A GRAVE JOKE ON UNDERTAKERS — Some malicious wag at Providence, R.I. has been playing a grave practical joke on the undertakers there, by summoning them over the telephone to bring freezers, candlesticks and coffin for persons alleged to be dead. In each case the denouement was highly farcical, and the reputed corpses are now hunting in a lively manner for that telephonist.
Paul Collins uncovers
the birth of the prank call.
[more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Nov 6, 2011 -
28 comments
In August, Google added a feature to Gmail that lets you
make phone calls — for free, if you live in the US or Canada and you're calling someone in the US or Canada. When you make a call, your number shows up as 760-705-8888. Judging by the nine pages of complaints
found here, the service is often being used to prank, harass and scam people.
[more inside]
posted by defenestration
on Oct 2, 2010 -
60 comments
Telephoneme: Even if your Alphabet Conspiracy succeeds and you destroy the books, machines have no minds of their own. They are easily confused by different voices and different accents. It is the brain of man that tells them what to do.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 20, 2010 -
10 comments
The
Fore River Shipyard was in service between 1886 and 1985, first under the management of the Fore River Ship and Engine Building Company, then Bethlehem Steel, and finally General Dynamics. She helped to close out the age of sail with the construction of the
largest sailing vessel in history without any kind of engine. Besides providing a substantial number of liberty ships, surface warships of various classes, and submarines during WWII, it may also be the source of the
"Kilroy was here" graffiti.
[more inside]
posted by rmd1023
on Nov 4, 2009 -
3 comments
The Smoking Gun turns the table on a group of pranksters allegedly responsible for terrorizing strangers over the phone:
Outing An Online Outlaw describes how the group leader used skype, an unprotected wifi connection and his mothers bedroom to engage in what TSG calls "an orgy of criminal activity."
posted by krautland
on Aug 4, 2009 -
65 comments
[archaic tech filter] Foreign correspondents and reporters in the field at the
New York Times say goodbye to the paper of record's
recording room.
posted by digaman
on Dec 6, 2007 -
9 comments
For four months, the Kuykendalls, the Prices and the McKays say they’ve been harassed and threatened by mysterious cell phone stalkers who track their every move and occasionally lurk by their homes late at night, screaming and banging on walls.
Police can’t seem to stop them. The late-night visitors vanish before officers arrive. The families say investigators have a hard time believing the stalkers can control cell phones without touching them and suspect an elaborate hoax. Complaints to their phone companies do no good – the families say they’ve been told what the stalkers are doing
is impossible.
posted by daninnj
on Jun 29, 2007 -
99 comments
Use the badly named
Tglo to call any phone in the USA for free, and to SMS anyone in the world (maybe) for free.
posted by riotgrrl69
on Aug 6, 2006 -
18 comments
The End of the Internet? "The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online."
posted by allkindsoftime
on Feb 4, 2006 -
32 comments
Psst... I know you called your girlfriend last night. No, not the one you live with. The naughty hottie that she doesn't know about. I know this because I paid
a website $110 to buy your cell-phone records, which they delivered in two hours. Did you know that
your private phone records are for sale?
posted by digaman
on Jan 7, 2006 -
49 comments
Safe Drunken Dialing: Its a fairly new and growing issue and we here at
slackertown are tackling it head on with booze in hand. We've taken the liberty of setting up a number (321) 600-1200 for whenever the drunken dialing urge takes a hold of you. Whatever message you leave will be added to the slackertown web site so when you sober up you can check back see just how drunk you were.
posted by page404
on Feb 10, 2005 -
17 comments
Thanks to our
new service you too can spend quality time with Kato Kaelin. Unfortunately, Leon Spinks is currently unavailable. And if you think you might want to sleep or use your phone during the next week, make sure to read the
faq.
posted by alms
on Dec 14, 2004 -
20 comments
Its not your fathers P.O.T.S. Plain Old Telephone Service is undergoing a fundamental shift as companies such as Verizon, AT&T and British Telecom embrace Internet technology to route long-distance and local phone calls to compete with services from the likes of upstarts Vonage and Packet8 and Skype etc. Is this the beginning of the
Telepocalypse
a race to the bottom of less and less profit and more and more layoffs? Follow the history and future of the woeful crumbling of the hiearchical phone phone company at
David Isen's web page Are the guts of the phone companies the class 5 switch
go the way of mainframe computer
posted by thedailygrowl
on Dec 11, 2003 -
9 comments
A giant game of telephone in the sky --For most of November in Yamaguchi, Japan, messages sent will be translated to japanese and back, and encoded as a unique set of flashes and redirected into the sky ove the city, flashing there until the recipient of the message retrieves it, transforming the skyline with
data as light--created by
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
Meanwhile, at the same time on the other side of the world, there's
Poetrica, on Sao Paulo, Brazil,
advertising billboards.--messages that also can't be read in public in their current form. You write something and convert it into a non-phonetic font. The visual messages are archived on the web site and you get an email when your message is displayed on one of the billboards--created by
Giselle Beiguelman
posted by amberglow
on Nov 1, 2003 -
9 comments
Retro phone fun. Remember the days when telephone numbers included an exhcange, like BUtterfield 8, MUrray Hill 7, or YUkon 5? Even you young whippersnappers can look up your current phone number and see what it's exchange name used to be. If your number isn't in the database, you can check Ma Bell's list of
recommended exchange names. The next time someone asks for your number, use the exchange and watch hilarity ensue.
posted by Oriole Adams
on Jul 18, 2003 -
34 comments
