The growing irrelevance of the news homepage

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In the Internet’s early days, the homepage was king: Companies like Yahoo! fought to have the most relevant landing page for users. The hope was they’d make it their start page when opening their browser, and spend a long time on their sites, consuming content and features. Continue reading

Turn off auto-play on Facebook’s videos

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As Facebook continues its relentless march towards world domination, it continues to make decisions that will help it earn revenue, something that is at times at odds with what users would choose as their ideal experience.  One such decision is auto-play videos and their growing prominence in the newsfeed.  Fortunately, like with other settings that has led Facebook to catch some flack, there is a way to turn it off. Continue reading

Your friends are getting married, and you’re getting older

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Are you missing your chance to get married?  A completely frivolous piece of tech on Time magazine’s website uses your Facebook graph to calculate the ages of your friends, married and not, to tell you if you’re getting past your prime.  Fortunately I have eight months, according to the applet, so I’ll get right on it. Continue reading

Facebook, 10 years later

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Yesterday, Facebook celebrated the 10th anniversary of its launch.  Initially rolling out to colleges before opening itself to the wider public, the social network has become an ever-present, with more than 1 billion active accounts, a remarkable feat given the number of issues it had over the years with privacy concerns, monetization, going public and even the near-revolt they first face when letting high school students on (for college students, that was nearly a cardinal sin). Continue reading

Classic You Don’t Know Jack goodness, thanks to Steam

you-dont-know-jack I had become aware of it when it first happened, but over the break I was finally able to act: most of You Don’t Know Jack’s classic editions had been re-released! In high school and college I spent countless hours playing the game “where high culture and pop culture collide,” so I was excited to get my hands on the classic editions again. Continue reading

The real facts behind that McDonald’s coffee lawsuit

The McDonald’s spilled coffee story and lawsuit that came out in the 90s endures somehow, a prime example of a story going viral long before Twitter and Facebook existed.  Yet while some are lamenting the problems that the immediacy of social media brings and the major pitfalls we’re failing to avoid, it’s not an exclusively online problem, either. Continue reading

Saving a bit more, one week at a time

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With the year drawing to a close, thoughts turn to the new year, and inevitably, new year’s resolutions.  I’m not particularly fond of them; I think it’s an arbitrary date that doesn’t spur on real change, but temporary motivation (I’m for sure in that camp).  That said, I’m never going to argue against things that encourage good habits, as long as people stay focused, so if it works for others, fantastic.  One such resolution, which seems to be getting passed around each year around this time, is the 52-week money challenge. Continue reading