Wires Crossed #125 – July 30
Aussie golfer's Twitter gaffe; exploding phone blamed for apartment fire; Twitter hijacks users accounts to push new services; and mother nature takes rap for slow console sales.
By Mike Wheeler
Elkington Claims Ignorance Over Angry Tweet
Australian Golfer Steve Elkington has yet to learn that once you put something out in cyberspace it is there forever. Playing in the Senior Open at Royal Birkdale in the UK, Elkington let rip about the local seaside town of Southport by tweeting “fat tattooed guy, fat tattooed girl, trash, ice cream stored guy and s— food.” If that was not enough to endear him to the locals, what he tweeted next certainly didn’t. “Couple of caddies got rolled by some Pakkis. Bad night for them”. The term “Paki” is highly offensive to Britain’s of Pakistani heritage, but what beggar’s belief is his apology, which amongst other things stated ““Being Australian, I was unaware that my use of language in relation to the Pakistani people would cause offence.” Really, Steve? Have you been living in a fish bowl?
Twitter Caught Faking It
And speaking of Twitter, the company is in the firing line from users for using real people’s Twitter accounts to advertise its new services. Nothing wrong in that, except you need to make the account holders are aware of what you are doing. When Twitter recently pushing it Amplify product it hijacked real accounts of people who had no idea what the company was doing. To its credit, Twitter has issued a public apology, but one wonders what other bright ideas its advertising department has dreamed up using real people to promote what is has to offer.
More Exploding Smartphones?
After posting a couple of stories in recent Wires Crossed columns about smartphones causing burns and being at the centre of a fatal electric shock, a Hong Kong resident is claiming that his exploding handset caused an apartment fire. A Mr Du alleges that when he plugged his Samsung Galaxy S4 into its charger, it exploded in his hands causing him to throw it across the room where it hit a couch, which then caught fire and the whole place went up in smoke. Sounds a bit convoluted to us, and we would be interested to know what the fire inspectors make of the electrical wiring in the apartment, as opposed to the handset, as being the primary cause of the fire.
Act Of God Blamed For Slow Console Sales
Steep pricing, lack of interest in hand-held devices, and huge competition from Microsoft and Sony are not the reasons for weak Wii and Nintendo 3DS console sales, according to Nintendo from a report out of Japan. It seems that the Tokoku Earthquake of 2011 is responsible for the lack of interest. Why was the natural disaster to blame? Because one of the Nintendo factories was destoyed? No. Because people could no longer make it to work to manufacture the devices? No. It appears the earthquake stopped the sales ‘momentum’ when it hit about the same time Nintendo started selling the device. We’re sceptical, after all, sales were less than stellar in territories where there was no earthquake. It’s not surprising that sales have picked up since the reduction in prices for the consoles, which is probably closer to the truth.
