Wires Crossed #34 – April 29

Your Move, Sucker!

Your Move, Sucker!
There are more ‘stupid robber’ stories out there than I’ve had hot dinners, but this one certainly belongs in the annals of robbery ‘dumbness’.  Florida resident Cameron Pittman decided to hold up a fast food outlet with – get this – a PlayStation controller. It seems police had already been tipped off about Pittman’s predilection for holding up shops  and he was caught in the act. We’re just hoping it was the Move controller he was using because its phallic shape actually resembles a firearm of sorts. If it was one of the traditional devices, well, the guy’s dumber than a sack of spuds.

That’s Dumb Dumb, TomTom
Not one of the smartest marketing strategies in the world, and one they are probably regretting already, GPS manufacturer TomTom has been caught selling customer information to the police in the Netherlands. The company has apologised profusely for letting the info go, which the police have used to see what stretches of road people speed along and then set speed traps for hapless motorists. With a decline in sales, and smartphones getting GPS apps, the likes of TomTom have had to look at other revenue streams including selling traffic information. While TomTom is claiming ignorance about the info’s end use, we’re hoping the lesson has been learned and maybe there is now some sort of rider attached to the sale of said info with regard to how it is used.

It’s The Principle Dammit!
In a time where there a multi-million – heck even multi-billion – lawsuits hanging around Facebook’s neck, it’s refreshing to see that somebody is going after the social networking site, but only for the princely sum of $1. American AOL journo David Fagin didn’t take too kindly to be labelled a spammer by the site, and was threatened with having his account deleted after he was barred from sending friends’ requests. While this is a very annoying turn of events, the bit that really made him irate was that when he went to complain to customer support, there was nobody to talk to – in fact the social networking behemoth has no customer service department, period. With a current value of between $60 and $90 billion, you’d think Mark Zuckerberg could spring for a customer support department, yeah?

9-Year Old Spends $200 On Apple Aps: Dad Not Happy
Speaking of suing – this ubiquitous American past time has Pennsylvanian father Garen Meguerian taking on Apple because his daughter  spent over $200 downloading games via her iPod Touch. It appears the problem stems from people being able to download a game after entering their password. However, there is a 15-minute period after the game has been downloaded whereby you don’t have to reenter the password, but can get games, and it seems that it is during this period that Meguerian’s daughter helped herself to the app store. Although Apple does include a warning next to the Install button, Meguerian is not satisfied that this is enough to stop children raiding their parents’ Paypal accounts without their knowledge. Watch this space.