ie8 fix

Gingrich to world: Rename the cell phone

It's time this country addressed the real issues.

Things cannot go on the way they are and cometh the hour, cometh the man. That man is Newt Gingrich.

No, the great Republican doesn't want to impeach the President, repeal Obamacare and institute conscription for everyone aged 15 and older.

Well, those aren't his current priorities. Instead, he believes that for America to progress we need to call the cell phone something else.

Please, this is serious.

In a video posted to YouTube on Friday, Gingrich made his case, while waggling his encased cell phone.

"If it'… Read more

Suspected ID thief exposed by food porn on Instagram

Those who steal your identity digitally are not nice people.

On the other hand, they are still people. Which often means that -- somewhere -- they have online enthusiasms which still take them over and reveal their own identities to the outside world.

IRS investigators say that a predilection for food porn created a digital footprint for a suspect whom they were trying to trace.

As Florida's Sun-Sentinel reports, the investigators were in pursuit of a man who was said to have 700,000 stolen IDs available for sale.

It seems that he was quite good at keeping his … Read more

Earbuds, freight train a fatal mix for pedestrian, police say

Electronics give people the opportunity to live in a world of their own.

Sometimes, though, this may not end well.

A train struck a man who was walking on the railway tracks in Joppa, Md., Thursday.

Police say the freight train approached him from behind. Its conductor said he sounded the horn.

That seems to have had no effect on 37-year-old Kevin Scott Street. For, police say, he was wearing earbuds.

According to CBS Baltimore, Street was struck by the 20-car freight train just after noon.

Edward Hopkins, a spokesman for the Hartford County Sheriff's Office explained to The Baltimore Sun: &… Read more

Chattanooga to Iron Man: Pardon us, but you're a liar

"It isn't choo-choo. OK, punk?"

These were the pained, spittle-emitting words of the elders in Chattanooga, Tenn., on seeing "Iron Man 3."

Well, they weren't the exact words, but these that I've selected seem to accurately express the Chattanooga sentiment on witnessing Robert Downey Jr. become frustrated at the city's allegedly slow Internet service in the movie.

I have before me a missive from the city's representatives demanding a Google Hangout with Downey Jr., the producers, the directors, and anyone who claims to have been involved in creating such a horrid … Read more

Intel employee sues over alleged 'Kick Me' sign

I am not sure how much intelligence it takes to pin a "Kick Me" sign on someone's back, but one imagines it doesn't befit Intel.

Perhaps that's why an employee of the company's New Mexico plant is suing in federal court, after someone allegedly pinned such a sign to his back and then more than one person actually kicked him.

The Associated Press reports that Harvey Palacio went to a senior member of staff named Randy Lehman to ask whether there was a sign on his back.

He claims in a lawsuit that Lehman … Read more

W3C proceeds with Web video encryption despite opposition

The World Wide Web Consortium has decided to go ahead with a technology that will let companies like Netflix stream encrypted video using Web sites -- against the wishes of the Free Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and 25,600 petition signatories.

The Web standards group announced the move Thursday, to nobody's surprise. Entertainment-industry players had approached the group three years ago to discuss the technology, Microsoft has been helping develop it, and Google already has built the specification, called Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) into Chrome.

The standard doesn't actually handle encryption and digital rights management (DRM) to … Read more

Share original content with Flipboard Android 2.0

Flipboard, the popular news-reading app, is making it easier for people to add -- and track -- their original content to Flipboard with the latest magazine curation features for Android devices.

The magazine curation feature, which lets users collect articles around a specific theme or subject matter into a Flipboard magazine is now available for Android phones and tablets, and online as a Web-based editing tool that also provides metrics.

Flipboard introduced the magazine curation feature for iOS in late March, gaining 6 million users since the launch. It's network of 56 million users have created 1 million magazines … Read more

Should Microsoft purchase Nook Media assets?

TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft is mulling the idea of buying out the Nook Media venture in which Microsoft invested $300 million last year. TechCrunch says it has obtained "internal documents" that indicate Microsoft may pay $1 billion for the assets of Nook Media.

Does this make any sense? Given I thought rumors of Microsoft buying Skype and Yammer (both of which Redmond ended up purchasing) were pretty ludicrous, I'd say I'm probably not the best one to judge.

Microsoft officials, as one might expect, are saying they have no comment on rumors or speculation involving … Read more

Sole female, minor coder wins hackathon with anti-spoiler app

As the father of a 5-year-old girl who adores all things princess but also digs stars and comets and mastered the user interface for both Android and iOS in about half a day, I'm always on the look out for Geek Grrl role models. So the new hero in my household is Jennie Lamere.

This 17-year-old grrl loves both reality television and hackathons and tapped into those two passions to win the grand prize at the TVnext hack event in Boston last month. Her brilliantly simple hack, first detailed on evolver.fm, is designed to prevent spoilers on Twitter while watching live TV.

Surely we've all shaken our fists in the air when a fellow "Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones" fan in a different time zone tweets about the latest character to get eliminated while you're still popping popcorn and getting the couch ready for the evening's gore-fest.

Lamere's Google Chrome app, Twivo, allows users to block any tweets related to a certain keyword or words for a specified period of time, allowing you to keep up with the rest of the Twitterverse during commercial breaks without ruining the show you're watching.

Read more

Facebook support removed from TweetDeck

If you've been relying on TweetDeck as a front-end for your Facebook account, it's time to look elsewhere.

Starting today, Twitter-owned TweetDeck no longer supports Facebook. That move, which Twitter announced in March, was part of the social-networking giant's effort to "focus our development efforts on our modern, Web-based versions of TweetDeck."

As expected, as part of the move Twitter also has removed support for TweetDeck for Air and versions of the client for iPhone and Android.

For now, TweetDeck for Mac is still available, but one has to wonder how long that will be … Read more