Monday, January 25, 2010

Be careful how you shake it



I am not a terribly savvy Iphone owner. I have never, for instance, gone so far as to plug my phone into my computer and synch all that shit up. I have only a single page of app icons, most of which were the default ones that came with the phone. But during our trip to TN my in-laws took it upon themselves to introduce me to the app store.

I found the array of choices somewhat mind-blowing. But my sister-in-law helped me get started by suggesting this photo app she had called "Shake It" which basically imitates the effects of a Poloroid on your Iphone camera, over-saturating the photo and making it square so it looks like the real deal. And the gimmick is, you shake your Iphone to develop the picture and it makes that delicious sound of the picture being ejected from the Polaroid camera.

So I went to the app store and did a little search for "ShakeIt," and without looking closely at what popped up, I selected "Buy Now." I ended up with an app on my phone which loads th following message when youclick on it:

"Warning: Using this application can cause pain in your arm and hand and can permanently damage your body, If you feel ANY kind of pain, stop using this app."

Hmmmn . . . that didn't seem quite right. I mean, I've never heard of anyone getting rushed to the ER for too vigrously shaking a Polaroid picture. Turns out what I had bought was a game where you literally try to shake your Iphone as hard as you possible can and the phone calculates how many times you have shaken it and shares that information with you.

What I would like to know is this:

Who the hell thinks this is a good time? Shaking an exceedingly expensive piece of electronics as hard as is humanly possible -- so hard in fact it will likely cause you physical harm -- for the sheer joy of it?

I may have low expectations when it comes to fun but even I have higher criteria than that.

I did manage to find the correct Shake it, an app aptly called "ShakeItPhoto" and Primo went to town taking pictures of me, most of which he intentionally framed so that my head would be out of the pictures. His headless collection. Some of them aren't half bad. Check it out: