Wasted protoplasm

Hello there! And welcome to the future! That’s right, the future! Not at all, not at all, come right in.. Yes, yes, welcome, welcome… have a seat while we wait to process you; actually, have a hoverseat! No, it’s essentially the same as a seat, but this is the future, everything hovers!

Why yes, that is a miniature supercomputer in your pocket, and yes, of course you can download products from a centralized database of products, but we don’t call it that any more, not very catchy. You seem to be a bit confused: here, relax, have a honk on this Soma pipe and read this guide to some of the best smartphone applications out there.

Shazam

Shazam is a magically named, incredible piece of technology that makes you realize that the world has changed. If you have ever heard a song playing on the radio, or on a TV ad, or in a shop you are ‘just hanging around in’ to kill time and act like you have money, Shazam can save you.  Shazam knows every song in the world: take out your phone, press the big button, it listens to a few seconds of whatever is playing, and ‘HEY PRESTO!’, it will tell you the name of the song and artist. Think about that. Remember that feeling that used to exist, the pain as a tune faded from memory, and you think one last time: “I’ll never know what that song was…” before that feeling tumbles down into your subconscious alongside Penis Envy (Crass).  That feeling is gone. The human condition is forever slightly changed, and the world is a slightly less irritating place, as if by magic. HEY PRESTO!

HeyTell 

Tone is hard. How often has someone misread your tone from a text message and it’s caused a minor misunderstanding of some sort? Read this sentence: “God, I really love cake. “. Now have a think about my feelings towards cake.  Naturally, you’ll assume that I am quite fond of cake. Well you’re wrong, you idiot.  I hate cake. It’s basically just a giant muffin cut in slices. Ugh…cake.

 I was being sarcastic there and this snafu of yours for not discerning my tone has caused a discrepancy between your perception of how much I like cake, and how much I actually like cake.  Disaster! Not to fear, HeyTell is here.

HeyTell is a walkie-talkie on your phone. Open it up, choose a contact, hold down the button and speak: instantly your friend gets your spoken word message, and can reply in the same manner. Verbal communication is great, your tone can’t get lost  in translation, you can fit a lot more in one message, and you don’t have to get your screen filthy by prodding it with those disgusting cake-covered fingers of yours.  Protip: it is considered ‘good fun’ to pretend you are in the military when using HeyTell: “Breaker breaker! Niner Niner! I actually really love cake!”

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is  probably the most important app in the world. Everyone with a smartphone should have it, and if they don’t, they’re no longer your friend. Allowing you to: text, send pictures, videos, and share contacts for free, WhatsApp should really be in your arsenal. So ubiquitous is WhatsApp, they even have it in Nokia’s Ovi Store: the banana bread of App ecosystems.

Seriously though, having WhatsApp is a litmus test for knowing what you’re doing if you have a smartphone, and the only reason it’s included in this list is so that people who don’t have it feel bad. Yes, I mean you, you poor lost soul. Go on, you may as well give up reading this, donate your smartphone to an orphanage and strap a 3510 to your cave-belt.  Orphans love texting.

The only downside I can think of with WhatsApp is the generic status it assigns to everyone in your contacts list: “Hey there! I am using WhatsApp”, 90% of my friends appear to be droning. WhatsApp = doubleplusgood.

Viber

Lets you to make free calls to other smartphone users. Simple. File under: sounds like sex toy; is not.

Avoid:

QR Code Readers

QR codes are all about conspicuous consumption: I have an iPhone and I don’t care who knows.

You’ll have seen them; square barcode type things scattered around, mainly on advertisements for international brands, which you can scan using one of several QR code readers.  QR codes are links, which once scanned will take you somewhere on the internet.

The idea is: someone sees QR code, someone is intrigued by QR code, someone scans using this QR code reader and gives me delicious profitable hits on my website.

“QR Codes are going to be the next biggest thing in the world ever”, cried someone once.  “They’re huge in Japan”.  Do you know what else is huge in Japan? Lizards.  Building-crushing, fearless, reptilian behemoths. Does that sound fun? It’s not. Neither are QR codes.

And the best part is, you don’t even know where it’s going to take you.

Some of us have done it, defying social norms by standing at a bus stop, taking out our phone by scanning a code like a spare prick trying to line it up just right for 4 minutes, only to end up at a Muller Crunch Corner website.

You can imagine them sitting around, discussing  ‘how fun it’s going to be for the consumer’., and ‘how edgy and new’ it all is. “Which do you prefer, banana or vanilla yoghurt?” I prefer not being technologically led down a blind alley and raped thank you very much.   And banana. And the ones with the little chocolate cornflakes.

Even worse, through spectacular ineptness, people have started putting QR codes on the internet.

I could just click a link and go where I want to pretty simply, but no. Not today. Today, my friends, we make a stand: a stand against usability.; a stand against common sense; a stand against logic. That’s right: today, I am going to take out my phone, open an application, scan the thing that is already on the internet, and look at it on my smaller internet for no reason whatsoever. Welcome to the future. Not much has changed.

Everyone is on facebook. This is fact. Odds are, unless you’re a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who is already vying for space on the moon colony so that they can’t steal “your secrets”, or a technophobe who thinks that polyphonic ringtones are the future and that internet is just a convenient swimming pool nappy, you are on facebook. Let me rephrase: everyone normal is on facebook.  One might imagine that a film about a website which facilitates an inevitably futile set of activities would be one to avoid. 

When rumours about ‘The Facebook Movie” first leaked onto the web a few years back, it was met with ridicule by the ever thoughtful, self-aware hivemind that is the internet: “I’m going to wait for the Twitter movie”, they scoffed hilariously, “it’ll be like this except much more epic: 140 characters!”. Slowly details of the cast and production crew began to trickle down, and film buffs all around the world enjoyed in a collective erection. Produced by Kevin Spacey, directed by David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac), and with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men), The Social Network boasts some serious talent behind the scenes.

It is and isn’t about facebook. The film doesn’t probe the ethical dilemmas encountered by characters flicking through stranger’s “Summer ’10!!!!”  photo album telling themselves it’s OK  “because everyone does it”, instead focusing on the (much more interesting) story about how Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) founded facebook and became the world’s youngest billionaire.

The film portrays Zuckerberg’s rise to fame, starting from his first website, a nascent version of Hot or Not, through to the present day with Zuckerberg being sued from all sides by former colleagues and friends. Eisenberg is an inspired piece of casting, portraying Zuckerberg as socially awkward, occasionally ruthless, and often brilliant; a lesser performance could have seen Zuckerberg emerge as the villain of the piece, but the Eisenberg is somewhat likeable, and the character emerges not as a pantomime villain, but as a somewhat affable geek. 

Eisenberg stands out, but the supporting cast are for the most part impressive, Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer merit special mentions, the former playing Zuckerberg’s charming best friend and co-founder of facebook, the latter playing a the Winklevoss twins, delivering a hilarious performance as the archetypal Ivy League rowing jock, while Justin Timberlake plays the sleazy Napster founder Sean Parker well, tempting Zuckerberg with the promise of millions, bevies of beautiful women, and a place in internet history.

While the details are murky, Facebook have dismissed the movie as fiction , which isn’t hard to believe; who honestly believes that web programmers snort cocaine off underage girls stomachs?

Nonetheless, the movie is great value for money, at times witty, at others poignant, but constantly entertaining: this is 2 hours worth of great character drama made  by an an incredibly talented group of filmmakers; it’s not something you get often from Hollywood. ‘Like’ isn’t strong enough.