After reading a somewhat serious review on an iPhone/iPad app that features jiggling Jell-O, it occurs to me that techs are odd characters when it comes to silliness.  They can also be a little unreliable in the humor department, but I think that depends more on who made the joke.




I actually have some personal experience with geeks and this sort of thing. A couple of years ago I forwarded an email about a silly calculation with letters and numbers and corresponding words to my dad, something I thought was hilarious and worthy of sharing with an analyst and statistician. He proceeded to check the work, find a flaw in a calculation, and correct it. Then he made a few of his own (correct) calculations to make another silly but clever joke, and sent it back to me.

Nerds live for that kind of thing, they seem to love the complicated stuff. And silly complicated stuff, like well-written apps depicting accurately jiggling gelatin: definitely. In my own house, where geek has ruled for years, humor and silliness are very odd things. There is no family, not anywhere, which pauses movies more often to recap or compare notes after comedic scenes. We pretend it’s so we don’t miss the next line or two, but it often lasts into thorough re-creations and performances – all of which are judged for accuracy and delivery. I’m serious. The last time we watched Snatch it took at least four hours, even though some of us were already doing our best voiceovers in sync with the characters. (I am not part of that some, and those who are know it makes me crazy, which is why they now pause the movie.)

My own seventeen-year-old son, who I absolutely adore, spends more time over-complicating even the most basic of the silly things. He has actually described to me why a particular Bugs Bunny skit is funny. While I have always appreciated the whole Werner Brothers crew and their use of thought-provoking antics for humor, I think I appreciated my son’s take on it more that day. And I wondered if my dad ever explained Bugs Bunny to my grandmother.

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When you think about social activist groups you often think of Green Peace, or maybe the Suzan Colman foundation, perhaps your mind may hit on groups like the Shriners. I do doubt that you think of Anonymous. When Anonymous comes to mind many people (too many perhaps) think “Hacker!” and all that this negative title has to offer. Anonymous does have only themselves to blame on this one though as through the years many of their members have perpetrated some very unsavory acts. The one that really comes to my mind was the releasing of personal information (including home addresses) of police officers. This act (which was, from what I hear, very unpopular even inside Anonymous) put many innocent people in danger; spouses and children to be exact.  

So we are sure that the question that must be mulling around in the heads of some of the more clear thinking members of the ever changing group is; “How to change the way Anonymous is viewed by the world?” They can no longer just hack companies and gain the same level of response they once did. Defacing a web site is becoming as common and mundane as graffiti painted on the wall of an abandoned building. Sure people look at it, read about it, and then file the incident away in the “just another hacker” section of their minds.  Anonymous needs something to work with that still has mystique but also hits these companies where it counts.

To accomplish this Anonymous has started their own analysis group. This group is reportedly staffed by Anonymous members whose regular jobs are in the Legal, Financial and Analytical world already. Together this new offshoot will use cough “unconventional” methods to identify and expose fraudulent activity and (as they put it) bad corporate stewardship.  This type of “attack” is something that the rest of the world can understand (if not get behind). After all, while the methods differ drastically then results are identical to what the judicial branches of our respective governments claim they are working towards.

Still it is very hard to get a good feel for the motives and psychology of a collective like Anonymous. Usually to find this you look at the movies and ideology of the leader(s). With Anonymous there is no stated leader and there is no group in control. It truly is a collective. Anyone can make a suggestion and those that agree jump in. This is Anonymous’ strength and weakness. As we have seen the smaller splinter groups that have cohesion are quickly infiltrated and run to ground by law enforcement. So while not having a leader helps prevent this, it also makes keeping focus nearly impossible. This is what is responsible for the many projects that have simply died out, or never even started on the date in question. This makes me wonder how long the analytics group will stay focused and if this effort will be enough to maintain momentum, which as we have said is one of the downsides to being a true collective.

Personally, I really hope that this project can meet their stated ends and uncover some of the corruption and fraud that does exist out there. I hope that it is successful enough that some of the more subversive plans and elements will turn their efforts to this instead of releasing information that has the potential to harm innocent people; something that Anonymous claims to be very much against.

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With all of the hubbub about Spotify and other new music services it seems that Microsoft would like to get in on some of that MP3 love. To do this they are launching a new $10 Zune Pass service. Now, this is not a price reduction, but it is a new level of service. With the $15 price tag you get unlimited downloads, complete with DRM, and 10 song credits per month. You can use these to download DRM free songs that you can use in almost any way you like.

With the new $10 plan you get the same unlimited downloads, but you lose out on the 10 song credits. We are fairly certain that this will not bring in a ton of new Zune owners, but it certainly is a step in the right direction for Microsoft at this point. This news was accompanied by a rumor that Microsoft will be adding more video services to the Xbox 360. Some of the ones that are being tossed around are Comcast, HBO Go, Crackle and many more. The thing that makes this even more interesting is that is Microsoft is working on this for the XboX 360 then it is already planning to drop these into Windows 8’s Media Center.

Now I wonder if I can get confirmation on that Microsoft Run Media Service that I was hearing about. Maybe this report is not so much Microsoft adding these services in but offering an aggregation service for these and dropping this into Windows and the Xbox… Remember, Microsoft has already said they are working toward integrating Xbox and Windows, so this idea is not that far-fetched. We will work to find out more on this.

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We have known that this was coming for months now and yet the world seems even more eager than before the announcement that Apple will have a Launch Event on October the 4th. What are they announcing? Well most are pretty well convinced that it will be long awaited iPhone 5. Along with this will be another announcement; one that will potentially change the balance of power in the mobile market (at least in the US). This is the announcement that Sprint will have the iPhone 5 for its customers.

We have actually been told on more than one occasion that Sprint will have it without ever hearing those words. As an example we told you that Sprint is cutting back the Silver and Gold VIP rewards. They end on October 1st. Sprint is expected to offer the iPhone 5 on the 15th of October. Several people that we know have been told they cannot take vacation during this time period. Now to top this off Sprint issued a statement saying that they will not be changing their unlimited data plan for their “new phones”. When you add everything up it all comes home to one thing. The iPhone 5 will be coming to the very last Unlimited Data plan carrier in the US.

We fully expect Sprint to draw in a very large number of new customers shortly after October the 15th. The question is; what is Sprint going to do about the customers that have been with them? That is the one thing that really could make or break their new power. If they do not take care of the people already with them, they could still potentially lose them to another company that offers the iPhone. I have read and talked to more than a few existing Sprint customers that are rather annoyed that they might have to pay full price for the iPhone (full price meaning $600+). They would rather cut their losses take the $200 hit for early cancelation and start up a new plan with a $199.99 phone and end up paying less than sticking with Sprint.

I tell you this, Sprint had better have a Loyalty Pricing plan up their sleeves or they could find themselves hemorrhaging customers rather quickly and to be perfectly honest; I am not sure that they can make up for them all with new buyers…

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