Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Welcome to this week’s “Who’s on Crack,” where I get to point out events of the week that lead us to suspect perhaps drugs were involved in reaching their decision to move forward.  Behind every product is someone who said, “This is going to make us rich!” and about 90% of the time consumers say, “Are you freaking kidding me?”  Here’s my list for this week:

• Guitar Hero course at NYU ruffles feathers
• NFL wants to control Twitter
• MS to drop WinMo 6.5 in October
• The poor hate knock offs too

Bothered by Guitar Hero?  I agree.

This fall, 16 students will surprise their parents by taking a class in Guitar Hero, the popular video game.  From our sister site Gamertell, “New York University professor Gary Marcus is teaching a freshman seminar called ‘Guitar Heroes (and Heroines): Music, Video Games and the Nature of Human Cognition.’ No, really.”

My problem with NYU offering a course on Guitar Here is simple: they picked the wrong game.  Who needs help with the five finger fret?  What would be helpful and worthy of a lot of my parents money would be help with Mario Kart.  I mean, how many vehicles/character combination have you figured out?  Throw in your Wii Mii and the variables grow higher.

Imagine the topics: Risk Analysis and the Green Turtle Shell; Short Cuts and Their Emotional Impact,  Cornering: Advanced Drifting (prerequisite: driver’s license and health form waiver).  Mushrooms gone bad.  I could go on all day and still not be done.

Guitar Hero is such a shallow game: like following the bouncing ball it, the game is spoon fed.  Don’t get me wrong, I love rocking out with everyone else, but don’t believe that many students need help with the game.  Just commit to endless hours like the rest of us and you’ll get it.  A student’s $50k a year would be better served by learning the finer points of Mario Kart’ I think we could even convince parents of this.  Almost.

The NFL bans more stuff

The NFL is overbearing regarding all its properties.  The league is no stranger to restricting anything it believes it can control and in this case, it has set its sights on tech.  From Gadgetell: 

“The NFL has announced that beginning this season, players, coaches, and league officials will be banned from tweeting or posting Facebook updates starting 90 minutes before games and until all post-game interviews are completed.  The ban extends to anyone who represents a player or coach on any such accounts as well.

But wait, there’s more.  The NFL also says that members of the media will be banned from posting game updates on Twitter or Facebook as well, citing a long standing policy regarding live descriptions of games.”

Can you imagine the NFL employee that has to sift through each player’s Twitter and Facebook accounts checking the time on postings to ensure they are clear of violations?  What a load of garbage!  Fan interaction is a bad thing?  Are we next to ban smiling to the camera? 

Or did the NFL just buy a bunch of stock in MySpace who doesn’t seem to be listed a place you can’t post?  If so, well played, NFL.  We’ll add NFL players to the bands and pervs that hang there.

Windows Mobile to update version on October 6

A quick 20 months after moving to 6.1, the crackerjack Windows Mobile team is set to crank out 6.5 this fall.  It feels like I just updated my Samsung Blackjack to 6.0 and already here comes 6.5?  The funny thing is the iPhone I replaced it with is almost out of its 2-year contract.  Does the Windows folks giggle at that too?

With all the hype of the coming Android phones, the Palm Pre and possibly a new webOS version, Nokia trying to make inroads, who’s going to be wowed by these?  I am not sure and I don’t think the MS folks are either.  Is there room at the table still or did Android steal their seat at the end of the last tune?

The poor hate knock offs too

Our Heather Wood shined some light on seemingly do-gooders efforts to turn lemons into lemonade: the new counterfeit give-a-way program.  As Ms. Wood explains: “starting next month, the New Jersey and New York branches of US Customs and Border Protection are planning to launch a program that involves donating seized counterfeit iPods, TVs, DVDs, and clothing items to the poor and homeless.”

Seemingly harmless, possibly helpful, right?  No.  Have you ever tried to use some of these products?  Trying to load a song from your computer can be frustrating at best.  It is like dropping off a load of brussels sprouts at your local food bank or donating your worn-out, smelly Stan Smiths you used to mow the lawn 1,000 times.  Thanks, but no thanks.

What’s to stop these folks from eBaying these trinkets and thus putting the fake gear back on the market (though the fake logos will have to be put back on)?  The very goods they took off the streets go back, get captured again, given back the folks that sold them only to sell them one more time.  Around and around we go.

Obviously, I am kidding here and surely the program has the right intentions, I just don’t know how practical it is.