There's Hype, Hysteria And History!
No, we're not talking about Three Brothers And A Sister getting the most traffic we've ever had since we launched three month's ago!
This is all about Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s upcoming iPhone.
Set to launch Friday, will the gadget - which triples as a cell phone, iPod media player and a wireless Web device - be as "revolutionary" as Apple CEO Steve Jobs has claimed?
Remember the television ads for the Motorola RAZR?
The commercials showed off the sexy, thin profile of the clamshell handset and seduced more than 50 million people from 2004 to 2006 to buy it, making it the most popular cell phone ever sold.
Meanwhile in New Orleans, an older black patron is having trouble signing into the library computer. He approached the help desk, and an employee accompanied him back to the machine to assist.
It turned out that the man was doing signing in properly, but instead of typing in the password "006" he was typing in "OO6."
Are you tech-savvy enough to discern the problem? If so, you just passed the digital divide test.
If not, then I'll tell you that our older friend had confused the letter "O" with zero "0," something that used to be inconsequential, back in the day when cheaper typewriters had neither a "1" nor "0"; instead using the lowercase "l" and uppercase "O".
Now, of course, such a misunderstanding poses a barrier to access, trivial though it might be.