I’m not exactly sure why anyone would want or need something like this? I can’t imagine a severed silicone child’s hand attached to your iPhone would somehow enhance your communication experience. I’m totally stumped here.
Mammoth reports on the best architecture of the decade. Some excellent stuff in here, from the Large Hardon Hadron Collider to the iPhone. Dig it!
The end of a decade inspires a lot of list compiling; in that spirit, mammoth offers an alternative list of the best architecture of the decade, concocted without any claim to authority and surely missing some fascinating architecture. But we hope that at least it?
Maybe David Letterman should retire his “Stupid Pet Tricks” segment in favor of a new one called “Stupid iPhone Apps.” Is it just me or are the below apps pointless time (and money) wasters? And a couple of them seem highly likely to cause actual damage to your iPhone. Apparently Apple sells 350 apps per minute from the iTunes app store—over 3 billion since it launched—but surely, soon, we’ll all be suffering from “cute” novelty burnout when the useful ideas have been used up ... or maybe not. Never underestimate the American consumer, eh?
Exhibit the first: Happy Dangy Diggy. This whimsical app allows you to blow virtual kisses to the object of your affection cyber-stalking. Although this might’ve come in handy were we in the midst of a full-blown H1N1 pandemic (you know, like the one that was supposed to happen), in the absence of a public health crisis, it’s just plain goofy. If you need an iPhone app to flirt, well, dude, you’re pathetic!
Next up: the iSteam app, which will fog up your iPhone with realistic digital fog. Someone showed me this at a party recently and I just shook my head in bored disbelief. You can simply breathe on your iPhone for free to fog it up, but at least that’s all that the app costs anyway. It’s gratis for now from the developer—which is about what it’s worth, if you ask me. Cute? Sure, but who cares?
Moving on, we have the iPhone Blower, which will push air out of your iPhone speaker. Enough to extinguish a candle. Big whoop. Watch the demo video:
If you don’t think this will cause damage to your iPhone ... then move on to the next two, the iHandWarmer (who thought that name up?) and Pocket Heat. The iHand Warmer actually kind of works by using up 100% of your CPU and draining the battery, but does it give off enough BTUs to really warm your hands? Doubtful. Pocket Heat, on the other hand, is admittedly mostly just a gimmick that’s meant to look like a space heater, rather than perform like one. Now that’s really pointless.
You have to hand it to Lou Reed. For five decades, the guy’s been on the cutting edge of the cutting edge, from the avant-garde rock of the Velvet Underground to ... developing his own iPhone app?
Yup. Reed, perhaps rock’s most decadent artist of all, has just released his Lou Zoom app and it’s available at the iTunes store and his website. What does it do, you ask? Well, it’s not really for rock and roll animals; it’s more an app for old people. The Lou Zoom basically zooms in on your iPhone contacts list, turning it into the high-tech equivalent of one of those large-number telephones your grandma has. The price: $1.99.
