Wires Crossed #70 – February 10

Jail For Rioting Blackberry User
Always remember this: when you use an electronic device it leaves a digital record. A lesson not learned by Nottinghamshire man Sam Lowe, who was jailed for more than three years for trying to incite a riot via text messages. He sent a message to the 160 people who were in his contacts list of his Blackberry to meet at a certain place where they intended to riot. The police found out about his plans, and even though Lowe deleted the message, the law was able to recover it to use in their case against him even though Blackberry has rigorous security settings in place.

Apple Stems Tide Of Dodgy Apps
Apple is taking a hard line on copycat apps that appear in its app store. It has recently taken down apps that are similar to popular games such as Tiny Wings and Words with Friends. The developers of the original games caused them to be taken down after they claimed the other versions were blatant rip offs. Apple agreed. Android face a similar problem, but it will be a lot harder to police as it is an open platform and does not have the same amount of scrutiny as Apple.

Marilyn Monroe Back From the Dead?
Not too sure if this is a good idea or not. The company in control of the estate of the late 20th century icon Marilyn Monroe has decided to create a Twitter account for her. Apparently there are already verified accounts for the likes of Bob Marley and Elvis Presley, too so this is nothing new. Our first thoughts was that it would be used solely as a marketing tool, but apparently they are currently tweeting some of her favourite sayings and talking about current events that involve Monroe, such as the movie My Week With Marilyn. While the estate does not benefit from the movie directly, keeping her name in lights is important to them.

Microsoft and Google In Stoush Over Privacy
Most of us know that Google’s latest privacy policy has not been met with universal approval because it grabs your data from all its services you use, but have yet to state what they are going to do with the info. Both the US government and some from the European Union countries are looking into the new policy to make sure it doesn’t infringe on anybody’s rights. However, the search engine giant has also ruffled the feathers of another technology leviathan, Microsoft. Microsoft makes no bones about the reason behind Google mining our information – to get monies from advertisers. Google is not too happy about the allegations, and have countered by saying Microsoft’s Hotmail service does the same. Who knows where it will end up, but maybe they should be more worried about what we – their end users – think.