TamsPPC – the PocketPC Blog

We have covered the World Business Guide Scam some time ago – don’t ask me why, but the jerks still don’t give up (even though they know that I covered them on here some time ago). The email below has just hit my inbox:

Ladies and Gentlemen.

In order to have your company inserted in the registry of World Businesses for 2009/2010 edition, please print, complete and submit the enclosed form (PDF file) to the following address:

WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands

email: register@wbgtoday.net
FAX: redacted

Updating is free of charge!

If you are not the intended recipient, please submit an email to unsubscribe@wbgtoday.net Your request shall be dealt with accordingly.

Once again: if you get ANY communication from these folks, just delete/destroy it unless it comes from a court in your home country (which has never happened so far). The boys have never sued anyone AFAIK, and are sending these emails out illegally themselves.

According to the CNN, Mosquitoes in Africa will soon face a new technological threat:

Lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jordin Kare, told CNN that the laser would be able to sweep an area and “toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes.”

Unfortunately, initial shipments of the technology are intended to go to Africa (as there are more Mosquitoes there). Nevertheless, the Tamoggemon Content team can literally hear the screams of millions of people in the west and east begging for such a device…let’s all keep our hopes up for now.

P.S. Some of the technology was recycled from the US Star Wars project…I would say that this is literally a case of tax dollars at work…

Image: pd per United States Department of Health and Human Services, via Wikimedia Commons

I have never been to happy with the way traditional print magazines cover mobile and IT-related topics: the Austrian daily magazine Kurier just shot the ball right out of their court with a three-page story looking at the “various dangers of computer gaming”. As usual, all of it was bullsh*t – read on for the best parts:

Safer texts – or – on copy and paste
In Austria, journalists usually receive training which allows them to disguise PR gags from real events. However, the padded lamp post story (which has been forgotten for a few months) has just received a revival from the boys in red:

I have no idea why they didn’t stumble across messages like these:

Charity organisation Living Streets said that, if the trial is successful, streets including Charing Cross Road, Old Bond Street and Oxford Street will be fitted with the lampposts.
Advertisement

The padding is sponsored by directory enquiries service 118118, which commissioned a study into injuries suffered while texting.

Demanding them to ask themselves why the original Yahoo story was pulled is – um – superfluous…

Wii: movement causes pain
After having proven their intellectual prowess with the story above, idiocies continue on the next page:

The picture shows a gamer playing Wii Fit, while the tag line claims that “all kinds of bodily injuries are caused by the Wii, as it demands bodily activity”. I ask myself what they would write about sports like Tennis or Jogging…but am pretty sure that it would be a lot less aggressive.

In the end, I personally feel offended by their sloppy and misleading editorial work. If this wouldn’t be my wife’s subscription, I would cancel it immediately…and urge any Austrian computer gamers to give them the same treatment. Not getting enough ad purchases from game manufacturers can be painful – but IMHO does not allow for insane moves like the one above…

A sucker is literally born every minute – the latest a$$hole to waddle past me takes the form of a spammer offering an advance fee/directory scam. The whole story starts out with them sending an email similar to the one below:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

In order to have your company inserted in the registry of World Businesses
for 2009/2010 edition, please print, complete and submit the enclosed form (PDF file)
to the following address:

WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands

email: register@worldbusinessguidenow.biz
FAX: +31 20 524 8107

Updating is free of charge!

If you are not the intended recipient, please submit an email to
unsubscribe@worldbusinessguidenow.biz
Your request shall be dealt with accordingly.

The attached form points out its “freeness” multiple times, but contradicts itself in the fine print at the very bottom. While this alone IMHO disqualifies them under Austrian law (misleading contracts are prohibited), the legalities of spamming potential customers IMHO doesn’t need to be discussed under the latest Austrian ECG act.

Their actual web site is pictured below: please do note that the date there is still displayed as the 24th of November:

P.S. I have googled the web looking for other “victims” of the World Business Guide scam, and found none who were actually prosecuted: it looks like the best thing is to formally dispute their charges and ignore both them and their (nonexistent) debt collection agency…

P.S.2. Thanks to Peter Burgstaller’s Lawfirm Linz and the FH Hagenberg, I am well aware that their action is not legal (thanks, Peter, for the great course). I have thus decided to go Ed Fagan on them – here is my response:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
thank you so much for your letter, which constitutes punishable spam under Austrian legal code (§107 TKG)! I have passed this on to my attorney and will seek legal action against your company.

However, I am willing to settle with your company for the payment of the costs I incurred in processing your email, which make up for a total of 35 Euros, which constitutes half an hour of work! I am more than willing to provide you with an invoice and a contract freeing you of all further claims from me if you so desire!

All the best from Vienna
Mos. Tam Hanna

P.S. I have taken the liberty to publish this to my well-read web site network:
….

A recent issue of the Financial times contained an article on the partnership between Microsoft and LG. This is nothing new (Microsoft has an excellent PR department and buys many ads) – but the image assignment is funny as hell:

In case you don’t follow TamsS60: the picture shows Samsung’s Omnia HD fractal:

And to make things worse: the Omnia HD runs S60. Yikes!

The picture on the left side is the dumbest ad I have seen in the last month – in fact, it is so absolutely stupid that I have to share it with you. It says:

Austrias number one dating page

More than ten million singles await you…

The catch is short and sweet: Austria’s 2001 census reported just 8,032,926 million inhabitants, with current estimates south of 8500k…

While working with Microsoft Outlook 2003, I just stumbled across the extremely funny thing pictured below – look at the caption of the first email group:

P.S. I am perfectly aware how this was caused, but posted it for fun’s sake – have a laugh, folks!

Fanboyism can sometimes go quite a bit too far – the latest super-fanboy is pictured below:

This Texas-based, 23 year old girl has posted the picture above to MySpace, but has since removed it from there – I don’t want to know what she was up to…

The folks at Engadget’s are known to be extremely good when it comes to all things rumor: unfortunately, their analyst team sometimes gets carried away by bad or humorous feelings.

Their latest stunt is a gift list “for your biggest enemy” – while the idea sounds funny, some of their selections are nothing short of bone-headed:

• Celio REDFLY
• Meizu M8
• Treo 800w

P.S. I could recommend a gift for your enemy: an Asus product of your choice. Its crap cheap due to bad design…and when it breaks down, things get really really funny…

While looking at a little ad on BrightHand, I stumbled across this truly wonderful handset:

Don’t ask me what the guys who had this idea were smoking – I want none of it…

Yesterday’s PhotoAdventure games just took a funny turn – Oliver Bolch, one of the organizers of the funky event, went crazy and sent us the following email (translated by yours truly):

Dear Sir,
it’s your style of communication!

If you ever call an employee of mine a wanker again, I will tear up your small ass, so that a horse can walk through (SIC!!).

Best regards
Oliver Bolch

Want to find out more about this highly professional and noble man? Visit our sister site TamsPalm for the full scoop:
Oliver Bolch / PhotoAdventure – the show gets funny

As quite a few of you man tradeshow booths at least once a year, I felt like sharing this little gem with you all for posterity!
Austria was recently graced with a small photography exhibition going by the rather funny name of PhotoAdventure. While I usually don’t care too much about these small events, Olympus’s new E30 looked promising. As I had some free time on hand, I ventured out with Doris in tow…oh boy, adventures we had indeed.

Find out more at our sister site TamsPalm:
PhotoAdventure idiocy @ TamsPalm

The folks at Palm’s seem to consider a few severe defects features – but we’re not talking about the perpetually-defective power buttons here. Instead, the recent releases from the orange boys have a new habit – cracking cases.

WMExperts reports a raising amount of users with cracked cases on the WM Treo Pro line (which is very similar to the Centro which has similar problems):

As of now, the boys don’t call it an “epidemic failure” – in case you know more, please let them know!

via WMExperts

As the Chinese churn out clones literally every day, I have stopped covering them on the Tamoggemon Content network (lest we get insane). Nevertheless, the device below is so useless that I simply had to share it:

The funny thing: the back of the box states “8MP camera” (and even has a movable lens) – actually, its CCD chip maxes out at just 1.0MP. Don’t ask me why they out the Alpha DSLR and Sony Vaio (notebook brand!!!) laptops on the back either…these folks probably were really high on sth…

via ChinaGrabber

I don’t know what kind of drugs the boys at the FH Hagenberg’s Mobile Computing department use, but I want them too. Today’s top story comes hot off Andreas Jakl’s and Stephan Selinger’s hands – everybody who loves RC cars will be more than delighted to see what they have in store for us.

The pictures above show DI Stephan Selinger handling a stock RC car which was modified with a custom PCB that adds remote-control support via Bluetooth.

Further information can be found at our sister site TamsS60.