When a Blog Gets Caught in Your Throat

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 "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.

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 29, 2013

Twitter Tells News Organizations to Expect Even More Hacks in the Future

A little less than a week after a hacked Associated Press account reported a non-existent bombing at the White House, Twitter decided it was time to comfort journalists by warning them that they should expect to get hacked.

Comments | 1,967 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 29, 2013

Virgin Galactic Is One Supersonic Trip Closer to Actual Space Tourism

Nearly a decade after Richard Branson founded the space tourism wing of his Virgin empire and more than three years after he unveiled the ship that will get humans into the suborbital vacation business, SpaceShipTwo has proven itself ready for liftoff.

Comments | 2,163 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

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 29, 2013

Why Wall Street Is Still Better Work Than Tech Start-Ups (If You Can Get It)

The allure of Silicon Valley (and Alley) over Wall Street for would-be bankers makes sense in theory, but it's not really a better career bet. 

Comments | 786 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 28, 2013

This Is Not Where You're Supposed to Wear Your Google Glass

Did you expect to see someone wearing Google Glass in a box? Did you expect to see someone wearing Google Glass with a fox? Did you expect to see someone wearing Google Glass with a mouse? How about a mouse? You probably didn't expect to see them in the shower, that's for sure.

Comments | 5,299 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Apr 26, 2013

Conan Puts the Media on High Alert for White House Correspondents' Dinner

Conan O'Brien, an old pro at this thing, is in D.C. preparing for his stint this weekend at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And in an interview with Politico, which is way too into this kind of thing, he explains his strategy: Conan doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and he wants to take aim at the correspondents as much as the politicos.

Comments | 782 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 24, 2013

Amazon Is Building a Streaming TV Box You Don't Need

Rumor has it that Amazon will release a streaming TV box, which will take Amazon's streaming video offerings and funnel them through a television — something a bunch of other streaming TV boxes already do.

Comments | 780 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 24, 2013

Five Best Green Stories

Our Coming Electricity Crisis; A Precarious Case of Fracking Support

The Hill on public opinion of fracking, The Washington Post on the economic impact of the energy boom, Energy Biz on the coming electricity crisis, BBC on the question of human extinction, and CNN on our cleaner air, 

Comments | 975 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 24, 2013

The Real Lesson of Fisker Auto's Failure

The executives and backers of Fisker Automotive are being called before Congress today to answer for the failure of the electric car maker that is being called the "Solydra" of the green auto movement. What happened to all that Department of Energy money?

Comments | 5,851 Views

By Jeff Roberts, PaidContent

Apr 24, 2013

What Took the AP So Long to Get Its 2 Million Twitter Followers Back?

Something was amiss after the hack, but Twitter told the AP what it takes for followers to return.

Comments | 2,339 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 24, 2013

And Now It's Time to Read Way Too Much into Apple's WWDC Invite

Apple sent out invitations Wednesday morning to its annual Worldwide Developer's Conference, and, this being Apple and its fanboys, the invite signals a lot more than just an official notice of a nerdfest this June.

Comments | 2,134 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 24, 2013

The Samsung Galaxy S IV Reviews Are Great for the HTC One

With the Samsung Galaxy S IV set to go on sale this weekend on AT&T and in another month on Verizon, the reviewers have taken the purported iPhone killer for a spin and despite all its bells and whistles, they still like another Android phone a lot better.

Comments | 24,163 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 23, 2013

Good Timing: Twitter Will Soon Release a Two-Step Security Solution

Some Twitter employee had a pretty rough day on Tuesday, after a hack led to the AP sending a fake tweet to its 2 million followers. If only the hacker had waited, Twitter could've stopped them!

Comments | 1,558 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Even After the Lies of Boston, Twitter Probably Won't Build an Edit Button

After all the "misinformation flying around" that ended up as a part of the official news record during the hunt for the bombing suspects, it would make a lot of sense for Twitter to let you truly modify tweets. But it's unlikely Twitter would make such a move, according to two former Twitter developers and three social media developers who spoke with The Atlantic Wire.

Comments | 2,141 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Why Apple's Giving Back So Much Money to Its Investors

Of course Wall Street is happy with Apple's latest earnings report: it included the company's biggest dividends and biggest buyback program ever, which increases its capital return program from $10 to $60 billion—and its quarterly dividend 15 percent. So that's one way to calm everyone down.

Comments | 3,697 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Look What the Hacked AP Tweet About White House Bombs Did to the Market

The stock market took an instant nosedive — and made just as instant of a recovery — in response to an alarming tweet from the Associated Press account to its hundreds of thousands of followers at lunchtime on the East Coast Tuesday.

Comments | 5,638 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 23, 2013

Today's Best

Five Best Tuesday Columns

Michael Chertoff and Dallas Lawrence on social media helping a manhunt, Erwin Chemerinsky on the constitutional rights of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Richard Overy on the use of the word 'Nazi,' John Villasenor on ownership and Google Glass, and William Germano on writing for readers. 

Comments | 1,555 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Prepare for Apple's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Earnings Report Today

Wall Street, analysts, and all those investors with Apple inside their 401(k)s are assuming the worst come Tuesday evening, and right when they would love to see signs of hope. It's best you get ready now.

Comments | 583 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

Seven Days in 100 Words: The Facebook Phone

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. 

Comments | 1,165 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

Netflix Has Almost Already Paid for 'House of Cards' in New Subscribers

By adding more than 2 million U.S. subscribers this quarter and another 1 million elsewhere in the world, Netflix has nearly earned back its entire $100 million investment in House of Cards — in under three months, according to our calculations based on Monday's earnings report.

Comments | 3,106 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

How Green Is Facebook's Massive Green Roof?

Tech companies are always battling each other for the title of the greenest organization out there and these so-called green roofs are the latest turf for these environmentalist wars.

Comments | 971 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

Stat of the Day

10 Million People Watch Netflix Without Paying

All that anecdotal password sharing we've been hearing about is more than just a few media savvy friends passing around their logins: One analyst estimates that something like 10 million people watch Netflix Instant, gratis.

Comments | 18,093 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

The Rise of the Term 'Glasshole,' Explained by Linguists

With all the lucky first Google Glass owners now starting to receive their wearable face computers in the mail, we are already seeing a rise in the "glasshole"—an endearing term used to describe people who do not use the gadgets in socially acceptable ways. 

Comments | 28,624 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

The Internet Is Not Freaking Out About the SOPA Sequel

Over 200 sites are participating in today's Internet shutdown to protest the cyber-security bill Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which the House of Representatives passed last week. But, the big names that showed up to last year's nearly Internet-wide protest of SOPA—like Wikipedia and Wired—haven't shut down their sites this time.

Comments | 9,896 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 20, 2013

Would the Real Sarah Hanson Please Stand Up?

What happens when a 19-year-old programmer extensively covered by media outlets this week probably doesn't exist? 

Comments | 3,288 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 19, 2013

How Reddit Fueled the Scanner-Happy Media to Out Innocent Boston 'Suspects'

If you thought the New York Post's "Bag Men" outing was bad, the most crowdsourced terror investigation in American history transformed from Internet sleuthing of FBI photos on Thursday night into a lynch mob — from Reddit to a police scanner to social media and beyond — that led to the outing of even more innocent people as would-be suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Comments | 53,293 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 18, 2013

An Entire Town in Illinois Is Being Evacuated a After Levee Breach

London Mills, Illinois is being evacuated after flooding turned from bad to worse on Thursday. No, we're not talking about a few blocks of the town. Police are ordering the entire town out their homes.

Comments | 6,355 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 18, 2013

NASA Just Found Some Very Earth-Like Planets

Since being launched into space in March 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been searching the Milky Way for planets that might sustain liquid water. Witness its latest discovery.

Comments | 2,311 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 18, 2013

Yahoo's New Weather App Will Change Every Day of Your Life

Yahoo already helps power the Apple weather app that comes built in to every iPhone, but the newly mobile first company has just launched its own proprietary meteorological wonder — indeed, this photo-first new app is so wondrous that you should go download Yahoo! Weather right now.

Comments | 3,274 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 18, 2013

Why Hasn't the FBI's Facial Recognition Technology Found the Boston Bombers?

According to multiple reports, the FBI's investigation into potential perpetrators in the Boston Marathon bombings now centers on "clear video images" that may be released today — possibly without names to faces or answers to America's questions.

Comments | 21,833 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 18, 2013

Twitter's Music Service Is Here and It's Not Really a Music Service

After a soft roll out with celebrities over Coachella weekend, Twitter Music is here for everyone else, after a big debut on Good Morning America on Thursday.

Comments | 192 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

What We Can Learn from '100 Percent Men'

Is a Tumblr that collects instances of groups curiously lacking women the best way to change a deeply rooted problem or is it just making the case for tokenism?

Comments | 3,074 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 17, 2013

Google Fiber Is Coming to Provo, Utah — Because It Already Had Fancy Internet

Last Tuesday, Google announced another reason to be jealous of Austin, Texas — the city became the second place in the U.S. where Google would offer its super fast, affordable fiber Internet service. Well, this week you can be jealous of Provo, Utah.

Comments | 769 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

Funny or Die's 'iSteve' Is Driving Apple Fanboys Nuts

Nobody finds Funny or Die's very unfunny new feature length film less funny than all the Apple nerds who were very quick to point out all of the movie's techie inaccuracies within hours of its debut on the comedy site late Tuesday night.

Comments | 5,880 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

New Boston Bomb Parts and Crime Scene Photos Provide Early Marathon Answers

While officials asked citizens to help find the suspect and Internet gurus helped make sense of the "bag or backpack" holding the explosives, important details have emerged from the "ends of the Earth" effort to understand the bombs themselves.

Comments | 21,713 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

Update: Google Is Working Again

After a disruption this morning, the Google App Status Dashboard has everything running again:

Comments | 560 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 16, 2013

Google Glass Packaging Looks a Lot Like Apple iPhone Packaging

The first few hundred Google Glass headsets are now in the hands of the luck "Explorers" who coughed up $1,500 for the device. Obviously, the proud new owners meticulously documented the unboxing process.

Comments | 6,142 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 16, 2013

What Can Doctors Do to Save a Leg from Amputation?

The doctors fighting to save the lives — and limbs — of those wounded in the Monday's bombing will have the benefit of recent major advances, many of them results of medical experience during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in what is called limb salvaging.

Comments | 5,182 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 15, 2013

The Best Ways to Contact Loved Ones After the Boston Marathon Bombings

There is at least some relative calm amidst the panic that is the "ongoing event" in Boston right now: Cellphone service is overwhelmed in the area, but there remain important ways for people to reach loved ones online.

Comments | 5,736 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 15, 2013

How Is This Silicon Valley Prostitution Boom Different Than All Others?

With every tech boom comes a tale not only of the nouveau riche using their disposable income to buy sex, but also about how the very technologies making these clients rich is changing the sex work industry.

Comments | 5,543 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 15, 2013

You're One Step Closer to On-Demand Organ Transplants

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital say they have successfully "grown" a kidney in a laboratory environment and transplanted it back into a healthy animal, raising the tantalizing possibility of a future with organs grown in lab dishes — and a potential end to donor shortages.

Comments | 956 Views

FDA Let Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market

The agency refuses to disclose the names of the drugs it is reassessing, on the grounds that doing so would expose "confidential commercial information." But here are five drugs that used the controversial tests to help win FDA approval.

Comments | 1,338 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 15, 2013

Dish's $25.5 Billion Offer for Sprint Is All About Cord-Cutting

Dish is willing to pay $25.5 billion for Sprint because it thinks the wireless high-speed Internet Sprint can offer is the future of streaming TV.

Comments | 954 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

How to Choose the Right Version of Facebook Home for You

Facebook's biggest foray into cellphone software, Home, is now officially available to the cellphone masses, and there sure are a lot of ways to download it. For those having trouble deciding whether to take the plunge, we put together this little personality guide for the dawn of the "Facebook phone" era.

Comments | 937 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

Is Twitter Really the Best Place to Discover Music?

With Twitter's new music service reportedly coming out sometime this weekend, it's time to consider if we really want to go to our Twitter friends to find new tunes.

Comments | 749 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

Reading Through Michael Arrington's Info Dump on Jenn Allen

Last night former Silicon Valley start-up big-wig Michael Arrington published a letter from his lawyer to Jenn Allen, one of the women who has accused him of sexual assault, most of which was meant to destroy her character and credibility.

Comments | 3,329 Views

By Philip Bump and Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

So, How Much Bitcoin Value Has Vanished as of This Minute?

With all the spikes and subsequent crashes in Bitcoin's value over the last couple of days, it's hard to keep track of how the currency and all of its enthusiastic owners are doing.

Comments | 9,611 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 11, 2013

Apple Will Pay for Those Water-Damaged iPhones After All

Court documents show that Apple has agreed to pay $53 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed  by countless iPhone and iPod Touch owners who claim that the company failed to honor its own warranty.

Comments | 12,595 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 11, 2013

No, That German Hacker Probably Can't Hijack an Airplane with Software

An alarming dispatch from the Hack In The Box security conference in Amsterdam arrived on Wednesday: a hacker says he's found a way to take over airplane controls. That's probably not true.

Comments | 3,329 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 11, 2013

It's Time to Write a Will for Your Digital Life

Google's new "digital afterlife" feature feels creepy and morbid, but it's the kind of responsible data control we should embrace for the rest of our Internet selves.

Comments | 555 Views

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