Social networking

I criticized MySpace for burying Imeem when it bought the company last month, but it looks like MySpace is finally making good on its promise to let Imeem users transfer their music.

Imeem users began receiving e-mails on Friday explaining that they could now import their old Imeem playlists to MySpace, turning them into MySpace playlists. All they have to do is log in to MySpace, enter the e-mail address they used for Imeem into this form, and their playlists should automatically be transferred to the new service.

Unfortunately, I didn't save any of my music on Imeem in … Read more

There were many people, quite a few in America, who were excited, delighted, even positively beaming when some clever cove created that smiley colon/parenthesis thing that is now the universal sign of a written smile.

:) That's the one. The one that is sometimes written as ":0" or ":-)" or, for a smiling wink, ";)." Or even, and this is far beyond my intellectual galaxy, "J". Does that signify "JOKINGYOUMORON!!!!!!!!"? I think that it does.

All these symbols have been such great successes in bringing people together and making them … Read more

America has been gripped this week by the battle between two men, each with one portion of his head oversized: Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno.

The baiting and the bile have spilled over into the online world. The "I'm with Coco" Facebook group already has more than 157,000 fans and a lovely icon of O'Brien with which people are adorning their personal, but highly public, profiles.

Friday, I awoke to a Leno fightback. The Huffington Post reports that NBC executive Dick Ebersol described O'Brien as "an astounding failure." He also said … Read more

I haven't been to see "Avatar" because I have feared it would make me depressed. I have feared I would be depressed that so much money had been spent on a movie which, like "Titanic," made me manicure the fingernails of my right hand using the fingernails of my left.

It appears, however, that I am not alone in experiencing "Avatar"-related dysthymia. According to the erudite CNN discussion I have embedded, thousands of people have been flooding "Avatar" chat sites and saying that the movie did, indeed, depress them. But their reasons are somewhat different than mine.

They seem to feel miserable that the idyllic world of Pandora is nothing more than a box of 3D tricks. They want it to exist. They are sad that it doesn't.

CNN quoted one depressed post-"Avatar" poster who wrote: "It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning." On the Facebook Avatar-Forums group, a wall poster called Paul Neumann wrote: "ALL I SAID WAS " I DON'T WANT TO BE ON EARTH AND HUMAN ANYMORE, I JUST WANT TO BE ON PANDORA WITH THE NA'VI!"!"

Jo Piazza, a CNN entertainment writer declared: "I think the depression is widespread enough that it is an actual phenomenon."… Read more

General Motors has taken away his cars. Perhaps it was something to do with his driving record.

Accenture has replaced all those entertainingly spurious images of him in their ads with a picture of an elephant on a surfboard. (Which rather finely describes the balancing act he allegedly tried to perform for so many years.)

However, EA is not going to be moved so easily to distancing itself from Tiger Woods. The company has already said that it will release a new "Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online" game.

Now, Kotaku has discovered that EA wants to know just … Read more

I am sure there are many of you who inhale marijuana for purely medicinal purposes. Your pains might be physical. They might be psychological. But you feel as though your world is going to pot, so you turn to pot.

Now, an enterprising man called John Lee has decided to bring a little online rigor to your smoking vigor.

Sonoma, Calif.-based Lee has created PlainView Systems, a remarkably non-hippie name for a venture that, according to CNNMoney.com, he describes as the Amazon of pot.

That would be Amazon.com, rather than the never-ending river.

A visit to the … Read more

An escaped convict who entertained so many on Facebook with his taunting of the U.K. police, has finally been friended in person by the long arm of the law, according to the Associated Press.

Craig "Lazie" Lynch, who had been in jail for aggravated burglary, flew the coop on September 23 and began to create a little fame for himself with a Facebook page that grew him tens of thousands of fans.

The U.K. police asked Facebook to help in locating him and his Facebook page has finally disappeared. However, the "Where is Craig 'Lazie' Lynch" group … Read more

When you become president of your country, you walk into crises from the very first day.

Threats to your country's security may abound. Some of your cabinet ministers may be enjoying risky extramarital relations. But perhaps no newly elected president has ever had to confront as difficult a situation as Ivo Josipovic, Croatia's new head of state.

For, according to Reuters, he is tearing his rather impressive hair out at the thought of having too many Facebook friends.

"I have 5,000 friends, which is the maximum allowed on Facebook. I also have another 7,000 waiting … Read more

Given that Mark Zuckerberg has explained to you that privacy is no longer a social norm, your first thought this morning was probably, "How can I get more of my information to be public on Facebook?"

Your second might well have been something to do with improving your current relationship with your beloved.

In a heartwarming analysis of Google searches, Dan Ariely, author of the beautifully named "Predictably Irrational," revealed just how different boyfriends and girlfriends are, when it comes to asking the Google oracle for ways to solve their relationship problems.

Taking the search "… Read more