It’s funny how a few tweaks can make a Government program go from completely legal, to questionably so. A new secret authorization puts the US Justice Department on the fuzzy side of the legal line, approving the expansion of a program originally …
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. It’s funny how things come back around. When I was growing up in the ’80s, music was looking back at the ’50s and …
Benchmarks are a funny thing. I think we’ve mentioned it close to a hundred times how, in real world usage, they don’t really amount up to diddly squat. Well, let me clarify that — they can give you a general idea of a mobile device’s performance, but they’re not always the bible truth in gauging [...]
The British charity Comic Relief hosts a bi-annual fundraiser called Red Nose Day that encourages sponsors to do something funny. When the event rolled around on Friday, UK parliament member Fiona MacTaggart thought she’d base her don…
Facebook announced a major redesign today with an odd, half-accurate, overused analogy. “What we’re trying to do is give everyone in the world the best personalized newspaper,” Mark Zuckerberg said, before showcasing the social netw…
Adam Goldberg is best known for memorable roles in films like Saving Private Ryan and the TV sitcom Friends. But since the age of 14 Goldberg has also been a director, crafting experimental films that pushed the traditional us…
The rumor about an upcoming new iPhone called “iPhone Math” was interesting on many levels. It would be fascinating to see how well an iPhone phablet would sell. But it would also be funny if Apple (AAPL) truly launched a product with a name this stupid. The competition for the dumbest phone name is currently fierce and there is no shortage of strong contenders out there. Here’s my top-five: BLU Tank is my current favorite. It combines an annoying misspelling of a color with senseless capitalization of an entire word. As a kicker, the “Tank” portion of the name is misleading and inappropriate for a model that weighs just 92 grams and is only 0.59 inches thick. Packing this much
Apple (AAPL) is apparently looking to give Siri a personality boost. 9to5Mac has found a new Apple job posting looking for “a uniquely creative individual to help us evolve and enrich Siri” for future updates. More specifically, Apple wants to hire “someone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment.” The post notes that Siri is “known for ‘her’ wit, cultural knowledge, and zeal to explain things in engaging, funny, and practical ways,” so it’s safe to assume that the new hire will be responsible for enhancing those aspects of Siri’s “personality.” The real question, though, is whether Apple can make Siri realistic enough to
It’s good to see that Google (GOOG) has some plans for Motorola other than selling it off for parts. Unnamed sources have told AllThingsD that Google has hired Brian Wallace, who for the past year has served as the vice president of strategic marketing at Samsung’s (005930) American phone unit, to take the reins for marketing at Motorola. As we noted recently, Samsung’s marketing team has been at the top of its game all year by producing witty, funny commercials that both mock rival Apple (AAPL) and that deftly promote Samsung phones by giving concrete examples of how they improve people’s lives. So while most other smartphone vendors have made ads that make it look as though your smartphone will turn you into a cyborg,
Dearest RIM, Microsoft, Intel and Sony: Stop spending millions on mildly successful advertising campaigns. Just modify a delivery scooter to shout your brand name between gear shifts. Respectfully, A new lifelong Domino’s Pizza consumer.This talking …
