ITGumbo: spicing IT up

Say goodbye to watching iPod Heros on your subway commute. NBC and Apple, after failing to reach an agreement over television episode pricing on iTunes, have now gone off to sulk in their respective corners. Apple issued this statement today, saying it would not bear NBC extortion of its customers at $4.99 per episode. Says Eddy Cue iTune's VP: “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.” Or in English: "Fine! We just won't play! And you guys'll lose all your market share in the digital entertainment space. Na na na na na." This comic pretty much sums up the thinking of the rest of the internet.

Just because surfing the Chinese-government-censored web wasn't annoying enough, the Beijing Police announced yesterday that they plan to use animated characters to remind users to steer clear of illegal online content. And in another unimaginable extension of their control, the Party has also announced that reincarnation without authorization is also strictly prohibited. This story is so crazy it can hardly be parodied! This comic contemplates what it will be like surfing the Chinese web with Clippy the Cop hot on your tail.

Bloggers yesterday had a schadenfreude-ic chuckle at the expense of the "advocacy" group Prism. Prism claims to be a grassroots organization in favor of increased copyright protections for scientific research. They favor making research pay-per-view even when that work is legally in the public domain and for public benefit. It turns out, however, that they only claim the moral high-ground when it will add to their own profits. Bloggers discovered yesterday that 100% of the images on Prism's home page were infringed from Getty Images, with the watermarks still on the images to prove lack of compensation.

All in all this has been a pretty scandalous blogging week, what with Republican Senator Larry Craig exposed for lewd sexual behavior (or attempting it with an undercover cop) in an airport restroom. All this, and the bloggers still have to find time to do their regular paid work, right? Today's comic confronts this dilemma.

I hope against hope that everyone in the tech world is already familiar with the LOLcats phenomenon. If you aren't however, never fear. Thanks to the Wall Street Journal , your bosses will soon be forwarding their favorite LOLcats around the office. While the highly popular meme started back in January (like prehistoric times for the internet), the story of the silly cats with a-gramatical captions just reached Aaron Rutkoff at The Journal this weekend. Today's Mumbo Gumbo cartoon reveals what happens when internet humor invades the office work environment.

i maded you a comic.
kthanxbye.

First Second Life's Ginko Financial declares insolvency, losing 200,000,000 Lindens of customers' investments (five points if you know how much money that really is), and now World of Warcraft negotiates with epidemiologists to test the spread of diseases through its virtual population. Whatever happened to the peaceful escapism of internet gaming? In this installment of Mumbo Gumbo, our hero discovers that virtual life can be just as scary as, uh, real life.

You've probably already heard some of the internet buzz around spock.com, a new search engine positioning itself as the volksgoogle, or google of people. Well, if positioning statements were horses then Spock would ride. Unfortunately, the internet has confirmed that the product leaves much to be desired. High profile problems abound including a mad-libs ploy to tag high schoolers as pedophiles and prostitutes and rampant tag spamming of famous entries. If like me you're not too famous, however, you'll probably find that Spock has merely indexed your social networking sites to come up with light info such as "single and Taurus" (only half of which is true). Google remains infinitely more effective at finding this page.

Today the Mumbo Gumbo characters tackle Spock for your amusement.

The booming popularity of Apple's consumer products has meant the quick acquisition of many users whose predilections lie outside the range of Apple's more tech-savvy clientele. This sometimes causes crowd-flow issues in the Apple store, as user factions find their needs diametrically opposed. Today's musing focuses on this phenomena, lifting events loosely from a recent personal anecdote. What is it about the Siren song of Photo Booth, anyway?

The airline Virgin America set out on its maiden voyage last week, to much critical acclaim from techEs. (There's a virgin/maiden joke in there for those inclined towards such immaturities; i will leave it to the imaginations.) The American addition to Richard Branson's Virgin empire includes many inflight amusements such as Web games, music downloads, and seat-to-seat chat. What's more annoying, a crying baby or a thousand messages reading: PLESE SHUT ^ b4by!!!! ?
This Mumbo Gumbo comic attempts to answer the question.

The US Pirate Party, a franchise of the international political party dedicated to increasing creative freedoms by transforming copyright law, is vying for official recognition in Utah. While they don't actually condone pirating music, as ars explains, they employ the name to situate themselves within a tradition of political iconoclasts. Or to improve their viral marketing buzz. Either way, today's comic explores the Pirate Party's political / brand positioning, and its possible consequences.

Facebook is desperately trying to supplant all the applications you currently use, transforming your computing experience into one large college dorm common-room. (Remember how hard it was to concentrate on your homework with a TV blasting and twenty side conversations going on? Welcome to the internet.) We mentioned this phenomenon in a previous Mumbo Gumbo comic, but oh it gets better. Now a Vancouver company has created an "ingame" ToDo list application called Dabble Do which lets Facebook users create To Do lists and view those of their friends. Not only can you view your friends self-exhortations to do the laundry, but you can add items to your friends to do list like "please, for the love of God, you really need to do your laundry." Today's cartoon tracks Dabble Do to the office environment.

Today we learn of this recent study in which the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration proved that IRS employees are easily persuaded to give up their passwords to fake help-desk personnel using social engineering techniques. Today's Mumbo Gumbo comic repeats this experiment.

As Arnold mentioned yesterday, the internet is all abuzz with the news (first published in the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica) that the Vatican is now calling for missionaries to work their soul-saving magic in Second Life. Indeed, today's comic posits that this effort is sorely needed among many Second Life denizens. Enjoy.