"Let’s get this straight up front: I am now writing a blog post, not blogging a blog," writes Forrest Wickman at Slate, the good people who brought you the great two-spaces-after-a-period debate. Oh yes. Oh yes. They are at it again, this time with a post in which he takes on the matter of what to call this thing we do.
In case you've ever doubted that astronauts are the best, Commander Chris Hadfield is here to set you straight with what is apparently the first music video recorded in space. His song choice? "Space Oddity," by David Bowie. Of course.
Are you an Android user who's been hoping for a service similar to the iOs GameCenter or XBox Live on your phone? Fear not, your wishes may be granted sooner than you think.
The organization's goal is to evaporate the container described by the Second Amendment, making obtaining a firearm trivial enough that even trying to place restrictions on gun manufacturing becomes useless.
CNN on the myth of energy independence, The New York Times on the new carbon milestone, The Washington Post on how the World Bank can mitigate climate change, Treehugger on how young people flock to public transportation, and Scientific American on the produce industry's safety strategy.
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).
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.
The Wall Street Journal says that Amazon is expanding its hardware offerings with a whole new line of gadgets, including a lame-sounding "audio streaming device" and a pair of next gen smartphones.
If there's any phrase an astronaut never wants to mutter, it's "Houston, we have a problem." Calling from the International Space Station on Thursday evening, Commander Chris Hadfield did just that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you thought the Mars One mission (a.k.a. the one-way ticket to the Red Planet in the name of reality TV) sounded oddly appealing, you were hardly alone. Newly released numbers show that the contest has already garnered almost 80,000 applications.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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."
The situation has turned from bad to worse to absurd in Peru, where the Ecuadorian ambassador is being forbidden from reentering the country due to an altercation at a supermarket in Lima two weeks ago.
Mother Jones on lead-filled lipstick, USA Today on how the military could go green, The Atlantic Cities on the future of public roads, MIT Technology Review on how much oil we have, and National Geographic on Pakistan's energy crisis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The New York Times on honeybee deaths, The Atlantic on oil in North Dakota, The Nation on what it means to be natural, Vice on oil in the Amazon, and NBC News on 'climate whiplash.'
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.
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.
A look at government data on alternate-fuel vehicles offers an interesting perspective on the popularity of the vehicles across the country. It does not, however, indicate that ExxonMobil and Shell need to stay awake at night in worry.
The Arizona Republic on the Grand Canyon's uranium mine, The New York Times on water conservation in the U.A.E., Forbes on the future of coal, The Guardian on bribery-based energy policy, and The Atlantic Cities on the vulnerability of sewage plants.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When you're completely disconnected from the online world, when you refuse to engage in every collective breath over social media, are you really even alive anymore? One blogger tried, and this one can sympathize.
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.
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.
Amidst increasing pressure from the law and creepy renters, the world's best urban vacation rental startup is forcing users to fork over government-issued photo I.D. so they can crosscheck your identity against your social media account... all to rent a cheap apartment. Yes, Airbnb is now more strict than most bars.
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.
This week, Digg and Feedly both surveyed RSS users on the types of social features they’d like to see integrated into a Google Reader replacement. Feedly says it will roll out an updated product in a couple weeks, while Digg’s product launches in June and is likely to be paid.
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.
The trial of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell has been sent to the jury for deliberations. The trial hasn't inspired a flurry of news articles, though — mostly because nothing much of interest is happening in the trial.
NBC on the marketing of energy-efficient light bulbs, The New York Times on burning garbage in Oslo, The Washington Post on Fisker Automotive, The American Prospect on Obama's green record, and National Geographic on solar nanotechnology.
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.
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.
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.
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