We’ve been talking about Facebook’s revamp of its “Like” system for months, but the social network giant today finally performed a global launch of new “Reactions” which should better allow people to express their feelings about a post. The long-standing thumbs up is now joined by a heart (Love), and emojis signifying...Read more...
Will they or won’t they? It’s been a topic of discussion surrounding Facebook for years — will the company introduce a “Dislike” button to go alongside the inescapable “Like” button? When we last visited the topic in late December, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea outright, citing its negative...Read more...
The question of whether to add a “dislike” button just won’t go away for Facebook, in part because the company hasn’t aggressively shot the idea down. This week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg closed the book on the issue by saying outright that Facebook won’t create a “dislike” button. However, he went on to say...Read more...
As I sit here writing this, I'm thinking, "Should I depressed that it's a newsworthy topic when Facebook changes its 'Like' button, or just accept that it's a sign of the times we live in?" I'm not sure of the answer, but as silly as it sounds, in this case, a revamped icon is kind of a big deal, and for a number of reasons. The first, of...Read more...
Besides being a low-ranking Marvel Comics super-villain, Trapster is a free application that went live on the App Store last Friday, allowing users to share information real-time on speed traps.Besides the iPhone (naturally the highest-profile device in the bunch), the app runs on GPS devices like Garmin and TomTom, as well as on smartphones...Read more...
Not content to let Nintendo Wii owners have all the fun with motion-based, wireless game controllers, Asus has just announced its own Wii-like controllers for Windows PCs, called the Eee Stick. It seems that Asus is putting the "Eee" moniker on all of its new products lately, such as the Eee PC and the Eee Box. In fact, the Asus press release...Read more...
This smacks somewhat of those old blindfold taste tests you see on commerials. It goes a little something like this... "I hate Diet Coke." "Here, try this new soda!""Wow, it's great!""That was Diet Coke!""Ooops!" In a similar move, Microsoft took Windows XP fans and showed them a new OS, "Mojave." What's...Read more...
One of the great appeals of Apple products is their elegant design. (Elegant enough to entice long-time Segway CTO Doug Field to leave Dean Kamen's brain trust at Segway and move over to Steve Jobs lair as VP for product design at Apple.) Apple's designs have such a unique appeal to them that they frequently invite competing manufacturers...Read more...
Apple is certainly litigious over the use of the word "pod," and on Wednesday it received a taste of its own medicine, as it was sued over its "Mighty Mouse." No, it's not for the reason you might think, as its already licensed the name "Mighty Mouse" from CBS.Apple is facing a new lawsuit over its Mighty Mouse peripheral, reports say....Read more...
While AMD is frantically trying to ramp up the speeds of their existing Phenom designs, we’re starting to get a slightly clearer picture of what the company plans on offering next. AMD’s technical director of sales and marketing for EMEA, Giuseppe Amato, told Custom PC that ‘if I look at the next generation architecture of our CPU, then it...Read more...
Over the last year, there has been an influx of ultra small form factor PCs, from companies like Asus and Acer. But Everex has also gotten in on some of the action and have just unveiled yet another new mini-PC at their on-line store. In the post, Everex says the new MyMiniPC, as it is called, is exclusively created for the +100,000,000...Read more...
Korea's MIU is out with a new UMPC, which they call a "HDPC," for Hybrid Dual Portable Computer. It's so very, very hybrid -- it looks like a hunchbacked fax machine mated with a tricorder. Equipped with a dual OS -- Windows XP or a Linux distro -- it tries to do everything. Qwerty keyboard, 800x480 resolution on a 4 inch display, and they...Read more...
Promises, promises. Can it deliver?The technical trick of Skyfire is that it's a proxy browser. The Skyfire app itself isn't a full browser. Instead, big Skyfire servers elsewhere process Web pages, including all the media and browser formats -- like Flash, Java, and Ajax -- that a normal desktop browser would handle but that most phones...Read more...
Turning over the calendar means lots and lots of lists. The lists cataloging the year gone by get boring fast. We like crazy stabs at the future much better. Here's a list of ten things that could change the next ten years of your future, chosen despite --and because -- they seem so unlikely. But as the author points out, pretty much...Read more...
Western Digital is a big fan of text files, and assumes you are too. It has disabled the ability of its 1TB network-ready drive to share MP3, AVI, MPEGs... well, pretty much any audio or video file you could name. The "My Book World Edition" drive assumes the world is full of typists, I guess.Access to multimedia files is allowed only...Read more...
The Romantics had a hit. What I Like About You. It was one and done for them, hit-wise, but they've certainly managed to milk that old cow for three decades now. They figure there might be a few drops of 2% in the old holstein yet, as they're suing Activision, makers of the Guitar Hero game. They claim that even though Activision paid...Read more...
The digital grassy knoll set's collective head is about to explode. Apple is collecting iPhone usage data, linked to the user's specific personal information. Apple gathers that personal information when you sign up for an iPhone, and may be doing something or nothing with it after associating it with your usage data. People's opinions...Read more...
We love YouTube. It's got a lot of competition for your postage stamp size viewing pleasure, but it's still the default setting for looking for video clips on the Net. Speaking at a conference yesterday, co-founder Steve Chen has confirmed that YouTube is going to make high-quality video streams available soon.Chen told [c/net reporter Rafe...Read more...
It wasn't all that long ago that online music vendors starting selling DRM-free tracks, often at a small premium and/or small loss of audio fidelity. At the time it was viewed by some as a marketing experiment to see if people would pay more to avoid headaches related to Digital Rights Management, and now it appears that there...Read more...
Solar arrays in space, delivering power to the Earth. Something seen frequently in science fiction movies and books. It's always been seen as financially unviable, but if someone with really deep pockets like the military were interested ...A new Pentagon study lays out the roadmap for a multibillion-dollar push to the final frontier...Read more...
Unfortunately, MHz makes a difference. Changes to the system requirements for the next Apple operating system could exclude those systems with 800 MHz CPUs.The increase in system requirements would exclude a number of Mac systems from running Leopard, such as the 800MHz PowerBook G4 (Titanium), 800MHz PowerMac G4 (Quicksilver), 800MHz iMac...Read more...
For years the defense department and even some large corporations have utilized games as a method of teaching people various trade tasks. It appears that miners are perhaps the newest recipients of 'video game' based training.Considering the staggering cost of serious mining equipment (think 7 and 8 figures each), the idea of training and...Read more...