Morisy dot com

Or rather, the lack thereof. A major German publisher, presumably in Apple's ranks of the exempted (a "well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format," as they put it to the Times), is pushing back on Apple's suggestion that they tone down their racy content.

Bild, Germany's daily "picture newspaper" tabloid since 1952, has had their "shake the Bild girl app" shaken from the App store for showing areolas, and the International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) is considering a formal complaint, according to The Guardian.
The app in question
The piece quotes Association of German Magazine Publishers chief executive Wolfgang Fuerstner by way of Der Spiegel*: "Publishers can't sell their soul just to get a few lousy pennies from Apple."

Nips are a no-no in most state-side tabloids and lad mags, but trying to export cultural standards elsewhere might be a dangerous game.

*I couldn't find this quote anywhere in the English-language Der Spiegel, so I'm taking it on the Guardian's word.

Photo: 

Yes, this photo was Photoshopped. Actually, Photoshopped Mobile since I did it on my Droid. But it wasn't that altered, which is slightly terrifying.

Danc over at Lost Garden recently wrote a great essay about "manufactured" gaming heroes, the public faces marketing teams come up with and trot out to promote a new product.

It's a great read, not the least of which it could be applied so much more broadly:

The game media, trained to vacuum up press releases and pre-packaged interviews, never asks the probing question "What did you actually do?" or "Well, if you didn't, who did?" Marketing handlers merely selects a plausible face and media blindly crowns them as worthy creative visionaries.

Idols, even false ones, fill a uniquely human need for worship. Both gamers and journalists are desperate to adore, to celebrate, to follow the brilliant individuals that birthed our favorite games. When presented with the mechanistic, faceless truth of modern game development, we reject reality and seek something, anything that fits our preconceived notions of creative genius. A paper hero constructed of marketing materials fits the fan's need and is gladly assembled for each game launch.

But do we really need to settle? Are artificial heroes necessary? What if there were real gaming celebrities out there who are actually worthy of our veneration?

As an IT reporter, I've definitely (rarely, but definitely) run into situations where the spokesperson and particularly the customer interview never worked directly with the product.

Let that sink in: A company puts forward as a customer testimonial someone who has never, ever actually used the product.

Photo: 

Riley, age 8 months, looking up at the camera, only slightly confused.

Ok, first a disclaimer: This pizza has 10 gazillion calories and it probably won't save money over ordering. It tastes incredible, however, so I still think you'll end up ahead.

Ingredients:

• Half a pound of crumbled blue cheese
• A pound of 80/20 ground beef
• 8 slices of bacon
• A pound of pre-made pizza dough, I used Trader Joe's
• Barbecue sauce. I recommend Corky's if you can get it.

Recipe

1. Stick the bacon in the microwave for 8 minutes, on a plate. Sandwich the bacon in between two sheets of paper towels that have had water sprinkled on them.
2. While that's microwaving, start cooking up the ground beef in a pan, adding garlic, salt, papper and some barbecue sauce. Cook until thoroughly brown.
3. Roll out the pizza dough onto whatever you'll be cooking it on. I used a pizza stone.
4. Start pre-heating the oven to 350°.
5. Sprinkle a (un)healthy layer of blue cheese on the dough.
6. Cover the the blue cheese with the the pound of ground beef.
7. Layer down bacon on top of the ground beef, and then drizzle with more barbecue sauce.
8. Sprinkle remaining blue cheese on top.
9. Bake for 12 minutes and then check on it until the crust is a golden brown.
10. Cut, let sit for a few minutes and serve.

From the New York Times:

A screenshot from one of On the Go Girls banned applications.Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls, which made Sexy Scratch Off, said that as of Monday all 50 of his company’s applications were no longer available. They included an application in which a woman wearing a swimsuit appeared to wipe finger marks from the iPhone’s screen with a rag and spray bottle.

“I’m shocked,” said Mr. Clarke, who said the company had not had a problem with its applications since the first one went on sale last June. “We’re showing stuff that’s racier than the Disney Channel, but not by much.”

Mr. Clarke said his company had been earning thousands of dollars a day from the App Store.

“It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”

How long until developers start picking platforms they can't get kicked off? Until the risk is greater than the reward, which means "really soon" for anyone who wants anything more provocative than sparkly unicorns in their app. And it's not a new or even particularly shocking phenomenon, since Apple's previously banished dictionaries.

The strangest part is that this is all on the device with a beautifully crafted browser that can, you know, browse the great smut basin that is the Internet.

A screenshot from one of On the Go Girls banned applications.

Photo: 

@BettinaTizzy asks:

@morisy Where does computer engineer Barbi live and what are her views on IP protection, open source and Creative Commons?

The Malibu Server Room, obvi.

Scary Red Text
Occasionally, logging in to check site comments, I get scary red text like this. It gives me a sick little thrill, realizing how complicated and interconnected everything is, that I can reach in and break stuff on this site, even accidentally, like opening up a mechanical watch and seeing all the gears and springs quietly clicking and whirring along.

Complexity is a beautiful and frightening thing.