iTrust because she doesn't

Perhaps Tiger needed an iPhone instead of a Blackberry?

From the Culture article in the January 2010 edition of Men’s Fashion magazine (article is on cheating, snooping and social media... and unsurprisingly references Mr. Woods):

Providing another layer of privacy, there’s an iPhone application called iTrust, which lets owners know if prying eyes have tried to gain access to their phone. The app’s maker cites a survey claiming that 67% of women regularly check their boyfriends’ phone.

They advertise differently in Asia

Here’s a Taiwanese Yahoo! ad. It sort of speaks for itself.

Today's something or other #58

Kids today....

Teen Sues Mom for Hacking Facebook Account

From PC World Magazine:

Suing your parents isn't just for celebrities anymore--a 16-year-old Arkansas boy is suing his mother for hacking into his Facebook account and allegedly posting slanderous remarks.

According to the boy, his mother hacked into his Facebook and email accounts, then changed both passwords. She also allegedly posted remarks that involved slander and information about his personal life.

New admits to changing the passwords, but denies hacking--she claims he left his account logged in on her computer. She also admits to making "maybe three, maybe four actual postings," but says the rest of it was a "conversation" between her, her son, and his friends.

New reportedly "hacked" her son's Facebook account because she was disturbed with the things he was posting--including a post that suggested he had driven home one night at 95 mph because he had been upset with a girl.

New plans on fighting the charges, as she believes she was fully within her legal rights as a parent to monitor her son's online behavior.

Click here to read the rest of the story. 

Use Tagxedo to create cool word clouds

Here's my new word cloud for SWATE courtesy of Tagxedo:

Facebook’s Amusingly Cruel CAPTCHA

This would be a tough way to start the day... You log into Facebook to see what's what and you get presented with this CAPTCHA.

British Teenager Fired From Job Via Facebook, After Cookie-Related Ineptitude

I posted this link the other day on Twitter but thought it was worth sharing in more detail here as well. From Fast Company:



Things you need to know before we get started: in England, cookies are called biscuits. Also in England, the word "cookies" does not also mean cookies, because this story revolves around a cafe called Cookies that does not sell cookies. This may all sound like a fun bit of wordplay leading up to a punchline, but it's not--that's just how they roll in England. It's a mysterious island nation, I know.

As the Daily Mail reports, Chelsea Taylor, a 16-year-old clerk at the Cookies Cafe in Leigh, was sent, improbably enough, on an errand to retrieve cookies for the staff of Cookies. She was given a "tenner" (in proper American English, God's own language, that's a "Hamilton") for the purchase of said sweets, only to lose it sometime during the journey. She returned to the Cookies Cafe both cookie-less and penniless.

Young Chelsea Taylor's boss at the Cookies Cafe was not pleased with this turn of events. How, she wondered, did she manage to open and run a cafe named after a snack she could not manage to procure? Heads would roll for this one! And it was our poor heroine who got the axe--and not in a very pleasant way.

Yes, Chelsea was fired via Facebook. The message is conciliatory, apologetic, and polite, yet its mere medium suggests a lack of personal involvement and a distancing that borders on the insulting. The shortened words, the text-message abbreviations ("u" for "you"), and the aversion to tell Chelsea in person all combine to form an epic brush-off--and Chelsea is not pleased.

"Even if she had sent me a text message or something it would have been better than on Facebook. She didn't have the guts to tell me face-to-face," said Taylor. Her mother called the action "appalling," "heartless," and "dreadful," and (rightfully) identified the typos and abbreviations as "disrespectful."

Is it okay to fire someone via Facebook? Would it actually have been more appropriate to use proper grammatical conventions? Those norms are still being formed. All we know is, don't go to the Cookies Cafe expecting cookies. They don't have any.

I think the Nestle Social Media Manager was having a bad day

And it undoubtedly got much, much worse after a lapse in judgment about how to deal with customers.

Here's a suggestion:  Going to war with your customers is never sound business practice and insulting them in this manner just seems petty and vindictive. What was there to gain? When you start in with social media - like Nestle did with their Facebook page - you lose some control over the conversation and you need to be prepared how to deal with that. 

Innovation that Matters

I found this article on the evolving nature of innovation by Nicholas M. Donofrio quite interesting. Here are some key highlights.... 

Innovation that Matters

The very nature of innovation is changing. Today, the innovation that matters is not the latest result of Moore's Law, or doubling RAM, or tripling pixels. Those things still matter, but they matter much, much less.

The innovation that matters now—the innovation that we're all waiting for, even if we don't know it—is the one that unlocks the hidden value that exists at the intersection of deep knowledge of a problem and intimate knowledge of a market, combined with your knowledge, your technology, and your capability … whoever you are, whatever you can do, whatever you bring to the table.

Yet too many people still think of innovation solely in terms of a wholly new product or technological breakthrough. But this is limiting, and it is false. Innovations can arise from fresh thinking in any number of areas: from product to service to process to business model. Michael Dell built a Fortune 500 company by changing the way computers are built and sold—but not changing anything about the device itself.

The good news for innovators and potential innovators is that, given the incredible complexity and diversity of the world today, opportunities for innovation abound. As confused as you think the world is, it's great for innovators. There are so many problems—some known and some yet to come to light—that opportunities for innovation will never run out. But we have to take a new approach: start from the problem, not the solution. That is, we can no longer say to ourselves "The end product is 5 GHz" (or whatever). Rather, we must ask ourselves "What needs to change?" and then—and only then—start thinking about how to change it. The question of what specific invention or product or innovation to pursue comes after that.

To read the full article click here.

Remember "Gotcha!"?

If you are a male of a certain age - say mid-30s to mid-40s - you probably remember the Anthony Edwards movie Gotcha! from 1985. You probably also played a version of this game with your friends in high school using spit balls and a Bic pen. Well, Gotcha! enters the modern age with a new, augmented reality game for the iPhone called Gunman.

The Economist to go Social in 2010

Interesting to see The Economist zigging while many competitors are zagging. The august magazine (or, newspaper as they would say) it launching an aggressive social media campaign to create deeper engagement with their readers and to attract new readers.

Tough to say if this will work but it seems a more promising strategy than (a) sticking your head in the sand and hoping the danger goes away; or (b) fencing in your content and limiting access only to subscribers.

The Economist newspaper plans to acquire 500,000 fans on Facebook and 750,000 followers on Twitter within six months, says the FT, calling it another sign that traditional publishers are looking to social media as a substantial source of web traffic and new readers.

The Financial Times’ report says that users of The Economist’s website will soon be able to log in to the site and make comments using their Facebook identity, through Facebook Connect. The website will also take on features similar to social networks, allowing readers to create profile pages and earn a reputation through other users’ recommendations of their comments on the site. (read the rest of the article here)

Looking back at analysts and the iPhone

From Brainstorm Tech 

The great iPhone death watch

Posted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt

December 1, 2009 7:59 AM 

What critics were saying about Steve Jobs' smartphone in the months before it launched

Three years ago, when it became clear that Apple (AAPL) was about to unveil some kind of mobile phone, critics began to weigh in on its chances of success. AAPLinvestors' Terry Gregory, building on a list of skeptical quotes begun by MacDailyNews, has put together what may be the definitive collection,

A sample:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Palm CEO Ed Colligan, commenting on then-rumored Apple iPhone, 16 Nov 2006

“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.”

John C. Dvorak, 28 March 2007

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.”

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 30 April 2007

"What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.”

Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, 21 May 2007

“We Predict the iPhone will bomb.”

Seth Porges, The Futurist, 7 June 2007

“The forthcoming (June 29) release of the Apple iPhone is going to be a bigger marketing flop than Ishtar and Waterworld combined. Because its designers forgot Platt’s First, Last, and Only Law of User Experience Design (“Know Thy User, for He Is Not Thee”), that product is going to crash in flames. Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype’s still hot. You heard it here first.”

David S. Platt, Suckbusters!, 21 June 2007

More than 33 million iPhones, 100,000 apps and 2 billion downloads later, the death watch continues. To see AAPLinvestors' full collection — including comparisons to such "iPhone killers" as the Palm (PALM) Pre, Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm and Motorola's (MOT) Droid — click here.

More drinking with your iPhone - never go thirsty again!

Have you ever said to yourself, 'self, I need a Guinness and I need one now.' You lie, of course you have. Okay, let’s say you’re out and about and you have a thirst for some Vitamin G. Now there’s an iPhone app that helps you “locate a pint.” The app also shows you how to pouring a perfect pint and provides an alcohol FAQ. 

I got to get me one of them iPhone things.

And here's an added bonus for your viewing pleasure. (I add value because I care.) There are three stages to the perfect pour: 

1. You craft the pint
2. You revere it
3. You savor it

Good god I'm thirsty.

Drinking alone has never been so much fun

Can the iPhone make beer even better? Well, perhaps. Check this out from Fast Company:

Turns out there's a keg's worth of new beer-themed iPhone apps that have recently bubbled to the surface of the iTunes store. In the brave new AR world, you'll always be able to find craft beers and a cozy watering hole wherever you go. Unlike last year's hokey iBeer app, the following actually have practical applications.(click here for the rest of the article)

Star Wars and Facebook: Together at last

From CollegeHumor.com. See more Facebook feeds here.

Mercedes, iPhone and James Bond

What do these three things have in common? Well, Mercedes has created an iPhone app that lets you control your Benz. What will the app let you do? Apparently....

• Navigation
• Remote door locking
• Vehicle finding
• Dealer connect
• Stolen vehicle location
• Automatic alarm notification
• Roadside assistance calling
• Automatic collision notification
• If that's not enough, there are premium extras that give you location-based weather and traffic info, and a concierge service that lets you book hotels, find stores, make restaurant reservations and so on.

Other than letting you steer your car through a parking garage while slumped down in the backseat it doesn't get much more James Bond than this.

Can't wait to see what the guys at Pimp My Ride can come up with.

Click here for the article in Fast Company.