It has been five years since the first iPhone was unleashed unto the world. At the time of its release Nokia was the world's largest phone maker and Blackberry was the only game in town for (semi) smart phones. Gone are the texting days where you have to hit your button three times to get to the third letter on your numeric keypads, and you no longer have to argue about who starred in what movie with IMDB and Wikipedia easily accessible. When the first phone came out, there was no app store, (it was launched in 2008) so it was packaged with the standard apps that you still get on a new iPhone (stocks, weather etc) and Apple sold a million units in just a couple months at the starting price of 600 large. The prices dropped once you signed up for term, and these days anyone can have one, 80 year old, 5 year old; it doesn't matter. Consumers were initially skeptical about the touch screen keyboard, saying they can't give up the physical keyboard, but you get on to that in a day of use, since when you first get it you can't put it down for that long anyways. Buyers did not beware, despite the keyboard concerns and to date 217 million iPhones have been sold worldwide. For better or for worse, it keeps us connected to our friends, family, work 24/7… There is literally an app for everything from a flashlight, to a guitar to Mega Man II. There was a survey conducted on a gadget website, the Gazelle, that found 15% of consumers would rather give up sex than go without their iPhones for the weekend. That about 15% too high. The iPhone can also be credited with inventing the tablet market, because the iPad is quite obviously just a big iPhone. But for every Blackberry (see next post) or Windows phone that have been murdered by Apple, there is companies, such as Google whose mobile operating system for Android at first seemed to be a carbon copy of the iPhone have made incredible strides, with some consumers swearing the best Androids are better than the iPhones in every facet and that Apple has to step up their game with the iPhone 5 and not release another phone just to release one (see the 4S), since other than Siri there was no really great improvements. That'd be sweet if they stepped it up like in this concept video:
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Blackberry have posted a wider than expected loss and are forced to lay off another 5,000 employees as well as delaying it's BlackBerry 10 operating system. During the first quarter of 2012, RIM reported a loss of $518 million and had sales of $2.8 billion down from $4.9 billion from the same quarter last year. Their Playbook tablet was an epic failure, with just 260,000 shipped to date (compared to the iPad's first day sales of 300,000) and that, along with another delay of the operating system may be the final nails in the coffin for the one-time leader of the smartphone market.
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Do you like good wine and have a spare buck or two kicking around? Australian winemaker Penfolds have a dozen ampoules (I had to google that myself science geeks) of a 2004 Block 42 wine running you a cool $168,000. No big deal. Included in the price is a senior official from the company who is sent to deliver then extract the wine from its blown glass casing into a "specially designed, tungsten-tipped, sterling silver scribe-snap." Yup. For the design of the bottle, glass, etc Penfolds employed a world-renowned glass artist, an designer-maker who did all the metal detailing, a furniture craftsman who designed the casing and a scientific glassblower who designed and engineered the ampoules. Twelve of them, perfect for the person who has everything. Or a person who has nothing. Whatever
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Duchess Kate Middleton will be sleeping on the streets after an altercation with Price William and he kicked her out of the palace when she… Just joking, could you imagine? No, the Duchess of Cambridge will be sleeping on the streets of London to raise awareness of the city's growing homeless problems. Joining Kate will be Lisa Maxwell, a regular on the British daytime show "Loose Women," after Maxwell convinced her, no doubt after a couple G&Ts, to trade in her million thread count bedding for a box and a can of beans. The charity that's putting on the campaign, called "Sleep Out," is called Centre Point. In 2009, Prince William bunked outside of an evening near London's Blackfriars Bridge (where in 1982 it became international news when the former head of a private Italian bank, who was charged with embezzlement, was found hung from one of the bridges arches with $14,000 in random currencies stuffed in his pockets - the death was ruled a suicide). William's mother Diana was also a supporter of the charity.
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This isn't even funny. Ok, it's kind of funny. A woman at a Wal-Mart in Kentucky got superglued to a toilet in the washroom. She became stuck pretty quick since the glue was super, and struggled to peel herself loose, with minimal success. After another woman heard the struggling going on in the stall, she called paramedics who needed over an hour to remove the seat. What's worse is they couldn't do it at the store and had to detach the seat and take her to the hospital where they removed it in the emergency room. Officers suspect the glue may have been put there "on purpose" or a horse (that's what they make glue from right?) came in and peed glue all over the seat. Both reports are being investigated.
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I used to go to Darien Lake in the 90's.. way back when. It was great. Located between Rochester and Buffalo in upstate New York, I went there from probably four years in a row. Since that time, they have greatly improved their concert hall (which is now a 20,000 person venue run by LiveNation), a state of the art hotel, and this season $5 million have been sunk into the park for new rides and some of the old RV and tent sites have been replaced by log cabins. We tented it when we went, and it was pretty terrible camping, who are we kidding, probably even worse now with a gorgeous hotel staring you in the face. But that wasn't what it was all about. It was all about the Viper, a long steel coaster built in 1982. It has five inversions (first of its kind) and travels at a speed of 50mph (80km/h). Another great, but bumpy (least bumpy wooden coaster I've been on though) was the Predator which made it debut in May of 1990. I was there first season and it was super smooth, but these days, reports out there make the case that it's too bumpy and rough to really compete with any of the new rides. After the 2006 season, the ride went under extreme re-tracking, replacing most of the wood which had decayed over the sixteen years with new stuff, making the ride much smoother for guests. They added a Superman theme ride called Ride Of Steel in 1999 that's supposed to be pretty intense, but dangerous apparently, with a couple bad incidents already having occurred on the ride. But $5 million has installed many new rides, some family oriented, others a little bit more mature (or as mature as a roller coaster can get) so if you are in upstate New York.. check it out. If you've been there check it out again. Play Skee-Ball.
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The latest edition of Playboy's 20Q has Andy Samberg spilling his beans about his upcoming movie, which SNL host was his favourite to kiss (spoiler: ScarJo beat out Paul Rudd), his hippy parents, and his friendship with Adam Sandler. Just don't see "That's My Boy," I gave them the benefit of the doubt (especially Samberg) and I wish I didn't. Don't want to drive off that bridge again. Check the 20Q here!
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| Toronto of the future? |
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