Hasta La Gadget!

On assignment.

(Credit: Johanna DeBiase)

This week I’ve been celebrating 25 years of the Web by retracing my own life, lived largely online, from the Web’s early years to the dot-com boom and bust to the slow emergence of Web 2.0, which I largely missed while in self-imposed digital exile in Alaska. In the final installment today I look at how I came back to the Web just in time for things to get really good.

Look through my author’s profile here at CNET and you might notice that I’m a bit obsessed with following the latest developments in the mobile world, from even the most hopeful iPhone rumors to torture-testing ruggedized Android phones. But back in January of 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced, arguably kicking off the global smartphone craze and eventually helping to push the mobile Web into the mainst… [Read more]

Related Links:
The Web at 25: I was a teenage dial-up addict
Tim Berners-Lee: 25 years on, the Web still needs work (Q&A)
The Web at 25: Out of the ashes and onto the Friendster
Web inventor Berners-Lee to do Reddit AMA Wednesday
The Web at 25: Dot-com bubble bursts and breaks me, too

Google has slashed the price of Google Drive storage, with some tiers now a fifth of the price they were before, as the company pushes its cross-service cloud. While 15GB … Continue reading

Vine user Worldchamp Santwon breaches the counter at a McDonald's.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

The gadget-toting subpopulation of the human race can’t go for long without developing a new visual meme that spreads like an iPhone rumor. The most recent craze is cropping up on Vine, and it’s called whaling. There is a vine.com list dedicated to whaling, which offers the helpful definition “to dive backwards with one’s body in a public or unusual place, like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean.”

Fads like planking and Tebowing were built for an age of photographs. They were amusing, still poses, captured in the moment. Whaling builds on the idea of doing something weird in unlikely places, but brings in the element of motion (and sometimes sound). It’s designed to shine in Vine’s short-video format.

Now that whaling has exploded as a meme, the challenge is for whalers to up the ante on the antics. Synchronized whaling? We got it. Whaling in the produce section of the grocery store? Been done. Whaling in a bathroom stall? Check.

Related stories

• ‘Eastwooding’ meme sweeps across Twitter
• … [Read more]

  Related Links:
  Whale-watching from space totally works
  Twitter to star in cinema deal
  Twitter prohibits posting of sexually explicit videos on Vine
  Twitter crashes for ‘most users’
  Opera Max promises to cut data usage across apps
  
  

  
  
  

  

  Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • LinkedIn
  • More

  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Pocket
  • Email

What you see above is an alleged screenshot that touts to represent iOS 8, having appeared over on a Weibo account (which is somewhat akin to Twitter in China). Although the main source of the alleged screenshot remains unverified and unknown, it does seem legitimate. Basically, from what has been depicted online so far, it does seem as though iOS 8 is not going to venture too far away from the existing iOS version on your Apple device.

(more…)

iOS 8 Screenshots Spotted (Rumor) original content from Ubergizmo.

Multiple models of Samsung Galaxy smartphones could contain a backdoor for remote data access, a developer team has alleged, potentially leaving personal files open to clandestine browsing. The security loophole … Continue reading