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07 Sep 2009 11:50

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Tech: Your brain on Twitter < Your brain on Facebook. Any questions?

  • On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it’s also very succinct. You don’t have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you’re not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.
  • University of Stirling (Scotland) psychologist Dr Tracy Alloway • Describing the difference between Facebook and Twitter usage. Since tweets are so short, you’re not thinking as much, which damages your working memory. Facebook has the opposite effect. Which means, in the long term, Twitter makes you dumber and Facebook makes you smarter. • source

07 Sep 2009 11:22

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Tech: Asus’ new Eee eBook reader is not only fawnworthy, but cheap

It’s dual-screen AND it’s going to sell for less than $200. We’re gonna buy two so that we can surround ourselves with the Internet at all times. source

06 Sep 2009 13:48

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Tech: From blog hub to … blog: Technorati shifts gears a little

  • We like their new advertising service, though. Technorati, a fairly well-known blog search engine that feels like it’s fighting a little bit of irrelevance thanks to Twitter and Facebook, is looking to have some blogs of its own. A number of people got invites from the service to become writers for the site, which is a little strange because of the fact that their main service facilitates traffic for other blogs. We’ll be keeping our eye out. source

06 Sep 2009 11:42

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Tech: Fake Steve’s worried about an anti-Snow Leopard NYT article

  • The Borg won’t comment on the record, but they’ll definitely put some folks on the phone who will chortle on background and point out all the ‘problems’ with Snowy.
  • Fake Steve Jobs • On the possibility of an anti-Snow Leopard article in The New York Times, after David Pogue gushed about it, then admitted that he had a lot of problems with things breaking. According to Fake Steve, “the guys on the news side at the Times are ashamed of Pogue and embarrassed by him.” So are we, Fake Steve. So are we. • source

05 Sep 2009 00:58

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Biz, Tech: Amazon finally rights its Orwellian wrongs on Kindle users

  • You can have your books back. Or, if you want, $30. Back in July, a big to-do broke over Amazon’s ironic handling of the books “1984” and “Animal Farm,” two George Orwell books that tackled the very issues Amazon created when they took them away from readers. Realizing that they done #(^@!* up, the sent an e-mail to affected users offering to fix the problem. Which just goes to show you: You can’t take back stuff you already sold, idiots. source

04 Sep 2009 15:13

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Tech: Harmonix: Lots of failures before major “Rock Band” success

  • I was watching people interact with our product, and the realization came crashing down on me – we had spent 18 months on a music system that was fundamentally flawed.
  • Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos • On a karaoke system that Harmonix developed that turned out to be a big failure. It was one of many miscues for the company before hitting on a formula that would bring them lasting success – music games with peripherals. With the help of Red Octane, they created the early “Guitar Hero” games, then took it in a whole new direction with “Rock Band.” Regarding a fairly unpopular poll question we asked the other day, whether the company had sold out, Rigoulos says “we didn’t feel that way at all. We felt that our time had finally come to compete in the big leagues.” A great interview that deserves to be read in full. • source

04 Sep 2009 10:39

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Tech: *shakes head* … Someone had to compare Snow Leopard to Vista.

  • This is the Vista of Apple’s history. Not that much. I know – I’m misconstruing the gravity of it, but this is kinda the closest thing to Apple’s Vista.
  • CNET’s Brian Cooley • Describing the various incompatibilities created by the new version of Mac OSX. On top of many programs not working (100 is a number being thrown around), it includes ancient versions of Flash and Java, and has bricked some machines. Hmm. And one thing we noticed: Dragging and dropping to the dock doesn’t work right anymore. The result? NERD RAGE. • source
 

04 Sep 2009 09:54

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Biz, Tech: Good news! Microsoft can keep selling Word!

  • And thank God. That injunction was cramping our style. Last month, a Texas court known for its little-guy-leaning decisions in patent cases ruled that Microsoft had to stop selling word over its use of an XML format patented by another company, i4i. MS was also fined $290m for the violation. Lest you think Word stop getting sold, an appeals court granted a stay of the Word ban. Microsoft is doing a happy dance for now. source

03 Sep 2009 20:45

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Tech: AT&T stops being lame, sets a date for offering iPhone MMS

  • 9/25 when the iPhone finally catches up on MMS source

03 Sep 2009 11:16

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Tech: One in four Xbox 360 owners will soon own a brick

  • 23.7% of Xbox 360s will eventually fail; LOL source