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For Valentine's Day, Cupid ditches arrows, opts for e-cards

Romance isn't dead.

It's merely been reduced to the level of a friend request, a poke, and a privacy control.

Often in that order.

How else can one interpret the staggeringly predictable research -- performed on behalf of SOASTA, the oddly named company that performs cloud and mobile testing -- that suggests more than a third of American human beings will send an e-card for Valentine's Day?… Read more

Street View catches couple in throes of passion. Or does it?

Sometimes passion just overtakes you.

It's going 110 mph in the outside lane and suddenly all you want to do is take your lover in your arms and express your feelings as fully and openly as you can.

Perhaps that's what happened to a couple in the changing room of the Krakatoa extreme sports store in Briancon, France.… Read more

My Facebook profile transformed into a 3D-printed monster

I can hold my Facebook profile in the palm of my hand. It's shaped like a pink butternut squash with a top hat, no arms, and a bit of blood dripping from its teeth.

This strange creature came about through the Creators Project, a globe-hopping initiative from Intel and Vice that supports artists working through technology. The initiative has been around since 2010, but the Facebook 3D-printable figures project just started this year.

The 3D-printable Facebook project can take three different forms. There's Monster Me, which turns out a little monster. There's Crystallized, which interprets your social data as a pretty crystalline form. There's also Astroverb, which turns out a personalized visual horoscope. These are all pretty abstract concepts. Given the choice, I had to go with the monster.… Read more

How to unsend Twitter direct messages

The best thing about old AOL -- which is to say, the best thing about the mid-1990s -- was unsend. If you sent an e-mail to another AOL user, up until the moment that person actually opened it, you had the option of taking it all back. It was like it never happened! Gmail has a lot of optional features that let you create impediments to hasty e-mailing, but in the end, it won't retrieve your message from the recipient's inbox.

Fun fact: Twitter will.

Maybe you were angry, maybe you were love sick, maybe you were drunk. … Read more

Google-Asteroids: Blast your way through search terms

If you think searching the Internet is way too fast and easy, I have the perfect online game for you. Google-Asteroids makes you slow down and really savor the search experience, one laser blast at a time.

Created by Masswerk.at, Google-Asteroids is labeled as an "info-shooter." You have to blast your way through the alphabet letter by letter to set your search term. Launch the search and you find yourself in an old-school-gaming asteroid field. Blast away at the asteroids floating by and you slowly reveal the search results in your score list.… Read more

Chinese golf resort tees off with world's largest human QR code

A gigantic QR code took form in China a couple of days ago. Mission Hills China trumpets the accomplishment with the headline, "World's Largest Golf Club & Spa Resort Creates the World's Biggest QR Code." Sounds like someone is obsessed with being the world's largest.

That headline is a little misleading, though. A Canadian corn maze turned out a 309,570-square-foot QR code last year. What Mission Hills China created is most likely the world's biggest human QR code. It certainly beat out the 1,300 people Taiwan drafted for a promotion event.

The club rounded up 2,000 employees for the massive publicity stunt. They stood in designated spots and opened red and white umbrellas above their heads. Seen from 270 feet above the ground, the formation created a scannable QR code. The code links back to an eco-tourism campaign that lets entrants sign up for a chance to win a holiday at the resort.… Read more

Forget Episode VII, watch 'JJ Abrams Star Wars -- The Musical'

Are you a late-model "Star Trek" fan with issues about your guy J.J. Abrams jumping ship in order to direct the next "Star Wars" film? Or maybe a "Star Wars" devotee filled with dread at having your favorite franchise be under the control of someone who's directed two "Star Trek" films?

If so, there's a musical for you. "JJ Abrams Star Wars -- The Musical," to be precise.

Picture Darth Vader and Abrams singing at each other on a pier. Picture Vader shaming Abrams -- well, a … Read more

'Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day' gets canned

If you've been spending the last few days thinking up adjectives to use on Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day, you'll have to save "dreamy," "hunky," "handsome," and "hot" for another occasion. Leigh Alexander, the writer who first proposed the special day for February 1, has called an official halt to the festivities before they can begin.

Alexander's original idea was to make February 1 a day when people sharing articles written by male tech writers would add an extra comment about the writer's appearance. This was in response to ongoing issues she has encountered with people making comments about her appearance, something she feels few male tech writers have to deal with.

It was all supposed to be lighthearted and humorous, but Alexander received feedback that sparked concern about the day going in negative directions it wasn't intended to take.… Read more

Man who says 'Glee' ripped him off rips off 'Glee' rip-off

When people steal your jokes, your haircut, or your music, the instinct is to fight back.

It's hard, sometimes, to know how. Anger can be so bestial.

But as Kotaku reports, Jonathan Coulton seems to have lighted on an excellent wheeze. … Read more

'Vinepeek' site taps Twitter's Vine to put humanity on parade

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey calls Vine an all-new art form. Maybe he's right (though the six-second video clips created with Twitter's new app owe a debt to animated GIFs, home movies, YouTube, TV commercials, stop-motion animation, filmmaking in general, and other forms of visual storytelling). Regardless, it's true that Vine has suddenly thrust something new into the hands of a great mass of people, and made it supereasy for everyone to get into the act of saying something quickly with moving images (and then sharing what they've said with, perhaps, millions). And that's bound to lead to some exciting discoveries. … Read more