Corporate recognition

I like where I work. I like my job. For example, when you hit your two year anniversary the head-honchos give you a small gift to show their appreciation of your hard word and dedication.

My friend Jeremy really appreciated his.

Apple: iPhone owners, we're sorry. Here's $100. (Kind of.)

Well, yesterday was great and dreadful. Great for those who held off buying iPhones - it's now $200 cheaper.

Dreadful for those who laid down $600 just six weeks ago for Apple's latest and greatest - it's now $200 cheaper.

Naturally, those early adopters were a bit ticked off. And rightly so.

Steve Job's response? "Well, that's what happens in technology".

In other words, "We knew our faithful customers would take the bait and pay a premium for the iPhone. After we've milked them we'll drop the price by a third and appeal to everybody else."

Bad form Steve!

Now Apple's PR elite have convinced Steve (probably under duress) to issue a statement apologizing ("Now say you're sorry") and offer early adopters a $100 credit to the Apple Store ("Now say you're sorry and mean it").

This is the same runaround they gave me when they kept my computer for a month and then pretended like they were doing me a huge favor by giving me $100 off (a purchase of $300 or more).

You can count the amount of stuff you can get in the Apple Store for under $100 on one hand. It's a ploy to hit you up for more money.

In the words of Fake Steve:

Anyway, it's been a pretty good week. We're screwing everyone in sight. We screwed you. We screwed AT&T. We screwed NBC. Man oh man. If we make it to the end of this week without angry picketers chanting outside our campus I'll be shocked. Peace out, suckas.

Frigtards.

Does the iPod Touch have Bluetooth? - UPDATED

Check the upper right corner. Squint a bit. There. See it? Next to the battery meter. Yup. Lest mine eyes deceive me, that's a Bluetooth icon.

Unannounced Bluetooth feature? No Mail or Notes programs? Delayed, unspecified launch date ("a few weeks")? Something is fishy. And does anybody else think the iPod Touch's home screen looks a little sparse and underwhelming when compared to the iPhone's?Anyone care to speculate as to why there would be a Bluetooth icon on the Touch when Stevie J and Party didn't mention a thing about it yesterday?

UPDATED: Nope. Apple confirmed no Bluetooth. Oh well. I suppose we can still hope for a Mail app.

iPod Touch announced - UPDATED

No my friends. That isn't the iPhone. It's the new iPod Touch. $299 for 8 gigs and $399 for 16 gigs. Boo-ya.

They also dropped the price of the iPhone TWO HUNDRED BUCKS to just $399 for the 8 gig model. Nice.

But back to the iPod Touch.

My dreams kinda-sorta came true. Yes, it has WiFi with Safari. You can download tracks from iTunes straight onto your iPod which is cool, but I don't really care so much about that. You can even have all your contacts and calendars synced as well.

But there's no e-mail.

Seriously.

Why in the world would you put a full web browser and access to an online music store and not put the e-mail program on there?? I might have actually used my .Mac e-mail address if they did. I suppose they could add it later but why not now?

Not saying I wouldn't want one, and I'm sure they'll sell loads of these for Christmas, but c'mon Apple...no e-mail?

P.S. Nanos got revamped to handle video and the iPods we know and love got MASSIVE capacity upgrades,rebranded as iPod Classic, and some smooth new looks. New colors on the shuffles.

UPDATE: What the heck? The Nano has a Notes program (just like every other iPod ever released) but the Touch...you know, the iPod with the full-screen keyboard...doesn't have that either. I don't get it.

Favor for a husband of a friend

Hey, a friend's husband is up for Connect Magazine's top 25 people who influenced Utah business. Cool, huh?

If you have a sec, please click here and vote for Jeff Barnes (5th from the top).

If you do this, good luck will follow you and your family for generations. If you don't, your dog will die and you'll lose your job.

Alabama teacher accused of raping student, fired, still getting paid

Seriously, I need to make a category on this blog just for stories about people in Alabama. Anyhoo, this teacher in Alabama who was accused of raping one of his students has collected $100,000 and received two raises despite being fired for two years.

Jigga-what?

"He is the beneficiary of a legal twist in a 2004 Alabama law that was supposed to reform the state's teacher dismissal process," sez this article.

Hmmmm. Get fired. Keep getting paid AND get raises. Yup. Sounds like the Alabama educational system has it all figured out.

One thing's for sure. If I were a teacher there and I heard about this, I'd be royally ticked off. "Sorry, we can't pay you more. We don't have the budget."

AT&T: we drop more calls than our competition

Apparently the Better Business Bureau looked into AT&T's little claim that they have the fewest dropped calls. They found what everybody else already knew: it was a load of steaming cow dung.

According to WIRED:

Turns out, the assertion was never really true, and was based on only a small part of a larger Telephia report. As a whole, the report notes that AT&T Wireless did not have the most reliable network in places like New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, according to Broadband Reports. Recent studies from Consumer Reports and JD Power mirror these findings, and have placed Cingular/AT&T at or near the the bottom of their rankings for reliability and satisfaction.

Looks like you've been caught lying to everyone AT&T! Oh, snap!

I really can't wait until the iPhone is available on other networks. Oh, wait. It is.


Photo via Gizmodo