Along with the staggeringly early announcement starting at 5AM my time (Eastern Daylight Time), the “Mum is no longer the word” even in London was not much of a surprise. Once again the rumor mills clobbered stray bits of hearsay and cobbled together to make what was reasonably the right answer.

iPhone is coming to England on O2

Happily for those would-be jealous Americans (I being American but not so jealous) we find out that it is not 3G. Even more good news is that a lot of European countries bypassed upgrading their GPRS to EDGE in favor of rolling out UMTS/WCDMA or 3G. One thing that the English do have over us Yanks, is the 1.1.1 firmware, the iTunes Mobile Store, and the free wifi hotspot provided by Cloud.

Hardly an upset, but then again – I was partially awake when I was skimming the blog wires.

Steve himself and the CEO of O2, presented in the Regent Street store which made for an intimate setting which lent itself naturally to a question and answer period. Reading the questions posed, I was wondering if the spin doctors and the SJRDF technicians saw these coming and prepped the CEOs.

England’s weird marketing and business practices forbade the discussion of hard numbers and subscriber information of O2, but under pressure of someone asking about contracts and “unlimited data usage” we found out that there is a compulsory 18 month contract and 1,400 internet pages per day would break the deal as part of the fair usage agreement.

Steve said the 8GB phone will be £269 (~USD$550)
No confirmation on the GBP£30 unlimited capped data plan but it seems to require a post-paid plan of at least GBP£35
No confirmation of the Starbucks deal in the UK (wasn’t a big deal here, why would it be there…)
Steve fielded a question about unlocking and passively played the victim, what a shrewd genius.

surprise surprise… it’s not out yet…

O2 will announce the plans on Oct 1
Phones will come out Nov 9

Links:
Engadget
TUAW
Gizmodo

I was told by a friend that they ordered “teriyaki beef and wasabi potatoes” and a red flag went up.

Okay, “teriyaki” is Japanese – but it’s moved from a traditional cooking form to a flavor/seasoning that is bandied about like “ranch” is here. I concede teriyaki beef is still the provenance of the Japanese; as for wasabi mashed potatoes, I can’t be so lenient.
I am sure that mashed potatoes have been served in Japan for some time now but mixing wasabi powder [a dyed-green pulverized horseradish extract facsimile meant to resemble the rare root found in mountain streams Wasabia Japonica] into the spuds as a common practice? I think it is safe to say it is more likely that one might find peanut butter or Kraft Dinner in a Japanese pantry than seeing green spicy taters in Tokyo. [link]

So the question is – wasabi mashed potatoes is to Japan like:
the Croissan’wich® is to France?
the fortune cookie is to China?
the Olive Garden is to real restaurants?

Do other countries have spoofs of our food?
I asked snuff and we came up with:

-Louisiana Blackened Steak with Ranch Rice
-Chicken Fried Steak with Salsa Popcorn
-Meatloaf with BBQ Sauce Plantains
-Hotdog with Mayonnaise Corn