One Bad Apple?

It would seem that even with the most thorough of vetting procedures something can go wrong.

In the case of Apple, its App. Enforcer has been caught selling his own "bodily function" apps; to be more precise fart and urination simulations.

This begs the question as to whether a person with such a puerile mindset should ever have been placed in charge of an approval process, especially for a product that boasts about being smut free.

Wired who broke the story puts the news into context "Apple’s App Store serves over 225,000 apps, and only 5 percent of the 15,000 wares submitted each week are rejected, usually for technical reasons, according to Steve Jobs.

But Apple in the past has rejected apps because they had “limited utility” or displayed “overtly sexual content,” and the company has repeatedly come under fire for inconsistent decision making."

The activities of the Apple App. Enforcer get even murkier the more the media delve.

Valleywag has discovered more online skeletons in the closet, including a Twitter predilection to follow "lots of escorts and porn stars on the microblogging service, a public indulgence in precisely the sort of content his boss Apple CEO Steve Jobs has deemed too harmful and corrosive even to touch the app store".

The Twitter account @pbshoemaker has since been deleted by its owner.

Why is all of this important? Nobody should be claiming any moral high ground but it once again raises the question, just who is watching the watchers?

Such a severe case of digital flatulence also clearly proves the old adage that one bad Apple spoils the barrel.

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Death Of A Postman

In our neighbourhood one can still see the posties cycling around making snail mail deliveries; sadly they are a dying breed.

A couple of decades ago it was possible to set the time by the regular nature of their beat but no more.

In Singapore weekend deliveries have now completely ceased as the volumes of traditional mail have dropped dramatically.

Recently release figures from the States show that at th end of June, year-to-date total mail volume was down 4.9% from 2009 to nearly 129 billion pieces.  This represents a drop of 700 million pieces in the last quarter which in the long term is simply not sustainable.  The US Postal service lost $2.5 billion in June and the revenue trends show the situation worsening.

While it may be comforting to blame this on the recession, the real reason is that one form of communication has replaced another.

I recall stock market advice given more than a decade ago to invest in courier firms.  At first glance this may seem to be going against the global trend of less snail mail volume.  The rationale is the the growth of e-commerce would see an increased need for home deliveries and so it has proved to be.

Though email has supplanted the written letter there are still quite distinct usage patterns  vary widely as this analysis from Rackspace shows.

The prevailing advice is not to send out marketing email at these peak times as the "delete" button is likely to be fully operational.  Better to time the delivery for the start of the working when the volume is less and recipient is more receptive. 

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• US postman hoarded 20,000 letters (news.bbc.co.uk)