Hi, I'm Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the tech news
that everyone's talking about. This week, the iPhone 4 backlash, nobody wants
Office 2010, and this Buzz Report is now diamonds.
First, it's the Gadget of the Week.
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The Gadget of the Week is the Samsung colon parentheses. Or, as we're apparently supposed to call it: The
Smiley. Which, I guess, is better than calling it the Samsung Colon Parentheses, to avoid using the word
"colon" when naming a product that isn't medically necessary.
But anyway. It's a cute little messaging phone with a dedicated smiley face button, so I guess it's ...
friendly? It seems like a perfectly fine phone. But seriously. We really don't need emoticon names for
phones. If they come out with the Samsung Less Than Three, someone's gettin' punched. But I would
consider the Samsung OMGWTFBBQ. That'd be ironic.
And now for the news. As you MAY have heard this week, lots of people are mad about the whole iPhone
4 antenna-not-working-depending-how-you-hold-it thing. And some of them, including me, have called for
Apple to recall the device. Even Consumer Reports is saying, "Yeah, it's awesome, but we'd just buy an
iPhone 3GS." Apple's stock price has even started to suffer from the news.
Personally, although I think Apple SHOULD bite the bullet, I think the closest we're gonna see to a recall is
Steve Jobs saying, "I don't recall any antenna problem." Why? A couple of reasons.
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi claims that a recall could cost Apple 1 point 5 billion dollars.
That's like enough for several MacBook Airs. Not only that, a recall would cost Apple some credibility.
Admittedly, that credibility is already waning, since Apple is sticking with the whole "Hold Different"
strategy, which is like the high-tech version of "jiggle the handle."
We'll see how that works out for them.
Speaking of phone news, the Droid X landed in Verizon stores this week, and Verizon was promising that,
unlike the Incredible, there will in fact be plenty of Droid X supply. Which would make it the first iPhone
alternative that you can actually buy.
In other news, a new NPD report says sales of Microsoft Office 2010 sales are "lackluster." Yep. That's
because Google Docs might not be awesome, but it's free. And it doesn't include any Bobs or paper clips or
ribbons or any other Office baggage.
Or maybe it's because most of us don't need to update from the version of Office we already have. It's not
like the new one offers anything supermegacool like Word with telepathy. Or unicorns. Or FREE.
And in other news, remember last week's Clogging the Tubes, with Pulpo Paul, the psychic octopus? Well,
now there's an app for that. uTouchLabs' new Ask the Octopus app lets you put in a two-choice question
and get an answer from "Paul." See, now, but what's funny is that I bet an octopus could, actually, under the
right circumstances, LITERALLY jump a shark.
And speaking of Clogging the Tubes, let's have a look, shall we? It should come as a surprise to NO ONE
that this week's Clogging the Tubes is the latest Old Spice genius: personalized videos from Isaiah
Mustafa.
Man, those Old Spice people are marketing geniuses. And if Isaiah makes a personalized video for ME, we
won't send Old Spice a bill for all the free advertising we just gave them.
By the way, those videos are so good that they actually took our attention away from the double rainbow
man. And the Doubledown KFC parody of the rainbow man. So, please go watch them if you haven't
already. And that's the Buzz Report for this week, everyone. I'm Molly Wood, and thanks for watching.
