Lifestyle posts

As internet folk, we probably all have at least one friend who’s incurably addicted to Foursquare. I definitely do. Steve, this one’s for you. Y’know those people in your social networks, who you’re only kind of friends with, and you wouldn’t really hang out with those people, but it would be awkward to delete them, so you keep them around hoping they’ll go away, but they just so happen to be the ones who stalk you and comment on everything you say and do online? Y’know, those people? Don’t lie, you’ve got some of those people. Enter Avoidr. Assuming you use Foursquare (and are friends with those people…

If you’re one of the millions who downloaded and used the notorious I Am T-Pain iPhone app then hit your upgrade buttons today, as you’ve got an upgrade you just might like. The latest version is wrapped up in lovely iOS4 improvements, but also offers a fab feature for the iPhone 4 — you can use that front-facing video camera to film yourself singing along to something or other while using the Auto-tune feature. Then, assuming friends, family or concerned neighbors haven’t made some kind of intervention to save you from future workplace embarrassment. You can even send those clips right…

Phew. For a moment there, I thought I was going to have an ugly baby. You know, what with me being so ugly and all. But now I don’t have to worry my ugly self – Beautiful People have come to my aid. I speak, of course, about Beautifulpeople.com – the dating site for beautiful people. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of this, either. Let me tell you how it works. Beautifulpeople is a dating site like any other, except it’s exceptionally discriminatory, and you’re screened for hotness upon applying to join the community. Only one in five is accepted. This of course brings up the paradox of ‘if you’re so hot, why would you…

Behold the tale of two inseparable interspecies buddies, a monkey and dog (only Japan, right?), whose friendship is torn asunder by a big move, and subsequently mended by the magic* of Toshiba products. I swear this isn’t a plug for Toshiba – I honestly just really enjoy anything with a monkey in it. And the shot of the car driving away with the dog house on it made me choke. With laughter or tears, you ask? That is for me to know, and I will take the secret to my grave. *”Magic” (c) copyright 2009-2010 Apple Inc. [Via Trendhunter]…

Torrents have been getting a bad rap lately, but pressure has been increasing lately as more and more studios are cracking down on piracy. They must know that you cannot kill a system like that (even by suing those who downloaded The Hurt Locker), it’s just too large and spread out. Somebody seems to get this, as we are now seeing the first series ever to be released exclusively for free download via torrents. The show, Pioneer One, is a science fiction story about an object falling from space only to release radiation which spreads all over North America. US Homeland Security, suspecting terrorism…

The world of technology is unarguably one of the most exciting fields in the contemporary era. The breathless pace of change, the innovation, the competition – it’s all so exciting! But at the same time, the world of tech has bred some unfortunate side effects. Whether it’s the pace or the newness, something about technology gives rise to things that just aren’t acceptable or desired. I’m not talking about reduced attention span here, people. What I’m talking about is a kind of petulant, selfish, annoying behavior that we really need to stop. Here are five things that can occasionally make the…

How have you been making use of your time? PixelOptics have spent the last decade developing emPower, which is – get this – electronic spectacles that can change focus via an electrical current run through a layer of liquid crystal in the lenses, effectively rendering the bifocal obsolete. You tell me what’s not bad ass about that. Just tell me. I dare you. The specs have three modes: when off, they act as a regular progressive lens – not the greatest, but suitable for everyday activity. When in manual mode, the electronic layer is locked in the on position, and the glasses function more or less like…

Got a world class newspaper you want to keep publishing as tastes go digital? The LA Times has, and so it has introduced its rather marvelous and all brand new Los Angeles Times News Reader iPhone app. A $1.99 app which delivers a nice and easy route into all the influential newspaper’s editorial content. There’s no half measures here, no attempt to give readers a tiny morsel of the content to hook them into expensive monthly subscription fees. Not from the LA Times — instead you get news, commentary and photography. Oh, and it has an offline mode so you can read it on the subway. Better yet, the…

These days, if you asked most people which company is out to destroy the PC, they’d tell you ‘Apple’. But it isn’t just Steve Jobs out to crush the personal computer. In fact, a much better symbol for the end of the PC came recently when Google launched an on-site video editing app on YouTube. Why? It was one more step in a trend that moves computing away from the desktop and onto the web. And nowadays, you could even skip editing on the web – the new iPhone will let you edit movies and then upload them directly to YouTube, no computer required. Things that were unimaginable just a few short years ago are now…

This is totally flowing my mind. Developed by Dean McNamee and Filippo Cuttica of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (they have freaking schools for interaction design in Denmark. I was totally born in the wrong country), Go with the Flow is a new way to visualize email. Built of tubes and wires, the contraption filters your incoming emails into three cylinders – work, family, and friends – and colours them accordingly. That’s kind of neat on its own, but here’s where it gets interesting: you actually haven’t received any emails yet. They’re just backed up and chillin’. To receive…