Of flacks and other demons

You know lately business journalism in India has been under attack for drinking the corporate lemonade and not doing enough to prevent the Satyam scam. But drinking corporate spiel is not just limited to India, take the case of Apple. Fair enough, I love their products, but the maniacal Apple and thus Steve Jobs worship by the technology media in the US is a bit disturbing, given that outside the US the company's retail presence is godawful, and lets not even talk about India. But Steve Jobs health has been a concern for quite a few people for a while, but one reporter in particular - Jim Goldman of CNBC kept on claiming nothing was wrong even though Gizmodo, a tech blog mentioned that dal mein kuch toh kala tha! When things did go wrong a few days ago, see Fake Steve Jobs - Dan Lyons of Newsweek - take him on an interview on live TV. Damn, Dan Lyons is now a superstar and Gizmodo's sister sites are well, making more fun of Goldman.

And then there is the curious case of Masal Bugduv a non-existent Moldova footballer who The Times (of London) fell for. Heck, just because Bombay Times falls for Sandip Sorripkar's lies doesn't mean it is alone - heck Mail Today also fell for that one!

I don't usually do such posts... but.

Why would a bonafide Vodafone iPhone 3G (handed over by Apple PR so I assume it is completely and totally bonafide, even though I seemingly can't make calls or use the data network, so this iPhone 3G is essentially being run as an iPod Touch - which is a great Wi-Fi surfing tablet and something I might even consider buying) not register the the Vodafone GSM network and then, of all things show me a Reliance GSM network. Unless that is Reliance has already started testing their GSM network (something my Nokia confirms with two strange networks showing up in the operator search - so has Swan also started trials?) and weirder still, the Vodafone network doesn't even register (not surprising since I lose an average of ten calls everyday on that network). Peculiar!