Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The holidays are here, tech is weathering the storm, office party season has begun.  It’s been a tough year, this one and it looks like some folks are hitting the egg nog, if not the crack pipe early.  Here is what caught my eye this week:  Enjoy

• Our editor takes on office pr0n
• Palm makes you an app maker, and you, and you
• Google’s dev phone, er, T-Mobile free phone
• Fake Steve Jobs incites a riot

Mr. Nelson hit the nog a bit too hard.

OK, Robert, everyone knows the problem.  That guy in the corner has pr0n up most times you have to go and bug him.  Your solution?

“maybe the next best thing to do is sit them somewhere in the middle of the office, and also give them the biggest display possible.”

Your solution is to give him the biggest monitor, the one I’ve had my eye on for years now and give him the best spot in the office for gossip???  I am stupified.  In fact, I am so amazed I am going to start heading to pr0n sites just so I can get a big monitor and different seat, away from these mouth-breathers.  Maybe if I watch enough of it, I’ll even get to work from home!

Reward the troublemakers eh Nelson?

Palm has a plan for app store gold: sign everyone up

Have you a browser?  Well, then buddy, you are in luck!  You are a webOS developer!  Get the business cards at hand, drop that title at holiday parties and get ready to hear the cash register start ringing.  Is it that simple?

Our Greg Billetdeaux explains, “Probably the coolest thing, is that you don’t need to have massive amounts of coding knowledge to do this. A lot of it reminds me of Visual Basic. You can click and drag all of the different things such as buttons, text boxes, and check boxes onto the model of the Palm….I think I might give this a try for myself.”

Is this a good idea?  Do we really want every Tom, Dick and Harry designing web apps?  I mean how many of Apple’s 100,000 apps suck?  80%?  And these were the geniuses that could download the SDK, code something and get it back to Apple for review and access to the App Store.  By lowering the bar to just any fool with a browser, what is Palm opening up?

I’ll tell you what Palm is opening up: numbers.  Specifically getting to 100,000 or even 20,000 apps by any means possible.  Palm’s app catalog will soon be bursting at the seams filled with apps like: Find your phone (an app that uses your phone to find, uh, your phone), Pet rock (an app that turns your phone into a inanimate pet rock), and the Zero Times Tables (an app that gives you hint on (X*0) math equations). 

This isn’t about Greg, I am sure he’d design a handy app, but the folks I sit behind in traffic, or observe in the supermarket or the folks at my kids lacrosse games are morons.  Designing apps should be for an elite group that can build a fascinating fart app or weather app.  Leave the app stuff to those guys.

Google’s mighty Android super-phone

Ah, the Nexus One.  Genius in the making, the worlds most perfect Android phone ever created made to work with everything Googlistic.  If my count is right, this is actually the third phone Google has built and given to employees.  Are we really to get this excited about another one?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to stick it to the man with a free phone and free service but this is America.  Last time I checked, T-Mobile isn’t giving anything away for free, despite their dubious ads talking about a BlackBerry plan for $29.99.  So what gives, will Google foot the bill?  Possible, but not probable. 

Most likely folks, this is just another test phone that looks kinda Android-y to me.

Fake Steve yells fire in a crowded theater

Oh Fake Steve, grow a pair huh?  When he incited a veritable riot by everyone using their phones at noon on Friday, what were you thinking?  Was it satire?  Was it a call to arms?

He intended to see how much power he’s got.  Fake Steve’s real identity, journalist Dan Lyons couldn’t get away with what his fake persona did.  He wanted the attention, the page views, the outcry to fall on his fake persona, but things got hot.  AT&T called his house and got all “up in his grill” to use the kids lingo of that day.  The real Dan Lyons backed off and muttered this retraction of sorts, you know - for a fake guy:

1. This was meant as a joke.
2. This may be cathartic, but it is pointless.
3. We’ve already won.
4. The media is all over this, and they’re on our side.
5. At this point, a demonstration outside an AT&T store is way more effective than O.C. itself.
6. We should be thinking about what comes next.
7. There is an even bigger goal.

Crack-less translation:
So, if I follow correctly: this was a joke.  A cathartic joke (better than most jokes but still dumb).  Our joke won a real objective.  The media forced the real objective, which kinda makes the joke look more like a real thing disguised as a joke.  Jokes are for kids, go protest in the mall.  I am staying home and thinking about what I’ve done, cause this got me in a heap of poo.

I am not buying anything from Fake Steve.  Not even the t-shirts or baby-doll for the Mrs.