Wires Crossed #53 – September 23

1 in 10 Kids Under 10 Have iPhone
When I was growing up, your coolness meter was measured by the type of skateboard you had, the clothes you wore and the music you listened to. These days, it’s about the type of tech gear you have. A recent survey in the UK of 2000 people showed that a tenth of kids under the age of 10 have their own iPhone. Quite a statistic when you consider the cost of a unit and the monthly top up you have to pay, to say nothing of bill shock. Back in the day, a CD cost about $30 and a good skateboard about $150. With an iPhone you wouldn’t get much change out of $500. At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, all I can say is ‘kids these days!’

Yahoo In Email Row
Yahoo is apologising profusely for a gaff in its email service. It appears that a group of protesters using the domain name occupywallst.org, have had their emails blocked. The protesters are trying to get US President Barack Obama to stop the influence of Wall St money on politicians in Washington DC. While Yahoo says it was a spam filter causing the problem, conspiracy theorists would have a field day. Yahoo says the email was up and running within 24 hours.

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb
Not the first time I have used this headline, probably won’t be the last. It’s not that I don’t have the creativity to generate different headers (some editors would disagree), but sometimes somebody does something that is so stupid, words fail. Johann Levy, a dual French/British citizen invented an app that would tell people if certain celebrities and public figures were Jewish. Unsurprisingly, Apple has pulled the app at the request of an anti-racism group. Levy himself is Jewish and says it was developed for fun because he and his friends are proud of their Jewish heritage.  However, wouldn’t Levy have released that certain hate groups – and there are plenty of them dotted around the world – would love to get their hands on such an app for more nefarious reasons? Not that anybody of note who is Jewish would try and hide the fact, but why make things easy for the bottom feeders of the world? As I said, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Ex-Samsung Worker Leaked iPad Secrets
This is not going to make the stoush Apple and Samsung are having over the release of the latter’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet any better. A former Samsung employee, Suk-Joo Hwang, allegedly sold secrets about the iPad and iPhone to consultant James Fleishman for huge sums of money. Fleishman, who ran a company called Global Research, sold consulting services to investors, especially about industry trends and regulations. Fleishman and some of his coworkers have been arrested because they on sold the information to these investors who were looking for some inside knowledge on financial reporting. The FBI claims this is nothing more than insider trading, and the courts are about to decide if that is the case. Samsung supplies screens for Apple devices.

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