The Occasional Blargh

Retail Pimp. . .

Gawker's fun follow-up to their American Apparel story.

Apple Invented Video Calling. . .

Whomever started the Tumblr blog "Things John Gruber is Wrong About" got bored with it early on. After only about two weeks, it was abandoned. Otherwise JG would get a mention for this comment:

The existence of a front-facing camera may fair be considered a “catch up” feature on iPhone 4. But the ability to use the front-facing camera to actually make video calls is first on the iPhone.

Never mind that this feature has existed on other smart phones since 2004 and that there is an actual existing standard for video calls on 3G. In some cases, iPhone partisans don't let facts get in the way.

Why I Hate American Apparel

This is as good a reason as any. Just looking through the ads, or even the photos for its catalog, you can't escape the suspicion that Dov Charney, the CEO, is a pervert. He can be as slimy as he wants, but running his stores as though they were a beauty pageant/harem makes him a bigger douche than the A&F CEO.

[A source told Gawker] that American Apparel has a new hiring policy. For the past several months, they say, job applicants at AA have had their photos taken. . . where they are "approved" by a nameless person for hiring. The applicant's resumé is a distant second when it comes to hiring decisions, our source says.

Our source also tells us that a new policy now says that in order for current AA employees to be approved for a promotion or raise, they must also have their photos approved. As they put it, "Your looks determine your position and pay rate, not how effective you are at your job."

Building Better Consumers by Building Better Fanboys. . .

Gizmodo recently republished an interesting piece from the website "You Are Not So Smart: A Celebration of Self Delusion" about how easy it is to become a fanboy for a product, the merits notwithstanding. The executive summary:

The Misconception: You prefer the things we own over the things we don’t because we made rational choices when we bought them.

The Truth: You prefer the things you own because you rationalize your past choices to protect your sense of self.

If for some reason you read this page regularly and follow me on Twitter, or even decide to now read the past several posts, you'll notice I've been ragging on Apple partisans recently. This explains a good deal of my pushback against that. Read many of the people I've linked to for a while and you begin to see them engaging in arguments that are not much more than boosterism, ego massage, sour grapes rationalizing and so on.

 

I'm a broke-ass phone user, and AT&T's smartphone plans were my idea!

Smartphone data tweets

Twitter lists posts in reverse chronological order, so read them bottom to top. Or read them individually at these links (first, second, third, fourth, fifth). But the gist of the idea was to meter data usage so people would use less of it, and make some extra money to fix its many long-standing network problems, while making voice cheap enough to encourage more people to join AT&T. Well, they implemented the data half of my proposed plan (though I'll stop pretending it was my idea; also Windows 7 wasn't my idea either). To note, I don't use a smartphone. I just have the cheapest cell phone available, but only because people insist I have a telephone number for them to use to contact me.