Author: Rebecca Greenfield

How to Stop Worrying and Love Twitter's New Two-Factor Verification

Reuters

Twitter has added two-step verification to increase its security after all the recent hacks into high profile media accounts, but you should go sign up for it right this minute — because everyone's vulnerable to password attacks these days, even if the new cellphone hiccup seems cumbersome.

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 22, 2013

What Google's X Lab Is Cooking Up Next

While it houses a lot of cooky ideas that never see the light of day, the "top-secret" innovation hub birthed Google Glass and Google's driverless cars. So as outlandish as some of the following ideas may sound, they're all in the works or they suddenly aren't, per Businessweek's new cover story — yes, even the balloons — and, hey, maybe they'll come true, too.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 22, 2013

Vine's Cicada Stompers Need to Stop Murdering Innocent, Horny Bugs

As much masochistic fun as it may be to follow the cicada sex invasion via Twitter's ever popular Vine app, the brave backyard directors chronicling the East Coast's ongoing insect phenomenon don't seem to be enjoying the process too much — many of them are just resorting to violence against the little guys, who die almost instantly upon their return to earth anyway.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 22, 2013

The HTC One Isn't Saving HTC from the Facebook Phone

Despite all the glowing reviews of the HTC One, it's still not beating Samsung's Galaxy S IV in the high-end, non-iPhone smartphone market, and HTC is currently falling apart — at least in part because of "disastrous" sales that wiped the HTC First (aka the Facebook phone) on its way out of the market.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 22, 2013

It's Time to Stop Arguing About the Pronunciation of 'GIF'

It's time we took some advice from George Gershwin and stopped bickering over the right and wrong way to say words: Let's call the whole thing off on this GIF pronunciation battle.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 21, 2013

Tumblr's Recently Fired Editorial Team Just Missed Out on a $371,000 Payday

Every single one of Tumblr's 178 employees will get money from the $1.1 billion Yahoo deal, which means that if the site hadn't let go of its three editorial team members last month, they too would have received $371,000 — each.

Comments | 1,031 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 21, 2013

Senators Turn Tim Cook's Hearing into a Genius Bar Visit

The U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had some tough questions for Tim Cook, CEO of computer giant Apple which stands accused of tax avoidance to the tune of billions of dollars. Questions like: "Why the hell do I have to keep updating my apps on my iPhone all the time and why you don't fix that?"

Comments | 1,443 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 21, 2013

Kids, Don't Be Like Tumblr CEO David Karp

Kids, listen up: don't start dropping out of high school just because the Tumblr CEO David Karp, who just sold his Internet company to Yahoo for $1.1 billion, had neither a high school nor a college degree.

Comments | 1,856 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 20, 2013

Seven Days in 100 Words: The Samsung Galaxy S IV

The typical gadget review these days can run thousands of words and cover hundreds of features before telling you what you really want to know: is this thing any good? The Atlantic Wire will cut to the chase after spending a week with a device and give you just the bottom line. 

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 20, 2013

The Cicadas Are Coming: Here's Photographic Proof

The cicadas haven't even reached their mating season climax and already the visual evidence of their East Coast presence is alarming.

Comments | 28,870 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 20, 2013

The Yahoo-Tumblr Panic Is Both Predictable and Meaningless

All this crying over how much this Yahoo acquisition will ruin Tumblr is a predictable part of the cycle of tech company acquisitions these days — no matter how smart or dumb the buy — and says nothing about how the impending marriage will do.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 14, 2013

Media Diet

Emma Carmichael: What I Read

The new editor of The Hairpin treats mix-tapes like books and commutes by Instapaper.

Comments | 3,701 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 10, 2013

How to Emotionally Survive the 2013 Cicada Swarmageddon

Harmless scientific marvel though it may be, the summer of bug love has arrived — perhaps entering your backyard or urban escape as soon as this weekend — and it's pretty gross. For those of you with a fear of flying insects, it's downright terrifying. Here's a handy guide for East Coast entomophobes, with the help of the Internet's ultimate cicada expert.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 10, 2013

D.C. Restaurants Are Against the D.C. Food Truck Invasion Because Terrorism

Ahead of a public hearing Friday pitting upstart mobile food vendors against sedentary street vendors and old-school sidewalk restaurants, George Farrell — a Washington Times "community" member — settled on a reason to take sides: "propane tanks inside food trucks could easily become explosive devices" and "may pose a terrorism threat."

Comments | 1,425 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 10, 2013

The Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal Meme Is Vine's Breakthrough Moment

Three and a half months after Twitter's stop-motion inauspicious foray into pseudo-video began, Vine has officially made it in the Internet world, thanks to a pitch-perfect (if kinda creepy) meme built on a meme god of Internet yore (as in, like, last year).

Comments | 8,757 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 10, 2013

TV's Pay-Per-Channel Future Is Nigh

For the cord-cutters and cable-company haters out there eagerly awaiting the next era of television, in which you no longer have to pay your provider for a bundled package of junk you never watch, YouTube officially launched 14 of its rumored pay-to-subscribe channels on Friday. It's not top-shelf, but it's a start. Just ask Washington.

Comments | 5,091 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 9, 2013

You Just Can't Stop Playing 'Dots'

The iPhone game of the moment is so addictive that it's impossible to even talk about how addictive it is to play the color-coded connect-the-dots game without stopping to play another round — or 25.

Comments | 2,438 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 9, 2013

Oh, So This Is What It's Really Like to See Through Google Glass

The first two months of Google Glass testimonials resulted in lame sports videos and bad photos taken with the wearable machine, but a new first-person video that surfaced last night finally gives the face computer-less masses a look at what you actually see from behind the glass.

Comments | 8,532 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 9, 2013

Class Action or Not, the Unpaid Intern Lawsuit at Hearst Will Go On

A judge may have thrown out class-action status for the lawsuit against Hearst for using unpaid interns at its magazines, but the disgruntled former coffee-fetchers will continue the fight. 

Comments | 1,016 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 9, 2013

Soon Facebook May Have Waze (of Knowing Where You Are)

Facebook's in "advanced talks" to buy Waze, an Israeli mapping start-up, for somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion, according to multiple sources at Calcalist and TechCrunch, making it the social media company's biggest acquisition to date.

Comments | 609 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 9, 2013

How Would We Know If Google Glass Was Any Good?

Google Glass has itself a marketing problem: the glasses might be as cool as some Glassheads say, but the rest of us non-early adopters are stuck with boring first-person videos and banal pictures of the world's foremost face computer, without any of the cool face-computer functionality.

Comments | 1,016 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 9, 2013

Non-Satirical Advice from 'The Onion' on How Not to Get Hacked Like 'The Onion'

The Onion has released a detailed account of how it believes the Syrian Electronic Army hacked into its extremely popular Twitter account the other day, providing a rare glimpse at the simple yet devious spear-phishing emails that can crack major media outlets — and probably you.

Comments | 3,222 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 8, 2013

HTC Just Put the Facebook Phone on Its Dollar Menu, and That's Bad News

It's never a good sign when a cellphone company lowers the price of a cellphone so soon after its release, which makes the new, very low $0.99 price of HTC's so-called Facebook phone so very foreboding.

Comments | 1,822 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 8, 2013

Syria's Internet Blackout Is Over, but the Digital Civil War Blame Is Just Beginning

It's still relatively unclear whether the Assad regime broke the Syrian Internet — even if nobody else, even "terrorists," really could — but after a 19-and-a-half-hour near complete shutdown across Syria, service started coming back today, according to multiple analytics firms.

Comments | 405 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 8, 2013

Everybody Hates This New Google Maps Look

Google may or may not introduce a new design for Google Maps at a conference next week, when the company will publicly discuss about "the future of Google Maps." But people are definitely complaining about the rumored design getting passed around the web today. Here's how.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 7, 2013

Syria Made Its Internet Disappear Again

Did the Assad regime just shut down Syrian online access again? For several hours on Thursday — beginning around 3 p.m. Eastern time, or 10 p.m. in Damascus — Internet traffic in the warring country ground to an almost complete halt, just like it did in November when the government blacked out web usage to stymy opposition maneuvers.

Comments | 607 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 7, 2013

Google's Mother's Day Video Celebrates Gay Moms, Too

The masters of the heartwarming, love-your-children promotional video at Google are tugging at the heartstrings of the American family once again with a new Mother's Day spot called "Here's to the Moms" — and they mean all moms.

Comments | 1,818 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 7, 2013

Wait, Is Google Glass Really Going to Be Illegal?

So far Google Glass is illegal exactly nowhere, despite an over-the-top front-page story in today's New York Times that suggests Google is already facing a bunch of legal pushback over its face computer of the future. What will Google do about all this?

Comments | 11,512 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 7, 2013

Media Diet

Brian Lam: What I Read

Brian Lam, founder of gadget review site The Wirecutter, on his pared down media diet. "I try not to open Twitter too often. Some editors, I don't know how they're getting any work done."

Comments | 13,746 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 6, 2013

Stat of the Day

Sex-Crazed Cicadas Will Soon Outnumber Humans 600-to-1

The very horny and very loud insects haven't arrived in full force for the Mid-Atlantic cicada sex invasion quite yet, but when they do, they will come with a huge body-count advantage over people, outnumbering us 600-to-1, or maybe even 20,000-to-1.

Comments | 6,472 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 6, 2013

The Weirdest Thing About MG Siegler's New Job Isn't How Unethical It Is

The popular tech writer was already straddling the blogger/investor line as both a TechCrunch writer and a partner at CrunchFund, the VC fund started by fellow blogger-without-morals Michael Arrington. The more surprising part of today's news, then, is that Siegler would deign to work for Google Ventures after writing so unabashedly in favor of Apple all these years.

Comments | 593 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 6, 2013

The First Rule of Google Glass Etiquette

Of all the various etiquette guides to emerge with prescriptions for the inaugural class of Glassholes, there has been one recurring piece of advice that probably won't please Google: The most polite thing a Google Glass owner can do is not wear Google Glass at all.

Comments | 15,082 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 6, 2013

Why Instagram Really Chose Facebook Over Twitter

In this definitive telling of the history of Instagram we get CEO Kevin Systrom's reasoning for ultimately choosing Facebook's $1 billion offer over Twitter's $520 million—and it has less to do with money than you might think.

Comments | 2,412 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 3, 2013

Don't Hate the Dorks, Hate the Glass

Google Glass, that doomed-at-early-adoption device about which we learned so much this week, will not become a tough seell to the masses because of a bunch of white male dorks trying out the face computer of the future. It's the design itself — in form, and the function inspired by something that, well, makes everyone who puts on a pair look so frickin' weird.

Comments | 3,594 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 3, 2013

Brooklyn Now Has a Park Named After Adam Yauch

The late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (a.k.a MCA) has received the "ultimate honor for a kid from New York City" with a Brooklyn Heights park named after him as of Friday afternoon.

Comments | 1,997 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 3, 2013

How the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S IV Got Military-Grade Security

After years of maintaining that BlackBerry was the only smartphone smart enough for the Department of Defense security blanket, the Pentagon has finally approved the Samsung Galaxy S IV, and sources say Apple's iPhone is expected to follow some time later this month. Here's how they got good enough.

Comments | 2,584 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 2, 2013

Instagram's Tags Are About to Turn It into Your Lame Facebook Wall

Now that Instagram has introduced a "Photos of You" section for tagged snapshots just like its parent company Facebook, you can forget the beautiful images of pro photographers and amateurs turned pro — your square cellphone art is about to degrade into filtered party pics.

Comments | 3,351 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 2, 2013

The Creepiest Google Glass App Is a Stalker's Dream

Despite the many fears of cyber-stalking to arise from the soft launch of its digital seeing eye, Google has made it pretty difficult to take photos and videos of unwitting people with Google Glass — except for one developer who's already built a workaround privacy nightmare.

Comments | 5,168 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 2, 2013

The Great East Coast Cicada Sex Invasion of 2013 Has Arrived

People of the Acela corridor: The time to prepare for four to six weeks of the little six-legged sexual power saws is over. People of America: The invasion is here. Prepare your backyards — and your ears.

Comments | 77,585 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 2, 2013

Facebook's Mobile Ads May Be Annoying — but You'll Be Able to Hide Them Soon

We have some good news for irritated Facebook phone users. In the coming weeks Facebook plans to add controls to let users hide all those pesky mobile ads if they so desire, a Facebook spokesperson told The Atlantic Wire this afternoon.

Comments | 1,186 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 1, 2013

The Dream of Cheap, Streaming HBO Is Dead

Just when we were getting excited about a standalone streaming service from HBO — like HBO Go, except without paying for a cable subscription — HBO now says it was just kidding and won't cut that cord... ever.

Comments | 2,569 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 1, 2013

The Banality of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's LOL

The most ravenously picked apart teenage digital trail in the history of American terrorism got picked apart again Wednesday afternoon: If you unravel the criminal complaint against Tsarnaev's fellow 19-year-old friend, you'll find an instantly historic LOL. But LOL has lost its historical significance, and everybody needs to calm down with their investigative linguistics.

Comments | 24,609 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 1, 2013

What Apple's Flat iOS 7 Design Will Look Like — When It Gets Here

The latest design for Apple's mobile operating system might not be ready in time for the World Wide Developer's Conference this June, but when it comes it will look a lot different than the current iPhone software—the look of which hasn't much changed since its debut in 2007.

Comments | 22,606 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 1, 2013

Google Glass Is Already This Broken

Beyond aesthetics, professional Glass reviewers and amateur experimenters alike have reported some flaws  — bad battery life, a bad fit, vulnerability to hackers, and beyond — that might make future buyers reconsider the $1,500 investment when the glasses of the future are available to the masses.

Comments | 36,756 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 30, 2013

Are You Ready for the Great Netflix Instant Vanishing of 2013?

In May, Netflix will lose streaming rights to a whopping 1,794 titles because of expiring deals with Warner Bros., MGM, Universal, and Viacom. A big chunk of them will expire at midnight on May 1 — and by the end of the month, Netflix Instant will have lost the whole lot.

Comments | 38,855 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 30, 2013

One Device to Rule Them All: BlackBerry Isn't Wrong About a Tablet-Less Future

The Internet spent Tuesday morning laughing at a suggestion by BlackBerry CEO Thorstein Heins that tablets won't exist in five years, a scenario that is as plausible as it is predictive — in fact, it's as exciting a plan for the future of gadgets as the one Apple built right under your fingertips.

Comments | 3,745 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 30, 2013

Uber Refutes Report of a $1 Billion Valuation

Minutes after a Reuters report came out, Uber released a definitive statement denying that it has raised any money that would value the transportation startup at $1 billion.

Comments | 591 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 30, 2013

Marissa Mayer's Maternity Policy Still Isn't Up to Silicon Valley's Gold Standard

Yahoo's new maternity and paternity leave policy would delight all those pro-family people who hated on Mayer's work-from-home ban... if only Yahoo's new plan for new parents was as good as the HR strategies at Google and Facebook.

Comments | 394 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 30, 2013

Google Glass Is Bringing Selfies Back

The most popular use of Google Glass so far is also the creepiest: Newly minted owners of the awkward eyeglasses of the future sure are taking and posting a lot of self-portraits, and Google sure must love the publicity, what with its plan to make wearing a computer on your face totally normal.

Comments | 2,166 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 30, 2013

This Is the First World Wide Web Page of All Time

In honor of today's 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web, its creators at the research laboratory CERN (the Higgs Boson guys) have gone all nostalgic — and a bit anti-establishment — in recreating the first publicly available free web page.

Comments | 1,958 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 29, 2013

Will Next-Gen Social Media Wiretapping Catch the Next Boston Bombers?

The FBI's "top legislative priority" this year is a push to make tech companies comply with agency wiretapping standards in order to keep up with the changing way persons of interest — including, perhaps, the Boston bombing suspects and their family — communicate on Facebook, Google, and beyond.

Comments | 1,376 Views

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