I hate the iPhone. I hate it because I don’t have one. My current cell phone looks like something I salvaged from a cardboard box at Goodwill. Day in and day out I’m forced to endure the taunting of my Twitter followers who keep asking me to play “Words with Friends,” an iPhone application that might as well be called “Scrabble for Cool People.”

Still, I was interested when Apple announced it had started to pull apps from its iPhone Apps Store that it deemed “overtly sexual.” We’re not talking a handful of apps here, folks: last week, over 5,000 apps were removed. Typically, Apple removes around 100 a day. That’s a lotta yanking. (Yanking of APPS, you gutter-minds.) As you would expect, this vast sweep is catching software that’s guilty more of puerility than indecency. One app, Wobble iBoobs, makes a bikini model’s breasts jiggle when you shake the phone. The most egregious removal is Daisy Mae’s Alien Buffet, a silly game featuring a scantily clad (not nude) lead female character.

The removals are generating blowback from many iPhone fans (keywords: male, 30, parent’s basement) who don’t think Apple, which maintains a monopoly on iPhone application sales, has any business telling them they can’t ogle some animated lady’s moneymaker. But it’s also creating noise in the gay community. As Andy Towle reports, several popular gay-themed apps have also been given the boot. Congratulations, GLBT community – you’re being equally discriminated against! You’ve made it to the mountaintop!!

Looking past my own ghetto-cellular bitterness for a moment, the case raises intriguing questions about what constitutes “censorship” in an age where large corporations serve as digital gatekeepers. If it’s fine for Apple to pull applications containing near-nudity, is it also kosher for Facebook to ban breastfeeding photos? Forget “legal right” for a minute – does a company that’s reached a certain level of success have a social obligation to guarantee freedom of expression using its technology? We never had to face these questions with print media, because space in a newspaper or a magazine was always limited. Of course a publisher had to make decisions about what was appropriate or inappropriate for her audience. But the digital spaces we navigate are virtually limitless. How hard is it for Apple to create an Adult Ghetto in the iPhone App store? Then the issue becomes one of proper labeling, not of inclusion or exclusion.

America has a long and proud First Amendment tradition. Companies like Twitter have been instrumental in bringing the fight for freedom to dictatorships like Iran. Corporations should seek to expand freedoms in these virtual spaces, not restrict them.

For now, it doesn’t appear that Apple is budging. If you want scantily clad women or half-naked men, you’ll have to find them somewhere else on the Internet. Good luck with that.

Uncategorized apple, daisy maes alien buffet, gay, glbt, iphone, iphone apps, technology

I need schooling. Specifically, I need someone to explain the appeal of Foursquare, a.k.a. the TMI of GPS.

For those of you who are unaware (lucky bastards), Foursquare is a mobile application where you “check in” upon arriving at a destination. As you accumulate check-ins, you win prizes, or “badges.” Check-in to a single location enough, and you’re declared its “Mayor.”

For the record? The first friend who attempts to become the Mayor of my apartment earns himself an ass-kicking.

If you’re on Facebook or Twitter and have any friends with a half-modern mobile phone, chances are you’ve seen your share of Foursquare check-ins. Personally, whenever one floats through my media-stream, I think of “The Game,” that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the crew of the Enterprise gets addicted to a headset that doles out warm tinglies for every point scored. All that’s missing is the brain-jack. Seratonin for iPhone, anyone?

Oh, sure. Call me jealous. Dismiss my complaints as the bleating of a technophile wannabe whose current cell phone looks like a prize from a box of Cracker Jacks. (No, those aren’t tears. Got sumpthin’ in my eye. Shut up.) But really, guys – I don’t care where you are. I mean, I care in a general way. You at home? Work? On a trip to the Bahamas? At a convention listening to a life-altering speaker? That’s great – let us know. That’s newsworthy among friends. But I don’t need latitude and longitude. I don’t give a shit that your hankering for day-old corn dogs has made you Mayor of the 7-11 at 91st and Roosevelt. I’m your friend, man – not your professional stalker. For that, I charge extra.

David Kornik, a Foursquare user, ponders the impact this game will have on privacy. Do we want Big Brother – whose role, formerly occupied by the government, is now being played by Corporate America – to know our every moment? Oddly, that doesn’t bother me. I’m a TMI kind of guy who’d happily trade privacy for a big red shiny. Give all the information to Corporate America you want, my lovely online friends. Just don’t give it to me. Friends don’t tell friends their coordinates.

Uncategorized foursquare, gps, mobile, privacy, star trek, technology

Me: We should buy a Kindle.

Me 2: What, that ugly dull-gray slab of plastic? What the fuck for?

Me: It’s cool.

Me 2: Oh, that’s subpar even for you. You’ll have to do better than that.

Me: Okay, smartass. It’s a revolution in reading. We can carry thousands of books around with us at any one time.

Me 2: Okaaaay…but we can only read one at a time. Right? Or did we purchase a new set of eyes recently?

Me: Oh, like we don’t walk around Seattle with 10 lbs. of books strapped to our back on any given day.

Me 2: Yes, but when you drop a book, nohing happens to it. You drop a Kindle, and you lose those thousands of books.

Me: I would never drop my Kindle!

Me 2: Need I remind you that we’re the same person who dropped our new Palm Pilot within two days of purchase?

Me: You had to bring THAT up…

Me 2: Or remind you what happened to our Dell MP3 player? Or the five cell phones we had prior to our current craptastic model?

Me: Look, you’re missing the bigger picture (as usual). Thousands of titles, instantly accessible over a fee-free cellular link. Think of all of the paper that saves!

Me 2: Ah, the environment. All right, point awarded for tree-hugging.

Me: And wouldn’t it be cool, whenever we needed something to read, to download it in under a minute? Without paying the penalty of forced interaction with other human beings?

Me 2: All right, your appeal to my darker instincts has not fallen on deaf ears. Let’s bring this thing up on Amazon’s site and see what…um, hello? It costs $250?!

Me: It’s an investment.

Me 2: In what, the greenbacks used to stuff Jeff Bezos’ mattress?? Let’s see what the Internet says about that…

Me: Since when are you so concerned with what the Internet thinks?

Me 2: Since you want to spent $250 of my money on a dead-tree replacer, that’s since when. Hmmm, here’s one of the Most Ironic Moments of 2009 – after Kindle customers downloaded 1984 from Amazon, the company deleted it from their devices without their consent. So much for ownership of digital content, right?

Me: Not fair – Bezos himself admits that was stupid. Besides, it was an illegal copy. Should customers be allowed to keep books they have no right to own?

Me 2: But that’s the thing – you don’t own any of these books. Like Cory Doctorow says:

They say that when you buy an ebook or an audiobook that’s delivered digitally, you are demoted from an owner to a licensor. From a reader to a mere user. These thieves deliver our digital books and our audiobooks wrapped in license agreements and technologies that might as well be designed to destroy the emotional connection that readers have with their books.

Me: That’s a bit hysterical. Plus, it hurts my feelings.

Me 2: Suck it up, buttercup. Holy hell – you can’t even share books with other Kindle users? At least Barnes & Noble’s contraption lets you lend out books to other Nook readers. Why don’t you want a Nook instead?

Me: Nook’s not even available yet. They were supposed to have it out by Christmas, now it’s not hitting until January. You want to invest in a company that can’t ship its hardware on schedule?

Me 2: Okay, look – I’m vetoing this. It’s expensive, it’s Orwellian, and it’s early-adapter. What’s wrong with carting around physical books for a few more years? Besides, you know that if we get this, we’ll never use the library again. We’ll spend ten times more on books than we’d normally waste. Which I guess is great for the authors we love, but not for our bank balance.

Me: So…no fucking way?

Me 2: No fucking way.

Me: How about we get an iPod Touch instead?

Me 2: Okay, but only if we load it up with DRM-free MP3s from Amazon.

Me: Deal.

Uncategorized amazon, cory doctorow, electronics, kindle, nook, technology