It’s a small thing, but Extreme Music knows how to keep you entertained while albums are loading.
It’s not always slow, but when you’re downloading tracks and trying to listen to others it takes a bit of strain, so every 5 seconds or so the progress bar changes its text.
Very funny, and clever.
This morning I attended a Google media briefing at the DD Campus. Never before has one event sparked off so many thoughts in my mind - sadly, in this case most of them are negative (expect more here, and even here).
As for the irony…
Google CIO Douglas Merrill, did a very effective job in making sure that we understand Google’s mission statement:
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
This is a great and noble mission, and I’d believe him if his most repeated and memorable quotes from the day weren’t:
“It is not our corporate policy to talk about…”
and
“We don’t generally comment on…”
These boiler print answers for just about every question whether about their future plans for SA or even how many staff they have locally.
So in short, Google believes you should know everything, about everyone - except themselves.
Nice..!
I was super stoked though when I installed the contacts app on my iPhone in the Plain Jane Dim theme and saw that the developer used Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose from Diggnation for it.
Like I said, just a wee bit geek…!
A big hat-tip to Virgin Mobile for their Bransonesque up yours to Vodacom this week. Here’s the deal.
Late last year pensioner Hendrikus Wessels ran up a bill of R48, 000.00 trying to win a blue BMW by sending a shit-tonne of premium priced SMSs (approx 320 p/day). After Vodacom let him know the ammount he owed, he confessed that he couldn’t pay and was cut off and given terms to pay - terms that apparently still would have him in the poor house (oh, and he didn’t win the car - but you guessed that, right?).
This is where Virgin Mobile come in - in a great example of a big company thinking small, they announced this week that they’d pay his debt in full… directly to Vodacom. From IOL:
“We’ll be settling Mr Wessels’ bill, and have offered him a complimentary package for a year, enabling him to SMS as much as he likes. But we’ll make sure he can’t use it to enter competitions or partake in any premium offerings,” said Virgin Mobile executive head of corporate affairs Nicholas Maweni.
They’ve also offered Wessels a session with the National Responsible Gambling Programme in the Western Cape, which he’s accepted.
Now no-one will believe that this is pure philanthropy from Virgin, and you have to think that it’s a R50k cheque just to give the finger to Vodacom, either way though it’s very well played, and a good laugh to boot.
I would kill to see the Vodacom execs’ faces when they get that cheque…!