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Category: Odd stuff

When Photoshopping goes bad

Microsoft is taking heat for a pair of promotional photos found on the net in which an African-American man's head was swapped out for a caucasian's, apparently to tweak the photo for the company's Polish web site.

The photo appeared on the company's U.S. Web site and depicted three businesspeople: one black, one white, and one Asian, as part of a pitch for Microsoft's business productivity software. But when the 'same' photo was also published on the site of Microsoft's Polish subsidiary, a white head was cut-and-pasted over the black man's body. His hand remains unchanged.

Microsoft gave no explanation for the edit, but quickly apologized online and via the company's Twitterfeed after the online buzz began to grow. The photos were to be pulled from the websites, but you can still see them here at Cnet, where screen grabs have been saved and posted.

Category: Odd stuff

Ball State students make their iPhones and iPods roar...er..chirp

Ball State University alumnus and late night TV talk show host David Letterman regularly describes a cardinal as the world's fiercest 4-ounce bird. And, at each home football game, thousands of Ball State students yell "chirp" in union to spur on their 8-0 nationally ranked football team.

Now, a group of Ball State students has created software for iPods and iPhones that will allow Cardinal fans take their "chirps" anywhere. (The chirp is attached as a .wav file)

Under the mentoring of Digital Corps director Jonathan Huer, the student media software group has created the Chirper application.

The free application is available through the iTunes store. In the first 30 hours the Chirper was available, it was downloaded 220 times in 28 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Croatia, New Zealand and Australia.

To use the Chirper, all you have to do is hold an iPod or iPhone in the air and shake it. This will generate a chirping sound and color-changing screen.

"We were motivated by the tremendous success of our football team to make something that would be fun for fans to use," Huer said. "Development for the iPhone is a really exciting area and fits well into Ball State's strengths in emerging media and emerging technologies. Although the application is really simple, it's really an amazing device and there's a lot to learn."

"I hope students will enjoy the app, and maybe it will help out on a third down a few times," he said. "Our future applications will be quite a bit more complicated, and we've got a few other features we want to add to the next version of this application."