Social networking

Update at 10:56 p.m. PST: The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team (PDF) has won the competition.

You may have heard about that DARPA balloon challenge, where the first team to identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 moored weather balloons across the continental U.S. wins $40,000? Well, as of Saturday, the balloons are up in the air. If you don't have a team yet, here are some places to report a sighting.

What's cool is how most of the balloon-hunting communities I've found are working toward selfless goals. Both DARPABalloon.com and this … Read more

Sometimes, readers write to me. Sometimes, a couple of their words begin with an "f" or a "b." However, on Friday it was just "b"s. "Best Buy," "Best Buy," they said, along with one or two other words beginning with "b."

The customers' simmering frustration seemed to be directed at a Black Friday offer of a spectacular deal on an HP Pavilion P6214y package. I am sure this was a very fine offer. Unfortunately, Best Buy kept taking orders for it after it didn't have any … Read more

Perhaps you have already become used to Verizon's Droid tossing names at the iPhone like an 8-year-old boy behind his teacher's back.

However, the latest ill feelings directed at Apple's little cutey seem beyond even anything heard in an elementary school.

In a new TV spot, Droid asks an important question: "Should a phone be pretty?" To which many sane people would say "yes," and many emotionally challenged beings made of metal would say, "Huh? What?"

Its answer--the latest in its presentation of the Droid as a robotphone--is to hurl metallic-tasting … Read more

An increasing number of people are meeting the loves of their lives, or at least of their months, on Facebook.

However, a consequence of this might be that an increasing number of people think they will encounter love's intrepid arrow by socially networking. It seems, indeed, that some might be making advances toward their psychologists. Or even their proctologists.

The U.K.'s Medical Defense Union, an organization whose goal is to "defend the professional reputations of our members when their clinical performance is called into question," is concerned that some of its members resort to politeness … Read more

If you thought that all wireless carriers know just how good their competitors' networks are, you might be suffering from a dropped conception.

In a recent speech to the Association of National Advertisers, posted on the AdAge Web site, Verizon Chief Marketing Officer John Stratton explained that his company couldn't get hold of any good data on just how reliable AT&T's network is. So it commissioned a third-party survey, one that seems to have sent it giddy with joy.

"What we saw, we sort of suspected, but it was almost astounding," he said.

So … Read more

You know that apocalypse thing we're always being told might be just around the corner? Well, do you feel the chilling breeze? Do you feel the troubled twittering in the trees?

For here is a tale that I know you will discuss with your loved ones, perhaps with other people's loved ones, even with your psychological professional, the minute you hear it.

It appears a man called Dana Hanna is standing at the altar on November 21. He utters those most solemn vows about how he will love and obey or whatever it is that married people claim … Read more

Some, perhaps including Rupert Murdoch, might find this story uplifting.

While there has been much recent bellowing, whining, and general cat-on-heat griping about Google making money from the fine work of others, now I can report that some are finding ways to make money piggybacking on the broad spine of Google's engineering.

Two enterprising entities, different in their form but united in their purpose, have attempted to use Google's Street View as a medium for their own commercial messages.

First, there was car rental company AutoShare, the Canadian equivalent Zipcar in the U.S. You know, the folks … Read more

The Disney Company is always so good at accessing one's inner child. The hope, the joy, the glory of absolute love, family goodness, and everything that sails in it.

So I am thrown a little off course when I hear that Disney may have falsely accused an 11-year-old boy of hacking the Pirates of the Caribbean video game and disabled his account.

The account I have read comes from the boy's dad, Brian Guy. Guy is a manager of MySQL's hardy pirates at Sun Microsystems. He also has a blog, which was positively fulminating with frustration Tuesday, … Read more