Taking Home the Chihuahua

That's right, with this image of an iPhone, I'm promoting Ellen Lupton's Stock-a-Rama, where one of America's best-known design mavens is urging online users to "feel free to use any of these random images in your blog or other non-commercial project" under a Creative Commons license.

I suppose I am also admitting that I've bought the actual item represented, even though I used Blackberry devices perfectly happily and certainly read Ian Bogost's warning that it was a "geek's chihuahua" with attention.

Nonetheless, in worrying that universities and government agencies are committing to a model of rapidly outmoded web experience when the mobile web may better serve the Internet user of the future, it seems important to have the device with the greatest number of applications designed by universities and government agencies. I've already installed my NASA launch app on my iPhone, which I must say has come in handy, since the launch for the WISE project has already been scrubbed for weather reasons several times. (When it does happen, I promise to report from Vandenberg, where I've been invited to see it first-hand.)

Still, as someone who really hates difficult-to-use keyboards, no matter how noble the cause, I certainly won't be blogging from my iPhone.