Section: Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Welcome to another edition of Who’s on Crack, the internets only weekly(ish) blog that is brave enough to point out the moves in the tech world that are clearly fueled by illegal drugs. That’s right, we are talking about bazooka, cat’s pee, apple jacks, baby T., bolo, cloud 9, eastside player, jelly beans and red caps. Funny, lots of words for crack, but like pornography, you know it when you see it. Let’s get to todays accused:
- Free cell service
- You don’t want these followers on Twitter
- GOOG and VZN to take iPad down?
- Nelson goes the dark side: Walkman land
Money for nothing and your calls for free
With apologies to Dire Straits for ripping off the title, Walmart wants to give you free wireless service. The catch, keep it short and use a crappy phone. Easy right? Our Robert Nelson breaks it down for us:
“One nice perk here is the ability to "round down" your minutes, which means you can actually talk for up to 1 minute and 59 seconds and still be charged for just one minute. Hence the rounding down. Or alternatively, you can end all of you calls at 59 seconds and never pay for minutes.”
Nelson’s got it. Want free service? Keep all conversations to under 59 seconds and you are golden. Do you ever really want to talk for longer than 59 seconds, ever? No you don’t. What cannot be expressed in a good 22 seconds? Everything else is fluff.
Cut the teen drama. Keep your boss from telling that story, yet again. Stop the works stories that never freakin’ end. 59 seconds or less.
But how to get off in 59 seconds? No worries there, as the Who’s on Crack staff has been out testing methods with our focus groups. Here is your guide to free cell service:
-“oh my gosh, a bird hit my window, I need to go check on it.” click.
-“wow, this is the first time today AT&T hasn’t dropped m…” click.
-“I should not have eaten all that chili, gotta run” click.
-“uh-oh, I forgot to charge my phone last…” click
Our focus group also revealed ones you should steer clear from. They are:
-“fake static noise” I am loosing you. -instant tip off and the callers hold it against you.
-“my mom is calling me to dinner” - we all know you don’t like your mom’s cooking.
“I’ve got another call coming in” -we all know no one calls you but us.
Crackheads rejoice, ditch your phone plan and jump on the Who’s on Crack free mobile phone plan (also known as silly Walmarts round-down plan). Use the focus group proven strategies to keep your calls under 59 seconds and you’ll have more money for the rock. Good luck with that.
[note: Gadgetell does not recommend following this bit of Who’s on Crack “advise” to avoid paying for mobile service. In fact, we suspect Mason is on crack here as it would surely result in higher costs for the rest of us, there are no free lunches. A drug test stands between Mason and future writing…]
Who is really following you on Twitter?
I say a lot of dumb stuff. Heck, most of what I say is dumb. But when you tweet dumb stuff, you could end up paying a stiff 1,000 pound fine plus get that criminal record you’ve been after. Our Sue Walsh explains,
“Chambers, who lost his job over the incident and apologized to the court, said it never crossed his mind that anyone would take it seriously. Unfortunately an employee of Robin Hood Airport saw the tweet and reported it to the airport's head of security who was then required to inform the police even though he considered it harmless.He was fined the equivalent of about $1500US but says the criminal record he now has is his biggest concern and that he hopes it won't prevent him from traveling out of the country to visit friends and family.”
Sure, he said he might blow up an airport in a tweet. Interestingly, it wasn’t one of his 600 followers who turned him in, rather it was an airport employee searching for Robin Hood Airport (the aforementioned “target”). No one took him seriously.
What’s next? Tracking tweets to movie theaters to search for “fire”? Will an exclamation point be the tipping point: “fire.” vs “FIRE!”? Is this more than out-of-date laws snagging the latest tech rage? What if we all confess to a bank robbery at the same time on Twitter? Would the paddy wagon spring into action? I’d suggest it, but I know all of you would wait until I hit “tweet” making me the first. Stay tuned for next weeks, “Whose on Crack from Birmingham Jail”.
Tablet envy?
Who doesn’t envy their neighbors lawn? This week, we learned that Verizon and Google have been thinking about a better iPad. Our Hunter Clark posted this:
“In response to the raging success of the iPad, it is no surprise that Google has felt the need to contribute to the newly found market of tablets. And, with their Android operating system, they already have the tools to create a solid product.
What is interesting about this story, however, is the fact that Verizon is branching out. AT&T is usually the network where devices other than cell phones go for their connection to the outside world. Up until now, Verizon has not been particularly interested in carrying anything other than cell phones. With this addition to the network, Verizon is officially branching out into other devices.”
Verizon has been pretty snuggly with Google since the Droid launch and it looks like that won’t end anytime soon, perhaps down playing the incessant Verizon iPhone rumors. Could a VZW-GOOG tablet make inroads into iPad world? Could, would or even should it an Android tablet be regaled as “revolutionary and magical”? Apple seems to be the only one preloading their machines with magic these days and it’s a pity too.
Sony keeps pushing Walkman, now Nelson is hooked
Our Editor keeps 3 or 4 smartphones around him at all times. Judging from his latest blog, he won’t even let his wife take the iPad to work, as he needs it close by, like a blankey. So how can a gadget geek fall in love with a backwards branded Walkman product?
From Nelson’s review, “I have used the Walkman W series for about two weeks now and can easily see it becoming a regular part of my running gear. I also would not hesitate to recommend this style of MP3 player, or more specifically the W series WZ-W252 Walkman.
Plus, there is still something that strikes me as cool by having a Sony Walkman, even if its not quite the same as what I had back in the 80's.”
Yes, the 80s. That is where Sony is taking their branding queues from these days. Virgin Media, authority of everything, says, “Technically an invention of the 70s, the Sony Walkman is best-remembered as an 80s icon.” But still, 20 years later the Walkman name lives on.
It’s been my personal crusade to get Sony to drop the Walkman name. Have they just run out of names, fresh ideas or do they believe that folks like me, who look back fondly on my groovin’ 80s days will get the warm-and-fuzzies and buy their stuff over the latest iStuff? It baffles me. Instead, when I see the Walkman gear, I remember quasi-physcho girlfriends, mohawks, the Reagan presidency and parachute pants. I am not sure thats what Sony hopes for.
But now, Nelson is loving his Walkman gear. He’ll probably edit out most of my rant here, as clearly he’s gone to the dark side and quite possibly sharing on Sony’s crack pipe. If nothing else gets through, Sony - you make decent stuff (a lot of it better than decent) - grab a new name - one that doesn’t make me weep for Madonna.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Eric Schmidt, speaking at Google’s shareholder meeting, bragged how many Android powered units were shipping. Schmidt claims they are shipping 65,000 Android phones per day. That’s a huge number of new smartphones entering the market each day.
A quick look at Apple’s last quarterly report says it’s shipping 97,000 iPhones a day. RIM is moving 116,000 units a day. One big difference between Google’s offering and Apple and Rims? Google’s not getting paid.
“We’re trying to build an entire ecosystem of openness, the inverse of the other guys,” Schmidt said, without mentioning Apple by name. Google co-founder Larry Page, said, “I think you’ll see that as those products mature we’ll figure out how to make more money from them,” Page said.
Google’s tack sure is unique. While planning to leverage their investment in the future, we are not sure how trapped makers or consumers will feel when Google begins to “tighten the screws”. A free OS is not enough to keep makers like HTC and Motorola from paying for Windows Mobile 7 Series devices (both said they will make devices featuring that OS). Is a free OS worth less than it used to?
Either way, more smartphones will encourage development in devices and the networks they run on. No matter how you slice it, combine these top three OS makers daily output and it adds almost 300,000 new smartphones to the market everyday. Impressive by any measure.
Read: [Google]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
As a person who has been through many cell phones, I always prefer to test out possible phones before making any final purchases. With the 
As of now its no secret that Acer is planning to launch at least one device based around Chrome OS, but according to a recently article on Venture Beat—that device could be coming in just a few weeks. 
No comments:
Post a Comment