PR firm busted over fake iTunes reviews

A public relations firm has “settled” Federal Trade Commission charges that it wrote bogus reviews of games on iTunes on behalf of its clients. Its the first major such case since the introduction of new guidelines on disclosure from people writing online.

Reverb Communications staff had “consistently” posted reviews on iTunes using false usernames. Every review rated the game at four or five stars and included comments such as “GREAT, family-friendly board game app” and “Really Cool Game”.

In the wonderful stating-the-obvious style of most legal verdicts, the FTC noted (PDF): “Respondents failed to disclose that those reviews were written by employees of Reverb, a company hired to promote the gaming applications and often paid a percentage of the applications’ sales. These facts would have been material to consumers in their purchasing decision regarding the gaming applications. The failure to disclose these facts, in light of the representation made, was, and is, a deceptive practice.”

Although the FTC didn’t name the games involved, Reverb’s website lists 23 current gaming clients and 33 former clients, including some major iPhone app developers. It specifically lists 20 iPhone games, including iSamJackson and Turf Wars.

According to the FTC, the Reverb reviews breached the Federal Trade Commission Act. This followed revised guidance from the FTC last year that made clear anyone writing online about a product or service shows disclose any material connection they have with the seller. At the time that prompted speculation that amateur bloggers might fall foul of the rules if they failed to disclose getting free copies of a product that they reviewed.

At the moment, Reverb won’t face any repercussions beyond the negative publicity. It will have to remove all the bogus reviews and has signed an agreement committing to disclose commercial connections in the future. Although Reverb hasn’t been found guilty of breaking any laws, the agreement is legally binding and violating it could lead to a fine of up to $16,000.



Wicket the Ewok and other Amigurumi

Had a bad day and need your ration of cute? Here’s Wicket from “Return of the Jedi,” in knitted stuffed animal form. This Wicket (and others like him) are called “Amigurumi,” which is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals.

Our friends over at GeekDad pointed us to other geeky Amigurumi, including more StarWars characters, Harry Potter, Cthulhu, and others, on more than one occasion.

Searching for other geeky Amigurumi on Google, I found this list on thedomesticscientist.com, which includes Mythbusters Amigurumi, Megaman Amigurumi, and more.

Angry Birds: The Movie?

If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the Angry Birds phenomenon, you might not be able to escape for much longer. The game’s creators are heading to Hollywood to try to strike cash-in deals.

The game itself, which appears on the iPhone platform, is remarkably simple. You use a catapult to fling birds at a pile of wood or glass in an attempt to destroy a group of pigs that stole the birds’ eggs. As the game goes on, you acquire birds with different powers such as one that splits into three smaller birds, clusterbomb style.

It is ridiculously addictive, though it does mean that when my wife has the iPad and I hear the theme music start up, I know that I’ve got a few hours of complete control over the TV, so that’s a win. Part of the success is that it’s the type of game where you first have to work out how to complete each level, then physically pull it off.

The game has so far sold 6.5 million copies. What makes that particularly impressive is that the free edition (covering a few early levels) has 11 million downloads: as far as I know, a 50% conversion ratio for a free sample game is spectacularly high.

Now Variety is reporting that the producer, Rovio, has decided that rather than produce a new game (which they think would be like trying to strike gold twice), they are looking for spin-off deals.

Or to put it in Variety-speak, “The company’s founders have been making the rounds of the studios and tenpercenteries over the last several weeks weighing which ancillary offers to move forward with first.” (A “tenpercentarie” is an agent, working on said commission.) The company has recruited several specialist advisors, including a man who set up licensing deals for Twilight.

Rovio CEO Mikael Hed says there are plenty of possibilities, but he favors the idea of either a TV show or even a full-length movie based on the characters, noting that the claymation style of Wallace & Gromit might be the best format.

Whether that’s really going to succeed is open to question. While the characters are certainly cute enough, it really is the gameplay rather than the story which makes Angry Birds work. There aren’t many successful game-to-movie transplants, and this really does seem like a case where losing control of the characters would take away far too much of the appeal.



Dead flowers for bad relationships

Such is the power of the Internet that we can match people who supply crazy goods and services with people who demand crazy goods and services.

For example, dead flowers for really rotten relationships.

At Dirty Rotten Flowers, you can order a bouquet of rotting flowers, or the “Morticia,” (a dozen decapitated roses), and send them to the people you never want to see again.

Love left you forlorn?
Got dumped for the yoga instructor?
Want to send a reminder of the “good times?”
Maybe you’re feeling a little cynical…
Yet another forgotten anniversary?
Or, maybe you just want to have a little fun…

“Oh, you shouldn’t have…” will resonate surprise when your recipient opens their elegant box of Dirty Rotten Flowers.

Star Trek:TNG casting memo surfaces after 23 years

In a parallel universe, Belgian actor Patrick Bauchau played Captain Picard.

I’m basing that claim on a 23 year old memo that surfaced, on Paramount letterhead, written by John Ferraro, who was then a young development executive in Paramount’s syndicated television division, to John Pike, president of Paramount’s TV division at the time.

The memo, which has surfaced on the Letters of Note blog, lists the people who were being brought in to read for Gene Roddenberry in April 1987 for the various roles. Notably, Brent Spiner and Wil Wheaton weren’t even being considered for the roles at that time, and Wesley Snipes was being considered for the role of Geordi LaForge.

Obviously, this was early in the casting process.

[GAS] tracked down the author of the memo, John Ferraro, who had no idea the old memo had been leaked online.

“It’s so funny! How did that memo surface, it’s been like, 25 years! That’s kind of crazy! Somebody obviously found it in somebody’s old file at the studio, I guess.”

Ferraro mentioned that the letter might have simply been used to create a preliminary list of the types of actors that the series would go for – and was quick to point out that though he wrote the letter, he did not determine the names on the list.

“Those weren’t my choices. It wasn’t like I was the one who put Wesley Snipes’ name on the list…. “

“The casting director was bringing people in, and it looks like [at the time the memo was written] they were starting to pare things down and determine the people who would read for Gene [Roddenberry]”

“It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t worked in the industry, but there’s sort of a hierarchy of the way it works on the executive side… I was pretty junior, and I was reporting to a guy named Rick Berman, who became the producer of the series… I was his guy who did a lot of the legwork. But I had been working in television for about five years at that point.”

Ferraro worked on Star Trek through the production of the pilot, and possibly, he said, through the first couple of episodes. After that he moved to Paramount’s film division. Today, he’s working on producing other independent film projects.

Awesome: Star Wars Logo Bookends

Originally a Borders Exclusive, these bookends let you use the iconic Star Wars logo to support your favorite tomes or DVDs, be they Rebel or Imperial, Jedi, or Sith. Each set of bookends is individually hand-numbered and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. Together, the two ends measure 9.25″ long x 3″ wide x 4.25″ tall. Limited to 5,000 sets.

[$54.99 at Bigbadtoystore.com | Via]

Time controllers have (leap) second thoughts

One of the geekiest moments of any year, the leap second, may be under threat. The International Telecommunications Union, the organization that governs global communications issues including how computers deal with time, is calling for feedback on the idea of dropping the practice.

The leap second is designed to correct the disparity between the rigid consistency of an atomic clock (used for most automated timing systems, including computing) and the solar clock, which measures the movements of the Earth in relation with the Sun (hence giving us days and years).

Until 1967, the “official” definition of time was simply based on the Earth’s movements around the Sun: once round was a year, and a second was simply the appropriate fraction, depending on whether it was a leap year. The problem is that this period is slowly increasing as the Earth slips further away from the Sun.

The solution is the leap second: each year a leap second can be added on June 30 or December 31 (or both, or neither) to catch up the difference. Where this happens, the official measure of time, UTC, adds an extra second at the end of the relevant day. The idea is that the time we use, and the “true” solar time are never out of kilter by more than a second.

The reason for the proposed abolition is that the extra second can cause problems for computers using UTC. That’s because, unlike simply consulting a calendar for future dates, it’s not usually possible to predict when a leap second will be needed more than about six months in advance as their use depends on the actual, unpredictable, movements of the Earth. If you’re programming an application that depends on precise timings, you’ll need to build it in a way to keep it up to date.

The ITU proposal is to abandon the leap second, let the two times grow apart and perhaps chuck in a leap hour every couple of thousand years or so.

Critics of the proposal say that it would do more harm than good as most programmers who are affected by the time disparity have already tweaked their systems to take advantage of it and would be disrupted even further by undoing things.

[Picture credit: Screenshot of time.gov by Flickr user Jay Knight]