Hasta La Gadget!

Facebook is a powerful tool when it comes to connecting with people that you’ve met, as well as being arguably the most important social networking site on the planet. This can be both good and bad, and while I’m not sure if I want to share my location at all times on my timeline, I’m sure that it could be useful in some cases.

Facebook’s new Nearby Friends feature is disabled by default. It allows you to get alerts when some of your FB friends are nearby. It could definitely makes things easier when you’re out on the town, in the same general area, but have trouble actually locating your friends, something that actually happened to me today.

While I can also see the possible problems of such a feature, when it comes to stalkers, etc, at least it’s fully optional, and defaults to being switched off. The problem is that a lot of people aren’t going to remember to switch back off when they don’t want it running. They’ll just leave it on once they set it and forget it. At least you can choose who you do and don’t share your location with, so that should help some.

What do you think of this feature? Are you going to enable it on your phone?

[via Facebook]

Some people live on in the memories of others, even when they pass on, because of the life they’ve led and the differences that they’ve made on the lives of others. Others may be forgotten, while still others will live on as avatars in the online realm.

The latter is made possible by Eterni.me, a start-up brought about by MIT’s Entrepreneurship Development Program.

It’s essentially a service that learns and creates an online personality for the departed, based on their old chat logs, emails, photos, and social network interactions. A blurb on the site explains:

Eterni.me collects almost everything that you create during your lifetime, and processes this huge amount of information using complex Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Then it generates a virtual YOU, an avatar that emulates your personality and can interact with, and offer information and advice to, your family and friends after you pass away. It’s like a Skype chat from the past.

Marius Ursache, the startup’s Chief Executive, revealed that over 1,300 registrations were received in a span of 24 hours, so there’s certainly an interest in from people interested in being preserved as an electronic avatar.

To say that it is both unusual and creepy is an understatement. You can check out Eterni.me here.

[via Kotaku Australia via C|NET]

Unlike Stevie Wonder’s hit song Part Time Lover which was about, well, part-time lovers, this dating site called Part Time Love is all about helping people find their match, minus the pressure. It offers an unusual service that stays true to the name of the site: matchmaking for people who are looking for relationships without the usual strings attached.

Most people date to find a partner, but not with the strict timeline of getting hitched after X number of days like some people expect. So for that, there’s Part Time Love. The description on the site reads:

We are not a no-strings website. We are for singles looking for regular partners with mutual attraction, genuine friendship, respect and a magical spark but whom have no expectations of moving in after three months and value their free time and independence.

That’s definitely unconventional by most standards. But if you’re in a situation where you’re looking for a mate but have so many other things going on in your life at the same time, then this might be a worthy alternative to consider. Check out Part Time Love here.

[via C|NET]

Back when Amazon Prime first launched I made fun of it and generally thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. In my mind, I would never buy enough items for Amazon to cover the yearly fee to be a member. In practice only a few short months after signing up, I was hooked. I bet there are lots of people out there that feel the same way.

Other retailers online are trying to compete with Amazon Prime, including electronics purveyor Newegg. If you are a computer geek, you probably remember Newegg as the place you went when TigerDirect didn’t have the computer products you wanted back in the day. These days, Newegg sells all sorts of electronics.

Newegg is trying to compete with Amazon Prime with the new Newegg Premier service Beta. The service costs $49.99(USD) per year and will give you free expedited shipping on anything you order. Premier shipping promises to have your items in your hands in two to three days, and discounts on rush shipping. It also includes special deals just for members, no restocking or return shipping fees, and early alerts for sales and events.

Newegg is offering a 30-day trial to see how much you like the service. Sadly, it offers no streaming video or free digital books like Prime.

[via ArsTechnica]

Would you name your daughter Cthulhu All-Spark? I wouldn’t. But Stephen McLaughlin might, because that’s the name the Internet has suggested and voted to the top for his soon-to-be-born daughter.

Perhaps the pressure to finding a good name on his own was too much. Maybe he just wanted to have a little fun and do something different in the naming process. It doesn’t matter what his reason is though, because his plight for a name has been heeded by legions of Internet users and trolls who are all too happy to suggest some decent (but mostly outrageous) names.

Got a few suggestions of your own? Head on over to NameMyDaughter.com and send them in! Maybe we can band together and prevent his unborn daughter from being saddled with such a name. Though it’s better than Megatron Doge McLaughlin or Streetlamp Moonshine McLaughlin, I suppose.

[via C|NET]