I'm Probably Going To Pay For This...

... but this was just too good not to share.

Maybe I'm Using Facebook Wrong

I have a strange feeling that I am not using Facebook correctly. You see, Facebook has introduced their newest feature that will be pushed out to everyone shortly called Social Graph. If you don't keep up with tech news (or even if you do) that title may confuse you. A better title for the feature would be something along the lines of... Facebook Search, because essentially... that's what it is. It's simply a way to find in-depth things about your friends on the social networking site, and if Facebook doesn't know, they turn you over to Bing for help. You can search for... well, anything! From friends in your town that like steak to married people that like prostitutes. Remember, if you put it on Facebook... it's public information, and now it's even more public.

How We Stopped SOPA

On January 18th, 2012... one year ago today... something incredible happened. The internet went dark. There wasn't any power outage or system failure, no it was bigger than that. The internet chose to go dark in protest of a bill in congress called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Major websites like Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and many more altered their websites to sensor it in some way to show what legislation such as SOPA could do if passed. And it worked. The internet rallied, and rose up in great numbers to fight for our internet freedom. That day will be immortalized in the history of the internet as a bright beacon of strength and unity.

Below is a video of a speech from Aaron Swartz, one of the front line fighters against SOPA. If you haven't seen Aaron Swartz's name lately, do a quick search for him. His story is fantastic in his accomplishments, yet tragically short in time. This video is his recollection of how we defeated an internet censorship bill, and showed congress that we will fight for what we believe in.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way others talk about them. After Aaron's passing, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (he invented the internet, by the way) took to Twitter:

Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.

Would You Bank in the Cloud?

I will admit that there are some apps out there that I do not know about until they arrive on the Android platform. Sometimes, even a very popular app, like Flipboard, can slip through unnoticed. I attribute this to the fact that I have no iOS device. The girlfriend has an iPod that is used for an alarm clock, but that is the only Apple branded object in our home. For that reason, I am behind the curve when it comes to iOS apps. And I got a little behind again.

I Learn Something New Every Day

I have been using Gmail for just under 6 years now, and somehow I still get surprised when I find out there is something new I'm able to do with the service. Unfortunately, now that I know this handy little trick, I want to update my email address on every site I have an account with!

We Have A New Contender!

Yesterday, in a very Apple-like virtual keynote, the founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, unveiled the plans to bring the popular operating system to the world of smartphones. It is certainly an uphill battle for them against the current crop of Apple and Android offerings... but it does look pretty good.