Internet

If ever a story called for the use of an emoticon, this would be the one: text messaging volume in the U.S. has declined for the first time ever, according to a new research report.

Regardless of whether the emoticon you'd assign to the story is a smiley or a sad face, it's worth noting that after years as a growing communications medium, texting may be starting to fall victim to new market trends, at least insofar as it generates revenues for wireless carriers.

In a report looking at the U.S. mobile data market in the third quarter, Chetan Sharma wrote that although other western countries have already started to see falling revenue in the messaging segment, this was the first time that American carriers have both mirrored that revenue pattern and seen a drop in the total volume of SMS messages sent. … Read more

Forget Black Friday and be sure to slam a Red Bull at the Thanksgiving table this year. You'll need it to offset the effects of that turkey's tryptophan and be primed for some serious shopping following the feast.

That's right. Black Friday is now Black Thursday.

Toys "R" Us is among the retailers that will call employees in on Thanksgiving evening to open its nationwide locations at 8 p.m. and help fulfill shoppers' "hot toy needs," according to a release. HDTVs and tablets like the Tabeo for kids and Samsung Galaxy Tab series are just a few of the hot digital toys the stores will be pushing for a possible second dessert on Thanksgiving night.… Read more

In certain corners of America, there is a mood of relief and joy. In others, rampant despair.

This partly stems from the rather limited number of candidates at the voters' disposal.

Unless, that is, you choose your own. In that searing home of live-and-let-live that is Georgia, almost 4,000 people knew exactly who was the right man to lead its state into the future.… Read more

A new kind of digital activist has emerged from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy this week -- the hurricane hacker.

This weekend, an in-person "Sandy CrisisCamp" will take place in Boston, cities on the West Coast, and even New Zealand. The events are basically set up as cross between a hack-a-thon and a workshop where geeks come together to design and code projects that can help local communities prepare for and cope with crisis.

Among some of the projects CrisisCampers will be working on are crowdsourcing tools to categorize images for building damage, allowing FEMA to prioritize its efforts, and a simple Google doc that attempts to keep track of all the sources of Sandy recovery data in a single place.… Read more

Who needs a ski resort map, when your goggles can tell you right where you are?

Next Monday, Oakley, one of the largest sports optics makers in the world, will unveil its $599 Airwave ski goggles, an all-new product featuring a small built-in heads-up display that mimics what appears to be a 14-inch screen seen at a distance of five feet.

The display, created using what is called "prism" technology, shows a wide range of imagery and information, including where a skier is, where their friends are, and even data about the last jump they took, or the … Read more

For years, those in the know have flocked to one site to get their daily fix of funny pictures of cats.

There's plenty of contenders for the crown, but the king of such sites, I Can Has Cheezburger, has long since left its rivals in the dust in the rarefied field of LOLCats, bringing in countless thousands of people every day who stop by to see images like one of a cat grabbing hold of its human and saying, "You have a pulse. You're well enough to get up and feed me."

The company behind I Can Has Cheezburger, Cheezburger Inc., employs more than 90 people who run dozens of blogs. And over the years, as they've built an audience in the millions, they've spawned two best-selling books. But they've never had a TV show. Until now. … Read more

You can meet a new lover in unexpected places -- like on a bus, at a winery, or at a pharmacy counter.

Such a chance encounter allows for the relationship to develop organically, right down to the bitter organic end.

For some people, though, chance encounters tend not to offer the precision they require. One of those people is Japanese programmer Noriko Higashi.

She, you see, knows precisely what she wants. Please believe me, it's quite a lot.

In order to find the man of her (rational) dreams, Higashi decided to advertise on social-coding site GitHub. Perhaps because she … Read more

You can no more choose your neighbors than you can choose your family members.

Sometimes they are people for whom you have contempt -- or even worse. However, it's not always easy to explain to them just how much you dislike them.

There are protocols to go through. And then there's the problem of having to look them in the face and say what you really think.

So an increasing trend seems to be to give your Wi-Fi network a name that carries a message.

In a breathtakingly revelatory piece, the BBC unveils some of the Wi-Fi names … Read more

After an 80-year stint, Newsweek is cancelling its print publication and will go all digital come 2013.

The news was revealed today on the Daily Beast, the online news site that merged with Newsweek in 2010. Daily Beast and Newsweek editor Tina Brown and Baba Shetty, CEO of the combined company, said that the December 31 edition will be the magazine's last print version.

Known as Newsweek Global, the new digital edition will provide news and information on a worldwide scale. Access to Newsweek Global will be available via paid subscriptions for both Web and tablet users. Certain content … Read more