Video: Pocket Cemetery iPhone App preys on grief, sends prayers to Flash memory
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Jul 6th 2009 5:19AM
posted Jul 6th 2009 5:19AM
Death is a certainty and as inescapable as the people who will prey on your grief. The new Pocket Cemetery App on iTunes lets you create virtual tombstones for "dead relatives, friends, pets, or celebrities" that you can decorate with bitmapped flower images. You can even use the on-screen QWERTY to tap out and "send" a little prayer. As Wayne Perry describes it, Pocket Cemetery is "like having a little virtual heaven in the palm of your hand." Unfortunately, heaven will cost $2.99 and there won't be any connectivity -- this App runs isolated on your iPhone without any means to share your memorial, prayers, or grieving. But hey, maybe we're alone in our criticism; Pocket Cemetery already has a first "user review" rating it 5 out of 5 stars by a first time reviewer just 1-hour after launch. Impressive.
P.S. Don't just stop at the video above, Wayne's generated a different pitch on his YouTube channel capitalizing on the deaths of Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Farrah Fawcett. Elvis too, even though we know he's just in hiding.
P.S. Don't just stop at the video above, Wayne's generated a different pitch on his YouTube channel capitalizing on the deaths of Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Farrah Fawcett. Elvis too, even though we know he's just in hiding.
wtf is this garbage making money out of someone death lame humans
apparently you've never heard of private security contractors :)
See also: Inheritance tax, Alarms in case you're buried alive, The Egyptians
Hitler is upset about MJ's passing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELyTBXzfQJ8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmacsmind.com%2Fwordpress%2F&feature=player_embedded
this app is so sad in so many ways
I agree, this guy is a total moron.
What use is it if only you have access to this memorial? This only makes sense if you can share it with other people.
Yeah it's obviously even easier to milk the dumb by getting them to compete, who gave the most expensive biggest flowers? The sky's the limit.
this blog will turn from Cemetery Apps to Michael Jackson hating/loving thread in 3...2...1...
I can't decide between fruity pebbles or cinnamon toast crunch on this beautiful Monday morning.
come on ... it s a no brainer, always always go for the cinnamon toast crunch
Mix them! It'll take your breakfast to a whole new level. Can you handle it?
Oh, and make sure you use chocolate milk too.
anybody going to the jackson memorial in staples center?
Farrah Fawcet reaches the gates of heaven and God tells her she can have one wish in the world. She says she wishes all the children of the world can be safe, so God takes Micheal Jackson.
Honestly though, all this news and hoopla over MJ is stupid. He was a messed up person who's better off dead. His family, his life and his career were evidence enough.
ok, so my coffee came out of my nose when I read that joke!
F'ing Tacky and low class as hell.
I've been saying that about fox, cnn, (insert news company here) for about a day after MJ's death. The dude died, it's life, say your prayer or whatever and move on! What pisses me off about all this shit is we have weeks of OMGMJ died, and a 2 minute blurb about one of our servicemen captured by the Taliban.
Yep, that's why I hate the american news. Just a bunch of low rent whores. (can i please have another tour of MJ's empty house cnn?)
- BBC FTW!
Comparing it to the news networks is a good choice, it's basically the same damn thing, not just with celebrities either, they even make ads for themselves where they show people dying in all kinds of conflicts, brutally murdered or giving their life for a cause and then reduced to being an 'extra' in a 25 seconds ad for bbcworld/cnn/fox/nbc/abc what have you. Yay, bloody yay.
BBC is no different, and their tabloid newspapers are even worse than the worse US stuff.
Oh and they also have the commercial british channels with news.
In reality BBC is nasty now in that they push a doctrine and twist stuff to their end and hide stuff that hinders the view they are pushing, and unlike foxnews the BBC pretends they aren't doing that but are on some higher moral platform, so foxnewsfor instance is more respectable in the end than present day BBC.
"foxnewsfor instance is more respectable in the end than present day BBC.' - Wait, Wwhat??
It makes no difference if it's Farah, Michael, Travolta's son, or my some noncelebrity's daughter that got tragically hit by a stray bullet. There's no need to needlessly try and profit of of someone's death.
as for the news yes they are all pretty poor. sensationalizing without proof an all types of stories. And i'd agree the BBC is no better then American newspapers and worse in many ways. i've seen numerous articles on the bbc website that level accusations but don't even have an author listed or quotes from the person they are accusing. And most of the english tabloids are worse. But you can't write some of those things in most american papers, unsourced articles that with no quotes. You'll get sued for libel and won't risk it.
I know OneLove, it's astounding, but it's there staring us in the face.
ive always wanted to make money off the grief, tears, and sorrows of dead peoples family and friends.
Because dead people have iphones too..
that can apparently receive flowers
50,000 apps in the app store, 1/2 of them are garbage.
only half?
1 trillion Windows Mobile apps, 99% of them are garbage. I have had to scour the internet, 100s of threads on XDA and shady developer websites looking for good apps for my Touch Cruise.
I honestly cant believe Apple were the first successful (successful being the keyword) company to introduce a marketplace for mobile apps.
Of course there were places like Handango but by and large, they suck, and arent a CENTRAL place for Apps.
@Adderz
1,000,000,000,000 * 0.01 = 10,000,000,000
10,000,000,000 > 25,000
Something seems wrong there.
Fact is that he's good at addingz, but not at multiplyingz.
But don't Apple carefully vet each and every iPhone app before releasing it to the faithful? Making sure it isn;t obscene/offensive/likely to lead it's purchaser to a lice of crime and debauchery?
How can shake the baby be bad but this is considered ok?
Got to say though.. Tacky, parasitic, opportunist creepy and downright morbid. Carrying around a photo of a dead loved one/celebrity I can see. Listening to music that reminds you of them, fine. But putting a memorial on a phone for your own private use?? Come on. This is the app that should get the down-loaders flagged for some kind of at risk register.
Luckily AT&T has every person in the world flagged, and monitored.
So will this be pulled or not? If you think it WILL be pulled, vote this up - if you think it won't be, vote this down
"and the prayer has been sent"
how stupid can one be???????????????
Thats a iPhone ..
A before a consonant, an before a vowel.
Cut your nails you lowlife.
I just killed 3 Million of my brain cells watching this. This is INSANE!
How low are we going to make money out of someone's death!?!
Even a man/woman who has no limbs can pay homage to his/her loved ones without going to a cemetery. Using this app will make them feel dumb...
Shame on you Mr.PocketCemetery developer!
what a freaking parasite
Apple absolutely should feature this app for their next tv ad.
I could do a very bad joke about Steve Job but I will restrain myself. That application is total crap.
MJ was not born on August 29. He changed his birth date because he didn't want to be a Scorpio.
His actual birth date is in Oct of '58.
Michael surely didn't want to be Michael.
That's why he changed his name to mikaeel or whatever it was and become a Muslim
Thats why he faked his death and ran off to Mexico
Haha, mexico, the low cost alternative to brazil.
Meanwhile michael jackson is still on the floor of his studio with a broken ankle saying 'Why did they take that latex replica of me from the lobby and did they shock it with paddles, and when will I get some assistance?'
Thats really low class Engadget... you just couldnt make a remark from you about his death you had to put someones rip-OFF APP regarding his death. So many serious sites (not music related !!!) put tribute remark in form of small banner or something and you put this lame news.
Kinda disguasting.
This is a tech blog; if events regarding Michael Jackson's death pertain to technology, Engadget will report on it, otherwise its just more meaningless fluff added to the collective navel which the entire connected world will spend an eternity wanking themselves into a frenzy over.
As for the rest of the moral feather spitting going on about this golden nugget on the app store, if you don't like it, don't buy it. The only *actual* problem here seems to be that the creator is asking for payment, but the actual concept, though tacky in its execution, is no more a show of disrespect to the dead than any other medium of rememberance.
All of the major services (from wide variety of fields) decided to give him respect and tribute for touching milions.So if other could mention Micheal I dont see Engadget could not make small remark. The whole freaking world knows who this person was as he was one of his kind.
But if engadget decides to ignore that fact [fair] thats their view/choice. And I can agree to that and have no problem with it.
But why they decided to put this news up? hmm? i think this app existed before Micheal's death concerning other celebrities. But engadget didnt focus on it untill Micheal Jackson passed away. And it because Micheal, engadget highlighted this app. So for me it is not the most classy way to reffer to someones death by emphasizing an app that uses his name to make cash. >:O I would leave more space for things more important than that. Especially when micheal's death is considered for something not worth of mentioning. Thats how i think :)
While caught up in grief I was expecting this site to cover Michael Jackson's demise since this site has been known to blog about robots, and Jackson was the most influential robot in pop history. In retrospect, even though it may have been sad, I'd prefer them to stick to covering practical consumer gadgets. I'll continue to do my grieving at rotten.com, thank you.
You actually pitched a fit because a gadget blog is not posting a tribute to a musician. Seriously, think about how pathetic you look to all of us right now.
I'm having a good laugh over it. I'll tell you that much.
Finally an app that let's me feel good about burying my iphone.
Making money out of numpties? Good work that man.
More iCrap!
yay Engadget! I'm so glad they're not acknoledging this stupid-ass media hype over MJ's death. He was a pop music star. He was not somebody that ever did anything good for the world or bettered it. He sang shitty music that influenced more shitty music that has now resulted in massive amounts of shitty music that is produced by a bunch of suits sitting around a 15,000 Microsoft touch screen coffee table computer (which are still way f'ing cool) who decide which demographic they can exploit next with music written by people who are 50+ and then sang by hot white jail-bait ass.
Way to be Engadget. +9000 Internets, and my hat's off to you.
before MJ fans start blasting me, I spelled acknowledging*** wrong. I am aware. Now, go ahead.
JrA 219 pSu,
"He was not somebody that ever did anything good for the world or bettered it."
Seriously? Let's see you give over 300 million dollars to charities. Hell, even one percent of that.
http://www.thesource.com/2009/06/the-source-remembers-michael-jackson-humanitarian/
WOW that is the crappiest app ever -.- Lets send fake flowers and a fake prayer to dead people that won't ever receive them. I'm telling you these religious things are gonna kill me....
I don't know which is worse; The idiot profiteering off a celebrity's death or the idiots who spend money on an app to send prayers to a person they didn't know.
This is also on android!!!!
Androids eat apples for breakfast
I'm a CONSUMER WHORE... Deep inside I am already dead, before this application was even made... and no amount of iPhone flowers can bring my soul to life...
Man I'm sick of hearing about Michael "Kid-toucher" Jackson.
Weird and creepy - wonder how many have sold? I'm going to take a look at ratings.
http://www.cruisemarketwatch.com/blog1/articles/cruise-iphone-app-now-available-to-cruisers/
http://www.alwaysbecruising.com/who/index.php