A Mobile App and One Man's 15 Minutes of Fame

Andy Warhol said it: "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."

Well thanks to MobileMe, Apple's online synch service, and the iPhone, Austin resident Kevin Miller is getting a bit more time than that.

The iPhone user lost his iPhone at a bar on June 20 while attending a Lego conference. Using MobileMe, a friend's laptop and plain old email technology, he and two friends tracked down the person who had his beloved handset and retrieved it.

He related the story on his blog, The Intermittent Kevin, last Sunday.

In doing so, Miller writes that he not only learned some shortcomings of the iPhone (yes, there are some) and the MobileMe service, but is realizing firsthand how the Web and sharing his story online at his dusty blog (in his first post in over four years) can bring instant stardom.

His iPhone hunt and successful retrieval story has been reported nationwide from dailies to tech blogs and everywhere in between.

As he writes in a follow-up post this week, being an Internet celebrity is a rare feat.

"It's fantastic in that (a) you feel like Mr. Awesome, and (b) you're glad you're not famous all the time. Hell, this isn't even real fame; I haven't been recognized by a single stranger at the grocery store. Just have to deal with comment trolls."

And, it's kicked him into getting back into the blogging mode:

"But seriously, folks, I've been intending to blog for a little while now, and procrastinating with wanting to install it locally on happywaffle.com and get it all perfect. Ah, forget it. Here I am, I'll start."

Just in case you're wondering what Miller's first 15 minutes of fame were all about, you'll have to scroll down his blog a bit to learn why and how he decided to a Lego version of the Starship Enterprise from the "keel up."

Here's part of his explanation:

"I will never own or wear a Star Trek costume, and I actually like Star Wars better. But (a) the Enterprise is as graceful and sexy as anything ILM ever put out, and (b) Star Wars has been done, man."