The conversation Consumerist's Laura Northrup had with an AT&T customer service representative after confirming that iPhones could not be purchased online when using any New York zip code almost plays out like an SNL skit:

Daphne: Welcome to AT&T online Sales support. How may I assist you with placing your order today?

Laura: Hi, I was looking at the iPhone 3Gs and the system tells me that I cannot order one in my ZIP code. My zip code is 11231. (Brooklyn, NY) Is this true? Are iPhones no longer available in New York City?

Daphne: I am happy to be helping you today . Yes, this is correct the phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone.

Daphne: You don't have enough towers to handle the phone.

Laura: Thank you for your help. So the phone is not available to people anywhere in the city?

Daphne: Yes this is correct Laura.

Yikes. Turns out Laura then went to try and buy an iPhone online and was shut down using any NY zip code she tried.

Then we tried it and were similarly shot down but not with the same message Laura got from a customer service rep.

We know that AT&T's aware that it sucks in NY, but is the solution to a localized network strain from heavy data usage to stop online sales of a particular phone? Doesn't exactly seem like the most sensible of ideas, especially since there are plenty of iPhones in AT&T's brick-and-mortar New York stores.

Something else that's peculiar about this "sales ban" is that folks in San Francisco, another spot where data puts a huge strain on AT&T's network, are still able to purchase the iPhone online:

A possible explanation to things comes in the form of whispers regarding some kind of New York-based online sales fraud, but somehow the answer to the old ""Is it the network?" still seems to be a loud, angry "Yes!" After all, how can a bit of online sales fraud prompt refusing to sell one particular phone model to an entire market? Then again, if it really is the network, why are they still selling iPhones in stores?

Whatever the real story here, I'm definitely curious to hear if AT&T makes an official statement on this odd issue. Hell, I'd be happy with just another Luke Wilson pep talk. Instead, we're waiting for a AT&T media rep to write us back and further clarify the situation. [Consumerist]

Update: According to the folks at TechTrackr, AT&T told them that the reason for the mysterious lack of iPhones for New Yorkers is because AT&T "periodically modif[ies] [their] promotions and distribution channels." AT&T refused to go beyond that statement, so this is still a bit of a head scratcher.

Under a proposed deal, Google would digitize those pictures of "Manhattan buildings that were originally shot for tax purposes," and show them off in Google Maps. Seems neat, but it would be even neater if Google Maps were somehow integrated into the Phantom City iPhone app, because then there'd be even cooler iPhone-powered trips through history ahead. [NY Times]

Click to see the full resolution image

Created by Studio Lindfors, these images show scenes of New York and Tokyo after massive floods caused by climate change. Never did the end of the world as we know it look so dreamy and romantic. I can only hope that Al Gore keeps flying around the world in his private jet, because I can't wait to go down Broadway in a gondola, singing in the rain. [Studio Lindfors and Flickr via Bldgblog]

You'll see broken and unrealized dreams, that is. With Museum of the Phantom City, an public art project of an app sponsored by the Van Alen Institute, you can explore the various "images and descriptions of speculative projects" for New York City. BLDGBLOG even romanticizes the entire adventure (and justly so):

You walk past a certain corner on the Upper West Side and your iPhone starts to ring: you're being called by a missing building... Absent structures detected in a wireless blur, leaving messages for you (complete with call-back number).

Missing buildings calling to you, potential designs chirping to make themselves known. It's almost enough to make me book a flight and go for a stroll through Manhattan.

Actually, I may just have to book that flight anyway, because the app's dowsing rod-like nature demands proximity to the buildings to view any information or images. Otherwise there's a cold "Out of Range" popup. Time to pack a bag. [Phantom City via BLDGBLOG]

In fact, this festival sounds downright awesome. Originally designed as a study on the "geographic environment of behavior" in 2003, the event has morphed over the years into an "art and technology fest," said David Darts, the curatorial director for this year's event, in an interview with the New York Times.

Case in point, the aforementioned golf game, played with iPhones, GPS and plenty of pre-round stretching, is called Gigaputt. NYC avenues are the "fairways," the sidewalks are greens, and a series of 18 local bars serve as the holes. Much like a Wiimote with MotionPlus and Tiger Woods 10, players "swing" their iPhones and the on board accelerometer, coupled with custom software, drives the ball forward.

The fish tech, called Fish 'n microChips (get it?), is the work of NYU professor Natalie Jeremijenko. An array of LED-equipped bouys line the East River, where they monitor water quality and also flash whenever a fish (or body) wash by.

The chess game, also played with cellphones, is an eight by eight block grid mapped out by photojournalist Sharilyn Neidhardt. Human pieces are controlled by two chess master overlords from afar, much like the staff at Gizmodo.

The festival runs from this Friday and run through Sunday. While you're in town, why don't you stop by Elizabeth Street down in Nolita for the Gizmodo Gallery? Tech overload? Yes, please. [New York Times]

Due to certain materials used in consumer electronics (especially in batteries and displays), gadgets are some of the most toxic consumer items out there, capable of leaking dangerous chemicals into the ground if they're not properly disposed of. New York, and 13 other states, have thus passed laws to create specific, stronger rules for these products. Unfortunately, in NYC, that means the members of CEA would have to go door to door to pick up products like televisions and monitors, at their own expense.

CEA is claiming that this pick-up service would clog the city's streets with smoke-belching trucks, which is bad for traffic and bad for the environment, and that the laws are unfair to electronics manufacturers. A spokesman claimed that it's "an unreasonable and unsustainable burden on manufacturers."

The CEA's argument isn't totally unfounded—it certainly would be a financial concern, even if we're not sure their environmental point about trucking is all that accurate. But the fact remains that somebody's got to take care of this stuff: It's either the state of New York, that needs to spend far more money extracting these gadgets from the trash, or the manufacturers that create the harmful products in the first place. And the fact remains that many other states and countries (Japan, South Korea) have enacted similar laws. So we're siding with New York on this one: We think it's worth a little trouble to get these products conscientiously recycled. [Wall Street Journal]

Tisch School of the Arts student Kacie Kinzer created the tweenbot as a kind of art experiment. In her words:

I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

In New York City, we might expect the smiley-faced tweenbot to be stabbed, stomped, mugged, or covered in graffiti, but every single one of the journeys was completed without a hitch. Pedestrians would stop and help the little guy when he was trapped against a curb or headed into traffic, and point him in the right direction.

I don't know about you guys, but I like to think this project says more about the state of our nation than that stupid negative-nancy stock market. It's just about the warmest, fuzziest thing I've seen since the last Muppet movie. [Tweenbots]

She knew she didn't send any email, so she opened the attachment, which was a self-portrait her attacker emailed to himself. She forwarded the picture to police, who quickly matched it to a mug shot of Dacquan Mathis.

Fukuda made the not so bright move of emailing Mathis directly, telling him the cops were onto him. He cheerfully replied to her, "I will kill you! I know where you live, I know where you work. I'll send people."

But we all know how this ends—the cops busted him, and he confessed to jacking the iPhone as well as another mugging involving an iPod.

Moral of the story: Whenever you steal a piece of technology, make sure you know how it works, or you'll get made fun of on a bunch of blogs. Oh yeah, and go to jail and stuff. [NY Post via Gothamist - Thanks Ace!]

"Green roofs" are nothing new—one day soon all of us will have grass for a roof, especially if the economy continues to plunge into its fiery little hellpit. But at the Mosholu Golf Course in the Bronx, the roof of a new water filtration plant is "performative" according to landscape architect Ken Smith—who worked on it with a firm called Grimshaw—because it's also a nine-acre driving range.

Even though it is full of drinking water, the $2.1 billion facility has to stay dry. The summer downpours and spring thaws that would otherwise buffet the green roof are naturally filtered and collected in innovative drains that route water around the entire 9-hole golf course. It apparently takes up to eight days for water to make its way around the circuit of irrigation.

In case you were wondering, this will be the "largest contiguous green roof in the country," according to the Architect's Newspaper, and it alone will cost $95 million. It's also an impressive step forward for the City of New York in the arena of sustainable architecture. Mind you, this is not a concept, like a lot of the pretty sketches we publish.

George Carlin called golf an elitist sport and a waste of space. Though unspoken, I can only imagine there's a bit of a hat-tip to Carlin, a New York native, in this move. (Incidentally, the Mosholu public golf course primarily serves underprivileged kids.) So there you go, Georgie—who said the human race was too dumb to listen to reason? Oh yeah, you did. [Architect's Newspaper via Treehugger]

The Google Earth Blog estimates that the new New York City (captured here with Google Earth Pro) has seen an update with hundreds, if not thousands of new buildings. That wild estimate sounds right to us, as here's what the skyline looked like in January 2007:
Sure, this is just one city, but it's a sign of where Google Earth can go. Scratch that, it's a sign of where Google Earth is going. Really, really, really neat stuff (that will be a gloriously mundane commonplace in a few more years). [Google Earth Blog via CrunchGear]

Bryant Park (Sunday, 7:25pm)
Was in Bryant park on a nice warm Sunday night. Drank a coffee, tested 3G sticks. It's in midtown, but midtown on Sunday evening is likely about as empty as these networks get in the city, so all three cards performed well here.

Upper West Side (Sunday, 9pm)
My girlfriend's 4th floor apartment in an old (read: not built for radio reception) apartment. In her living room, which is pretty much in the core of the building. So a bad reception area. AT&T took the biggest hit here, but surprisingly, this was Sprint's best performance out of the four locations.

Rockaway Beach (Friday, 3:30pm)
Sitting on a rock jetty extending into the Atlantic off of Rock-Rock...Rockaway beach, dodging salt water spray. JFK is nearby so it's not in the absolute boonies, and all three networks were pretty close, with VZW being the worst and AT&T the best.

Brooklyn (Sunday, 5:30pm)
My house in Clinton Hill/Ft. Greene. Second floor, lots of windows-never had a problem with reception. I must be right next to a Sprint tower because Sprint obliterated the other two. My neighborhood is pretty old-school, so it doesn't surprise me that AT&T and VZW aren't totally built out here yet.

Results
Sprint was way ahead of the other two, who seemed to be in a dead heat most of the time. In downloads, Verizon beat AT&T, but in uploads, AT&T beat Verizon.

Back to main Coast-to-Coast 3G Data Test story

The five-year, $22 million diving project is underway today, and that means six lucky divers are presently 700 feet beneath the NYC surface, trying to find where one of the bigger leaks is hiding. They're living in a 24-foot pressurized tube that includes "showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop," and they're breathing air that is 97.5% helium and 2.5% oxygen.

Why helium? Well, since these lucky ducks will be in a pressurized environment for an extended period of time, they need to employ what's known as "saturation diving." Long story short, this technique allows the divers to go 700 feet down, and return to their living quarters without having to worry about repeated decompression sessions. In fact, the only times they have to worry about pressure is when they first step into the tube, and when they exit it a month later.

When the divers aren't squeaking at one another in helium-speak, three of them use a diving bell to go 70 stories down, where they do things like strip out 4,000-lb. bronze pipe fittings. Their twelve hour shifts are divided up into four-hour demolition sessions, one per diver, where they each take a turn breaking concrete to get at a malfunctioning valve array. After four hours, the divers "rest" for eight hours in the murky water, before returning the the cylinder.

When they're on break, the divers can have whatever meals they like, although helium tends to dull human taste buds. Tabasco sauce is their best friend, apparently, along with jalapenos and salsa.

“They lose a lot of weight because they’re burning so many calories,” said Robert Onesti, who is running the water rescue project via Global Diving. “It’s not for everybody. It’s heavy construction work, and it’s deep.”

And when the month is up, the divers will have another week in the tube to adjust to life without helium in their lungs. [New York Times, thanks Andy!]

A New York City school teacher that went missing almost two weeks ago was recently spotted at the 5th Ave Apple Store. Looks like 23-year-old Hannah Upp was just as obsessed over the Let's Rock event as we were—only instead of pulling a disappearing act three days before the start of the school year, we channeled our anxiety into non-stop Apple blogging and reviewing.

Upp's friends and family have informed all major New York publications (and Facebook) of her disappearance. According to her roommates, she had left her apartment on Sunday and then never came back. When she didn't return, they entered her room and found her keys, her phone, her wallet and ID still there. Random Apple store appearance aside, she's still nowhere to be found.

So, Upp, it's great to see that you're healthy and well, but all joking about Apple fandom aside, please get in touch with your loved ones! They're no doubt worried sick about you! And if any of you New York Gizmodo-ers spot her around, please contact the 30th Precinct. [ABCNews]

Let's say someone put a bomb on your bus and it can't go below 50 mph or it will explode. If that were to happen on a NYC bus you would probably be incinerated because the city has installed a new GPS device in thousands of local commuter and tourist buses. If the authorities get wind of a hijacking in progress, they can slowly stop the vehicle and prevent it from restarting via remote control. It may not work for "Speed" style situations, but for conventional hijackings, it could prove to be an effective weapon.

The GPS device is attached to the bus computer system and it relays information about its speed and direction to a dispatcher. In the event of a hijacking, the dispatcher can remotely slow the bus down and prevent it from being restarted—giving cops enough time to get to the scene. Apparently, slowing the bus down gradually is intended to give terrorists extra time to rethink their position before doing something drastic.

Financing for the system has been made possible thanks to funding from the Department of Homeland Security. So far, the device is on 3000 Grey Line double-decker buses, 80 DeCamp buses and plans are currently underway to equip 3000 New Jersey Transit buses. NYC transit is currently in the pilot stage for the program, but they are expected to follow suit with their 4500 bus fleet sometime in the near future. [New York Post]

They pore over the 300 photos and videos in the memory card—which probably wasn't exactly legal—landing upon a shot of a bunch of people drunk in a bar, wearing nametags. Though the names themselves seemed to lead nowhere, a couple clicks up and to the right, a little zoom and voila! Our heroes could see the bar's name, written on an awning.

Popping over there, they shook down the bartender for information. The barman remembered a party and a particular "big tipper" who, fortunately for the couple, worked at another bar. They met up with her, and it turned out that her sister was amigos with the Australian who lost the camera. (What kind of amigo, I guess we'll never know.) After a few e-mails, the camera is making its way back to the bloke in Australia, who is happy to "know there are some honest people left in the world." [SMH]

Sure, it's a cute story, but the question is this:

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Cell service is already pretty easy to pick up in a station, especially those in midtown. The new 10-year deal stops short of offering service in moving trains, but that hasn't stopped the usual public-transit cellphone brouhaha from kicking up.

I dunno. When I ride the subways, people are loud and everyone is squeezed together, but naturally there's no cellphone talking. On the more comfortable commuter train, annoying people chatter on phones constantly. In both cases, I tune out the irritants with a decent pair of earbuds. Is there still room for the debate? Or should we just wire the damn world and get it over with? I am leaning toward the latter. [NYT]

"But Travis, I don't live in NYC!"

Well, Timmy, that is okay too. You can click this link right here to get the breakdown on electronics recycling state-by-state. Now get recycling! – Travis Hudson

New Yorkers: Recycle Used Electronics This Sunday [Gearlog]