girls

Lego for girls, this time hardware-hacker style

For Limor Fried, a hardware hacker and leader in the booming maker and do-it-yourself movements, there was never a question of waiting for someone else to jump in and do a better job of inspiring girls than Lego has done with its widely-panned Lego Friends set.

The product was featured on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week last year and drew worldwide attention as the global toy company's first major attempt at showcasing girls in a new set. Still, many Lego fans were upset that the company had focused on well-worn stereotypes and had ignored the modern reality that girls can do pretty much anything they want, whether or not there's pink or purple involved.

For Fried, who runs open-source hardware developer Adafruit Industries, it sounded like it was time for a little culture hacking.

The 404 1,058: Where CNET fans for the win (podcast)

Congratulations to all of our colleagues at CNET TV for winning a Webby Award in People's Voice Award in the Technology category at last night's ceremony.

Plenty of celebrities including Bono, George Lucas, Al Gore, Buzz Aldrin, and more were on hand to pay tribute to Steve Jobs and celebrate the best of the Web. None of CNET's programming would be useful without viewers to watch it, so thanks to you for tuning in!… Read more

The 404 1,056: Where you don't win friends with salad (podcast)

The Netflix video streaming player finally gets an overhaul, but most of the upgrades to the navigation and video thumbnail layouts feel vaguely reminiscent to us, but we can't put a finger on it.

Speaking of streaming video, we'll also made a plea to HBO to broadcast episodes of "Game of Thrones" to non-subscribers. The show has quickly become the most pirated show of 2012 so far, and although we understand HBO's rights to keep the episodes in-house, we can't help but wonder why the network isn't taking advantage of this opportunity to get more money. Related: this week's Low Latency comic.… Read more

Two Chrysler designs coming to the Beijing auto show

In celebration of the Year of the Dragon, Chrysler Group just announced its return to the China market at the 2012 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition on April 23, with two new concepts.

According to a press release, Chrysler will unveil a Chrysler 300C design concept and a Jeep Wrangler design concept. Both are designed to appeal to the Chinese consumer.

Although Chrysler did not reveal any details, dark and vaguely revealing photos of the Jeep Wrangler concept show embossed leather seats, large black wheels, and a mesh grille. The Chrysler 300C offers a light, luxurious interior and a dark mysterious … Read more

Girls Around Me and the end of Internet innocence

Moscow-based I-Free and its app Girls Around Me crystallized the online privacy debate this week, and, I suspect, will begin the end of our long era of digital naivete.

It's as though the online community has been living in the Garden of Eden all these recent years, and we're all taking a bite of the apple all at once. There are consequences to our behaviors: companies that rely on our data to make their money are not going to suddenly start protecting that data. It's time for you and me to get serious about what we put … Read more

1.5 million card numbers stolen

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

1.5M card numbers compromised Comcast, Time Warner don't allow access to HBO Go on Xbox and Roku Free Photoshop CS6 preview Angry Birds cartoon series Developer defends Girls Around Me app Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (HD) | RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS HD

Developer defends Girls Around Me app

The developer of a controversial Foursquare app designed to locate nearby women defended the app, saying its goals are misunderstood.

The Girls Around Me app, which used Foursquare and Facebook data to automatically pinpoint the location of specific women near users, was blocked by Foursquare after a firestorm of criticism over user privacy. The popular check-in service said the app's access to its API was shut down because it violated its policy against aggregating user data across venues.

Russian developer i-Free Innovations insisted in a statement that the app, which many blogs criticized as creepy and stalking, used publicly … Read more

Report: Foursquare shuts off API for Girls Around Me app

The tagline is "In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control! Reveal the hottest nightspots, who's in them, and how to reach them..."

For a lot of people, this sounds like an app made in heaven, but the fact that the service used Foursquare and Facebook data to automatically pinpoint the location of specific women near users has even more people freaking out, writes Cult of Mac.

Now, in response to the uproar about the app, Foursquare has apparently shut down the app's access to its … Read more

The 404 1,022: Where we get all of our news on the toilet (podcast)

It's always fun to have a first timer on the show with us, and today we welcome Chenda Ngak, CBSNews.com technology and lifestyle blogger. She's a big videogamer and proud geek, so she's the perfect guest to help us talk about the recent backlash against "fake" geek girls.

Speaking of girls, we don't have them on the show very often so it's great to finally get a female perspective on the Reply Girls phenomenon.

If you haven't heard about them before, Reply Girls are a group of a dozen women dressed in low cut tops that post video replies to trending YouTube videos, exploiting their sexuality to earn money via YouTube's revenue-sharing program. While certainly a symbiotic relationship between Reply Girl and the weirdos clicking on them, we'll discuss the real victims in the scam and how YouTube is putting an end to it.… Read more

How an odd dancing movie became a phenomenon

If it's hard to imagine how a film with just three lines of dialogue (and in subtitles, no less) could leave you smiling so much your jaw hurts, then you haven't seen "Girl Walk // All Day."

The brainchild of filmmaker Jacob Krupnick, the movie is a 71-minute music video that showcases the joyous dancing of actress Anne Marsen and a few others to the frenetic (and admittedly often profane) mashups of the Girl Talk album "All Day."

It's a concept that doesn't readily lend itself to a feature-length movie, but in Krupnick'… Read more