Pepsi's Pick-up Problem

Here is blogger Patrick Baldwin

Need to pick up a chick? There's an app for that. At least for now.

Pepsi is facing growing criticism for an iPhone application that promises to help men "score" with two dozen stereotypes of women by giving users pickup lines and a scoreboard to keep track of their conquests.

It was all part of a promotion for its Amp Energy Drink.

The free app is still up.

By the way, some of the stereotypes include "foreign exchange student,nerd or cougar."

You then get possible pickup lines like, "Wasn't I in Space Academy with you?" for the nerd.

Take THAT, iFart!

iFart is an application that generates different fart noises which you can download to your iPhone.

Now the competition gets even dirtier with Pee Now, an application which... well, let's let the developer's own words do the describing:

"This application is true urinary fun. The application allows you to play pranks on friends or foes. Use Pee Now to shock your friends and embarrass your enemies in public. Mark your territory as you choose your peeing terrain. If you are in a class room with tile floors just click"Pee on Tile". If you are standing next to someone in your driveway just click"Pee on Gravel" Dont worry, if your driveway is paved, just click on "Pee on cement" Have you ever been the butt of a joke? We all have trouble trying to express ourselves sometimes,we use our hind site and wish we had thought of a witty come back line. No need to panic while coming up with a great comeback line any longer. PeeNow includes Pee related comebacks at the touch of a finger. You dont even have to open your mouth. Your iphone will do the talking for you. The creators of PeeNow say why spend time laughing at passing gas, when you can laugh so hard you will pee your pants. "

See? Sex Sells.

Hot on the heels of the MyVibe app is the "Hottest Girls" app. It delivers a picture of a woman to users' iPhones.

Starting June 24, it delivered a picture of a nude woman to users' iPhones, making it the first app with nudity.

Within just a few hours, the resultant surge in user demand crashed the service's servers.

Apple has not allowed these kinds of "adult content" apps before, but the iPhone 3.0 OS added an age verification feature, opening the door to a whole new world of iPhone apps.

image: not from Hottest Girls. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1316/1393028700_01c997a73d.jpg

Good Vibrations?

Many iPhone apps are downloaded once and never used again.

But what about the myVibe application? It's an application that controls the vibration feature of the iPhone for... Well, you can read about it here.

Now... Where Did I Put My...

It has been said that the term "smartphone" is really something of a misnomer for the little computers that we carry around in our pockets (which also happen to be able to make and receive calls).

With more and more information and data being stored on these little devices, the stakes are becoming higher and higher if you are prone to losing or misplacing them.

This week at WWDC, the Apple Developer's Conference, Apple introduced a new app that's an almost-perfect solution for those who lose their iPhones (if they run iPhone 3.0 OS and subscribe to MobileMe). It's called "Find My iPhone" and allows you, from your computer, to locate your iPhone on a map like a GPS target, make it ring, or wipe all data from it.

Of course, if your iPhone was stolen, you could just wait for the thief to take a picture of himself and use your account to send it. Then you'd have a photo of the thief which you could give to the police, as one woman in New York did.

image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26532187@N00/1844560026

App-solute waste?

With an average of about 53 apps downloaded per iPhone, here's an interesting figure: after downloading a paid app, only 5% of people were still using it 20 days later -- and that percentage was even lower for free apps.

image: blogs.reuters.com

$10 Laptop!

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) strives to make computer access affordable to children in developing countries. Their effort to design an extremely affordable (and durable) laptop yielded the XO Laptop, which goes for $199.

But for governments and regular people looking to buy something even more affordable: consider the $10 laptop, which might be going on sale soon in India. Actually the initial price might be as much as $20, sort of like how the iPhone was discounted after initial release.