Technically Incorrect

The Disney Company is always so good at accessing one's inner child. The hope, the joy, the glory of absolute love, family goodness, and everything that sails in it.

So I am thrown a little off course when I hear that Disney may have falsely accused an 11-year-old boy of hacking the Pirates of the Caribbean video game and disabled his account.

The account I have read comes from the boy's dad, Brian Guy. Guy is a manager of MySQL's hardy pirates at Sun Microsystems. He also has a blog, which was positively fulminating with frustration Tuesday, as Guy told the story of his son's video game review site.

The site, Carsonreviews.com, seems to this untrained eye to be a rather fine construction, full of wit and wisdom. For example: "While my parents are busy cleaning the house for Thanksgiving, I am busy checking out free online games.= )"

Yet Carson's dad says: "Disney has falsely accused my 11-year-old son of hacking the online game, and Disney temporarily banned his account. They sent him a curt e-mail lecturing him about something he didn't even do."

Does a pirate ever accused another pirate of pirating? Just wondering.

(Credit: CC Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr)

Dad does seem like a fair and remarkably balanced chap as he explained: "I can see how at first glance, they might have misinterpreted his chat logs. Another user had made my son aware of a "glitch" (that's what they called it) that allowed users to rapid fire their cannons."

We are all insecure in this currently crazy world and any opportunity to rapid fire one's cannons at least deserves some attention. However, Carson quickly realized that speeding up his firing might require some file-changing. Which is a bad, bad thing to contemplate.

Dad posted the logs from his son's site to show that Carson was merely asking questions. I post them here for your perusal and edification:

However, he says Disney rapid-fired an e-mail that showed the darker side of its piratical nature.

Dad says Disney espied the logs, reached for its rum, muttered yo-ho-ho, and declared this was proof of "the use of third-party software, shown in the logs." The company also froze his son's account.

Dad entreated Disney by e-mail. Someone called Tony from Disney's Online Member Services apparently replied: "As a family-friendly company, all in-game chat is moderated equally for everyone regardless of age to maintain a friendly and safe online environment for all to enjoy. In regards to your account, the use or distribution of any software or device that allows automated or other manipulation of gameplay is not allowed. Such use may result in the termination of your account."

Dad didn't feel this answered the question, so he adorned his blog with his feelings. He would like Disney to apologize and, as of writing, he says he has not received such an apology.

I do not sense Pinocchio's lengthening nose in any part of Guy's story, so I, too, have attempted to contact Disney and will update should I receive a reply. I do hope that everyone can become BFFs again.

Perhaps this is an instance of careless customer service. But when your customer is 11 years old, perhaps you should pause and ask yourself: What would Johnny Depp do?"

Sometimes ingenuity doesn't quite lead you to a comfortable place.

The enterprising folks at WPMI TV in Mobile, Ala., decided that they should reach out on a real-time basis to their viewers. They erected a billboard, adorned it with an image of three of its most photogenic anchors, and added a live Twitter feed.

The whole thing ran very smoothly, until a passing human took this photograph and sent it in to The Palmetto Scoop.

(Credit: The Palmetto Scoop via Mashable)

Perhaps one's first reaction would be that this image might have enjoyed a little concoction.

However, Mashable has confirmed that not only is it real, but, citing the Lagniappe blog, it says WPMI-TV's general manager and news director have allegedly been suspended for a week because of this unfortunate conflagration.

This all seems just slightly odd. Television and radio has always been fond of slipping in a seven-second delay just in case untoward syllables slip through the mouths of guests or, indeed, hosts. It seems that no such delay was considered for this Twitter feed.

Yet who might have imagined such an unhappy coincidence might have occurred?

I'm sure that all Dell laptops are wonderful machines that would make perfect gifts for even the most misanthropic, laptop-loathing humans.

However, my feelings were temporarily frozen, not unlike Michael Douglas' forehead, when I espied that Austin's finest was trying to garland this holiday period with a Netbook that seems to have special twittering powers.

I see the liquid remnants of your scoffing floating through the ether. However, please peruse the picture with which I have decorated this post.

(Credit: Dell.com)

It's from the Dell site and it seems like a normal Dell Netbook, doesn't it? The blurb beneath this picture declares, "Build it your way make it your own," which is quite a tempting offer when you consider the price seems to be a vastly generous $299.

Yet this sweet little device appears to be called the Twitter Mini. And the promise that Dell offers reads: "Perfect for Tweeting! Windows 7 Starter Included!"

Naturally, I am already excited. It has been something of my month's dream to find a device that is perfect for pumping out my 140 finest characters. But I'm stumped to the point of limping to work out why this particular Netbook is perfect for tweeting and others aren't.

I clicked on the image and found myself at this page, which offered me nothing other than some severe pain in my neck and brain.

While telling me this was a Netbook, and while mentioning that this series of Netbooks was "small, ultraportable, and designed to keep you connected," there wasn't even a mention of the word "Twitter."

Look, were there a Technological Olympics, I would not even make it as a hostess. But could someone please explain to me why the Twitter Mini is perfect for tweeting when the Mini 10, for example, is perfect for, well, according to the site, nothing at all?

Does the Twitter Mini automatically shorten tweetable URLs if I just stare at the screen? Does it have a direct and very hot line to Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O'Neal, Stephen Fry, and that weird Russian girl who keeps following me, even though the Twitter folks keep deleting her naked entreaties?

Or did someone in the Dell marketing department get a little over-excited? Please feel free to send me a tweet.

He calls himself Agent Zero. His shirt number is a big, fat zero. And this accurately reflects the number of tweets Gilbert Arenas has posted to his Twitter account.

It's not that Arenas, the Washington Wizards point guard, isn't confident of his literary skills. Oh, no. Just look at his finely sculpted blog.

However, according to The Washington Post, Arenas has no interest in being a small time Twitter player. He wants 1 million followers before he will start to offer tweets from his copious and wondrous life and imagination.

Just last week Arenas told the Associated Press that he's chosen to go for 1 million because "it's so far-fetched."

And when some cruel know-it-all tried to point out that the way folks normally get followers is, well, by tweeting, Arenas replied with the sagacity of Wittgenstein: "I'm trying to do the opposite."

So that you can get some sense of Arenas' twittering possibilities, I have embedded a small piece of film featuring the Arenas bobblehead, quite a character in its own right.

However, I know you'll be wondering just how far away Arenas is from achieving immortal far-fetchedness. Well, he's pretty close to catching Shaquille O'Neal, who enjoys just over 2.5 million followers.

Yes, Arenas has already amassed, at the time of typing this, 5,717 followers. Perhaps the 4-9 Wizards will need to win a few more games before his Twitter page is swamped by mass anticipation of Arenas' first tweet.

As you begin to contemplate your Thanksgiving meal, your family gathered around you, your loved ones embracing you, please be thankful you are not Sal9000.

Sal appears to be a man with very idiosyncratic needs, which he has attempted to satiate by marrying his favorite video game character.

Perhaps you think I have finally lost my last marble. However, please examine this footage. Courtesy of the radical realists at BoingBoing, this video shows that Sal married Nene Anegasaki, a character in the Nintendo DS game, Love Plus.

These unique nuptials were apparently broadcast on the Japanese video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga, a place where many strange things occur for, no doubt, extremely sound psychological reasons.

I don't wish to so much as broach the topic of marital consummation. However, I can tell you that attending the wedding, which was held, naturally, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, were the bride's virtual video game girlfriend, a live audience and, yes, a real religious priest.

I cannot find record of where the happy couple might be honeymooning, but I have an indelible fear that it might be in a very small, dark apartment somewhere in Tokyo. I trust they will have a large and healthy family.

The Swedish town of Malmo is a wonderful place.

Some feel it is wonderful because it is the spiritual home of a band that was once cool, the Cardigans.

But now all committed social networkers will think Malmo is wonderful because of its IKEA. You see, the Swedish purveyor of fast-food furniture decided to open a new store in Malmo and didn't really have a lot of money to let people know about it.

So it engaged a rather outre advertising agency called Forsman and Bodenfors to create a rather special launch campaign.

The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, it uploaded images from of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album.

Then it put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it.

Facebook being what it is, word got out and needy, enthusiastic Swedes begged for more pictures so that they could tag themselves to a new sofa, a new bed, or a new vase into which they could stick their plastic flowers or their dead grandparents' ashes.

Before Facebook could take credit for its own wonderful ingenuity in creating the world's most needed Web site, thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the personal galaxy known as their profile pages.

Please look at the video I have embedded, as this idea is, as the best always are, simple and inspired. Which, some would say, also perfectly describes the clever, affordable, if sometimes maddening-to-put-together little things made by IKEA.

Insurance companies want us to be healthy. Really, they do. They have our interests at heart, and they defend those interests with an unusual zeal. This is why I am wondering which details might be missing from the tale of Natalie Blanchard.

According to the Associated Press, Blanchard, a 29-year-old IBM employee from Bromont, Quebec, was suffering from depression and took time away from work, relying on sick-leave benefits from her insurer, Manulife Financial.

The monthly payments were suddenly halted. When she called Manulife to ask why, she says she was told that it had espied photos on her Facebook page that showed her cheerful. Ergo, the argument allegedly went, she was able to work. Which led to the second ergo: no more payments.

The pictures, about which I am sure you are already wondering, were of her at a show featuring those tensing torsos, the Chippendales, as well as at a birthday party and on a beach holiday.

Depression is a nasty business. Cures are not exactly logical. And Blanchard says she went on three trips, each of a four-day duration, after consulting with her psychiatrist.

Manulife, while confirming (footage from Sky News embedded here) that it does use social-networking sites to, well, check up on its customers, also said, "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on Web sites such as Facebook."

Perhaps you, too, have some questions. What sort of a life is it when you spend your days trawling social-networking sites to sniff around your customers' personal existence? How is it that Manulife observed Blanchard's photos? Did she leave her Facebook page entirely open, or could it be that she had her insurance agent as one of her Facebook friends? Was she, indeed, already under suspicion before the Facebook trawling began?

December 8, this case will be heard in the Quebec Superior Court. Surely, we will learn a little more about Natalie Blanchard and a little more about Manulife. Perhaps Facebook could provide a live feed from the proceedings?

It seems that Apple doesn't respect Verizon's Droid phone quite as much as it does Microsoft's PCs. But two new ad spots, launching Monday evening, come as close as Apple has done thus far to directly attack the allegedly do-it-all robotphone.

The Droid, you see, went after Apple in its teaser campaign with some telling remarks and the hearty claim that Droid does what the iPhone doesn't. Then Verizon decided it would be fun to knock both the iPhone and AT&T's spotty 3G coverage with its "Misfit Toys" concept.

AT&T has already replied by hustling a hastily-dressed Luke Wilson into directing a few resentful pins at Verizon's effigy. However these new ads, while entirely in keeping with the iPhone tone and style, end with a line that expressly assaults the doings of Droid--or rather, its alleged non-doings.

Both ads focus on the iPhone's ability to allow you to use voice and data capabilities simultaneously over the AT&T network. By asking gently at the end of each spot "Can your phone and your network do that?" Apple is bursting what it sees as the inflated stealth bombing that accompanied the launch of the Droid.

Apple iPhone Ad - Did You See My Email? from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo.

Apple iPhone Ad - What Time's The Movie? from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo.

These ads don't mention the Droid or Verizon by name. But the fact that Apple has decided to address its rivals, however obliquely, suggests that one can look forward to more accusations, more bickering, and more attempted one-upmanship.

'Tis the season of goodwill, after all.

No, this isn't The Onion.

But just look at that headline and wonder how it could possibly be true.

Well, according to Newsday, Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber was due to conduct an album signing at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, N.Y.

It seems that thousands of teenage girls turned up to mob the wondrous teen hope, a happening perhaps so frightening that Bieber did not turn up.

The Nassau County police became rather concerned that the crowd might break the glass in store windows with its shrieking. (The official word seems to have been "unruly," but teenage girls are never really that.)

So they asked a senior vice president from Island Def Jam Records (Bieber's record label), James A. Roppo, to do what record label executives often do when solving a difficult situation: tweet.

However, he is alleged to have not complied with this endearing request and thus found himself arrested, pending charges that might, according to the police, comprise criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor, and obstructing government administration.

Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police told the AP: "We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message. By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk."

What is somewhat peculiar is that a tweet was sent from Justin Bieber's account around the time of the arrest, reading: "they are not allowing me to come into the mall. if you don't leave, I and my fans will be arrested, as the police just told us."

Bieber followed this message up with another tweet pleading for the high-pitched wailers to disperse, just three minutes later.

All this occurred Friday. And, thanks to Bieber himself, I have embedded YouTube footage of the melee at the mall.

Bieber posted a link to this footage Saturday and tweeted, "wow. this upsets me. the mall should of had proper security. They wouldnt let me in! Gotta make this right 4 the fans."

Well, yes, it should of. Just look at the worried faces of the parents. Just listen to the screams of the aficionadas. This is the kind of nightmare many will have experienced after a large tub of dulce de leche eaten well past midnight.

I cannot imagine what Roppo might have said to the police in order to incite their wrath. However, looking at this footage, I suspect that something like "Look at these people!!!! They're outta their minds!!! You really think a tweet is going to stop them from screaming?!!!" might have been part of the dialogue.

It is also pleasantly reassuring that the mall staff appears, near the end of the footage, to have resorted to analog crowd dispersal means. Yes, someone found a loudhailer.

However, I can find no record of any arrests from the scene other than Roppo's. And certainly, no one else appears to have been arrested for refusing to tweet.

Therefore, this truly seems to be a world first. One can only look forward to the day when someone's Facebook friends cause them to be arrested for not updating their status.