Remember the pic of the box from the previous post? Apparently they succumbed and opened it. Less than 24 hours to go before the deadline and the keynote announcement, and they go and open it—and a website has the pics.

Sheesh. Some heads are gonna roll.

We can’t vouch for the pictures’ veracity; for all we know it may be another iPhone 2.0 hoax, but it seems real enough. Does it look thinner and wider to you? I’m intrigued by what seems to be a front-facing camera on the upper right corner. And the color! But we’ll all know if this is real later, won’t we?

Link to the site here.

Don’t we all love it when a shipper delivers a box to our doorstep?

Well, some folk down under are beside themselves this weekend.

Australian Mac Community forum site MacTalk reports that they received a sealed box from Apple yesterday that is marked “Subject to terms of NDA. Do not open until Tuesday June 10th 2008.”

They suspect it’s a promotional iPhone 2.0 unit for display until supply actually becomes available. Other resellers across Australia (and presumably around the world) have received similar boxes under the same Non-Disclosure Agreement. This means the phone might not actually be available for purchase immediately after the WWDC announcement as initially hoped, at least outside the United States. Sigh.

(If it were me with the box, I don’t know if I’d have the restraint. Especially because I didn’t sign no stinkin’ NDA.)

Patience, patience. As they say in my country: dalawang tulog na lang.

iLounge.com released this weekend the new edition of the much-praised, much-downloaded online-only The Free iPod + iPhone Book.

Now on its fourth edition, it features everything you need to know about iPods, iPhones, iTunes and Apple TV in a 270-page book that can be printed out nicely if you don’t care about trees and nature. Speaking as a Mac user and magazine editor, this is one of the few titles I’d actually pick up from a newsstand and buy if it wasn’t already free and downloadable. Excellent and informative. The Doodler gives it high marks.

To get it, click here so that The Free iPod + iPhone Book 4 gets loaded onto iTunes for subscription, and you won’t have to worry about missing it and other iLounge Library online publications.

An uncovered patent made by Apple reveals plans to create an iPod powered by light.

MacRumors reports that it has found a patent by Apple to create an iPod (and presumably an iPhone) with a solar panel under the LCD screen by which it can generate additional power.  The patent postulates a thin three-level sandwich of sorts that incorporates a touch sensitive layer, a display and a photovoltaic panel. The unique Apple twist is that by doing so it won’t have to create a separate charging panel; it’ll look the same, only you don’t have to charge it as often, or at all. With its giant screen, the iPhone’ll be especially energy-efficient.

The patent also mentions that the multiple solar cells would be coupled directly with specific components within the device, including the memory and the data-processing system.

Talk about hot gadgets. This is way cool, but don’t hold your breath just yet.

Zinio, that wonderful source of online versions of your favorite magazines, is field-testing (or as they say, “incubating”) The Zinio Mobile Newsstand, a service made specifically for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, and makes use of the graphics and multi-touch features of these gadgets.

At the moment, all you need do is head on to zinio.com/iphone on your device to get full, free (for now, otherwise it’s US$5 per issue), hi-resolution and fully readable copies of your titles.

Available ones include Popular Mechanics, Car & Driver, Men’s Health, Playboy, Penthouse, Esquire, PC Magazine, Popular Photography, Elle, Technology Review, Reader’s Digest, Macworld US and Macworld UK.

Read them while they last! (And if you know how to tweak Safari to pretend it’s an iPhone, you can read these mags on your Macs as well, in full desktop mode. Heh.)

UPDATE: I’ve gotten more questions about how to tweak Desktop Safari to pretend it’s Mobile Safari for iPhones than is comfortable, so here’s the secret, once and for all: Go to Safari Prefs/Advanced and check the box to enable the Develop menu. Then go to Develop/User Agent and select Mobile Safari iPhone. Have fun.