Tag Archives: technology

The Brave Little Toaster Would Be Proud

New gadgets and apps stir the masses like no teenybopper concert can.

More than half a million people pre-ordered the iPhone 4 as thousands more camped out on sidewalks outside Apple stores across the world. News about insignificant changes in Facebook-land generate more articles than the midterm elections. And if you wanna talk obscure, the new iTunes icon even gave life (life, I say!) to a confrontational curmudgeon of a Twitter personality, dropping F bombs whenever Steve Jobs does something badass and unverified.

So it’s refreshing when humble technologies from older eras find their way back to relevancy.

Continue Reading on NeonTommy.com

Facebook Places: A Self-Policing Social Network?

Cheating spouses, drug dealers and truant teenagers beware. Facebook Places is just like tagging your friends… on crack.

If you’ve updated your iPhone Facebook app in the past few days, you may have noticed a glowing halo surrounding a new icon, smack dab in the center of your app home screen. I snagged a screenshot of mine before it disappeared into the permanence of mobile Facebook-dom.

[Cue ominous choral music.]

Okay, fear-mongering aside, we’ve been here before. Facebook rolls out a new service, the ACLU enjoys the public outcry over privacy issues, and after a few weeks, the masses latch onto the new service. And they like it. Dissenters finally figure out how to tweak the updated privacy settings, high schoolers spam the new service with inside jokes, and life goes on. A notable person here or there deletes his or her Facebook account on principle.

(Originally published August 21, 2010 on NeonTommy.com.)