Before you think I have gone all perverted, stop. These are actual mascots of events. From top right clockwise:
* 1996 Atlanta Olympic mascot “Izzy”
* 2008 Spain World Expo * 2010 Shanghai World Expo
* 2009 Hong Kong East Asian Games

Having lived through and participated in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta I heard all the “blue sperm” jokes you could imagine. After that I thought, “ok mistake over, now back to lions, tigers, and bears, oh my.” Nope. I just saw the Shanghai mascot last week. Not only is it ambiguous but it is also blue! Then this week I arrive in Hong Kong to the “white sperm twins” for the East Asian games. Those three alone would have been enough for this article, but then I find the 2008 Spain expo mascots. Posis? Negas? Are you serious? What is Posis even doing to Negas on the bottom right? Do people really want to see this? Please tell me I am not the only person who feels this is wrong.

I only have a few questions:

1. What’s wrong with an animal? Starbucks can dress up the same bear 6 ways to Sunday, but these events can’t manage a new animal look? What about the lemur? When was he a mascot? Or the moth? For that matter, they might as well put Alabama’s dung beetle up as a mascot given this company.
2. Why Blue or White? If you made them brown then… oh…I get why not brown.. but orange or green? What about black? Why can’t we have a “black” mascot, hmm? HMMMM???
3. Why so close together? We have gone from 2008-2010 and all three look very close. STOP COPYING CHINA! The problem with being ambiguous is you can be anything and when you are anything you are also nothing which is what they tend to end up. I think I need to report these and collect my reward to China’s new porn policy: http://bit.ly/7yQ5cw

Now most of these were designed using children’s imaginations and focus groups. The problem with children is that they don’t even know all the animals yet, so of course they sneeze on a paper (or worse) and someone calls it “Izzy!” Please, please, please, to the next event planner, find something with legs, a pulse, and a defined neck and NOT something that looks more like what people in Asia spit on the sidewalks.

Posted via email from beuk’s posterous

Yes, I broke down and bought the iPhone. “Broke down” is not quite the right phrase. In truth all other phones were merely a string of waiting rooms until the iPhone arrived. Let me back up a few months. I used to be a die hard Sony Ericsson fan. Buying the latest and greatest camera phone each time. In truth the K750i was the last great phone from Sony, but I upgraded anyway. They were all nice phones, but the they were just that and some took nice pictures too. I ~wanted~ to get the Sony X1. This phone looked like the sleekest most powerful business phone on the planet. The problem is I wanted it in Jan, 2008. Come November? Still not available. My next decision was one of my worst.

I purchased the Nokia N96. It is loaded and does everything, or so Nokia had me believe. That purchase has now made #3 in my list of life’s regrets. The phone chose what time it would take a call. People (namely B) would call and the phone would decide “not today, I’m tired.” No problem, I thought, why does a phone need to be a good…phone? I does other things, right? Well it played games. Brothers in Arms was actually pretty cool in NGage. Large game, install on large memory card right? Wrong. You must install it on the phone memory thereby decreasing valuable space AND (get this) turn the sound off to get it to play smoothly. Lame. even worse, why are there three memories? It is just a phone. Worst was the wifi/3g access. I had to answer a SAT practice test each time I wanted to connect to anything. Couldn’t the phone… er… device simply just serve up my data?

Enter the iPhone (to choruses of angels)*. When comparing phones EVERY site out there seems very focused on specs. Is this camera better? How does this game play? What is call quality like? Battery life? I say phooey on all of this and call for a a total rethink in how we measure devices. None of these “tech” sites seem to have a valid measure on usability.

The only problem I had with the iPhone 3G is that it was SIM locked. This meant IF you managed to buy it, it would be locked to a contract and a provider in a certain country. When I was in Australia I looked into it and they wanted: driver’s license, 2 bills, proof of address, copy of passport, work visa, first born, the usual. Even then I would have had to setup a contract, cancel it the next day, and pay an additional fee to unlock the phone. Waaaayy too difficult and costly. Other options like grey markets in Taiwan just scared me. Who knows what they pre-installed. Finally, it hit me. Hong Kong. Hong Kong and Italy are the only two countries that sell unlocked iPhones. I ordered 3 to my office there (for others, and no not your Christmas present) and 1.5 days later they arrived. Once you tell the phone where your iTunes is (a requirement) the phone is just… AWESOME. The simplicity is amazing.

The touch screen works flawlessly and is crazy fun to drag, slide, squeeze and even dial a combination lock. Each app runs as the focus for the user. You never have to worry about other apps running in the background. They seem to go into some sort of stasis and await the next time you need them. This helps me tons. I often have Chinese characters in email that are addresses, names, book titles, etc… Queue them up in email and lock the phone. W you need it, it is one button slide away from showing a person. The wifi is as simple as it can be. Your options are on/off (take that Nokia) and it simply connects, no asking “Do you really want to?” The simplicity and responsiveness is beyond anything I have seen in a phone. It also happens to be a full ipod, but that is the least of what it does. A search for “free” apps in the App Store and you are a kid in a candy shop. I now have 5 pages of apps. Rather than run down my list of favorites, let me share some of the ways my life has been changed in the past week:

• Tweets are more consistent than they ever have been.
• Exchange integration is flawless. I have returned my BlackBerry.
• Cooked two meals for B based on recipes that can sync online and I can read/store on the phone.
• Reading the Bible daily
• All passwords sync wirelessly with computer password app.
• Longer walks and bike rides just so I can track my progress in iMapMyRide
• Increased treadmill time from 20 to 40 minutes watching TV shows
• No more dropped calls
• Looking up Chinese words on the fly and…
• Beat TapDefense

In short, my life is considerably better and to say, “I love the iPhone” is an understatement. I know Matthew 6 says, “Lay not upon yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt” ’cause the iPhone told me so, but I’ve got to believe Apple is working on the rust bit.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I am not an Apple fan boy and do not normally gush about technology, but this warranted it.

Headless Blue Wonder Woman, originally uploaded by beuk.

This was in the window of the store next to my office in Hong Kong. I could not decide if it was tasteless, funny, sexy, what? All I know is a headless blue wonder woman caught my attention. and yes… You know I went inside to see the Invisible Jet!