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So someone leaves a phone on a bar, someone else picks it up and plays with it, and the next thing you know Gizmodo is taking it apart and declaring that this disguised iPhone is a test model of the not-yet-released iPhone 4G. The blog then outlined all the phone’s new features. Apple is taking the accidental leak very seriously.
In a blog post on Monday detailing how it obtained the phone, Gizmodo said it was left by an iPhone software engineer at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German specialty store and beer garden in Redwood City.
The person who found the phone peddled it to Gizmodo, which bought it for $5,000, Nick Denton, chief executive of Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, said by instant message.
His company’s sites have had a longstanding practice of paying for scoops, and the windfall was tangible. Traffic spiked on Monday, and at midday more than one million visitors stopped by the site in one hour to see pictures of the coveted gadget.
By late in the day, reports began to surface on the Internet that Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, had called Gizmodo to get the device back. Mr. Denton declined to comment, saying any conversation between Mr. Jobs and Gizmodo would most likely have been off the record.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Last February, director Spike Jonez (Where the Wild Things Are) agreed to shoot a video for Kanye West’s song, “See You in My Nightmares,” which was then expanded into a creative, short film – shot at a nightclub over two days.
The end result is an uneasy glimpse of Mr. West at his worst, premonitions of his MTV Video Awards appearance abound, and the ending says a lot about the musician’s own battered image of himself. It’s a fine piece, and will soon be available on iTunes.
Unfortunately for Spike Jonez, it was leaked last week with the help of…Kanye West.
“We Were Once a Fairytale” was leaked to the Internet and posted on Mr. West’s official Web site, kanyeuniversecity.com. Within a couple of days it was taken down without explanation. Mr. Jonze said the film was accidentally leaked from the postproduction studio of a friend, and that Mr. West did not realize that it was not meant to be circulated yet. “I think he was like: ‘Oh, it’s out. I’ll link to it,’ ” Mr. Jonze said. (A representative for Mr. West declined to elaborate.)
NYT has the whole story here and here.
“We Were Once a Fairytale” (embedded video)
(Photo: Spike Jonez, Inc. & Getting Out Our Dreams Pictures)
