Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

gender

Facebook 'gender policy' has grammar in mind

A blog post from Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit early on Friday announced an update to the site that initially may seem extremely minor: after years of using the grammatically abhorrent reflexive pronoun "themself" to describe actions in members' activity feeds (i.e. "Dwight Schrute tagged themself in the album 'Booze Cruise '08'"), the social network will be using the proper "himself" and "herself" instead.

My initial reaction to the announcement: big deal. Sounds like someone high up at Facebook was guilt-tripped into making the change by a finicky former English teacher.… Read more

Gadgets are from Mars, connections are from Venus?

Our (parent . thesis) blog is two months old now, and writing it has given me a renewed feeling that a woman's angle on technology is distinct from the male point of view.

I sometimes feel like I am living in a high-tech version of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which I think of as Gadgets are from Mars, Connections are from Venus.… Read more

Can a phone really be gender-specific?

Trends are a funny thing in technology. Even when major changes are under way, such as the convergence of phones and media players, companies will grasp onto old notions like grim death.

Case in point: the Philips 598, a so-called music phone that Slashphone says was created particularly for female consumers. The supposedly gender-specific features: "women's diary and calendar, buying list, discounts manager, price table, personal card info, body weight index and basal metabolic rate measurement." So are we to believe that shopping, more shopping and dieting compose most of a woman's day?

Even when the … Read more