A suspected—and determined—shoplifter at a Walmart in Mobile, Ala. managed to escape store security Wednesday by climbing up into the store's ventilation system. From there, he crawled his way to the store's entrance, kicked through the ceiling, jumped down, and fled.
Look at this amazing video of some kind of demon bursting out of a manhole in New York today. And it would be so much more amazing if this citizen journalist had simply held his or her phone horizontally instead of vertically. Your viral video should not be a narrow strip surrounded by the void.
Some big news in the telecom world today, as the Justice Department has sued to block AT&T's $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile on antitrust grounds. This is just like in the old days, when antitrust laws were enforced.
Dadgummit, porn ruins corporate strategy! CBS is learning the hard way that if you give people a "branded mobile platform" to "upload" their "user-generated content," the "content" they will "generate" is "nekkid womens." The Tiffany Network started a site called CBSeyemobile.com where you, the idiotic consumer, can upload photos. And now they're shocked, shocked to find out that it's full of filth, loose women, and inappropriate public demonstrations of lesbianism! Ad Age broke the story in a Pulitzer-worthy feat of journalism, causing them to (modestly) publish this rather NSFW picture, which we are prepared to say is the most newsworthy photo that has ever graced that august publication's pages:
While mobile handset designer Nokia may be dedicated to the Symbian operating system, that doesn't keep company reps from attending the latest developer conference for Google's Android. And shortly after that report, the jQuery team issued a press release naming both Microsoft and Nokia as benefactors of the javascript library as a tool for mobile software applications. Who knew the scandanavian cell phone manufacturer was a polyamorist? Certainly a lot more excitement than regularly afforded to fifteen kilobytes of code. (Photo by Joe Loong)
The Daily Mirror reports on a factory worker from Yorks whose £27,000 Vodafone bill whups those run up by entrepreneur Joi Ito and Wired editor Chris Anderson. "Ian Simpson, 29, was sent the bill for four weeks' service after wiring his mobile up to a laptop to download TV shows - and only then found out his £41.50-a-month [Vodafone Anytime 800] deal didn't include unlimited web use."
(Photo by Daily Mirror)
NICK DOUGLAS — Some time when modern folk started storing our phones in our pants, we decided we no longer wanted everyone to know our numbers. At the same time, we started inventing ways to use phones that didn't involve that distasteful habit of actually talking on phones: voicemail, Skype, and texting from computers. The chimera of all this tech is Jaxtr, a service that lets you take calls, texts, or voicemail from anyone on the web, without handing them your phone number. So I tried it. Go ahead, leave me a message.
Since we first launched Gawker Mobile, many tens of dozens of subscribers have thrilled to clever composting of the hottest Gawker goss, sent right to their mobile devices. Each day, wizened Sufi mystics at our Hyderabad call center use ancient divination techniques to reveal the 160 most salubrious characters in a day's worth of Gawker posts. These characters are then painstakingly rearranged into a text message broadcast all over the (paid subscribing) world, incrementally weakening the spiritual chains that bind us all to the karmic wheel of this hellish existence. The daily text message may appear, on the surface, to merely tell you about 50 Cent or Paris Hilton, but it's really saving your very soul. All this for only $4.99 per month, billed directly to your device. How can you refuse, and live?
Yay, a new way to read Valleywag! According to this press release a friend forwarded me (score one for internal communication), Mobileplay now offers Valleywag on a free subscription basis. It's "highly scalable" and "fast and easy" (except the bit where you register, opt out of alerts, and download an app).
Because we would hate for you to ever be even the slightest bit productive, a reminder that the wit and wisdom of Gawker and Defamer are now available as daily text messages sent to your mobile phone. A recent example of our SMS love:
Femfox: sexy women advertising Firefox. Possibly the strangest browser-inspired furry fetish ever. [Femfox]
Even if Verisign's shopping its mobile biz, maaaaaybe mobile phone content isn't dead. India's Mauj Telecom gets $10 mil in first-round funding. Bollywood should hold the mobile content market over til American teens get back into ringtones — but this time, all ironically. [alarm:clock]
Hm. Basically, no one knows what Apple will announce next week. Most likely, it's more Intel-based Macs (yawn). Whatever happens, I'll be on the scene, unfairly belittling it. [Macworld UK]
Classic! Jonathan Grubb of Rubyred Labs: "When the Linux Enthusiast asks you if you use Linux try saying 'no, our company makes pretty good profits so we can afford Windows.'" [Jonathan Grubb]
Today was Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. So, uh, hope you did. And when Google hired her, I hope you sent me her photo for the Google Gals contest. [Unofficial Google Blog]
Verisign's out of the mobile biz. The telecom giant reportedly shopped its mobile division to at least one company.
