The official launch date of the iPoor–is here…almost!

We here at iPoor Ltd. have been working around the clock for months on end now, but I have poured my last cup of instant coffee, slammed back my last mountain dew, and pulled my last all-nighter. It’s all been worth it.

I’ve got a warehouse full of shiny new iPoors, and we’re ready to ship.

In the next few days, I will be announcing the official iPoor launch date. On this day, the iPoor will be available at my house, and also major retailers across the country. For a mere $10, you can own a piece of the revolution–soon to be the 9th Wonder of the Modern World.

Steve Jobs threatened to sue, Steve Ballmer said our equipment looked like a kid’s toy, Forbes Magazine called us ‘delusional copycats’, and Guy Kawasaki told us to ’stop creeping’ him on Facebook. But despite the setbacks and the naysayers, we’re finally ready to let you, our supportive public, be the judge of our product.

Here’s my guarantee: on Launch Day, the iPoor will be kicking some major iPhone ass!

iPoor–coming soon to everywhere

Last week, Justine Ezarik, responsible for Tasty Blog Snack, iJustine, Mommy Pack my Lunch, and 456 other websites, created a stir with her new tattoo.

Ummm, hello? iPoor says ‘big whoop’. Tattoos have been around…oh, I don’t know…for like 6 billion years–since the first caveman took a sharp rock and scraped some totally sweet barbed wire around his hairy bicep. Clearly, Justine is making a weak bid to get on my Top Apple Geek list (see here).

Well, Justine, I got my first tattoo when you were in diapers. Maybe if we’d had the interweb back in ‘87, people on other continents like Nova Scotia could be impressed by my bitchin’ tat.

Let me put this into perspective–if your tattoo was like a rusty short-sword, my tattoo would be a Mithral Bastard Sword of Elvish Wonder (+10). I mean, c’mon, that wee thing isn’t even in color!

Check me out in all my majesty:

Awesome tattoo=flock of ladies

So, apparently everyone gets a musical except for me. They made a musical about cats, a musical about hobbits, and now one about a couple of our main competitors:

All this time, I thought musicals were for girls and the mentally deficient (like the music of Bon Jovi). Now I see how they can be realistic depictions of society’s ills. So I decided I’m gonna write iPoor the Musical. It’ll be about how the iPoor solves world hunger and poverty–just like real life, but with musical numbers (and possibly some riverdancing). I’m gonna ask my main-man, Rob Van Winkle, to play me and I thought I’d let Stephen Sondheim write the music.

I’ve actually been testing this new iPoor slogan–”iPoor - forget iTunes, we have a friggin’ musical”.

Let me know if you have any good ideas for song titles.

Please be my Guy.

Read the open letter to Guy Kawasaki.

http://ipoor.org/OpenLettertoGuy.html

Guy Kawasaki is a great guy. So why shouldn’t he have his own day?
Well, now he does. It’s official - Beaverton, Oregon, will play host to the first annual Guy Kawasaki Day! 

Visit the site:  http://GuyKawasakiDay.com.

On September 21, 2007, Pear Street will be turned into a parade of epic proportions–featuring a large banner, a tuba player (Nowoz), and at least 2 baton twirlers. Afterwards there will be drinks at my house (BYOB, but I’ll put out some pretzels).

Why all this celebration? Because we want to show our appreciation of Guy’s entrepreneurial spirit, and .. he’s a great guy.

We’ve got the entire community of Beaverton backing us–when his office was finally reached for comment, Mayor Rob Drake gave us an enthusiastic “no comment”. If you can’t make it out to the parade, you can still shout your Guy Pride from anywhere–visit our official Guy Kawasaki Day website to get more info.

Our Main Guy, Guy
(Source)

And the winner of our gadget contest is…

/* drum roll please */

Peter Cole from http://p3t3r.co.uk - you’ve won the Gorilla Pod from Thinkgeek, valued at $21.99.

Thanks very much for subscribing and spreading the word!

I’ll do the draw of all the remaining prizes to our subscribers. I’m limiting the number of prizes a member can win to 1 to maximise the number of different winners we have.

So if you subscribed, remember to check your email. Make sure you check your spam filters just in case.

Congrats again to Peter and good luck to everybody in the draw!

So last week, George Hotz accepted an offer for the world’s first unlocked iPhone. He traded his masterwork for a car and three more iPhones.

A little known story reveals that this is simply the last in a series of diabolical trades which earned Hotz the coveted iPhone. It all began a few short months ago with a red paperclip. A very phoneless Hotz was sitting at his computer playing Arena of Octos, when his eyes fell upon the aforementioned paperclip. A revelation hit him: why not try to trade this paperclip for an iPhone?

Hotz then made a litany of trades–his red paperclip for a blue paperclip, the blue paperclip for a wingnut, the wingnut for two yellow paperclips, the yellow paperclips for some yogurt, and finally the yogurt for a water-pistol, which he then used to hold up a New Jersey Apple outlet and steal an iPhone.

We offered George 29 iPoor units and Nowoz’s new 12-speed bicycle, but he had evidently been driven insane by the more than 500 hours he spent unlocking his iPhone–why else would he turn us down?

Give him a couple of months, and Hotz will be hard at work, trying to crack the uncrackable iPoor!

Geohot making a call on his unlocked iPhone

Here are some future iPoor customers. A frugal family of 7 lives on $35,000 per year with absolutely no debt.
How does a family of seven fund a comfortable lifestyle without credit? Well, they don’t own an iPhone for one thing.

A $599 iPhone could sustain one member of this family for 43 days! ($35,000 / 7 = $5000 per person / 365 days = $13.69. $599 / $13.69 = 43 days.)

Time is running out to enter our Free Gadget Giveaway–the contest will close on Friday, August 31st. All you have to do is subscribe to our email list or Kick Poverty.

The winners will be announced after August 31st–as we crawl ever closer to L-Day 2!

last year’s big Gadget Giveaway winner!

Leander Kahney once said, “As a group, Apple fans act like Hells Angels or Trekkies, but they’re loyal to a brand of computers instead of motorcycles or sci-fi.”. Today, you’ll see just how loyal some of them are.

I’ve put put together a list of the World’s Geekiest Apple fans you’ll ever see. Here are some of the ways they express their devotion.

1. Jeremy Mehrle (single) - ÜberNerd Mac Collector

Geek Quote: “The bar is a scaled down of my original idea where I would have 3 whole walls of Mac Classics like at the end of the second Matrix movie (only I had the idea before the movie).” Source

This guy takes the cake on pure financial dedication to his geekdom. Jeremy spent more than $4000 on Ikea furniture alone! His undeniably beautiful basement museum, containing more than 75 pieces of Apple computer history, has never been seen by a woman. Check out this video on CNN.

2. Greg Packer (terminally single) - Penultimate Nerd

Claim to Geekfame: Being first-in-line to buy an iPhone (after waiting 110 hours, proudly neglecting most acts of hygiene).
Greg is a professional line-sitter and is famous for being one of those jerkwads who will push his way in front of you at concerts or the movie theatre. Unfortunately, in our geek-off, he only finishes second. Visit Greg’s site and donate your hard-earned cash to his worthy cause.

3. Kyle Purdy (in a relationship) - MiniNerd

Geek Powers: braces, lisp, glasses, button-down lapels, desire to learn.
14 year-old Kyle wrote a letter to Steve Jobs and landed a personal invite to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. Only attending in the hopes of scoring some chicks, Kyle was brainwashed by Apple and forced to serve as Jobs’ supernerd sidekick. Check out Kyle’s interview on Planet Nerd.

4. Unbox iPhone Guy (so single it hurts) - HenchNerd

Geek Factor: 110%
Back in January, this dude somehow got his hands on an iPhone, before it was even completed, and beat those slackers at Unbox.IT by six months. Extra points were awarded for creative use of time travel and a realistic depiction of excitement. Check out this historic ceremony here.

5. Brad Stone (allegedly married) - FakeNerd

Geek Aliases: Santa Claus Killer.

After exposing the ‘real’ identity of blog-phenom Fake Steve Jobs earlier this month, Brad Stone was then revealed as the culprit himself (see story…) By charading as FSJ, Brad was able to live out his fantasy of owning and operating Apple. Brad is rumoured to have an Apple logo tattooed on his butt, and enjoys sucking the magic out of our daily lives.
Read more about BS at Fake Brad Stone (written by Daniel Lyons).

6. John Swerdan (singer) - HippieGeek

Geek Lyrics: “Start up and take a hard drive / Backup or you won’t arrive”

A few years ago, this elementary school teacher from California, recorded an album of songs based on or inspired by the Macintosh computer. You can read the Byronesque poetry of Swerdan’s lyrics on his site (no longer updated). Apparently, he is still writing and performing–albeit inferior, less relevant, non-Apple related music.

7. The ‘Yes Way! Expose’ Guys (all single) - GangNerds

Geeks? Yes.
If you haven’t already watched it 500 times, get started on this Mac music video by a group of guys who have never had girlfriends. I kept skipping back to minute 1:34 to repeatedly watch that killer dance move. Bask in all its geeky majesty! I made the switch!

Honorable Mentions:
Jennifer Wright (Kyle Purdy’s Girlfriend) - Nerd-in-Training

Elwin Fannypans - HopelessNerd

The MacIntyre Quadruplets - Nerds of a Feather

Applebaby - Future Geek

Steve Nojobs - iMac Geek

Alright, I’m probably a geek too or I wouldn’t have bothered to make this list…

…did we miss some Apple geeks out there? Send me your Geek Nominees as I continue to update this list! Still need more geeks? Check out this article by CNET about the Top 10 geeks through the decades.