As if bad government responses to swine flu aren’t enough, now there are bad technical ones too: a swine flu iPhone app that keeps tabs on the status of the pandemic (is it one yet?) and maps the latest cases.
So, um, if you’re planning a trip to Mexico City on the go, your phone can now warn you not to.
Image: IntuApps
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Apple has released some controversial applications for the iPhone, but Baby Shaker may be its most offensive yet. At least, it was for child welfare advocates who called Apple to protest the game, which consists of stopping a virtual baby’s crying by shaking the phone until two red “X”s appear over the baby’s eyes.
The game, created by a company called Sikalosoft, went on sale on Monday. By Wednesday, Apple pulled Baby Shaker amid protest and outrage from the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, child welfare advocates, and a mother whose son was shaken by his biological father and now has brain damage.
The sales pitch for the game included, “See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!” and does include the warning, “Never, never shake a baby.” How about never, never create the temptation?
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Discoblog: From iFart to iSperm: Apple Apps Go Highbrow
Image: YouTube.com
It wasn’t mentioned in Mac’s official software update, but iPhone (and iPod Touch) users can now download one of the most…titillating applications yet: iSperm.
To play, you tap, shake, and tease the phone to guide an individual sperm down a “fallopian tube” in the race to fertilize an egg. The Mobigem game, now available for $0.99 on iTunes, is designed to demonstrate the stiff competition a sperm faces when it is released into the race for fertilization.
Strange, perhaps—though the title of most promiscuous iPhone app should probably be saved for its use as a personalized sex toy.
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Image: Mobigem
Sure, he may live in a country that banned all modern technology, including TV and the Internet, from 1996 to 2001. But Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, now relies on his iPhone for all the same reasons its other users are hooked.
The former ambassador, who spent nearly four years imprisoned in Guantanamo, is now back in Afghanistan and uses his iPhone for things like online banking and finding directions on his phone’s built-in GPS. He reportedly calls the device “necessary” in today’s world.
Meanwhile, the wife of eponymous Microsoft mogul Bill Gates remains cruelly iPhone-deprived. Melinda Gates recently admitted to Vogue that she and her Microsoft-founding husband have a household policy against Apple products. But this sacrifice doesn’t come without its costs: As she watches her friends using their Jobs-ian gadgets, she sometimes thinks, “Ooh, I wouldn’t mind having that iPhone.”
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Image: Flickr / ten safe frogs
