Basically singing an aria right now. (Photo: Screencap)

Nathan Fillion, hunky star of the beloved-but-taken-too-soon TV series Firefly (and also Castle, we suppose?) appeared on Conan last night. And it seems the main thing he could talk about was how much he loves his iPhone 5.  He loves his iPhone 5 more than you love your mother, spouse and/or labradoodle puppy.

And what's more? That little bundle of chips and Gorilla glass surely loves him back. He gushed to host Conan O'Brien: "It's pretty, it's tiny and it's light and it's so smart and it loves me, obviously it loves me."

Lest you leap to the conclusion that Mr. Fillion's relationship with his Apple devices has been without its rough patches, he admitted to a period of unhappiness with Siri, whom he initially programmed to call him "Scout," which got annoying. However, in the words of the great U2, love is blindness:

"She's not always super accurate and sometimes she's way off, but you know what? I commit to it. Send--whatever she says."

Let's hope he takes a slightly more skeptical approach to whatever he discovers on Apple Maps.

(h/t CNET)

Just take whatever you want, okay? (Photo: flickr.com/wstryder)

The NYPD warned us that our precious iPhones were in danger, and they're quickly being proven right in the most alarming manner possible. The Daily News reports that a man seems to be jacking Apple devices in the Bronx--at hypodermic-needle-point.

This isn't even the first hypodermic needle-related crime of the week. Yesterday a bus driver got stabbed by a passenger with one. This of course poses the question of what is wrong with people?

The Daily News says the biohazardous offender has "accosted eight Bronx victims since mid-August, stealing iPhones and other electronic gadget, police say." The neighbors sound worried, because duh: 

St. Raymond School is also nearby, and crossing guard Maria Oliveras said she is worried about the schoolchildren.

“It’s spooky,” Oliveras said. “I tell the kids all the time to put your phones away.”

This is one of the few cases where we just wouldn't even bother with Find My Phone, lest it turn into Find Out My Horrible New Blood-Borne Disorder.

Serial numbers, plz. (Photo: flickr.com/lynxman)

Apple is reportedly attempting to poach members of the Google Maps team. You know what they say: If you can't beat 'em, steal 'em. [TechCrunch]

The latest boat lifted by the rising tide of the New York tech boom: accounting firms. [Crain's New York]

Apparently NYPD officers were stationed outside Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship, asking new iPhone 5 owners to register their serial numbers in case of theft. [Yahoo]

Meanwhile, in New Zealand: A court has ordered an investigation into whether Kim Dotcom was the victim of "unlawful spying." [BBC News]

Mr. Lovingood (Photo: Bravo TV)

You didn't think we'd forgotten, did you? It's Friday afternoon, which means it's Rumor Roundup time!

One Day You're In, Next Day You're Out Randi Zuckerberg's Bravo reality show finally has a (disappointly un-innovative) name--"Silicon Valley Start-Ups"--although we assume the shenanigans will make up for it. According to a press release, the hour-long show will premiere Monday November 5th at 10 p.m. EST, so set your DVRs or prep your voodoo dolls, depending.

This part got left out of the release, but we hear the show will launch sans two reported cast members: Marcus Lovingood and Jay Holanda, although both gentleman will appear as sub-characters.

If you've been wondering why you're seeing so many LOLCats on Bravo in between the screeching ladies of leisure--Did Andy Cohen just discover there's an Internet beyond Twitter??--the press release also mentions the premiere of LOLwork, set at the ICanHasCheezburger.com offices and due to test whether the Cat Pics = Traffic formula works as well on TV.

Speaking of screeching--in this case, Bravo has Sarah Lacy's approval.

@benhuh congrats! are you beating the shit silicon valley show to market?

— Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda) September 20, 2012

Fine Young Cannibals On his mirco-blog, Tumblr editor-in-chief Chris Mohney revealed that the entire office, excluding him, started a juice cleanse today.

Not your correspondent of course as I’m a lost cause cleansewise, but whoever of that persuasion survives the weekend will show up monday morning crazed and belligerent, shot through with explosive episodes of the whooping dropsy. Next week should be interesting expexially when you factor in Yom Kippur’s nutritional denial, so let’s peg it at 72% chance of autocannibalism by Wednesday and that’s Nat Daddy’s official projection on the subject going into the otherwise temperate weekend, drive carefully now.

If this counts as a thinspo post, we are so reporting you to Tumblr!

Cyber-Bullying Who's giving startups a hard time? That's what we want to know, as per this opaque, exasperated tweet from Texts From Last Night founder Lauren Leto, who shut down Bnters and took on the general manager role at Findings, a Betaworks startup, in May:

A certain 'influencer, curator' lady needs to stop being a bully to small start ups. Go create a company yourself.

— Lauren Leto (@laurenleto) September 19, 2012

Based on another recent tweet, however, one of Ms. Leto's followers did a little process of elimination.

@laurenleto so i guess she's not the "innovator, curator" you mention earlier ;)

— christy purington (@cpurington) September 19, 2012

Having perused Ms. Leto's winsome new book, Judging a Book By Its Lover, we are sorry to report it does not contain the answer to this particular mystery.

The Reality Distortion Field Reaches Los Angeles Even the youngest Kardashian kares about keeping up with technology.

Reverse-Reverse Sexism Still wondering what $50 and an App.net membership will get you (besides a word cloud of Twitter references)? Well, former GroupMe employee Matt Langer reports that the social network is "where you go to bro down with your /r/MensRights bros," like Favstar founder Tim Haines. However, no one with $50 has agreed to support Mr. Haines' cause.

Wedding bells On the mergers front, we hear that serial cofounder and investor Zack Klein recently married girlfriend Courtney Lewis, a partner at Hard Candy Shell. The pair booked "all of Aurora" earlier this week and issued an open invite via Twitter, in order to celebrate in style. To make everything ultra-official, the new Mrs. Klein has even rechristened her Twitter handle. Much luck and many Goodfellas-style envelopes of cash to the two lovebirds.

As always: Overheard a juicy tidbit about impending departures or imminent acquisitions? Dying to dish about startup blunders or frothy financing? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com

Unhelpful new map.

Holding the new iPhone in your hand on launch day feels really special. It's dumb to say that, but it's true. Eyes dart in your direction, you get smiled at by strangers. It's kind of awesome. An Italian tourist approached us and asked, with a sparkle and a hint of desperation in his light blue foreign eyes, “How is it?!” Unfortunately, honesty compelled us to shrug and say, “eh, it’s okay.” He looked back at us like we stole all of his luggage and killed his first born.

The truth about the new iPhone is just that, it's okay. It's fine. But as a poor miserable college student who doesn't make that much money, we wondered if it's worth the upgrade? Let's say you're not a stat-obsessed freak and you're not that addicted to upgrading--you're just a regular iPhone owner. Is it worth it for you to make the switch? 

The first thing we noticed is that the LTE (or 4G, or whatever they want to call it these days) service was in fact pretty fast. We were using it in midtown on our current carrier, AT&T, and the speeds pretty much blew our 3G out of the water. Text messages sent from our trial 5 to our faithful 4 arrived in mere seconds. Upgrade? +1

The longer length of the phone was a nice thing. Some of us have really chubby fingers okay? And if you had these hypothetical beefy droits, then you’d know that wrapping them around the 4 is sometimes a little strange looking. The extra length and smaller frame would give you a lovely confidence boost. Upgrade? +1

Apple's brand new headphones are the horribly named "Earpods." They kind of cradle into your inner ear instead of being forcibly jammed in, which is awesome.  However, Apple moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone, which wasn't a very good decision. It means that, if you're listening to music and want to put your phone in your pocket, it has to go in upside down, which feels horribly unnatural. Upgrade? -1

It may be jarring to realize that the iPhone 5 doesn't come with a YouTube app preloaded onto the phone. But a quick jump over to the mobile site will solve that problem. Brandy and Chris Brown's "Put It Down," which may or not be your favorite song to walk to class to, loaded really fast and there was actually some noticeable bass instead of the old iPhone headphone's flat sound. Upgrade? +1

It took less than two minutes to set up an email account and fire off a dispatch to a friend. The email's new pull-up-to-refresh feature is really enjoyable. It easily brings back  the childhood satisfaction of pulling a long booger out of your nose Upgrade? +1

Everyone's current nightmare is the new Apple Maps that comes with updating to iOS 6. The 3D views did look really pretty on the new longer screen. A quick tap gives you your location, just like in Google Maps. But searching for an East Village address put the dot right in the middle of Brooklyn. Not a good first sign. Upgrade? -1

Maybe something a little less likely to mess up would turn up better results. A search for "Momofuku Milk Bar" (the most uncommon name ever, right?) came up easily. The driving directions were clear, but there were no transit or walking directions. Fuck everything. Upgrade? -1

The map does label all of New York's neighborhoods and that's a great help for NYC newbies. But nothing is worse than the extremely forced name "LoDel" (Below Delancey). Ugh. Upgrade? -1:

iOS 6 also boasts a new mode called Do Not Disturb, which is a great deal for haters of drunk texts that wake you up in the middle of the night. This is big news when all of your friends are sloppy. A huge plus. Upgrade? +1

The new panoramic function on the camera app isn't worth checking out,  because there were always a bunch of apps available for download to stitch together panoramic shots. Not impressed by that feature at all. Upgrade? -1

That leaves the decision to upgrade at a 5 v.s. 5 split, but there's still one question left to answer.  Is the ability to impress good looking tourists worth the $200 dollars that you really don’t have? Well, the striking Italian didn't give out his number or dish out anything more than a smile, so you should just stick to your old 4 for now.

(Photo: David Shapiro)

T-Mobile, the only major carrier in the U.S. that doesn't sell iPhones, can't afford to shy away from an aggro advertising strategy. In August, Untethered.com got a hold of an internal memo to T-Mobile employees to aggressively "sell against the iPhone," starting today. (The blog also noted the drawback in performance for iPhone users who switched T-Mobile's network, as evidenced by leaked internal documents.)

Nevertheless, more than a million users are already using unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile's network. To grow that number, earlier this month, the company launched its "unlocked and unlimited" campaign to encourage more iPhone owners to use T-Mobile's cheaper plans instead. AllThingsD compared it to a BYOB party--where the alcohol is your iPhone.

Just as Verizon attempts to change the definition of the word unlimited, T-Mobile is touting the opposite. However, switching over could mean a return to the days of 2G, notes AllThingsD:

Its network isn’t yet all that iPhone-friendly given that its high-speed network has historically run in a band of spectrum not supported by the iPhone. T-Mobile is in the process of shifting around its network so that Apple phones can run at full speed, but for now, nearly all customers will be running at far slower 2G speeds.

Of course, that part wasn't mentioned on this street ad that David Shapiro, Betabeat's favorite smartphone fiend, noticed a outside the T-Mobile store in the Fulton Street Mall yesterday. Considering the amount T-Mobile invests in negging AT&T's network, the only thing that surprises us is that they didn't use a bigger font for "versus AT&T."

(Photo: Instagram/dewalt)

The hordes began lining up along Fifth Avenue eight days ago. Earlier this week, from inside their glass house, Apple store employees in familiar blue shirts (and the occasional derby cap) looked out towards the queue of customers eager to peel open the wrapping on their iPhone 5. But for employees at the flagship location, the yearly event is trading in its pomp for a more perfunctory feel.

Hushed by corporate mandates, Apple employees weren't forthcoming about the launch. Betabeat approached several staffers the Fifth Avenue and Grand Central locations, but only one would speak to us on background. Sealed lips smiled calmly, despite the intensity of the reality distortion field outside the store.

There's no bonus for working the overnight shift on launch night, given that the flagship store is open 24/7. But Keenen Thompson, 22, a former Apple store clerk--and the fourth person in line on Fifth Avenue--told us his old 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. shift did come with one bonus: “We do get to get the iPhone. We can’t buy it before it goes on sale, but we do get to go outside on our lunch break and buy the phone."

Mr. Thompson said these days launches are treated as de rigueur. “Everyone looks forward to a new device but it's nothing really different. It's kind of like you’re ready for your next day at work and to sell some phones.” Mr. Thompson was sponsored by iPhone repurchasing company Gazelle to sit in line.

The ninth man lined up, programmer Roger Chinchilla of Queens, showed us his solar powered Apple battery charger and said, “I have two different Wifi connections in my bag if need be.”

Carriers AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are also selling the phone to the masses this morning. Dennis, a Sprint store employee who only offered a first name and asked that we not mention the location, was less calm about today's launch, saying that all his fellow staffers were called in because, “We like to be fully prepared for the onslaught.” He added that managing the growing line outside is, “Something we do so there’s no chair flipping outside … over a phone.” To that end, Sprint keeps the line partially pacified with bottled water.

By Monday, AT&T had already released a statement saying that the new version had become “the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever offered.” JPMorgan chief economist Michael Feroli also chimed in, noting that the iPhone launch could significantly boost GDP--in addition to the number of artisanal lunches being Instagrammed.

Marta Rosado, manager of the flagship AT&T store in Times Square who has seen launches since the 3GS, said of relatives often asking for hookups with the new model. "People ask, but it's really first come, first serve. Even us as employees we will wait."

One AT&T employee said she switched her hours to go get the device. “Lines are going to be horrible and the phones are going to be first come, first serve, it's not going to be a privilege for employees or anything. I’m going to another store early in the morning … Even though I have friends in many AT&T stores, I’ll have to line up.”

Ms. Rosado said that despite the stress of the day, the store gets an influx of sales from buyers who have already flexed their consumer impulses. "They’ll spend the money on new cases, new chargers," she said. "We do pretty good."

In the throes of creation. (Photo: Courtesy of Quirky)

Late Friday afternoon, the Chelsea offices of Quirky--past the High Line and across from the Porsche dealership--looked like they'd been abandoned in a hurry.

The front desk: unmanned. Tables in the spacious central meeting area: covered in papers but utterly empty. In search of our assigned guide, Betabeat wandered inside the startup, which marries the wisdom of the crowd with the technical expertise of a team of in-house engineers to create products sold in stores like Bed Bath and Beyond and Lowe's. We made our way past a glass-enclosed workshop and conference rooms with brick artfully exposed, before finally stumbling upon signs of exhausted life among the open floor plan of the back office.

This wasn't mere Friday flakiness. Most of Quirky's 70-plus employees had been up all night, hacking away on an insane attempt to develop a line of accessories for the new iPhone 5 in the course of just 24 hours. Typically, would-be inventors must pay a small fee to have their ideas evaluated by Quirky's community of creative and experts. However, as a special event to get the new vertical off the ground, submissions were temporarily free of charge and thrown into a special high-speed development process.

Community members submitted 1700 ideas all told, and the Quirky team had narrowed them down to just 15 ideas for development. Everything had to be done by Friday night, when CEO Ben Kaufman was scheduled to fly the prototypes to their manufacturers, so that the final products could go up for sale on Fab.com by Wednesday morning.

The number of visible coffee cups suggested it had been a long night.

Typically, Quirky releases two new products per week. Until very recently, those could've been almost anything from shower caddies to spatulas. But the rush to develop new iPhone accessories is part of Quirky's new mission: to launch a series of new verticals on the site and for the company's product line, starting with Apple accessories.

Ultimately, Quirky will roll out a new product each week in each of its new verticals, as well as the two "general" releases. The company just raised a $68 million Series C to help them along.

The aftermath.

The entire office wraps around one glass-enclosed workshop composed of two connected spaces. The dirty room contains the power tools, and is typically covered in sawdust. Goggles and WPA posters urging workplace safety hung side by side on the way. Then, down a pair of stairs, is the clean room, which holds the 3D printers, sewing machines, and the like. As we descended, PR honcho Jaime Yandolino paused and, surveying the paper-littered tables, admitted, "The view from here just shows the aftermath."

The larger of Quirky's 3D printers--nicknamed "Bertha"--was originally installed when the company was based on Bleecker and Broadway. She got her name because she didn't fit up the stairs, requiring Quirky to close down Broadway and "haul this big girl up the side of the building," said Ms. Yandolino, like a piano in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The night before, there'd been 200 people bustling about the office, for a special edition of Quirky's standard Thursday night evaluation meetings. "Invention ambassador" Andrew Erlick--who, prior to Quirky, developed and sold a device for laser light shows to haunted houses--explained that each of the chosen ideas for Apple accessories had progressed through its own development process. Features and characteristics were hashed out. Then, once refined, concepts were handed over to a designer to execute.

Quirky's standard development process is a little less hell-for-leather. Normally the rate of submissions is more like 1,500 per week. The most promising are upvoted and evaluated by members of the Quirky online community, then evaluated by the company's in-house experts.

Mr. Erlick walked Betabeat through a massive wall of products, separated out by their various stages of development, from exploration (the very earliest stages of tire-kicking) to pricing (where the product is fleshed out and its marketability is evaluated) to production (where Quirky starts really investing resources). The production phase is when engineers “come together and start talking about what we could do with them, to the minute details, every little inch,” he explained. From those discussion, the team at Quirky builds a prototype  in-house, which might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Once the prototype gets the sign off, it's onto one of Quirky's manufacturing partners and, ultimately, onto store shelves.

The bottleneck, it looked like, lay in the pricing section. "As we grow bigger and bigger and we sign on more retailers, those products will hopefully find a home," Mr. Erlick noted.

Quirky is hoping that its new verticals-based approach will be a better way to connect experts with producs they actually give a crap about. "We'll have professionals that have worked in that field before, you know--if you have a person who's working in kitchen products, engineering and designing, you want that person to give their opinion and surface his best ideas."

And, of course, the contest leaves Quirky with quite a backlog of invention ideas to feed the beast that is that new line of Apple accessories--especially considering that charger connector is now completely different, rendering many older items so much garbage. "All of those ideas and every idea that ever gets submitted to Quirky, we have in our 'vault,' our archive," explained Mr. Erlick. "If a retailer comes to us and says, 'Hey I really want this,' we could look at our archive and see what's out there."

Tech talent from Sesame Street. (Photo: flickr.com/libertygrace0)

This crisp weather says it's fall, which means it's time for another round of the NYC Tech Talent Draft. [Wall Street Journal]

Third-party image hosts like Twitpic and yfrog are reportedly the next services to get the ax from Twitter. [BuzzFeed]

Your favorite educational puppet show was once a startup, and its founders were told the concept would never work. And yet here we are, an entire generation taught to count by the Count. [New York Daily News]

Some master thief drove his BMW into an Apple store and started stealing, only to find his getaway impeded by flat tires. [ABC News]

Marissa Mayer is giving everyone at Yahoo an electronic leash smartphone. [Business Insider]

Meet your iPhone 5 early birds: "Hazem Sayed, 54, and his marketing manager Sage (short for Sagittarius), 31, set up camp Thursday at 8 a.m. -- eight days early -- to promote a social media startup called Vibe." [Fortune]

Here's a little blast from the past, in the form of Bill Gates introducing Microsoft Excel, circa 1987. [History]

(Photo: YouTube)

Was it really only yesterday that we watched with muted glee as Apple fanboys everywhere lost their shit over a phone that is only mildly different from its now much cheaper predecessor? My, how time flies.

The iPhone 5 is slightly lighter and slightly longer than the iPhone 4s, but apparently even Apple fans can't really discern the difference. Jimmy Kimmel brought an iPhone 4s out on the streets of Los Angeles and told everyone he encountered that it was an iPhone 5.

"Oh, it's way better!" proclaimed a man in a Dave Matthews Band hat. "I only have the 4s," he admitted, not realizing that it's the same damn phone. You can't make this shit up, people.