Covia Labs Alert and Respond demo their product on a real iPhone thief (or did they?)

SFGate have a stolen iPhone story - with a happy ending. C|net is a little more careful and squeeze the word "allegedly" into the headline. Bicyclist allegedly steals iPhone during GPS demo

The story goes - and SFGate say this is 'according to San Francisco police' - David Kahn, the chief executive of Covia Labs asked his assistant Jordan Sturm to take his iPhone out on the sidewalk, so that he could track it with their new product Alert and Respond for iPhone.

As soon as Jordan was outside though, David noticed something odd on his tracking system that he was watching on his laptop: Jordan appeared to be running down the street at a very high speed.

Well, she wasn't, as soon as she stepped outside, a man on a bike snatched the phone away from her, and took off. But since the phone was being tracked in real-time, police nabbed the biking thief within ten minutes.

Youknow, they could have just used find my iPhone, which is free and all. But that wouldn't have made such a great demo-like story that earns "Alert and Respond" miles of press. Reading the newspaper just feels like adverting all the way these days.