The 24 Hours of The iPhone, Leo and TWIT Live

So I got somehow sucked into the TWiT TV 24 hour iPhone live netcast….. 24 hours of Leo Laporte sitting and talking about the iPhone and talking to people around the world as the different iPhone stores open from New Zealand all the way around the world to California. Yup, a video stream of a guy sitting in his basement doing nothing but talking. Yet as stupid as it sounds, and regardless of how you feel about Leo and the TWiT network (I not everyone is a fan) it’s somehow strangely fascinating. Even if you call me a weirdo, there are over six thousand people doing the same thing. There’s an IRC channel and a video chat channel, both full up, talking at such a rate that it’s hard to keep up with anything. I was watching it when I went to bed at 11pm last night and when I got up this morning to go for a run (and couldn’t, but that’s another story) at 5:40 it was still going strong. I expected Leo to still be going, but I didn’t expect both chatrooms to still be full.

It’s definitely an interesting phenomenon if you think about it in terms of technology reporting. People are getting up to the second information about the world of the new iPhone (and the iPod Touch, and the new iTunes app store). Imagine the marketing potential of something like that, with that much rapt attention…. They’re also crashing websites (few sites are able to handle 6000 people accessing them at exactly the same time it seems 🙂 This last part has been pretty amusing, basically any site Leo mentions everyone goes to all at once, and it’s unavailable…. (and when I got up it looked like there was a drinking game going on where if a site is crashed everyone takes a drink…. 6:30 is a bit early for me though 🙂

I suppose some of the other reason to watch is that there are (were) 10 new iPhones being given away to random people, so that’s a good reason to be sitting in the chat or calling in to stream video to him to talk and give a sob story and hope to get a freebie 🙂

So I’m still undecided about the iPhone, and getting one. Yes, it’s expensive, I could get it for a plan price around what I have now (only a few $ more a month, plus the phone of course), but I have a iPod Touch already (no internet not around wifi of course), the “Rogers is evil/confusing” thing, and that it sounds like the 3G internet access kills battery life, so if you’re turning that off why not just keep the iPod Touch anyway… I think I’ll wait for a few days at least to wait to hear what other people have to say, and lets be honest, I’ll probably break down and end up getting one next week sometime 🙂

Anyway, congrats Leo on a unique new way of doing media and good luck on the last 1.5 hours of your 24 hour marathon!