Weekly Rewind: August 18
Golden tech handshakes, blue Indian dogs & global vanilla shortages in a colourful collection of this week's news.
10. National Lottery targeted by trolls
When will marketers learn you can’t trust the online community? Following the hijacking of Walkers Crisps’ Champions League campaign by internet trolls earlier on in the year, the same thing has happened to The National Lottery for their British Athletics Twitter stunt, according to The Metro.
To promote the help that athletes receive from the National Lottery, Twitter users who used the hashtag #Represent were rewarded with an automated picture of a member of Team GB holding a board bearing the user’s name. We think you can guess how this went….
9. Apple and Google in golden handshake
The two tech titans are in a constant battle for mobile phone supremacy, but Google is set to pay Apple a whopping $3 billion to remain the default search engine for Apple’s iOS devices – an increase of $2 billion on the search giant’s first payment to Apple in 2014 as reported by Taxi.
8. The curious case of the blue dog
Green cats? Pink sheep? Whatever next? Well, according to the BBC, it's blue dogs, which have been spotted roaming the streets of Mumbai, India. But this is no designer dye job for pampered pooches – the eerie azure shade is apparently due to the actions of an unscrupulous detergent factory, which has allegedly been dumping waste into the nearby Kasadi river where the mutts scavenge for food.
7. Silicon Valley takes hard-line stance against extremism
Following last weekend’s protests which led to the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old legal assistant, during the Unite The Right rally, Wired has reported that GoDaddy stopped hosting neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, for violating its terms of service.
Attempting to move the site to Google, Stormer found itself thwarted again and its YouTube channel removed. ISP Zoho also blocked Stormer for violating its terms and conditions. It’s good to see tech companies finally taking a stance against hate.
6. Somebody call Robert Matthew Van Winkle…
… because a vanilla ice (cream) shortage has hit the UK. According to The Independent, customers visiting a west London branch of gelato chain Oddono this week were greeted by a sign blaming “an unprecedented vanilla pod shortage” following poor harvests earlier this year in Madagascar, which has forced up the price by 500 per cent. After the Great Courgette Crisis, we're not sure we can cope with this latest blow.
5. Apple to move into original content
Following stories earlier on in the year that Apple was looking to purchase Netflix and Disney, the tech giant has, according to The Verge, put aside $1 billion to produce and acquire original content for itself. Having already produced a handful of original content pieces such as Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps, this investment could see up to 10 new shows on the Apple slate.
4. 2017's best cities to live in
The results of the Economist Intelligence Unit's annual global liveability survey are in, and if you live in Melbourne, Vienna or Vancouver you can give yourself a smug pat on the back - those cities are ranked first, second and third respectively, based on stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.
Somewhat worse news for Londoners, though: the Big Smoke failed to make it into the top 50. Still, spare a thought for citizens of Damascus, officially deemed the least liveable city in the world thanks to the ongoing civil war in Syria.
3. David Bowie features in new Twin Peaks episode
David Bowie appeared in the Twin Peaks feature film, Fire Walk With Me, in 1992 and was set to reprise his role as FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in the current series of the show, which started airing earlier this year. Bowie's death in 2016 seemed to have put paid to that idea but David Lynch, the series' creator, was not to be dissuaded.
As The Guardian reported, the most recent episode of the series was dedicated to Bowie and scenes from Fire Walk With Me which featured him were woven into the episode via a dream sequence.
2. Move over the selfie, it's time for the 'bothie'
Whether it's a surreptitious snap of you with someone off the telly standing behind you in the queue at Starbucks; a humble-brag image just before you head out for the night, looking classy in 'something I just threw together', or a full-on, pouty-posed photo by the sun-soaked pool in Magaluf, the selfie has you covered.
But the selfie's days could be numbered with the advent of the 'bothie'. The newly launched Nokia 8, from HMD Global, allows you to take photos with both the front- and rear-facing camera at the same time. The company is targeting the phone at YouTube, Instagram and other social channel creators, as WIRED reports. So now you can not only take those quality snaps of yourself next to your dinner, but of the confused, occasionally scornful people looking on from the next table.
1. HBOh, no!
It's not been a good week for the HBO TV network. After a hack in July saw 1.5 terabytes of data accessed, this week several of their Twitter accounts - including the main HBO accounts, and those of Game of Thrones and Girls - were hacked again, by notorious online hackers, OurMine.
As The Guardian reported, HBO quickly regained control of the accounts and said they were "inverstigating" but in a further blow, those responsible for the July hack released further information including files from the second season of Westworld and the new season of GoT.
To compound events, an internal error at HBO's Spanish and Nordic offices meant the sixth episode of the new season of GoT was leaked before its scheduled broadcast day of this Sunday. Sounds like a saga that could get its own series.
