New app forces you out of the house, ready or not
CAN’T WAKE UP? Me neither. Luckily, Takuya Sato is working to solve our problems.
The inventor first came to my attention with a brilliant Japanese app called MorningBomb. You download it to your phone, set the time that you want to be out of the house, and then go to sleep.
The “bomb” (a loud noise) will go off if you are not up and out of your home by that time.
There are the two genius things about this app:
1.) The bomb cannot be turned off so you can’t cheat.
2.) It detects where you are so you can’t lie to it.
(ME: “I’m up! I’m up!” APP: “No, you’re not, you @#$% liar.”)
The ONLY way to shut it down is to get up, get dressed, and travel a set distance away from your house.
The app is a bit like an Automated Mom, forcing us sleep-junkies onto the street, SOMETIMES IN PAJAMAS.
But then it ran into trouble. Moms can’t be uninstalled, but apps can, mua ha ha! Many users started deleting it.
So Takuya crafted a gentler version for the wimps among us.
The new one, called Morning+, detects whether you leave your home on time, and if you do, a sponsor gives you a metaphorical pat on the head by donating one US cent to a charity.
The last I heard, from a report on Japanese website erocketnews24, he hadn’t found a sponsor yet, so was using his own personal savings, and had donated 320 yen, the equivalent of US$4, to charity.
Joke: How do you wake up Lady Gaga?
Answer: Po po po poke her face.
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A SHOPPING mall in China has built a non-moving escalator. It has glass sides and a black rubber rail but doesn’t do anything. People get on the bottom step and just stand there, waiting for the machinery to clank into action.
Even more weird is the fact that it doesn’t move makes people feel dizzy and unstable, as if they are about to fall off.
I once lived in an ancient apartment block in Caine Road, Hong Kong, at which you had to pull open the elevator door by yourself. We used to time our friends to see how stupid they were. The record was set by a stockbroker who stood there for three minutes before realizing he had to open the door.
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THE FOOFIGHTERS’ recent concert in Dublin was so loud that it could be heard more than 20 kilometers away, the media from that country reported. Why waste money on tickets? Just find a seat in a hemisphere nearby.
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A POLICE chief told a man whose daughter had run off to kill her or himself. “If your daughter has eloped then you should be ashamed of it and end your life. I would have killed my sister if she had eloped, or else I would have committed suicide,” Deputy Inspector General Satish Kumar Mathur told the father in Lucknow, India, a few days ago.
His comments, caught on video by journalists, and forwarded to me by a reader, have triggered a debate in India.
Should police chiefs encourage murders? Answer in one word or less.
Question 2: Who would you rather see die?
a) The father? b) The daughter? c) The police chief?
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ONE EVENING recently, a snake bit a farmer in a paddy field in Nepal. Mohammed Salmodin went home, got a torch, found the snake and bit it. The snake died, the BBC reported. Of the bite? Or of humiliation?
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THANKS FOR the ideas on publishing in the previous post’s comment section. Rafan Jr’s anti-reading stance was kind of shocking, but I guess common enough in Asia. Many of my friends in this part of the world have no idea that books can be way more pleasurable than even movies or music or games—they think of books purely as study-related options. Rafan and others have a great discovery ahead of them, if only they take the plunge and discover just how immersive and life-changing a good novel can be. (End of commercial.)
Karuna’s idea on ebooks was good—definitely a necessary option these days. I consulted an expert, Marshall Moore of Whirlwind Book Consultancy. This is what he had to say:
“I don't recommend Kindle-only any longer because Amazon has decided to screw people in the Asia-Pacific region by limiting the availability of the Kindle Store. Depending on your location preferences, certain content will not show up unless you do a direct search by title and author. In other instances, such as Malaysia, the books will show up without pricing info. My efforts to look into this have been met with stonewalling from Amazon, which is why I've been focusing on other Asian e-bookstores. Kindle's still the biggest but they're also being douchebags at the moment, so I'd suggest casting the net wider.”
If you want to do an ebook that actually works on Kindle AND all other formats, (or get an expert editor for your book at an affordable price), contact him by clicking here.
