Archive for October, 2006
The truth about the Apple iPhone
While Apple is keeping its cards close to its chest, we can exclusively reveal the details of the new iPhone thanks to a source who’d rather talk to me than to, y’know, the people who normally get the inside scoop on Apple stuff.
* It will be white, or black, or another colour.
* It will be smaller than an iPod, or bigger. Or the same.
* It will have a full-size touchscreen, or a normal screen and some buttons.
* It will have a sliding keypad, or it won’t.
* It will play music, or video. Or both. Or neither.
* It will definitely do video calling, unless it doesn’t.
* You will be able to play iPod games on it, or you won’t.
* It will have a really big hard disk, or a small one, or none at all.
* It will cost $99, or $199, or $299, or perhaps a different amount.
* It will be announced really soon, or later than that, or never.
* It will look like an iPod, or it will look like something else. Or it may resemble a horse.
* A HORSE!
* It will, like, totally, be the greatest thing ever.
* This post is definitely not a transparent attempt to get hits and ad clicks.
(c) 2006, the entire internet
Things that shouldn’t bug me
People Who Capitalise Every Single Word In Their Message Board Posts Or Blog Comments. And people Who Only capitalise the Odd Word, Apparently at random and
use Line breaks For No good
Rea
son.
Off sick
Thanks to a heavy cold that meant virtually no sleep last night, I’m utterly incapable of functioning today. So I’m taking a sickie.
Colds are rubbish. You’re not ill enough to get any sympathy but you’re not well enough to do anything vaguely intelligent.
IE7’s out
And you can get it here.
Er…
…that’s it.
Apple: nice products, arsey attitude
Here’s a good example of why I’m unlikely to join the ranks of Apple fanboys, despite my love of Apple products: Apple ships virus-infected iPods, and instead of saying “shite, sorry” takes a dig at Microsoft.
As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.
Think different? Think playground, more like.
Unintentionally amusing Google ads
David sent me a screengrab of the Unofficial Apple Weblog, which covered the story about an Apple store design potentially annoying Muslims. This Google ad appeared on the page:
[photopress:googleadm.png,full,pp_image]
eBay’s buying some weird keywords, it seems.
The scariest monster in virtual worlds is… the taxman. Aieeee!
Making tidy profits by selling the Magic Sword of Gnarklabarsh in virtual worlds? The taxman would like a word.
Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities…
The rapid emergence of virtual economies has outstripped current tax law in many areas, but there are some clear-cut guidelines that already apply. For example, people who cash out of virtual economies by converting their assets into real-world currencies are required to report their incomes to the U.S. IRS or the tax authority where they live in the real world.It is less clear how to deal with income and capital gains that never leave the virtual economy, income and capital gains that in the real world would be subject to taxes.
Not to mention the proposed (and officially denied) “BlackBerry tax” here in the UK…
Heh heh heh
From the Popbitch messageboard:
Catholic Truth, an organisation seeking to out gay priests, will “lead to innocent clergymen being fingered” said a spokesman for the National Secular Society.
Marie Claire and death by focus group
It’s probably not a surprise that hacks and editors talk about other magazines a lot - usually to damn the competition, but occasionally to praise the good stuff too. One name that used to come up a lot was Marie Claire, which stood out from the me-too world of women’s publishing with its combination of the usual suspects together with really good features. Sadly over the last few years it’s gone more and more lowbrow - a recent Paris Hilton cover was particularly bad - so here comes a redesign to rescue it.
Unfortunately the redesign is based on focus groups, and the result is awful: a huge chunk of the magazine is now devoted to shopping, and the overall magazine seems to suffer from a major case of me-tooism - to the point that my wife is cancelling her subscription. From must-read to must-bin in just over a year.
By comparison, the LA Times is also considering its direction - but instead of focus groups, it’s asking its own staff. According to UK Press Gazette:
That makes a lot of sense. After all, reporters spend a lot of time highlighting the flaws in other people’s companies - so why not get a bunch of your own opinionated sods to turn their jaundiced eye on their own publication? I suspect the reason it doesn’t happen more often is because hacks say what they see, whether it upsets people or not - and if they’re looking at their own publications, the people they’ll upset and whose strategies they might mock are the people who pay their wages. If they’re fearless, they could end up sacked; if they let that worry them, they might pull their punches and render the whole exercise worthless.
It’s an interesting idea, though. Rather than sending for the focus groups, could it be cheaper - and more useful - to commission some of your own people to do an in-depth, “what’s wrong with…” expose?