Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

A couple of days ago I tweeted on Twitter:

I feel so dirty – my genius sidebar on iTunes has just suggested Jedward … I feel judged, wrongly

I still feel that same – especially as the next day it suggested Van Halen! Please bear in mind, I’ve been buying stuff by The XX, African Soul Corporation and Elbow … I’m cool. But the iTunes Genius Bar had a different view of me … it clearly viewed me as a loser and, I admit, my self esteem has taken a knock.

The Tweet made it over to Facebook and, bless my supportive group of friends, I was roundly mocked. Then, the very witty Emma Molyneux, mocked up a letter from Apple explaining the sidebar’s decision … my feeling is, she’s working on the inside. Are Apple working to erode the cool and artistic integrity of our nation – we must be told!

“Dear Mr Johnson,

I am so sorry to hear you are not entirely satisfied with the services of your Itunes Genius sidebar.
You seem to think, based on your previous downloads that we are not suggesting the correct genre of music for you.

Unfortunately most of the recommendations are not infact based on previous downloads but simply on Apple’s newly developed Cool sensor.

It has not had much publicity so far but you will be reading about it soon I’m sure.

It’s quite complicated technology to go into here but basically it just knows what you really want to listen to but are maybe just not able to admit it …. even to your self….. Yet.

We just know what you really want and one day We know you will thank us.

Hope this clears up your queries.

Have a nice day.”

TechTags Plugin [ App Store | Apple | Facebook | Farnham | iPhone | ITunes | Macintosh | satire | Technology | Twitter ]

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It took me 25 minutes to get a coffee this morning. I’d be cool with that if there were hundreds of people in the queue – but there weren’t. There were four.

Coffee shops like Starbucks have simply offered too much choice to people who can’t deal with it.

I could smell the fear in the short queue as the poor people in front of me had to move the X Factor result to one side of their brain to focus on some challenging questions. In or out, wet or not, milk or soy … large, larger or bucket. Not one of them could cope with the choice. And the choice of names, surely, is provocative. I didn’t see anyone skinny ordering a skinny latte – but I guess someone in head office though asking people to request an ‘I want to be skinny’ latte was a little cruel?

It led me to the graph below – I’m convinced you were over-indulged as a child if your coffee order takes you over a minute:

We also have a guess graph today from a lecturer at an esteemed UK university. So driven to act was James (found here on Twitter) by our Facebook graph here that he not only penned one of his own – but made it considerably more pertinent that The Plooptionary had!

So we read that the blog world is up in arms, livid, snapping their Michael Buble CD’s over their pets faces about Facebook’s privacy changes.  Who’d have thought having an iphone virtually pointing up your trouser leg and automatically posting every facet of your daily life to a website really meant you wanted it kept to your group of close ‘friends’.

Surely in the age of celebrity where not actually being famous is a minority sport and actually have a job that produces something you can eat or use makes you some kind of circus freak you’d all be glad.  The Plooptionary reads a press release from Doncaster Council claiming they have just 3% of their population left to become famous.  It’s their intention to print the names and addresses of those people remaining who have no fame in the hope that the media cirus that it creates will, in turn, make the remaining 3% famous – for not being. The one person remaining will be given a Nobel Prize for secrecy and then photographed picking up the award with Barack Obama in front of a global audience.  No disguises will be allowed. Facebook is just helping this process.

We are reminded of the compellng science of this graph posted previously: