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  • iScape: Viral Douchery

    John Biggs

    Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

    Thursday, March 8th, 2007


    I was about to go snarkstorm on this product, which is some sort of video player. Now that I look at it, however, it’s abundantly clear that it’s a bit of viral frippery. The real value, I think, is the video which involves a set of dirty, ugly hippies getting all coked up and pressing buttons. Don’t go watch it, however, because, as I’ll explain, that’s exactly what they want you to do. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this, shall we?

    I’ve seen crappy products before, and this one was too over the top. With lines like “Scape is basically science fiction becoming reality. Now the mind and body can finally meet and exchange grandiose pleasantries,” I knew even the most trollish of patent troll wouldn’t take his bull to this level of insanity. Then I read the press release, which involved escorts from New Jersey, and realized I’d been had.

    The site is registered to EMIMusic and Virgin:

    Visit AboutUs.org for more information about ISCAPEDEVICE.COM AboutUs: ISCAPEDEVICE.COM

    Registrant: Make this info private
    Virgin
    150 5th Avenue 5th flr
    New York, NY 10011
    US

    Domain Name: ISCAPEDEVICE.COM

    Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
    Virgin
    domainname@emimusic.com
    150 5th Avenue 5th flr
    New York, NY 10011
    US
    Phone: 212-786-8000

    Record expires on 22-Feb-2012
    Record created on 22-Feb-2007
    Database last updated on 22-Feb-2007

    Domain servers in listed order: Manage DNS

    NS1.EMICAPITOL.COM 65.207.169.219
    NS2.EMICAPITOL.COM 208.253.155.164

    This is a viral website for the band the The Almost and the dirty hippie you see in the video is none other than Almost lead singer Douchey “Tattoos” McLimpwrist. Even the umbrella company, Omos, sounds kind of like Almost and the device they claim is the iScape looks like part of a webcam from 2002. So there you have it. A quick whois lookup has now saved us all hours of aggravation and frustration. And thank you, EMI, for giving me something to do this morning.

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