Jason Chen

I was interviewed by Chris Hardwick, who was super nice, about the iPhone 3G right after WWDC. My treadmill arrived shortly after.

I just realized that I never announced (on this site) that my book was done. It was done a few months ago, but here it is, in its Amazon linking glory: The iPhone Book.

Here, about Apple’s iPhone and subsequent slapping of customers in the face when the update came out that bricked unlocked phones. There’s some other “words” in the article, but Ctrl + F (or Command + F on a Mac) and search for me.

And my 10/17 Run:

Oh yes, thwarted by Blockbuster again. Like Dr. Venture of whom the quote is taken, I’ve got an arch nemesis that despite (or perhaps because) of their bumbling, manages to take advantage of me at every turn.

I go to the local Blockbuster to rent a game. Not just any game, but BioShock–one of the “most wanted” list that I’ve posted before. Luckily, I find one on the shelf. But when I bring it up to the front desk, the lazy, mumbling clerk asks me if I called ahead. I said no (truthfully). He then goes and checks to see if there are any more. He says there aren’t.

After some questioning, he fesses up that there is one more, but it’s reserved for the guy who called ahead. That’s not standard Blockbuster procedure, but I didn’t want to be a dick and make a scene, since I wanted to come back to his Blockbuster again. So I leave.

When I get home, I two more Blockbusters to see if they have it in stock. One didn’t, but the second one said they had one. We call and ask them to hold it for us until we get there. Ten minutes later when we did get there, it turns out the only copy that they had was for buying, not for renting. Seriously? You’re Blockbuster, and you think someone’s calling you to see if you have any more copies in stock to BUY?! Gimme a break.

End result, no BioShock, but plenty of jackassery.

Here about the BlackBerry outage a few months ago.

I actually know I’m going to be in some upcoming GM story, but it hasn’t gone up yet.

Here about the iPhone.

Yep, that’s right before I broke the 30,000 mark. The achievements have to be the greatest innovation of Microsoft’s unquestionably innovative console. Even when a game is mediocre, you’re going to want to rent it or buy it in the bargain bin just for the achievements. And if the achievements are easy, you’ll even put up with shit games.

But with good games, getting achievements is just a side effect of enjoying the game—you don’t have to go that far out of the way to get them. Which is nice.