iHobo: bad taste, yes. You can read more here.

But I'm inclined to think that bad taste is better than no taste at all.

Sometimes, I think that what people are offended by is the juxtaposition of the iPhone user and the homeless person. That is, next to the homeless, our wealth feels crass. Therefore, it is tempting to dismiss an iPhone app out of hand that deals with homelessness, because it points out our own wealth compared to their poverty.

However, this is our reality, the disparity between rich and poor. So we cannot dismiss the iHobo just because of the sick feeling we get watching the over-fashionable video with the young, fit, hoodie-wearing hobo that reminds me of my (and your) friend Thomas.

Or the idea that we are actually so bourgeois that we would buy an iHobo and tend to it at 3am but not give money to a hobo in the street. But this is actually where our society is at.

If we are to dismiss it, it would be because it assumes the homeless people live and die because of our attention to them, that they need or crave our attention. That we are somehow the gods of their life and death.

Anyways, we are actually having this conversation, and I bet the org in question will make money and give that money to the homeless, so that's a huge plus. I bet the iHobo will actually make iHobo-ers think about homeless people at 3am.

What a great practical joke to play on a technophile.