Items tagged with IRL
Early this morning, Facebook experienced an outage, leaving many users unable to post status updates, leave comments, upload pictures, and more. According to Downrightnow, the site hit a service disruption, and as of the last update at roughly 8:15am EST, there were still widespread problems. There have been a couple of brief dips in service over the last day or so, as well. Facebook has yet to comment on the situation--maybe they were trying to post an update on Facebook (zing!)--but more important than being unable to post status updates and the like is the fact that Facebook’s messaging service was down, too. Many people have grown to reply on Facebook as a de facto email account (especially...
Read more...
This actually sounds like something designed for the CW show Beauty and the Geek." In this new Playboy TV series, Gadget or the Girl, a guy will be forced to choose between a hot weekend getaway with the girl of his choice, or a mystery gadget. The episode starts with the guy forced to choose immediately between three women, ditching one. The remaining three go on a date to get to know each other, and eventually he narrows his choice down to one woman. But then he has to decide between a gadget and the girl, with the possibly high-tech toys ranging from a 60" plasma TV to an arcade game machine. In what sounds like Let's Make a Deal, though, the guy doesn't know what the gadget is until he makes...
Read more...
The New York Times looked at the Pew Internet and American Life Project's profile of young Internet users, and to their surprise, they discovered that teenage girls outnumber teenage boys in writing blogs and webpages, and building or working on social networking sites. The only category of Internet activity where boys lead is posting more videos, by a factor of two to one.“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS...
Read more...
If you travel as much as we do, then you have to be nearly sick of hearing the promises that airlines keep making about upcoming WiFi but not delivering. We feel your pain, and have actually managed to find a timetable that covers at least a few airlines for you. Keep in mind these are projections and subject to change:“Southwest said it would begin trials this summer with high-speed Internet service on four of its 737s. Alaska has said it would launch a trial in the same rough timeframe on one plane. Also this summer, American will launch onboard Internet service on its entire fleet of coast-to-coast 767s, and Virgin America plans on rolling out the service on all of its planes....
Read more...
Another grinch appears as a ten-year-old in Tennessee received a decidedly unwelcome present.Hill bought three of the players as Christmas presents for his children. He said one of the devices had apparently been returned to the store from a previous owner who loaded sex clips and songs with lyrics about using drugs."Within 10 minutes, my daughter was crying," Hill said Thursday. "I wish I could take the thoughts and images out of her head."Hill questioned why Wal-Mart Stores Inc. would sell used merchandise as new, which he said violates its own policies.The father is keeping the player until he speaks to a lawyer (obviously)....
Read more...
2007 is shaping up to be the first year when spending on cellphone services surpasses the cost of land line phones, according to a study by the US government and backed up by industry information. Anybody with a teenage girl at home has known this was coming for quite some time. "What we're finding is there's a huge move of people giving up their land line service altogether and using cell phones exclusively," said Allyn Hall, consumer research director for market research firm In-Stat. As recently as 2001, U.S. households spent three times as much on residential phone services as they did on cell phones. But the expansion of wireless networks has made cell phones more convenient, and a...
Read more...
Wow, soon we won't even need to show up. Oh wait, we still have to show up so we can be searched, x-rayed, prodded, and take off our shoes.Major airlines have agreed on a standard that will allow travelers to check in using a bar code sent to their cell phones, the International Air Transport Association said Thursday.Passengers will register their cell-phone number when buying a ticket and receive a bar code by text message, the group representing most commercial carriers said.That's actually very cool, and we understand the IATA wants to completely phase out paper tickets, but what happens if you leave your phone at home?...
Read more...
Alaska Airlines today announced plans to become the first U.S. airline to offer in-flight wi-fi. While this would keep people like us from becoming bored on a flight, it does have its downside.Seattle-based Alaska plans to install Westlake Village, Calif.-based Row 44's broadband service on one Boeing 737 jet next spring.Row 44's system Manage remotely with one interface -- the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server. is designed to work over water and across international borders. Alaska Airlines said the service is intended to work on all its routes, which include flights within the lower 48 states and to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico.If it works, Alaska may add the service to all 114 of its aircraft.So...
Read more...
Last week Skype internet phone service didn't work for more than a day. This week, it's delivering a worm to users through a counterfeit IM buddy message, which -- surprise, surprise -- offers to show you a picture of a young lady with her clothes off. If you click it, it loads the worm on the user's computer, and sends the worm to everyone on your buddy list. The Skype blog, which descries the worm and calls it "w32/Ramex.A," says that three anti-virus vendors have developed cures. F-Secure, Kaspersky Lab and Symantec Corp. have already updated their products to catch it. The same blog offers a manual fix, which it emphasizes is for experts only. It involves deleting five .exe files,...
Read more...
The paperless office was forecast years ago - and never happened. But the global airlines body IATA has set the stage for the paperless air transit system, by placing what it called the last order for paper tickets, ever. "In just 278 more days, the paper ticket will become a collector's item," said Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association. The changeover from paper would not only cut airlines' costs by $9 for every traveller but would also mean the industry -- criticized by environmentalists for its part in global warming -- would save 50,000 mature trees a year, he added. It's great that it will save trees,...
Read more...
There have always been benchmarks you watch to gauge the march of technology --Processor speed, number of channels available on cable, maximum screen size, etc. I must have fallen asleep for ten minutes, because they're putting 10 megapixel cameras into phones now. Camera Phone Plaza has pictures of the little wonders: "Samsung made a press release today in which announced the world's first super camera phone, the Samsung SCH-B600. The handset features an amazing 10 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom, 5x digital zoom and a flash unit. The SCH-B600 also has a LED autofocus that automatically determines the distance and utilizes the appropriate focus setting." The camera phones are exactly...
Read more...
The story of Lonelygirl15 exploded faster than any ever thought possible, even the creators of the "show". CNN News is reporting that Lonelygirl15 is indeed a fake, being the creation of three friends attempting to tell a story through short videos. Recently there has been speculation that Lonelygirl15 was actually a creation of a major Hollywood studio, perhaps some sort of advertising for an upcoming film. That turned out to be false, but it's certainly produced, and not real as so many have thought. "Instead, the three friends began the adventures of the doe-eyed, 16-year-old home-schooled Bree as an experiment in storytelling...
Read more...
Intel Computer Clubhouse Opens At Boys & Girls Club In Heart Of Atlanta ATLANTA, May 24, 2006 - Intel Corporation and Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta (BGCMA) today are celebrating the opening of a new Intel Computer Clubhouse, a unique after-school learning center for youth ages 10 to 18. The clubhouse is located at the John H. Harland Club in the city's southwest area. "Intel and the Boys and Girls Club's collective goal is to help open up the world of opportunities to the youth of southwest Atlanta through access to the latest technology and support of dedicated staff and mentors," said Rosalind Hudnell, Intel director of diversity. "Each young person who attends will be able to...
Read more...
