George Hotz's unlocked iPhone isn't ringing non-stop anymore with interview requests -- and he finally got a decent night's sleep.
But the last three days have been a whirlwind of TV and media appearances for the Bergen Academies graduate.
The Glen Rock teenager rocked the tech world last week with claims to be the first person to unlock Apple's iPhone, freeing it from exclusive use on AT&T's network.
News of his achievement, which Hotz posted on his blog and was first reported in The Record in Friday's editions, catapulted the 17-year-old to international fame.
By late Friday afternoon, Hotz was telling his tale on CNBC, a reporter for The New York Times had called him and he had been interviewed for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
That was only the beginning. Over the weekend, he traded one of his two unlocked iPhones for a snazzy new Nissan 350Z sports car. Someone created a biographical entry for him on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. And Kevin Mitnick, one of the world's most famous computer hackers, e-mailed him his phone number. (They spoke for half an hour, Hotz said).
Hotz, who juggled media interviews as he headed north Saturday with his parents to freshmen orientation at Rochester Institute of Technology, was matter-of-fact about his rather lengthy 15 minutes of fame.
"It's been fun," Hotz said Monday as he shopped for a new computer router at a Rochester Best Buy with his parents.
"Things are settling down -- and no lawyers have called," joked his father, also George Hotz.
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He put one of his two unlocked phones on eBay but canceled the auction Saturday after fraudulent bidders pushed the price into the tens of millions. Hotz said he doubted those bids as soon as he saw them.
After canceling the bids, Hotz was contacted Saturday morning by Terry Daidone, founder of Kentucky-based Certicell, a supplier of used cellphones, who offered to trade a new Nissan and three 8GB iPhones for the iPhone. Hotz said he wants to give iPhones to the other members of his Web-based group, Dev Wiki, who helped him figure out the hack.
Hotz plans to fly to Kentucky at the end of the week to meet Daidone, then home to pick up the new car Saturday and drive back up to Rochester.
The electrical engineering whiz, who graduated from Bergen Academies, took apart a car which is still in pieces in his parents' back yard. He said he would "probably not" take this one apart. He amended that quickly -- "probably not right away; I'm going to be careful when I take this one apart."
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GeoHot has been given his own Wikipedia entry as well.
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