[telecom] Where Is David Pogue's iPhone?

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Where Is David Pogue's iPhone?

AUGUST 2, 2012

On Monday night, I was taking the Amtrak train home from a "Nova" shoot in Philadelphia - exhausted, but happy to have power and Wi-Fi for my laptop.

As the train was about to pull into Bridgeport, Conn., my stop, I checked my pockets - and my iPhone was gone. I was baffled; I hadn't even stirred from my seat except to get something from the cafe car, and I was sure to take my phone with me for that mission. Maybe I was pickpocketed. Maybe I'd set it down to pay for the food. I don't know.

But now my phone was missing. The Amtrak conductor held the train for about two minutes and helped me search around my seat - nowhere. She dialed it from her own phone, too - no ringing sound, and nobody answered. As the train pulled away, I used the Apple app, Find My iPhone, on my laptop to see where the phone was. It said that the phone was "offline." In other words, somebody had my phone -- it wasn't lying under a seat somewhere - and had turned it off.

Anyway, I spent three days going through the five stages of phone loss - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and kicking myself. Then, suddenly Thursday, Find My iPhone sent me an e-mail, saying that the phone was back online and had been located. It was in Seat Pleasant, Md., which my Twitter followers informed me is a rough neighborhood. The app created a map so I could see the house where my phone was supposedly sitting.

Now what? I contacted the Prince George's County police department. And I posted the map of the house to my 1.4 million Twitter followers, who have never let me down.

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