Sam Biddle

Facebook Rips Off LiveJournal

Zuck’s money mill has been on a futuristic roll, giving us the most advanced social search we’ve ever seen. It’s advanced stuff. So why is FB toying with a feature ripped straight out of 2002? Welcome to emotional status updates. TechCrunch picked up this niche feature being tested on a small shred of Facebook users,…

More People Are Using Facebook via Phone For the First Time Ever

It’s time for another quarterly earning, that kooky game wherein companies announce how much cash they’ve raked in, and then investors spank or hail them without much correlation to reality. Now up: Facebook, which has just entered crazy new territory. For the first time, more people are hitting the site via mobile web or app…

Your Tweets Are Prettier Than Ever Before

Twitter wants tweets to be far more than words and links, and now they’re packing bigger and better media. Photos and video just got a very nice upgrade. Viewing pictures has never been graceful on Twitter, but now it’ll be a little better: click a thumbnail, and a beautiful big version will expand, a la…

If you haven’t sold your BlackBerry PlayBook yet, the company says you’ll get an upgrade to BB10… at some point.

Suddenly the feds aren’t so hot about T-Mobile merging with MetroPCS

Here Are the Servers You Must Destroy to Kill Justin Bieber’s Twitter

He is the most popular person in the history of social media. He is Canadian. He is a swaggy bro. He is an Illuminati tween with hair made of undiscovered elements. And here’s how to unplug him, forever. https://deadspin.com/outtakes-from-my-four-hours-with-justin-bieber-the-swa-5910756 Yes, Justin Bieber has three entire servers dedicated to him on Twitter. The machine runs forever.…

Office 365 Home Premium: This Is as Good as Word Gets

You’re never going to love Office, because it’s Office—it’s the thing you use to make money and do things you actually enjoy. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be (relatively) painless, affordable, and smart. Starting today, it is. Office 365 Home Premium is a fancy word for Microsoft’s new subscription-based, cloud-hosted way of getting Word,…

The New Microsoft Office Is Here—And You Rent It

Office—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the old frenemies—are out of beta and ready to buy. Sort of: you buy the newest version of Office like you buy Netflix or Spotify, with a subscription. And it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Microsoft Office is usually a big purchase, or no purchase at all—sometimes it comes…

Still worried about your privacy in the era of Facebook search? Check out some extra tips from FB itself. https://gizmodo.com/what-is-facebook-graph-search-5976186

Lucasfilm Kills 3D Star Wars Re-Releases After Realizing It’s Horrible and Everyone Hates It

What’s worse than the Star Wars prequels? The Star Wars prequels ramrodded in your face with an extra dimension. Lucasfilm was planning on subjecting idiots with loose wallets to re-released 3D Young Anakin, but Disney says no more bullshit. Deadline reports that Lucasfilm will pass on distributing the other five Star Wars flicks after The…

Holy Shit, There’s Porn on the Internet?

If you haven’t heard of Vine—Twitter’s video-sharing app—before today, it might’ve come across your screen this morning after a brief scandal: a dildo porn clip was featured as an “editor’s pick.” Porn on Vine—crazy, right? No. Shut up. There’s porn on almost everything, and there always will be. https://gizmodo.com/vine-is-twitters-new-gif-like-video-sharing-service-5978676 The notion that porn on Vine…

“Human Error” Made Dildo Porn the Top Video on Vine

Vine, Twitter’s new experiment in oddball video sharing, gave users a spook this morning: a video of a guy sticking a dildo in himself. Even more startling, it was the #1 “Editor’s Pick” for the entire app. What? How? Why? We can’t answer that last question, but we have a better idea of how, according…

Should You Ruin Lives with Facebook Search?

Facebook search can find a lot of cool things, like every photo you’ve liked, friends who share interests, friends who share restaurants, and maybe even your next wife! (?) But it could also completely destroy someone’s existence. Should we? https://gizmodo.com/these-people-are-now-sharing-horrible-things-about-them-5976328 The threat here is very basic: people (perhaps yourself or someone you know) liked things…

Apple Says Fewer Illegal Teens Now Building Your iPads

It’s bad enough when overworked Chinese adults are killing themselves and rioting because of our Apple lust—adding kids under 16 is just awful. But Apple says it’s cutting these industrious, exploited kiddos out of the supply chain. https://gizmodo.com/overworked-and-in-danger-the-full-foxconn-labor-report-5897593 According to a Supplier Responsibility “progress report” released last night, Apple is trying to do the right…

French Government Abolishes the Hashtag

The French, probably in the midst of a Malian air war adrenaline rush, have gone on another offensive: the hashtag is out. From now on, it’s called a mot-dièse, which is sort of like a Twitter Royale with Cheese. The French are notoriously tight-handed when it comes to language—they don’t want American BS corrupting what’s…

Dubious Sith Rumor: J.J. Abrams Will Direct Next Star Wars

Even though God in Heaven has prohibited man from directing both Star Trek and Star Wars at the same time—lest he be sent into a pit of tar and screaming—we’ve got (anonymous) two reports saying J.J. Abrams will make Star Wars VII. Seriously. This doesn’t make sense! And yet The Wrap and Deadline both say…

Vine Is Already Broken

Vine, Twitter’s new micro-video sharing… thing, is temporarily down, buckled beneath the weight of desk recordings. https://gizmodo.com/vine-is-twitters-new-gif-like-video-sharing-service-5978676 A Twitter spokesperson says the self-downing is temporary, but without the ability to post to Twitter or Facebook, there’s no reason to use the app. So this is something that needs to be fixed—particularly on day one.

Bowers & Wilkins A7: This Thing Is So Good. This Thing Is So Expensive.

Bowers & Wilkins makes some of our favorite audio hardware. We also happen to love AirPlay—so the union of the two should be terrific, right? Sort of. The A7 speaker is tremendous—but it’s just so, so expensive. What Is It? An $800, AirPlay-enabled speaker. Who’s it For? Someone who wants to fill an entire room…

Mark Zuckerberg Officially Entering the Dirty World of Politics

BuzzFeed reports that Zuck and wife Priscilla Chan will hold a fundraiser for NJ Gov. Chris Christie—meaning that Facebook now has political ties. It also means the Republican governor has some serious Silicon Valley cash headed his way. The event—which will surely draw a throng of affluent and powerful tech figures—is likely the first of…

Apple Users Sending 2 Billion Glitchy, Slow iMessages Every Single Day

Apple’s talking finances right now, and dropping some pretty crazy factoids: not only are there 250 million iCloud users, they’re sending two billion messages per day. Billion. Now if only the damn thing worked well. We have to wonder how many of these two billion daily dispatches are expressions of frustration about how unreliable iMessage…