We've seen plenty of dystopian tech since 2000. Phones that track and record your every movement. Drones that stalk and kill people. An enormous database of your feelings, ruthlessly exploited for commercial purposes. But the "Google Goggles" unveiled today take creepy tech to the next level.
MC Hammer just launched his search engine "WireDoo" at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The singer-turned-investor says WiredDoo goes "beyond just the keywords" into "relationship search" and "deep search." Sounds intense. Time to sample Marvin Gaye again.
Spotify, the mythical streaming music service launches tomorrow, no later than 8AM eastern. There will be all sorts of free streaming goodness. But you need to get on the invite list now. [Gizmodo]
Facebook just introduced a powerful new way for you to avoid doing your work: video chat built by Skype. It should be no surprise this comes as Google Plus gets rave reviews for its own video chat feature, Hangouts. [Gizmodo]
Footwear company MeyeWorld is launching a line of flip-flops with Jersey Shore heffalump Snooki. One style of shoe will be pink with a pickle print and have Snooki's name on them. What else?
Sure, many business owners say Groupon is a terrible deal for them. But co-founder Eric Lefkofsky saved his worst deal for consumers. How does a 125 percent-interest loan sound?
Twitter announced today it will natively host pictures within tweets, making it "easier than ever" to upload snapshots. Which is odd, given that the entire country spent this week discussing how it's way too easy to upload snapshots to Twitter.
There are now browser extensions that will filter out curse words from your online friends. Meet "Bleep Tweets" and its cousin the "Foul Facebook Filter," both great if your social networking has gotten far too exciting.
Google has launched a beta test of a Groupon clone called Offers, which promises to wring every remaining ounce of patience out of local merchants already besieged by the online coupon business.
Like Gwyneth Paltrow before him, rapper and mogul Jay-Z thinks that he knows exactly how you should live your life. He quietly launched his new website Life and Times today, and it proposes how you should dress, what music you should listen to, and which crazy cloud pictures you should look at.
Rupert Murdoch and his team at News Corp., plus third-string Apple executive Eddy Cue, just unveiled the much-hyped iPad newspaper, The Daily, in New York. It's got video, big pictures, embedded Twitter, and updates that "break in" to the app.
High-profile Wikileaks competitor Openleaks officially launched today. In a sign of what's to come, Openleaks' website was leaked to another secret-sharing website two days before its launch. It's leaks all the way down.
Steve Jobs will reportedly show up at the launch of Rupert Murdoch's The Daily. With Murdoch's News Corp. sinking a reported $30 million into a product designed specifically for Jobs' iPad, it seems like the least Apple's CEO could do.
Rupert Murdoch's iPad newspaper, The Daily, finally has a classy internet domain, TheDaily.com, from which to promote itself later this month. But the site's "coming soon" greeting is not so nice.
A cabal of centrist Democrats and lapsed Republicans are gathering in New York today to launch "No Labels," a group that advocates ditching partisan politics for supposedly common sense solutions. Cute! But don't pretend that this isn't ideological.
Rupert Murdoch is putting $30 million and 100 journalists behind an iPad newspaper called "The Daily." He even has support from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. But no one really believes this thing will last. Here's why.
With Google Instant Preview, you don't even have to open your search results; Google shows you thumbnails. First they killed the search button, now browser tabs. Google's cyborg engineers are determined to make humans nearly as fast as robots.
If you wish your search engine was more like a brain implant, then you'll love the new Google: It displays results instantly, predicts what you're looking for, and is extremely fast. It's also a big gamble.
Secret-sharing website Wikileaks.org's tagline is "We open governments." But the organization itself is about as open as North Korea. That's why we've launched Wikileakileaks.org: your source for Wikileaks-related secrets, documents and rumors!
Former New York Observer editors Tom McGeveran and Josh Benson launched their online magazine in beta form today. It seems to have lived up to its advance billing as a sort of Politico-meets-Salon-meets-Observer.