Steve Jobs Gave Russian President Locked iPhone

Time to check out some of that ultrasn0w.

Last summer, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Silicon Valley to learn more about one of America's unique tech hotbeds. Part of his trip included a stop at Apple, where he met with Steve Jobs and even got a special gift of an iPhone 4.

It was a nice gesture and a very cool souvenir to take away from Cupertino. Of course, that iPhone 4 is quite useless now in Russia, as Jobs gave Medvedev one that was locked to AT&T.

To be fair, all iPhone 4 models sold in the U.S. are locked to AT&T, even though there are factory unlocked models available just north of the border in Canada. We can only assume that Steve Jobs had one pulled right from the U.S.-specific stock.

A tweet from Medvedev's assistant confirms that the phone worked while in the U.S., but not in Russia. We assume that he's referring to using it on a local SIM card, as AT&T does roam in Russia.

It's time for Medvedev to seek out the local talent to inspect his iPhone's baseband to see if it's unlockable.

Google Letting Users Blocks Sites from Results

Tired of seeing search results from certain websites? Google's got your back.

Google today announced a new feature for Google Search that enables users to block certain sites from appearing in search results. 

"Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right," say Google's Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang over on the Google blog. 

"But sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality."

If that's the case, Google has introduced a link that will appear when you click "back" on your browser to return to the Google results. This new link allows you to block all results from the site you just visited. Google says you can block up to 500 sites, but there's no mention of whether or not you're able to do a one-time-only block for the sake of a specific search. However, you are able to unblock the site later if you wish, so that should serve as a more convoluted work-around for people who want to block sites on a search-by-search basis.

Bill Gates Comes in at No. 2 on Forbes Rich List

Carlos Slim has further widened the gap between himself and the man who occupies second place on Forbes' rich list.

He was robbed of his ‘World’s Richest Man’ title in 2010 by Carlos Slim, a 70-year-old Mexican telecoms mogul who placed third on 2009’s list of the world’s billionaires. However, it seems 2011 was not the year of the comeback for Bill Gates. Forbes just released its annual billionaires list and Bill, with his $56 billion fortune, it still at number two while Slim and his net worth of $74 billion are sitting comfortably at number one.

Sweden Replacing Stamps with SMS System

Sweden is going to replace stamps with handwritten codes that you obtain via SMS.

Stamp collecting is about to get a whole lot more interesting as Sweden has just announced a system that could eliminate the stamp altogether. TIME magazine reports that the Swedish postal service, Posten AB, is looking to launch a system that would see people pay for postage for letters and packages via text message. 

AMD Bulldozer, Llano Launch Dates Leaked

Various sources point to June and July release dates for Bulldozer and Llano.

Based on information gathered by "industrial sources," various reports are indicating that AMD plans to launch its upcoming high-end desktop Bulldozer CPUs sometime during the week of June 20, 2011.