"Unfriend" Declared Word of the Year

The New Oxford American Dictionary declared "Unfriend" the word of the year. It beat out hashtag, netbook and sexting, among other nominated words. Oxford defines the verb as: "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook." I think they should include offline usage, too, like when you stop calling people back entirely or leave people at rest stops on road trips. What, you guys don't do that? [CNN]

Facebook Status: Resting In Peace

Facebook is now letting users memorialize pages of friends who have passed away. More »

The Inventor of the Web Is Really Sorry About Destroying So Many Trees

Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who usually gets the cred for inventing the world wide web, says there is one thing he'd do differently if he did it all again: He'd dump the double slash that follows http in web addresses. More »

Mobile Web Finally Easy Enough For Old People, Female People and Teen People

Nielsen's mobile web statics show that, from July 2008 to July 2009, the demographic groups of 65+, female and 13-17 showed the most usage growth. The least? 18-24 year olds, who are all up in this mobile web already. More »

Google Wave Rolls Out to 100,000 Users Tomorrow

The NYT just discovered that Google Wave will be rolling out invites to 100,000 users starting today tomorrow. Google Wave, in case you forgot, is a mix between Google Docs and emailing, and is meant for collaboration. [NYT]

Invisible Hand Plug-In Points Out Better Deals

I try to keep my FireFox plug-ins streamlined, but after testing Invisible Hand only this morning, I'm addicted to its unobtrusive, deal-finding prowess. More »

Google Chrome's Getting Hardware-Accelerated 3D Graphics Powers

Google's building their O3D plug-in—that lets browsers use hardware-accelerated 3D graphics—into Chrome. The idea behind O3D is that with hardware graphics acceleration, it's possible for web apps to get even more intensive and sophisticated, closer to native apps—like games. Which makes Chrome OS's web app-only approach look even more feasible. [Cnet]

Google Wave Going (Semi)Public On September 30th

In May, the world was SHOCKED to find out that Google was pregnant, again, with what could best be described as a genetically modified inter-species lovespawn between Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter and AIM. Google called it "Wave;" Matt called it "frothy;" whatever it is, it'll become available to about 100,000 interested users come September, and has started rolling out to developers, API in tow, already. [Google via CNET]

Microsoft Has a Counter to Chrome OS on Monday?

Scoble hints at Microsoft announcing something along the lines of the Google Chrome OS next Monday, but he can't give any more details since he's under embargo. [Friendfeed via i4u]

The Machine That Changed the World

Perhaps more than anything else previously invented, this pretty black box changed the world of communications, entertainment, commerce, scientific research, and even war forever. In fact, the world as we know it today would have never existed without it. More »

RunPee Will Tell You When to Leave to Pee in Movies

Confession: After a day of coffee and a huge XXL Coke, and fighting my bladder for two hours, I had to run to pee during Star Trek. I wish I knew about RunPee then. More »

Pizza Place Prints Worst Yelp Reviews Onto Staff Uniforms

How do you respond to a world in which everyone's a critic? San Francisco's Pizzeria Delfina is having at laugh at their Yelp users' expense by printing their worst one-star complaints onto staff t-shirts. More »

20,000-Light Remote-Controlled Crazy Xmas Lights Now Online

Like every year, the Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease are now live, tackier and wonkier than ever, with more than 20,000 lights, plus inflatable Santa, Elmo, Frosty Family, SpongeBob, Homer, and even Hulk.

Verizon to Announce Unlimited Web $10 Connect Plan

One of our Verizon sources have also told us about a new plan called Connect, which is basically aimed at web-enabled cellphones, but not smartphones. According to him, the Connect option will be available on November 16 and it will be cheaper than the Vcast service, providing with unlimited mobile web for just $10 on top of your current Verizon plan: More »

Download Slacker Uprising, First Free Full Feature Film on the Web

With only a few weeks to go until Election Day, director/showman/clown—strike out words depending on your political preferences—Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising is now available on the internet. Created to promote voting among young people, Moore is saying that this is the first full-feature film to be released for free on the web, using Blip.tv, Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes, DivX, MPEG4, and Lycos VOD. More »

Unofficial Google Chromium Now Available for Mac OS X, Linux

If you have a Mac OS X or Linux machine and you are dying to try Google's Chrome, keep dying because it's not coming out yet. But if you want to just give it a try, you can grab this version of Chromium, the unofficial version of Chromium, the open-source Google web browser that is the basis of Chrome—and looks exactly like it down to the about box and its most fatal flaw. The Ubuntu flavor above looks nice. Unfortunately, the Mac version looks quite out of place: More »

Rifflet, Like Twitter For Music

I like to believe that all of us have rock star alter egos. For most of us, these inner rock beasts sleep latently, awaiting the proper heartbreak or drug cocktail to wake from slumber and cut a hit record. Rifflet.com is a place that shares my theory—a social networking site in which users can share 1-minute clips of music they've had bouncing around in their heads, just to get it out there. Others can then download these tracks, respond to them or even incorporate them into songs of their own. More »

Flickr Adds Videos Long Photos

As of last night, Flickr/Yahoo has finally bit the bullet and added video support to their service. A cynical response might be that they clearly would like to compete with YouTube. But when reading through the FAQ and examining the system's limitations, it seems that they really are sincere in supporting "long photo" as opposed to real videos. The kind that come from your cameras, not camcorders. More »

Cows, Farmer's Daughters Get $267 Million Broadband Boost

If your Internet surfing gets cut constantly because a cow kicked over a lantern and burned down the barn or worse-because you use DSL, help could be on the way. Denver-based Open Range Communications is hoping to eliminate rural DSL Internet surfing with a substantial $267 million loan it received from the Department of Agriculture. The loan is part of the USDA's Rural Development Broadband Loan and Loan Guarantee Program, and will provide broadband service in 518 rural areas in 17 states, including Illinois, Alabama, Arkansas and Wisconsin. This is great news and a long time coming for the rural communities of the US because, if anything, they've consistently shown a great thirst for knowledge, science and the unknown. [USDA via GigaOM]

Searchme: 'Cover Flow' Search Engine

Searchme is a new search engine with an obvious inspiration for its unique UI—Apple's Cover Flow. But that doesn't mean that Searchme is any less intriguing. Previewing webpages visually and filtering categories dynamically, we don't see the service usurping Google any time soon, but you might want to try out their private beta all the same. For a walk-through, hit this video complete with one of the worst voice-overs we've heard in our lives—and we did a short stint in local cable production. [searchme via techcrunch]

Update: Jet Blue Wi-Fi Crippled For a Reason

Jet Blue's air-to-ground cellular network (provided by LiveTV on the same spectrum as those in-flight phones no one uses) is still experiencing too many dropped connections between cell nodes to support the bandwidth necessary for full-on surfing, the NY Times is reporting. Hence the Yahoo Mail/IM and Blackberries only restriction, and the lack of cost. American, Virgin America, and Alaska Airlines are expected to join the fray with more robust, pay-per-use services "in the coming months," the latter using a more reliable and international satellite connection for more bandwidth and range. [New York Times]

Google Takes a Lesson From Digg?

Taking a lesson from Digg and similar sites, Google Labs is testing out a new reader response interface for search results (with only a select few users for a limited time). Essentially, your normal search results are enhanced with "like it" and "don't like it" buttons that would tweak the order of said results on your list. And you can also add URL results that you would have liked to receive given your search premise. Google explains:

When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made.

But your poor tastes/opinions won't screw everyone. More »

ICANN Testing Domain Names In Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic and Other Alphabets

ICANN, the governing body of domain names, says it will test out web addresses using Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Tamil and both simplified and traditional Chinese. I guess this means that the inevitable collapse of all language into a bloated English hodgepodge is on hold. While it's nice for people to get domain names they can actually read, it pisses me off, because I like navigating non-English sites by their forced use of Roman-alphabet tags. Ironically, as machine translation gets better, the use of more and more languages and alphabets on the web might not really detract from its universality. But I can't help thinking there's something scary in this decision, scary, that is, for monolingual America. [Yahoo/AFP]

Beijing Polices the Internet with Cartoon Officers

These cartoon cops are Beijing's latest war on the worldwide web. The animated figures will either walk, drive or cycle across the screen of internet users, warning them not to visit illegal sites. More »

Ask.com Brings Anonymous Searching With AskEraser

Ask.com isn't quite getting the traction it needs to overpower Google in the search arena with the weird algorithm ads, so it's besting Google in another arena: privacy. By providing a tool called AskEraser, Ask will allow users to perform internet searches—googling, if you will—without storing any of the search information server side. This is one of privacy fans' big complaints about Google, which recently shortened the span it keeps anonymous search data to 18 months. So if you're going to search for something you shouldn't be searching for, Ask has you covered. [Ask via Ars Technica]

SpaceTime Lets You Browse the Web in 3D

The folks at SpaceTime are trying to shake up how you browse the Web with a free app that lets you browse in 3D. The idea is pretty simple. Rather than have a 2D layout of your browser with tabs all over the place, SpaceTime breaks the "pages" out like a storyboard. It's not so practical if you're looking at one page, but if you're doing a search, it'll stack your search hits in 3D (making it easier to see them all at once). It'll do the same for your eBay searches, letting you browse through photos of the stuff you wanna buy. The app is available for PCs only. – Louis Ramirez More »

"Mad Dog" Murdoch to Teach a Generation How To Read The News

Tickled with the fact that there are over 100 million users of his MySpace networking site, but irked that members of the Ritalin generation only spend like two seconds on their pages each day, Rupert Murdoch (or at least, his company News Corp.) is planning to launch MySpace News. More »

Spider-man Web Gun Shoots Web Fluid

If you've seen any TV ads at all in the past few weeks you're probably aware that Spider-man 3 is almost in theaters. And if you're at all like us, you've been running around your office making "thwip" noises and throwing string cheese in anticipation. No more! This Spider-man webslinging gun is the real deal. More »

Xerox Gets X-Ray Vision on the Web

As if there weren't enough reasons for Web-related paranoia, Xerox just patented a technique to get a demographic lock on you—age, sex, and possibly income—by just looking at the sites you have visited. More »

WEB Radiator: For the Lair

FACT: One of Gizmodo's esteemed weekend writers will soon develop superpowers to defend the good citizens of the world from the evils of radioactive fly-mutant aliens. But he will not defend the earth alone. No, he will require the assistance of other slightly-lesser-super-powered sidekicks...or at least some normal guys who know how to take a bullet and don't mind wiping a grown man's buttocks (only if he can't reach back there because his suit is a bit on the restrictive but my mom's working on it). More »

The Shape of Song: Visualizing Music

The Shape of Song is web-based software by New York-based digital artist Martin Wattenberg that has its own unique way of artistically interpreting MIDI files. You can load any MIDI song you can find on the Web into the interface (that's "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles pictured above), or pick one of the many songs already in the site's 648-piece repertoire, and it will visualize it for you by drawing translucent arches that correspond with various parts of the music. More »

YouOS: Wha?

I love lots of heavy Ajax stuff as much as the next guy, but this is crazy. It's essentially a web-based OS with lots of little sub-prgrams and all kinds of UI cred. It's such a good idea you can almost smell Google's heady musk wafting under the door. Just signed up for a full account—password didn't come yet—but the demo is very compelling. It was created by some nerds at MIT, Stanford, and CalTech so you just know it's going to have Xeyes pretty soon. – John Biggs More »

The Hunt for Web Jukeboxes

Jukeboxes are the last vestige of non-on-demand music. You have a list of songs you can potentially play and that's it—if you don't like Willie or Waylon or Brown-Eyed Girl you're usually stuck. More »