Fear the Bloomberg Bozo

One of my Denver-area buddies, fellow Apple consultant J. Charles Holt of PEBMAC, was checking the Bloomberg Mobile iPhone application (click opens iTunes) this morning to see how the market was doing. What he found in the app is something downright weird -- Bozo the Clown. Charles originally posted this find on MacRumors.

Being the skeptic that I am, I followed his instructions, took a screenshot of the app's opening screen. As you can see from the image below, there doesn't appear to be anything odd with the picture:

At certain angles it does appear that there is something in the leftmost monitor. Charles sensed this, brought the photo into Photoshop, and did a bit of work with the Brightness / Contrast feature. (see the results on the next page)Not having Photoshop, I made a screenshot on the iPhone, sent it to my Mac, and opened it in iPhoto. I played with brightness, contrast, and sharpness, and here's what resulted:

Yep, folks! It's Bozo the Clown! The image below is an enlarged picture from the screenshot, while the real deal is below that:

What does this all mean? Are all investors Bozos? Are the folks in Washington, DC all Bozos for proposing the bailout? Or did an iPhone developer have too much time on his/her hands?

A tip of the Bozo hair to J. Charles Holt

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One of my Denver-area buddies, fellow Apple consultant J. Charles Holt of PEBMAC, was checking the Bloomberg Mobile iPhone application...

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islandguy

who ever did that is probably getting their butt kicked because that violates a copyright...

September 29 2008 at 1:26 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

SSteve

It just goes to show: we're all bozos on this bus

http://www.firesigntheatre.com/albums/album.php?album=bozos

September 26 2008 at 2:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Missy

clowns are creepy.

we did a Flash basketball game with an easter egg like this... if you clicked on a fan in the stadium it popped up one of the developer's pictures and info - of course one used a creepy clown mask for his

September 26 2008 at 2:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bobwilliams

GameAgent also offers an Extended Download Service for an additional fee of $4.99. Basically, what this does is give you the right to re-download the game anytime within two years. So, if you have a hard drive crash and no back-up, you can download again. One downside is that the game is locked to your computer, so you can only play them on the machine they were downloaded on. If you want to re-download the games on a new computer, you must purchase the EDS service when you buy the game. Even then, a given serial number can only be activated three times.

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Bobwilliams
social media optimization

September 26 2008 at 1:11 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Noobie

Could this have something to do with it?

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/08/28/bloomberg-steve-jobs.html

September 25 2008 at 11:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Keehun

This is scary! :-) But awesome find nonetheless

September 25 2008 at 9:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark

Also at the intersection of clowns and finance:

http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/09/25/the-dark-bailout/

September 25 2008 at 7:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Roy

haha, SCORE for easter eggs!

September 25 2008 at 7:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kenneth

I didn't believe it, so I took a screenshot and checked it out in Photoshop, sure enough it's there! Haha, cool.

September 25 2008 at 6:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jack

Good way to get a few more downloads... leak a little 'easter egg' and watch the blogosphere go mad advertising your app. Worked for me, had to download it just to make sure.

September 25 2008 at 6:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

3 replies to Jack's comment