What? Whazzat? You say something? Sorry, I can't hear you, all I hear is this infernal buzzing of 10,000 bees in here.
Evidently there's a big market in producing "anthems" for World Cup teams. Unsurprisingly England leads the pack, with a Simon Cowell-produced song "Shout for England" currently No. 1 in the British singles chart. It's a reworking of the obnoxious song "Shout," by Tears for Fears, currently appearing in a cruise ship near you.
The Associated Press reports that John Aizlewood, a writer and broadcaster on both music and soccer, said English soccer songs "express the hope of victory, but the expectation is of disappointment."
Or if you're South African evidently you prefer ninety minutes of BZZZZZ! BZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZ! as your anthem.
Trevor Watts, 35, an AV technician and soccer fan from Bracknell in southern England, explained to the AP why songs are such a strong part of not only the World Cup experience, but soccer in general:
Read more here.
...
App Store developers, you've wanted a way to keep an eye on your sales stats? Guess what - you're in luck.
As PCWorld reports, Apple has released an app for that. The iTunes Connect Mobile puts iTunes Connect, Apple's back-end portal for the App Store, "in developers' pockets. Daily and weekly data on sales and trends is available for both paid and free apps, as well as in-app purchases."
There you go. Happy now?
You'll be forgiven for missing the news, though. As Softpedia says, it's strange that "Apple does not document the release of its iTunes Connect Mobile app on the News and Announcements section of its iPhone Dev Center. Yet, the application is available from the iTunes App Store for the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad."
As one might expect from Apple, iTunes Connect Mobile seems to be well-designed, PCWorld says, adding that "it seems a bit odd that this is an iPhone-only app; iPad owners will just have to make due with the 2x button for scaling up iPhone apps, or perhaps consider purchasing an iPhone or iPod touch."
Read more here.
...
India's business IT weekly journal, Express Computer, recently printed a quite lengthy piece by Subhankar Kundu, discussing the UIDAI project in India.
According to Kundu, the Unique Identification project is "undoubtedly among the biggest e-governance projects that the Government of India has taken up. Its mandate is nothing less than to issue a unique identification number to every resident in the country."
Kundu is being polite when he notes "it's not an easy task for largely unorganized state administrative departments to gather such an exhaustive volume of data" such as what UID calls for: "The project aims at creating a platform that will collect the identity details of every resident of India and subsequently perform identity authentication so that the UIC created can be used by government and commercial service providers."
With the first set of UIDs slated to be issued between August 2010 and February 2011, UIDAI seems to be speeding up the process of roll-outs. Nandan Nilekani, the head of this project, said, "I expect the first set of UIDs will be rolled out between August 2010 and February 2011... but it is all at the PowerPoint presentation stage now."
Read more here.
...
Are we missing something here?
Honestly. Let's go through this slowly.
The New York Times is reporting that Best Buy is "giving away a cellphone application, Best Buy Movie Mode, released in connection with the July 9 release of "Despicable Me," an animated 3-D movie in which an aspiring super villain named Gru inherits three little girls."
The app, named Minionator, "translates the gibberish of Gru's little yellow henchmen called Minions. In theaters, the Minionator will work only during the closing credits, but when watching a Blu-ray disc, users can translate lines throughout the movie."
It'll work for iPhones and Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones.
So, the whole point of the app is to get people to keep their cell phones on during the movie so they can translate a few lines at the end. Which, you know, could be translated on the screen. I mean, the technology for that is there. We can do that without requiring the house to keep their cell phones on.
Turn your obnoxious cell phone on to read more here.
...
Travel site TripAdvisor has launched a new Facebook service offering users "travel tips direct from their friends."
Agence France-Presse is reporting that the new service, TripAdvisor Trip Friends, "will enable Facebook users who are planning a vacation to identify -- via the Cities I've Visited application -- which friends have visited the location."
As the Los Angeles Times' Travel blog says, "Let's say you're going to Washington, D.C. If you're a Facebook user, you'll see a list of friends who have used 'Cities I've Visited, which allows people to tell the world all the places they've been to. If you have 15 friends who have been to the city or know it well, you can message each one privately or post a request to a group and ask for recommendations. What are their favorite restaurants? Hotels? Sights?"
Steve Kaufer, the founder and head of TripAdvisor, told AFP that the goal is to "get advice from your friends." The site offers user-generated tips on airlines, hotels and other services.
Read more here.
