Bedded bliss

Raunchy analogies, online dating, neglected copper-tops, and invading the privacy of the elderly - just another week in Daveland

I was being wined and dined by a distribution boss the other day when he shared an ingenious analogy for channel partnerships. Lamenting a relationship with a start-up vendor that had failed to take off, the poetic VAD executive broke out his – apparently infamous – “love-sex-marriage” metaphor.

“You must know my love, sex, marriage thing?” he asked, earning an eye-roll from his long-suffering marketing colleague. “Go on,” I implored.

“Love is the relationship, marriage is the contract and sex is the revenue,” he went on (eye-rolls aplenty from his co-worker). “With this vendor, we had the love, we had the marriage of the contract – but there was no sex. We got married too soon!”

He was being glib, but maybe the nameless distie exec – let’s call him Graham Jones from Exclusive Networks, for argument’s sake – has struck allegoric gold. The more I think about it, my skills between the sheets could be likened to that batch of factory-seconds PCs we sold last week: slow running and may not have been tested for anything infectious in many a year, but ultimately reliable and better value than anything else you’ll find in Dagenham market.

Romantically charged

I felt a little queasy at the recent revelation that inexplicably popular dating app Tinder is to charge us mature types almost four times more than young folk to use its premium service. The rather creepy and reductive matching site is apparently introducing some higher-end subscription services, but has sparked incredulity with its age-based pricing policy.

In the US over-30s will be charged $19.99 per month to upgrade, double the $9.99 fee for those yet to enter their fourth decade. In the UK the age threshold is even lower, at 28, and the cost differential is even more pronounced: £3.99 a month for those aged 27 or under, and a whopping £14.99 once you’ve careered into the last two years of your 20s.

A Tinder spokeswoman told the BBC: “We’ve found that these price points were adopted very well by certain age demographics.” (Particularly the ones who have to pay much, much less, I’m guessing.) “Lots of products offer differentiated price tiers by age, like Spotify does for students, for example,” she added, confusing the concept of studying with that of being a certain age.

I second that emoji

Apple device users may have noticed in recent weeks that the new beta update of its operating system brings with it a diversified universe of emojis, encompassing a range of skin tones and sexual orientations.

The changes are welcome, to be sure, but some believe the fruity tech giant has not gone far enough. Emma Kelly, who runs the redhead-targeted Ginger Parrot website, spotted that Apple has not included a single emoji person of the redhead persuasion. She is seeking to rectify this with the launch of a petition which, as I write, has upwards of 2,000 signatures. “I can’t believe redheads didn’t even get one character in Apple’s openly diversified collection of emoji,” said Kelly.

“If you say you’re going to diversify, why not add a few ginger-haired emoji in the mix? Sure, we only make up less than two per cent of the world’s population, but that is 138,000,000 iPhones waiting to happen.”

Hear, hear! And while you’re at it, surely you can’t have failed to notice the complete lack of moustachioed, trench-coated spivs among Apple’s emojiverse?

Watch your step

In a landmark development for the burgeoning condescending tech industry, I learned this week that vendor Burg has unveiled its “first standalone phone/safety smartwatch for kids and seniors”.

Whether your relative is young and vulnerable, or old and vulnerable, this nifty bit of kit aims to offer you peace of mind.

A GPS system allows you to track the movements of your child (or your parent/lover/creditors, I suppose) while the one-touch emergency call option is designed to give the elderly an alternative to the “embarrassing and expensive ‘I’ve fallen’ pendant” – a technology that is apparently popular in the US. Sounds like a neat enough idea.

If there’s any way of getting the one-touch dial function set up to ring Kebabaganza in Barking, count me in!