Somehow I missed this moral panic.
Apparently, there was have been several scary news reports about “digital drugs” or iDosing.
Um, what?!?
I wish I was making this up.
The practice involves listening to audio files that claim to simulate the effects of drugs.
Well, TVO’s Jesse Brown decided to get to the bottom of this and go talk to some actual teenagers about iDosing.
I’ve written before that I’m somewhat distrustful of so-called cloud-based applications. That is, software that is accessed through the web browser, stored on somebody else’s computer.
Well, a major exception to my avoidance of such software has been Google’s Gmail. Because, well, Gmail is awesome. And they keep adding neat new features, like the recently launched Priority Inbox.
That said, I went to Gmail’s task window to create a list of things I need to do tomorrow afternoon, as I’ve been getting a little busier.
Instead of being able to create my list, I see this:
Yes, it’s not a great a colour scheme, I know, but it says: “Oops, the Tasks service is temporarily unavailable.”
Clicking the “Try Again” link below does nothing.
Blah.
I’ve had a hard time getting any work done the past few days.
For this I blame Solipskier.
Basically, you draw a ski hill and little stick man skier who listens to heavy metal, well, skis it.
Simple. But oh so addictive.
See, you want to draw the hill so the skier goes through gates and tunnels to get more points. Plus, drawing an incline once he’s got some speed going makes him jump – getting you more points if you get through a gate in mid-air.
Plus there are scary areas where you can’t draw and your little dude is gonna have to jump.
I’m kinda glad I own neither than an iPhone or an iPad, as there’s a mobile version available as well.
According to the creator’s web site, an Android version is coming soon.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to try and beat my current high school of 7,000,000.
A Taiwan news outlet has produced an animated version of all the events so far regarding the iPhone 4: From gadget blog Gizmodo getting a hold a prototype left in a bar to the antennae issues discovered after the launched.
They do take a few creative liberties, though. Enjoy.
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue interviews the couple behind Snopes.
Books that turn back into trees? Not so far fetched anymore.
Reports of Blogging’s Death have been greatly exaggerated.
Porn video company CEO on Digital Rights Management
For The Escapist’s fifth anniversary, a look back at the bold experiment that is the online video game magazine.
How not to be a jerk on Twitter.
Web developer v.s. SEO “expert” v.s. social media “expert”
Coffee powered cars? Now I really miss my diesel Jetta.
A great gallery of modern products had they been made in 1977.
Around 1:40 p.m. yesterday, I was sitting at my desk reading when I suddenly notice my glass of iced tea appears to be moving by itself.
Then the whole desk starts shaking. I consider the possibility that maybe I’d had too much coffee and turn around in an attempt to focus my eyes but the room is still shaking and my entire apartment appears to be slanting.
I still thought it might be an illusion until I realized that the slanting was causing one of the cats the slide down the floor.
“Um, shit just got real.”
As I’m sure most everyone knows by now, the Ottawa area was rocked by a 5.0 earthquake with the epicentre in Val-des-Bois Quebec.
Once the tremors had subsided, I glanced back at my computer where TweetDeck had been open to see a flurry of earthquake tweets being posted.
Indeed, since Twitter gained popularity, the microblogging service finds itself taken over any time the ground shakes.
This has a tendency to bring out the social media enthusiasts to once again proclaim that social media sites like Twitter are displacing the tired old media by bringing real-time up to the second breaking news updates.
And while it’s true that a few hundred people had tweeted “EARTHQUAKE!!!” before a single news website that posted anything, just how important was this?
I mean, yeah, an earthquake happened. I felt my apartment rocking. I can’t say I really needed Twitter to inform me of this fact.
Once folks had calmed down a bit, additional details of the quake began pouring in, again before old media news sites had them. But there was a problem with these instantaneous updates: Most of them were wrong.
Following the whole thing on Twitter, the magnitude of the quake went from 5.9 and over time eventually dropped down to the actual 5.0. The epicentre changed a few times, as well.
Meanwhile, a little more than an hour after the initial shakes, The Ottawa Citizen had an article up with the accurate details as well some additional information on the geology of Ottawa that has the area particularly at risk for earthquakes, though most are too minor to be felt.
Now, a good deal of the details being spread on Twitter were also getting corrected in real-time, but due to the nature of the service making it easy for users to “retweet” posts to their own followers, often the damage is done quickly.
I’m not going try to pretend I’m immune. In a quick joke posting I tossed up on this blog, I too was one of the people using the wrong magnitude.
Having the incorrect Richter Scale number posted right after seismic activity isn’t particularly harmful, it also leaves me to wonder about the value of getting wrong information fast versus waiting an hour for the right info.
None of this is to say that there’s anything wrong with Twitter and social media, just that the enthusiasm for the idea that any of this is somehow a better replacement for old media is a little over the top.
Besides, following the quake, Twitter was an excellent source of entertainment with witty remarks coming in as fast as the incorrect information.
Clearly, someone is tired of the insane price of ink cartridges.
Thus, we have a homemade printer built out of Lego, using a felt marker for ink. Truly a marvel of engineering.
