Woman Sues Apple Over Price Cuts

It’s just too easy and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Dongmei Li*, a woman from Queens, New York, has enlisted C Jean Wang, of Wang Law Offices, to file suit against Apple for $1 million for "price discrimination, underselling, discrimination in rebates, deceptive actions and other wrongdoings."

The suit comes after Apple’s much-fussed-about $200 iPhone price just 68 days after launch. As an early adopter, Li is claiming injury because of the price cut, as early adopters are unable to resell their phones “for the same profit as later purchasers.”

The suit also claims "market conditions did not require Apple to change its price," and that the exclusivity of Apple’s deal with AT&T is unfair.

Apple and AT&T were quick to boast about the sales of iPhone soon after launch, and the public nicknamed it the "Jesus Phone" for the seeming paroxysmal ecstasy that accompanied it since it was unveiled six months before release.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs offered a compromise after the early-adopter uproar by offering a $100 discount toward the purchase of another Apple product. Ms. Li obviously thinks that’s not enough.

As for the "market conditions" argument, Ms. Li’s attorney will have to argue that in court, one would assume, as Apple’s apparent motivation seemed to be the upcoming Christmas season and potentially stiff competition arises during that time period. Whether or not a holiday sales season qualifies as a market condition will be up to whomever decides the case.

^{*According to this website Dongmei means "winter + plum blossom," so stop being an insensitive jerk.} 

I’m only saying that, aside from entries and edits made to more clerical and administrative areas of Wikipedia, "W." leads as the topic of choice among editors and writers there. Jesus isn’t even second; he’s in third place, behind the United States.

Perhaps, "less agreeable" is better than "popular."

According to the stats provided by Wikipedia, over 32,000 edits have been made to articles about George W. Bush by 3,622 users, doubling the number of edits made to entries about the U.S. with 16,594 from 2,320 users.

As for the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, God With Us? Seems there’s less to quarrel with. Only 1,747 users have made 15,286 edits to articles about Jesus.

At least he trumps the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict (14,287 edits) and his, well, antithesis, Adolf Hitler (14,287), who edges out World War II in general (14,033), RuneScape (13,155), Hurricane Katrina (12,754), and Nintendo Wii (12,465).

Ah, the things humans will argue about.

Those are overall numbers since Wikipedia’s inception. Here are the top 25 most edited articles as of March 2007 (the latest numbers Wikipedia made available):

1.    300 (film)
2.    George W. Bush
3.    Deaths in 2007
4.    PlayStation 3
5.    Wikipedia
6.    Essjay controversy
7.    Harry Potter
8.    Eminem
9.    Battle of Thermopylae
10.    Borat
11.    Conservapedia
12.    United States
13.    American Idol (season 6)
14.    Grand Theft Auto IV
15.    World War II
16.    Saint Patrick’s Day
17.    Beyonce Knowles
18.    WrestleMania 23
19.    McDonald’s
20.    Kobe Bryant
21.    2007
22.    2007 Cricket World Cup
23.    Christianity
24.    Jesus
25.    American Idol

There have been billboard sightings in New York, LA, and San Francisco – weird billboards with weird sentences and no explanation.
Sentences like:

The Algorithm Is Banned In China

The Algorithm Is From Jersey

The Algorithm Killed Jeeves

And everyone’s favorite, um sort of  –

The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus.

That last one has caused more question marks than its weird predecessors. Some thought it was some kind of drive-by religious peddling. Others went the opposite way, wondering if it was making light of entire faith.

But they had one thought in common once they realized it was an Ask.com campaign: "What are they thinking?"

Says Bruce Clay’s Lisa Barone: "I get that we’re promoting the importance of the algorithm and all, but tell me again why we’re talking about Jesus? When is bringing religion into a conversation a good idea?"

Valleywag asks: "What is Ask’s marketing department on?…we thought for a moment that Ask’s main rival, Google, had funded the campaign. And this latest billboard sighted in Manhattan, though not so obviously self-destructive, is plain bizarre."

When we asked Ask about it, the response was akin to "what’s the big deal?" In fact, Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone and Greg Ott, Ask’s VP of marketing, seem to barely remember even mentioning Jesus.

"At Ask.com," said Lanzone, "we feel that in order to drive consumer awareness and use of our engine, it is important to highlight the uniqueness of our algorithm, which takes a different approach to ranking than our competitors."

Yeah, but, we were asking about the Jesus thing.

"We never thought people would be as curious about it as they are," Ott told WebProNews. "[The campaign] has gotten some great attention and we feel pretty good about it."

Yeah, but, hasn’t anybody yelled at you yet?

"We haven’t gotten too much feedback," Ott said, "The most interesting places we’ve seen talking about it were Valleywag and Flickr."

Hmmm. Guess I need to work on my interestingness.

Though the US campaign is reminiscent of the weirdness lacing the Information Revolution campaign spreading around London’s Underground about the same time, the banned-in-China-Jeeves-is-Dead-Jesus-found-in-Jersey campaign is the brainchild of the same people who’ve been bothering us with morbid street performers in those pretentious anti-smoking surreality spots.

Direct all complaints to Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Though we’re pretty sure we remember Ask getting at least a little flack over the Information Revolution trickery, Ott says Londoners really liked it. "We’ve had more requests for tee-shirts than we’ve had comments."

Okay, enough about the revolution. Let’s get back to the Jesus thing. The slogan seems at least a little risky, especially if the billboards start popping up outside of the blue states. Ott says the Ask marketing team didn’t see any risk in it, nor have they seen any negative response.

Even so, the billboards in question seem doomed to urban life as a nationwide billboard campaign would be "cost-prohibitive."

They’re also kind of Bible-Belt-prohibitive, too, but Ask isn’t sure why.

In a humorous twist, if one wanted to learn more about Ask’s algorithm promotion, they might want to use Google. Searches for the now notorious phrase on Ask only brought back three results, compared to Google’s 933 results.

To be fair, though, only search nerds use quotes around their queries.

Billboards and posters have begun appearing in major metropolitan areas (like New York and San Francisco – most likely because this is riskier in the red states) with the slogan:

"The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus"

That’s according to Tommy Keswick and the commentators on his blog, where you’ll find a photo. Maybe they’re just trying to outdo Google Maps.

What Ask.com has not constantly found, however, is warm reception to its past marketing efforts. Search Engine Watch’s Frank Watson, who says billboards have propped up between Manhattan and Brooklyn, reminds readers of Ask’s past monkey business:

Remember those monkeys on the TV commercials – where Ask was laying claim to making you more human?

Was this new campaign a response to the backlash about their support of evolution? And are we now to think that Ask is a Christian search engine?

Well, perhaps we’re to think that Ask ascribes a little too closely to the adage "there’s no such thing as bad publicity." After all, none of us were talking about them before this.

It wasn’t too long ago that Information Revolution posters sprang up on the London Underground, where concerned netizens were urged to help thwart Google’s information monopoly.

Though the Jesus ads have, as reported, copyright information in the corner of them to reveal Ask’s sponsorship, the Information Revolution campaign was not so forthcoming with that information.

Lack of transparency earned Ask a lot of flack, but it remains to be seen if it gained them users. And while an algorithm that’s good at finding Jesus may seem benign to some crowds, to others, it’s tantamount to blasphemy.

Or at least belittlement of their faith.

Good luck with that, Jeeves. You’ll need it.

Like the folks at SearchViews, St. Peter hasn’t granted me access. The private beta has been full up since TechCrunch told it on the mountain, leaving the wonders of eBible “ensconced within its own Holy of Holies.”

Michael Arrington lets us know that Jesus loves Web 2.0:

Search any of a number of versions of the Bible with eBible by keyword (and switch between Bible versions once you’ve selected text you are interested in). eBible pulls additional information relevant to your query from a library of Bible reference sites, such as dictionaries, topicals, encyclopedias, handbooks, etc. Expert commentary is also included in the margin of Biblical text.

The site will also offer product recommendations and “low key ads,” says Arrington.

According to the eBible blog, not only does Jesus love Web 2.0, but he Diggs it as well. James and Mark (not the originals) inform us that TechCrunch + Digg = crashed website. Wonder what happens when WebProNews throws in?

“This is all pretty exciting for us here at Godspeed developing in this 2.0 space,” writes James, “because it’s validation of some of the things we are doing, and some ideas we were trying out. It’s also great for Thomas Nelson to be branching out into some new technologies, and making strides to be a technology leader in the Christian publishing space.”

I’m not sure how the Baptist Convention would feel about the “GodSpeedo,” though. Hippies!

Until they tear the veil at eBible, there’s a wealth of other searchable Bible sources to save you some red letter thin paper strain.

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If it is a flying carthe picture’s a bit fuzzy since the object in question appears to only be a few yards off the ground.

The dutiful Register readership sends loads of “black helicopter” Google Earth images for examination. They’ve found anything (and anyone) from Jesus to swastika-shaped buildings.

Now somewhere in Australia, they’ve found a hovering 4-door sedan doing about 80 knots. But you have to ask, “Who wants a flying car that looks like a Crown Victoria?”

The Moller Skycar looks a bit more like a tail-kickin’ flying car should.

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Considering that most any organization can afford a blog hosted on its own domain, this is an attempt to shut down a site critical of theirs and generate publicitiy, no more. Google can’t afford to give them the subdomain, because then they would have to turn over any Blogspot subdomain with any trademark in it, and I doubt any court would agree with the fringe “religion”.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York on Wednesday, seeks to force Google to give Jews for Jesus control of the site as well as unspecified monetary damages.

The site has only three entries, the last of which was made on May 9.

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

The case was filed in U.S. District Court in New York on Wednesday and is attempting to force Google to relinquish control of the site and wants unspecified damages.

Reuters quoted Susan Perlman, associate executive director, saying, “We have a right to our own name and Google has allowed the use of our name on Blogspot without permission. Our reputation is at stake.”

The only question one wonders about here is why a suit is being filed for a blog that hasn’t had an entry since May 9th, and only three entries total at that. After reviewing the site, some of the comments are critical of the JewsForJesus organization. Perlman said it wasn’t about the critical side.

She told Reuters, “One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that there is freedom of expression, but there should be protection so that organizations like ours can represent ourselves.”

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

While the University of Southern California was celebrating a victory at Notre Dame, the home of Touchdown Jesus, another university from the same area celebrated blogging and Christianity.

The GodBlogCon drew about 135 devoted bloggers to discuss how the new medium of expression could fit into Christian life. Blogging could do for religion what it has done for mainstream journalism, in helping to keep Christianity’s most visible public figures honest, USA Today reported.

One speaker, Joe Carter, likened blogging to Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the church door to protest the abuse of indulgences. He also noted how some bloggers have moved beyond the usual political hot-button issues to discuss other topics.

“With blogging you tend to break out of those circles and you see other points of view,” Carter said in USA Today. “There’s a bigger world out there than gay marriage and abortion.”

One live blogger from the conference posted from a panel discussion. Part of that discussion included advice on being a successful blogger:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

You can thank Nathan Weinberg over at Inside Google for translating this tidbit from an Italian newspaper. After running it through BabelFish, all I got was English that looked like it came straight out of Madlibs.

While an Italian blogger was purveying satellite imagery of the Italian town Parma, he noticed some strange shadowy land formations. He beamed his discovery over to the diligent archeologists at Parma’s local university, who arrived there later post haste to dig around.

Beneath those twisty shadows, they found Luca Mori, an ancient Roman villa. Add this to Jesus and the swastika building in San Diego, and we have the beginning of a worldwide scavenger hunt.