Offbeat posts

You’re obvs friends (the Facebook kind, obvs) with Mark Zuckerberg. Zuck’s a pretty fly dude. Runs a little internet startup or something. But sometimes, Zuck gets irritating. He’s always status updating, about everything. Those passive-agressive song lyrics directed at someone you don’t like that you’re passing off as a status update are getting real annoying, Mark. Hell, now that the guy’s got Facebook Places, it’s only gonna get worse. So sometimes, you wanna block Zuck. You want to post something nasty on his wall and retreat to the safe haven of blockitude. Well, grow a pair! Man up! Just…

This is entirely a new one. A new German law, penned by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, will potentially disallow employers from peeking at potential candidates on Facebook and other non-career based social networks. However, googling (and LinkedIn-ing) a candidate is still okay, provided – get this – the employer disregards information that is old, or ‘outside of a candidate’s control’. The idea is to provide greater privacy for employees. But, okay, let’s think about this for a second. First of all, for the Facebook thing to work, I’d have to accept a friend request from a stranger…

The current generation of children, destined for a life of rickets and obesity due to lack of sunlight or exercise, are all about computers and the interwebs, but is this addiction a treatable condition? Proving once more that there’s very few afflictions that doctors won’t prescribe something for, research from Korea is showing that Zyban, the anti-depressant known for helping smokers quit the weed also helps take the edge off your gaming addiction. According to the researchers, the drug helps “decrease craving for internet game play”, with the game StarCraft being used as the example. Apparently,…

If there’s a textbook definition of karma, it might be Gizmodo Editorial Director Brian Lam leaving his phone in a bar or restaurant, and someone finding it and holding it hostage, demanding cash in exchange for the safe return of the phone. Well, that didn’t happen here. But it’s pretty close. Brian Lam was foolish enough to send a tweet on Friday saying he left his phone at lunch and a woman was kind enough to hand the phone in. As we all remember, Gizmodo paid a huge amount of money for a “lost” iPhone 4 prototype left in a bar by an Apple employee. Lam’s Twitter account is now protected, but John Gruber…

Yo, dawg. I heard you like Twitter, so I installed a keyboard in your shoe, so you can tweet while you walk. Seriously, not much is known about this shoe, beyond that it exists. An exercise in geek chic (oh man, exercise… pun totally not intended, but welcome), the keyboard is almost certainly non-functional, and just a hip sole design. And yes, it would probably be unwise to stick a keyboard on the underside of one’s footwear anyway. But imagine if you could get good at it, or something? Like, sure, you’d be walking like a tap-dancing zombie, but if you live in a highly populated urban center, you won’t…

Steve really hates his house – in fact, he’s been meaning to tear it down for years. Does this make him a crazy person? Don’t answer that. Steve has, however, just received word that all systems are go: the red tape preventing Jobs from bulldozing his Woodside, California home has been cleared, and at his leisure, plans for his dream ‘iHome’ (more like iPad, am I right? Right?) can commence. Reminiscin’ of the wildstyle, ’04: upon Jobs getting permission to end his home, Woodside preservationalists created a group, ‘Uphold Our Heritage’, committed to saving the residence from certain iDoom. What…

It is a dark day when I can wholeheartedly admit that a Justin Bieber song is tickling my fancy in any way, shape or form, let alone being listened to by me. Until yesterday, when this first exploded onto the scene, it was entirely unhip to own up to any degree of Bieberism, but Soundcloud user Shamantis has ensured, at least, that the Canadian eunuch’s music is good for something. Using Paulstretch, an audio editor that specializes in slowing regular music to a grinding halt, Shamantis has taken Bieber’s hit ‘U Smile’ and stretched it to 800% of its normal length – and the result, surprisingly, is one…

Even dorks need downtime, and what better way to relax than with a nice cold beer? But wait. What if you didn’t know the exact temperature of the beer you were drinking? What if there wasn’t a computer involved in any part of the beer drinking and/or partying that may or may not happen once said beer was consumed? What if you needed a wide array of data about the quality of the beer and which of your friends had consumed the most beer in any given time frame? The guys from Yelp have you covered. They’ve invented an iPad controlled beer keg. Using RFID tags, beer drinkers must “check in” before pouring a beer,…

There is absolutely nothing I can say here that isn’t expressed in the headline of this post or punctuated by the absolutely excellent photoshop I have compiled to illustrate it.. The world’s longest active, working, honest-to-goodness email address, at time of writing this, is 345 characters long, and owned by Peter Craig. I think mine’s, like… 18? Even then, people sometimes can’t remember. Maybe Peter just doesn’t like getting mail. Maybe Peter likes being mistaken for a spam bot. Maybe Peter is batsh*t insane. Whatever the case, until Peter is inevitably dethroned by a new challenger…

If you’re looking for iTunes, Amazon, or other digital releases of Pink Floyd’s material this month, you’ll be appalled and dismayed to find that anything post-Dark Side of the Moon has been wiped off the bright side of the internet. The move comes after EMI’s contract with the band concerning the albums expired June 30th.  P-Floyd has been looking for a new suitor to take up licensing of the material, but reportedly, their asking price is astronomical. Which is I guess is not outlandish. It is Pink Floyd. Meanwhile, EMI is shaking in its boots, understandably worried that it may have another Radiohead…