Living

Aug 10, 2012 4:20 PM   Once upon a time, it seemed like everyone had a LiveJournal, or Blogspot, or TypePad, or Wordpress, or ahem, Xanga. Then came the evolution of sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr which took the focus away from the blog post and emphasized the sharing of short thoughts, links, photos and whatever else. Nowadays, unless you're a writer or some sort of public personality, you probably don't have a personal blog full of "entries." Has this aspect of internet culture completely died off? View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Back when I was growing up in the 1970s, we fully expected that, by 2012, we'd all be driving flying cars to our condos on the moon where robotic butlers awaited, ready to bring us the cure for cancer from the bathroom first-aid kit. How's all of that working out? Sure, we now have faster, smaller computers, smartphones that talk back to you, and smart TVs, but in so many areas of technology the pace of change is slower than Windows Vista booting off a floppy disk. A few months ago, I wrote an article about 15 technologies that will be gone by the time my infant son is old enough to use them. However, barring a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of mainstays that my son will still be using when he enters college in 2030. Laptop Magazine may know which computers are great now, but they also have their head in the future. Here are 15 predictions they have for the technologies we'll still be using. Though voice recognition, handwriting recognition and gesture control will al...

Aug 7, 2012 11:20 PM   It's long been considered in poor taste to check your texts and emails and assorted other smartphone features while out on a date or socializing in close company. But is it possible that this social taboo is no longer worthy of being considered such a social crime? At this point, the odds are in your favor that whomever you're out with will have a smartphone, too. And you're probably going to receive a few texts in your time together. Maybe they'll be important, maybe they'll just be your mom saying she loves you (which: important, but not urgent ). But perhaps it's okay, finally, to acknowledge the need to check our phones for a second, just to make sure we're not needed. Should we ease up on the stigma at this point? Or is it still just plain rude? Image via Tawkify View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating...

Aug 1, 2012 1:40 PM   In case you're not already sick of the election cycle, Twitter has launched the Political Index, a new election tracker which measures a candidate's performance based on what every regular citizen is saying about them in 140-character form. It takes every tweet that mentions Obama or Romney and decides whether they're positive or negative, then compares that feeling with all other tweets. Then they get a score—for July 31, the president is at 34, meaning posts about him were more positive than 34 percent of all tweets. Romney was trailing behind at 25. Scores are updated each night. However it doesn't clarify which way things like "free health care" and "taking out Osama Bin Laden" or "dressage" "owning a couple of Cadillacs" are construed. That said, Twitter thinks it's a pretty accurate way to gauge the overall election sentiment, pointing out that the Political Index's scores has often been prett...

Jul 27, 2012 7:20 PM   Remember the whimsical sounds of your 56k modem made as it connected to AOL? BADONG-BADONG! Then a semi-officious voice announced you were online, "Welcome!" Yeah, that was in the 90's. Well according to the company's latest earnings report there are three million fools who are still paying for AOL dial-up Internet. WHHHHHHY? According to Dan Frommer the current 3.03 million "access" subscriber number is down 84,000 users from the previous quarter and down 400,000 from a year ago. AOL has been bleeding subscribers for ages, and it's nowhere near its 25 million subscriber apex a decade ago, but three million? Seriously? In fairness, maybe some people just don't have access to broadband. [SplatF via BGR] View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

What the hell happened to the Internet today? Google Talk? Down. Twitter? Crashed. Messages? Completely awful. Chrome? Blowing up my laptop. The weather? Shitty. My hangover? Slight but smelly. That all made me very grumpy. Did the entire internet decide to shit the bed on Thursday July 26th 2012? Did it think we wouldn't notice? How come we never got the memo? Well, go to hell Internet, we don't need you! Wait no sorry. That's a lie. We need you. Badly. It's sort of sad, really, how connected we are. Sad that it makes us so happy. I woke up in the morning like I always do, wanting to go right back to sleep. But like any self respecting kid in adult-sized clothing trying to avoid being exposed as a no-talent hack, you power on, dropping GIF bombs to your snickering co-workers and hearing stories about who humped who on hump day over Gchat. It's a morning routine as normal as sipping hot water that ran through roasted beans. But today? Ugh. How did the internet expe...

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More Apple today noted in its earnings call for Q3 that two-thirds of its Asia Pacific revenue is coming from Greater China at the moment. CEO Tim Cook noted that revenues in the country were $5.7 billion for the quarter, 48 percent increase on last year, and still growing at an “incredible rate.” To date Apple’s revenues in China for the year now total $12.4 billion. To compare, in 2011 the company made $13.3 billion in China. Nevertheless, Asia Pacific was actually the only region where Apple saw declines in hardware sales in Macs. These were down to 593,000 units, four percent year on year in terms of Ma...

Matt is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail... ? Learn More “We are not going to keep products around we don’t believe in,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in regards to the Apple TV on today’s earnings call. He also stated that Apple still considers the product a hobby although Apple keeps at the project because they stated “it will lead us [Apple] somewhere.” Apple is very happy with Apple TV’s growth. The company shipped around 4 million so far during this fiscal year with 1.3 million units over the third quarter — not so bad for a hobby. In many ways Apple TV is the missing link between Apple’s portables and the living room. It brings iTunes to the big screen but also, through the magic of Airpla...