Last month, Shelby Bonnie’s iPad vanished from his carry-on bag somewhere at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a red-eye flight from San Francisco. He figured he would never see it again.
But sometimes our devices aren’t ready to say goodbye.
While Bonnie, an investment banker, continued on his way to the Bahamas for a few days of relaxation, his iPad began a strange odyssey of its own, turning Bonnie into a digital gumshoe and the narrator of a personal thriller that played out on Facebook, to the delight of his online friends.
Photo: AFP
“I said, ‘I’m definitely going to lose my iPad, but I’m going to have some fun,’” Bonnie said in a phone interview.
The reason the iPad’s story didn’t end with its disappearance is a location tracking feature on Apple devices called Find My iPhone, which can be used to pinpoint any lost or stolen Apple device, including iPads and Macs.
Others have used this capability to very publicly hunt down missing devices, including David Pogue, a former technology reviewer for The New York Times who broadcast the hunt for his missing iPhone in Maryland to his Twitter followers. He eventually recovered the device with the help of local police.
When Bonnie discovered the iPad was missing after he left the Fort Lauderdale airport, he turned on Find My iPhone and saw that his tablet was at Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel at Graceland — in Memphis, Tennessee. The app represented the location of the device as a glowing green circle on an aerial map outside the hotel, with its distinctive heart-shaped pool.
His best guess was that he had lost the iPad in the airport when he was stuffing a travel pillow back into his carry-on bag and that the device was now in the company of another traveler who had picked it up.
That person had apparently decided not to turn in the device to the lost-and-found department at the airport. Through Find My iPhone, Bonnie sent a message, visible on the lock screen of the iPad, telling whoever had the device to call his cellphone for a reward. No one did.
Over the next few days, Bonnie began providing regular updates on the iPad’s whereabouts to his friends on Facebook, providing screen shots from Find My iPhone that showed the device headed to downtown Memphis and at the Links at Riverside, a golf course.
“IPad is on the move,” one of his updates said.
Most of his posts got more than 100 likes on Facebook and dozens of comments, as Bonnie’s online acquaintances became more engaged in the story.
“Please keep your fans informed as to the results of the mystery,” one commenter said.
By coincidence, Bonnie nearly bumped into his iPad on a short layover from the Bahamas. As he waited at Concourse C at the Fort Lauderdale airport for a flight back to his home in San Francisco, he saw on Find My iPhone that his iPad was on an airplane approaching Concourse C.
He quickly located the gate for an Allegiant Air flight arriving from Memphis and looked over the passengers disembarking from the plane.
He remembered he could use Find My iPhone to trigger a distress signal on his iPad. He activated the feature, but heard no sound. He told his Facebook fans he was within 100 feet of the iPad.
“This is better than Game of Thrones,” one commented.
He concluded that the iPad must have been inside checked luggage that never entered the terminal. By the time he got to the correct baggage carousel, the iPad had left the airport.
“At some point it became more about the storytelling and less about the iPad,” said Bonnie, a co-founder of the technology news and reviews site CNET. “Everybody loves a good story. It’s more entertaining than getting the iPad back.”
Bonnie saw an opportunity for mischief when the iPad finally seemed to stay put in a residential neighborhood in Miami Lakes, a suburb of Miami. On a map, it looked like a nice home with a swimming pool, Bonnie said.
He boarded his plane to San Francisco, ordered in-flight Wi-Fi access and spent US$50 to have five Mylar balloons delivered to the house the next morning. On the card, he listed the occasion as “Thinking of You.”
“Friendly yet slightly creepy enough for them to want that iPad out of their house,” one of his Facebook friends said.
A voicemail message left by a reporter for the phone number associated with the Miami Lakes address was not returned.
The balloons appeared to have an effect. The next morning the iPad was on the move again — back to the Fort Lauderdale airport. Bonnie, in San Francisco, was watching the device traveling on the map when it occurred to him that whoever had it might be taking it to the airport’s lost and found.
He went to the airport’s Web site and began filling out a missing item claim form when his phone rang. It was someone from lost and found.
“As described by lost and found when they called a second ago, a fairly elderly woman came in a few minutes ago and said she had gotten the balloons and thought it would be a good idea to return the iPad to the airport,” Bonnie wrote in a Facebook post. “She said to thank me for the balloons, but she didn’t really want to call.”
“Better than Serial,” a friend commented on Facebook. “Better than This American Life. Better than everything.”
Bonnie paid to have his iPad shipped home by UPS. He received it in San Francisco on Friday. He hung a banner saying “Welcome Home” on his front door.
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s F1, a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in Top Gun: Maverick, has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on Maverick, takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping
RSS