pm, the line had doubled over on itself:
Now, at 4pm, the 3rd row is forming, with 2 more hours to till launch.
A young girl yelled down from 1-story above, “What are you guys waiting for?” To which someone in line responded, “A cell phone.” Seriously? A cell phone? People don’t sit on the floor for a day for a cell phone.
An employee from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester decided to show up around 1pm to get in line. His current phone, pictured below, clearly ready for a replacement:
and past out of contract, so life is good.
Masergy is a global network service provider created to deliver the strongest network experience for expanding mid-size to large enterprises. Howard Lichtman of the Human Productivity Lab sat down with Chris Carr to talk about their video specific solution that provides a number of key features essential for telepresence
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Apparently, there is a new phone coming out on Friday from Apple called the iPhone. We thought it would be fun to cover the launch at the epicenter of American retail: the Mall of America, which happens to be only a few miles from Technology Evangelist headquarters.
And, why not have a bit more fun with it by bringing Justine from iJustine.tv to town for some co-coverage?
Starting Thursday afternoon (assuming airlines cooperate), I’ll be hanging out in Minneapolis with Justine and a local techie, Aaron Landry. The Aaron Landry that we’ve interviewed before on Technology Evangelist. Aaron happens to be a neighbor of mine, but I met him through conversations on local blogs.
It turns out this Internet thing is a small small world.
At some point around 18 months ago, I mentioned to my wife that I had an “online friend” named Aaron who I thought was originally from Stillwater, Minnesota. It turns out that Aaron and my wife went to high school together a decade ago.
And it turns out that there is an Aaron and Justine connection as well. Justine won a contest on Iminlikewithyou.com held by Aaron where he sent a postcard (yes, the paper kind) to Justine. Justine showed off the card she won in this video.
I’ve never met Justine and I’ve only visited with Aaron in person around four times, including a time when we tested the Twitter scavenger hunt game, Least Dangerous Game. Yet, I’m sure we’ll have fun together since we’ve all had a chance to get to know each other through our blogs, videos, emails, and analog postcards.
If you live in Minneapolis and have time to hang out on Thursday night, send me an email or give me a call. My contact info is on my profile page. Let’s turn a few more online friends into real-world friends then see what this iPhone hype is all about.
There are literally thousands of websites in existence today that allow you to sign up and contribute information. But, how do you decide which sites are worthy of your time?
This comes to mind after noticing tonight that I’ve rated over 400 movies on Netflix, yet not one movie review on Amazon.com. Yet both sites - and many more, such as IMDB - offer rating services for movies. In my case, Netflix was the first site that offered an immediate return on the information I contributed. Plus it has a social network where I can let my friends can see what I’ve rated.
I contribute to Wikipedia articles from time to time when I think I can add some value, but without the immediate return I receive from changes to my Netflix recommendations.
And I post comments on at least 100 unique blogs a month in order to join conversations that interest me. My reward here is making contacts with people online who share similar interests.
How do you decide which sites are worth contributing to? Do you seek an immediate or obvious return on your investment of time and knowledge or is implied reciprocity good enough?
My only hope is that someone finds this post worthy of a response. 
