The Wall St. Journal is reporting that Radio Shack will begin selling the iPhone for the holidays in New York City and Dallas-Ft. Worth and will roll it out to all of its stores in 2010.  Seperately, Radio Shack will be operating Target's wireless phone business or "store-within a store" so it is conceivable that they'll sell the iPhones at Target as well

"The Shack" has been rumored to carry the iPhone for over a year.

If you have any of the iPhone games above, iPhone developer Storm 8 might have collected your iPhone number according to a lawsuit investigated by Boing Boing. 

...the suit claims that the practice is not authorized by Apple and involves the execution of "malicious software code".  Storm8 has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game," the suit alleges. " ... Storm8, though, has no reason whatsoever to access the wireless phone numbers of the iPhones on which its games are installed."...The number farming was not disclosed to players until an acknowledgement in August that described it as a "bug." The lawsuit claims that only "very specific and specialized software code" could do so, however, and seeks injunctive relief and damages.

This follows news earlier this year that Mogo, a Swiss developer was stealing numbers, and calling their free customers to update to their paid app.

A couple of points to note:

• AT&T's poor network is really killing the iPhone's popularity and Pogue points this out.  As someone frequently in NYC, the iPhone is useless as a phone here.   I know many people who have an iPhone and still need to use a Verizon phone for phone calls.  The Droid will be tempting to them.  I've had similar experiences in SF.
• The Droid OS/apps are way less polished than the iPhone's.  While it isn't getting a lot of airtime, I think this is akin to Windows vs. Mac.  To many people, this won't matter. The Droid is definitely a techie phone.  Everything from the name to the feature-set is for techies.  Most people who've played with it so far are techie/journalists (like Pogue).  It will be interesting to see what everyday smartphone users think.
• Those docks are pretty cool but not a technology breakthrough.  Apple should allow docks to communicate with the OS so that Belkin can create a $20 car dock and nightstand dock.  OS 3.2?
• Not a fan of "App Phone"

Jim Goldman, below, is much more in favor of the iPhone.

Want to hitch a ride on another person’s inadequately secured internet connection - well, guess what, there’s an App for that...

Seems that iPhone App “Dessid” (€1.59, local prices vary) exploits a flaw that’s seemingly specific to Irish broadband users on the Eircom network.

Now, that flaw’s been repaired, but still 50 per cent of Eircom customers are using equipment that possess the problem. The problem occurs because each wireless network broadcasts a unique eight-digit code as its network name. That’s reasonable - what isn’t so reasonable is that the default password to the network is also derived from these eight digits. And, let’s face it, many users just don’t understand how to make their network more secure.

The acclaimed Musée du Louvre has introduced its own App through the App Store as Apple moves to open its first retail store to the French public in Paris at the Louvre Carrousel tomorrow morning.

We're not sure why you'd want to hold one key down and type with the other finger...but you can't do it on Droid.

We've heard the reports that Canada's Rogers was going to introduce an 8GB iPhone 3GS a few months ago, but now BGR is hearing that AT&T has similar plans to replace the low end $99 iPhone 3G with a faster iPhone 3GS.  Faster processor, more RAM faster network speeds at same price just in time for Christmas shoppers according to their source.  They also added:

One source said this was AT&T’s way of combating the DROID madness

We'll see soon if that's the case.

Mossberg reviews the Droid with the inevitable comparisons to the iPhone. Key downsides: Camera, Keyboard (cramped, no autocorrect), only 12,000 apps. Likes the docks, navigation system, network. More.

Hey, fresh this morning from the spurious but strangely amusing iLifestyle desk comes a breakdown of the dating habits of iPhone users..

Apple’s striking back against security critics, posting a new job ad for a security expert to help improve protection for its iPhone.

The ad, for iPhone OS Platform Security Manager, explains, “The Core OS group is looking for a talented and inspired manager to lead a team focused on the platform security of iPhone OS. The team is responsible for secure booting and installation of the OS, partitioning and hardening of security domains within the OS, cryptographic services, and risk analysis of security threats. The team is made up of a variety of security experts with backgrounds in system security and reverse engineering.”

It’s a leadership position, requiring management and planning skills, and also demands a “very technical and hands-on leader”.

The security boffin must also be “someone with a passion for understanding security exploits and coming up with innovative methods to create secure platforms.”