I love the fact that Power Music Hour, a new app for the iPhone, never once mentions drinking in its App Store page description. But anyone who has been to college in the past decade will know exactly what this app is for: A drinking game.
A “Power Hour” is a game in which you must drink one shot of beer every minute for an hour (there are variations). Yes, that’s 60 shots of beer. Yes, that will get you very, very drunk. But again, this app never once mentions drinking in its description, and instead implies that it may just be fun to listen to music for a minute at a time. I love it.
Then I dove into the App Store and looked at some other “Power Hour” apps — there are a ton of them. And hilariously, none seem to mention drinking at all. One, Hour of Power, has a description that even reads as follows:
Ever needed a one minute timer to pace yourself while listening to music? With Hour of Power, you can play one minute of any artists, albums, songs, or playlists from your iPod.
When exercising, you can use your music to tell you when to switch weights or activities. When jogging, you can use it to tell you when to change speeds.
Exercising? Jogging? Ha!
We all know what these apps are for, even if they found a rather brilliant loophole in Apple’s App approval system: Simply create a drinking game app, don’t mention the drinking part, and you’ll get a nice 4+ rating, rather than a much more restrictive one (or possibly even rejection).
But we’re going to focus on Power Music Hour because at least they were honest in their email to us about the app:
Howdy TechCrunchers,
Hope you’re all having a lovely week, but in case you’re not we’d like to give you the opportunity to forget all those blog posts you were meaning to post and take a sec to check out our new app, the perfect companion to a 30-rack and an office full of writers.
Let us kindly introduce Power Music Hour, the best (if not first) power hour application for the iPhone & iPod Touch.
So take a load off, grab your favorite drink(s), and enjoy yourself. Hey, your lunch break is an hour long, right?
The app itself is great as a Power Hour app. It takes the music that on your iPhone or iPod touch and cycles through it in 60-second intervals (you can also make it longer or shorter). There is then an audible “ding” when that minute is up, and the song changes.
Back in the day, we used to have to use a stop watch to do Power Hours, this is much, much better!
Find Power Music Hour in the App Store here. It is $0.99. Please drink responsibly. Or, please listen to music for a minute at a time responsibly. While jogging. Or whatever.
this app is for paul carr, right?
I heard they consulted him during the development… Is that true Paul?
i’ll let paul answer that. but i hear he may like “hour of power” more than this one.
I don’t understand. Why would anyone stop drinking after an hour?
Maybe you can adjust the speed of the app? 1 drink every 30 seconds etc.
Because you would be blacked out in 30 minutes.
If you took a drink every 30 seconds for 30 minutes it about 6 beers … 12 beers in 1 hour.
Try PowerHour – its tough – 60 seconds goes by real fast after the first 30 minutes.
so does the iPhone’s battery!
yeah, they really need some “Power Day” or “Power Week” apps.
power paul
i don’t get it neither… maybe this is ‘hei fellow yankees fraternity brothets, let’s leave our politically correct life for an hour and get wasted… usa rules!!!… sorta thing’??? lol
ok, i admit that there are fraternities here (switzerland) where you get wasted first and then fight each other with swords! that’s even creepier
happy drinking, yankee doodles
Hah, we were playing with this in the office today. Just another reason to do a power hour
I picked up this app from iTunes already. While it’s the middle of the day, so I haven’t put it to the full test yet, so far it looks pretty fantastic.
Having overseen a few power hours in college, this app definitely has a niche. We used to use a stop watch and a cd player (and later MP3 player). I’m pretty sure app will have a market, especially at $.99 for the cheap college kids.
http://www.ipowerhour.com/ plugs into your iTunes and lets you customize playlists. Not an iPhone app, but pretty awesome.
Love it. Been a long time.
DrinkingPartner.com is a sweet websiter that has some amazing power hours. The best part is that you can listen to all of them on you iPhone!
I’m a proud and unfortunate member of the “century club”. 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. I think I will design a “Century Club Music” app. Silliness.
Wyatt
I always preferred “century club” or “bicentennial” club. Is there an app for that?
The app has the ability to do century club as well
The app is semi-configurable. You can set it to run for 30, 60 or 100 minutes.
Props for the choice of “Heartbeats.” Awesome little diddy.
For my fellow students that are unable to afford iPhones, there are a few others options:
http://www.hack...ve-power-hours/
I do use it for running and intervals…. haaaaa who i my kidding always the drinking game
So Google needs to team up with Rhapsody and come out with an app just like this, and see if Apple accepts it….. we already know how this story ends.
Well….very, very drunk is also VERY, VERY relative. A typical shot is only 1oz. which means in 60 minutes you’re drinking 60oz, or 5 12oz. beers. If we’re talking a light beer or a fizzy, pale lager, like Amstel Light (at 3.5 ABV), then I would have to say that there are plenty of “normal” size (read weight) Americans and Europeans that could easily drink 5 beers in one hour and feel only slightly drunk or kinda buzzed.
that’s a good point. century club is better. maybe i should change to “very, very full”
Standard shot is 1.5 oz, so more like 7.5 beers.
nerd alert.
BTW, we’re testing this app out tonight, right?
What the hell is an oz?
metric system rules!
Note that the app lets you choose 30 or 100 minutes too, so you can “century club” if you are so inclined. Wonder if we’ll see a 120??
Hey guys, just wanted to comment on the whole ‘Power Hour’ on the iPhone. We released an application a few weeks back (http://www.powertunesplus.com) Apple was incessant about not using the term ‘Power Hour’ in the name, description, or application.
Our application was rejected twice, once on the basis that we were promoting excessive consumption of alcohol and another on the idea that you can’t show anything remotely related to alcohol in your application. The first piece, which we found a little disturbing due to the fact that there are plenty of drinking games and drinking applications in the App Store seemed hypocritical. Also, Apple was very adamant about prohibiting the excessive consumption of anything, for example I was told “You can’t change the app to make it say take a bite of food”.
this is sad … how will kids learn how to tell time by a watch if the app does it all for them?
Sweet app.
reading the article got me super stoked to start doing power hours again. I love that everything is customizable.
Sounds like a great app – don’t forget the TOGA…!!
It’s my understanding that a “shot” is 44mls.
Now, I’m an Australian, but I’m having trouble seeing how someone can get drunk on six pints. And if it’s pissweak american crap, I can’t see getting even moderately buzzed.