Now, I think we can all agree that Apple's marketing guys did a great job promoting their you-know-what phone. But, as far as sane people go, it's really been more than enough.

The latest bit of utterly ridiculous iPhone news comes from Heart Imaging Technologies, Durham. N.C. The company announced today that "medical images can be viewed on Apple's new iPhone". Wow, what a great feat of engineering this must have been. Just imagine, they've managed to send a digital image to a mobile phone. Outstanding!

The press release goes on: "Physicians can simply click on a web link sent via email by one of their colleagues, enter their password, and, for example, instantly view movies of a patient's beating heart halfway around the world. They can even put their colleagues on speakerphone and carry on a medical consultation while simultaneously browsing through the imaging results." 

Great news. It's nice to know that someone with an iPhone in their hands is going to cut you open and operate on your still beating heart while speaking to their colleagues "halfway around the world". This sounds really reassuring, if you're literally dying to meet Elvis, Janis, Jim and Jimi that is.

"Viewing medical images traditionally requires dedicated workstations costing tens of thousands of dollars, which in turn are connected to proprietary picture archiving communications and storage (PACS) systems costing millions of dollars more."

Yup, "millions of dollars" for archiving a few images and some video. Damn, my PC is probably worth billions to these people.

Here's a hint for the guys at Heart Imaging Technologies: when you outsource, for the love of God don't outsource your PR to North Korea.