Social networking

Here are some deeply perceptive estimations brought to you in the new ad campaign from cell phone service provider MetroPCS: All Indian males work in the tech industry. Unless they are in Bollywood. And all Indian techies are terribly nerdy beings with the dress sense of a dead gardener in his coffin.

Perhaps, you, too, were mesmerized by one of these spots, featuring Ranjit and Chad, two Indian tech experts, during Sunday's Super Bowl. Or perhaps this was merely some kind of local buy, as the so-called "Tech and Talk" campaign has been plaguing my own television … Read more

Put yourself in their shoes.

They are twins. It's the morning of their 20th birthday. So they log on to Facebook, expecting to find messages from well-wishers.

Instead Angela and Maryanne Vourlis discover posts that read "RIP Chris Naylor" and "RIP Bobby." It took more than a few seconds for them to realize that their 17-year-old brother was the "Bobby" to which the posts referred.

According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the twins saw the RIP posts and tried to call their brother.

They then called their mother.

"I rang Mum and … Read more

I know that so many of you have been a little undecided on this important subject, so this seriously significant information may be enough to sway you as to your own deeply conflicted feelings.

The majority of your fellow humans are not interested in owning an iPad.

No, I haven't been pounding the streets and screens of this world in order to ask everyone still living and breathing after the iPad launch announcement. Instead, I have lucked upon an article in Computerworld, which tells me of some survey work performed by online comparison shopping helper Retrevo.

Retrevo possibly performed … Read more

Working in customer service is never easy. People can be difficult, nay, impossible at times. But if there is one small rule, especially in this day of rampant networks with nothing better to do than be social, it's the one that says "don't insult the customer."

This rule seems not to have been followed by one customer service representative who works, at least for now, for U.K. wireless carrier Vodafone.

According to the Guardian, this individual posted a Friday tweet on Vodafone's official Twitter page that read: "VodafoneUK is fed up of dirty … Read more

I once went to a wedding in which a British High Court judge was the bride's godfather.

Having made a deeply insincere speech, he then proceeded to get blind drunk and attempt, for no clear reason, to remove his trousers. He left the proceedings with his pants around his ankles, his wife around his torso, and a deep hush around the marquee in which the wedding was being held.

People stared, so frozen at the lips that the wine enjoyed no sips. And this, I imagine, is a posture many have experienced upon viewing a campaign video made on … Read more

Facebook has gotten another face-lift.

The popular social-networking site has tweaked its home page yet again. This time around, the redesign puts more of Facebook's core features and settings right on the home page. The goal is to spare users from having to jump from one page to another to access their favorite features.

The redesign was rolled out to the first group of users on Thursday, Facebook's 6th birthday. As of Thursday evening, 80 million out of Facebook's 400 million customers should have received the new home page, according to Inside Facebook.

The top menu of … Read more

The more people use Facebook, the more they find new uses for it.

Sometimes these don't revolve around poking someone you met last night in a drunken bar, but poking the thoughts and conscience of a wider audience.

A Polish arts organization called Brama Grodzka (Grodzka Gate) was, according to the Associated Press, the driving force behind an idea to create a living testimonial to Holocaust victims. Following its lead, some members of his family and other administrators wrote a Facebook profile for Henio Zytomirski, a 6-year-old boy whose life was brutally taken in the Holocaust.

While more famous … Read more

For a reason beyond any fathom I can measure, I failed to follow Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz on Twitter. Now I am attempting to kick myself. I am missing.

You see, Schwartz decided that the best way to tell folks that he was leaving Sun-- recently purchased by Oracle seemingly because Larry Ellison still can't find a hostile way to grab the Golden State Warriors by their Nikes--was to confirm rumors of his departure in a tweet.

"Today's my last day at Sun. I'll miss it," he wrote at Twitter.com/OpenJonathan. Then … Read more

Some people get angry about anything to do with Apple. It's not for me to suggest they should get a life, because I am sure they feel they already have one, thank you very much.

However, the launch of the iPad seems to have revealed a rather more base and extreme level of emotional outpouring, last seen, perhaps, when Sports Illustrated created its first swimsuit edition.

Engadget, for example, decided to shut down its comments for a while in order to let the bile float off down the Nile.

For those outside the Fanboy Funhouse, it all seems rather odd. Which is why I was moved to pay attention to an e-mail I received from Sandee Cohen, self-confessed angry person. Cohen is no ordinary angry person. For a start, she is running a two-day seminar at next week's MacWorld Expo. How many angry people could do that?

Cohen is a mistress of the Adobe Creative Suite, but, as an intelligent angry person she has some theories as to why she and others are experiencing their negative emotions.

"Mac users feel they have some sort of investment in Apple. The older ones kept with the Mac platform when it was in danger of dying out. They may feel that since they supported the Mac, they have a right to tell Apple how to make products, operating system, etc.," she told me.

And you more junior, unwashed enthusiasts, well, you have some issues too, apparently.… Read more