dan tynan on Dec 26 2008 | Filed under: PC World, Web 2.0
The stories you are about to read are true. Some names have been changed to protect the humiliated.
Call it the ‘oh-no-second’ – the interval of time that passes between pressing the send button on an intimate email and realizing you just CC’d the entire universe.
But it’s not just email. Thanks to the ease, speed, [...]
dan tynan on Dec 23 2008 | Filed under: Da Web, PC World
The sex industry is behind many innovations that today’s Netizens cannot live without, as well as some nasty bits we wish never existed.
For an industry that many won’t admit they’ve ever patronized, pornography has had an amazing impact on virtually every new medium, from cave painting to photography. Dirty pictures have been [...]
dan tynan on Oct 31 2008 | Filed under: Apple, Gadgets, Geekishness, Lists, Music, PC World, Steve Jobs
The best gadgets are simple, elegant, and change your life in ways you don’t expect
Five years ago my Gadget Freak column began with a simple mission. To explore brave new technologies, to seek out new gizmos and gear, and to boldly go where no gadget column had gone before.
Now that mission is over. This [...]
dan tynan on Oct 27 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, PC World, Web 2.0
(A slightly different version of this article appeared on PCworld.com.)
It seems everyone is atwitter about Twitter. Yes, there are other microblogs with insufferably cute names — Pownce, Jaiku, Plurk, etc. But Twitter has quickly become the de facto choice for creating really really really short blogs.
Why? it helps that Twitter’s rules are painfully simple. [...]
dan tynan on Oct 23 2008 | Filed under: PC World, Spamarama
This post originally appeared on PCworld.com.
As more and more spammers are arrested, prosecuted, and sued under state and federal antispam statutes, there’s one thing you can count on: Someone somewhere will invariably call the targeted spammer a “spam king.”
It seems the bulk e-mail industry has more kings than a pinochle deck. But who is really [...]
dan tynan on Sep 18 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Foolishness, PC World, Privacy, Video, Web 2.0, yahoo, youtube
It was a vacation she’d probably rather forget. When Janet Dudley-Eshbach, president of Salisbury University in Maryland, created an album of her family’s trip to Mexico on Facebook in October 2007, she didn’t expect a local TV station to broadcast the photos to the world, or to have a Wikipedia entry covering the mini-scandal. [...]
dan tynan on Sep 18 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Microsoft, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
Michael Hanscom did not pose nude on Flickr, attack the locals with a stick on his trip to Mexico, or dress up like the Fairy Princess while calling in sick. His crime? In October 2003, the Microsoft temp posted photos of Macintosh G5s being unloaded on the Redmond campus to his blog with the [...]
dan tynan on Sep 18 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Facebook, Foolishness, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
What’s a Halloween costume cost? For college junior Joshua Lipton, it was two years of his life. In October 2006, the Bryant University student was charged with drunk driving after causing a three-car crash that left one Providence woman in critical condition. Two weeks later he showed up for a Halloween party dressed as [...]
dan tynan on Sep 17 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
As Texas is to nude art teachers, Illinois is to scantily clad cheerleading coaches. In April 2007, 25-year-old Natosha Shaw was temporarily stripped of her pom poms when parents at Waukegan High discovered sexy photos on Shaw’s MySpace profile. Parents claimed the aspiring dancer/model was also "inexperienced, incompetent, and immature" as well as under [...]
dan tynan on Sep 17 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Foolishness, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
Here are two quick rules of thumb. If you’re going to teach art to high schoolers, try not to post nude photos of yourself online. And if you must teach art and pose in the nude, don’t do it in Texas. Tamara Hoover found this out the hard way in May 2006, when she [...]
dan tynan on Sep 17 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Foolishness, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
Sometimes posting a photo of someone else is enough to get you in trouble. In March 2005 Central High student Eliazar Velasquez snapped shots of principal Elaine Almagno having a smoke on school grounds and posted them to his Web site. He then distributed flyers throughout the Providence-based school, urging students to visit the [...]
dan tynan on Sep 16 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Foolishness, PC World, Privacy, Video, Web 2.0, youtube
Quick, what’s more stupid–driving 140 mph or filming yourself while driving 140 mph? How about filming yourself driving 140 mph and then posting the evidence on YouTube? That was only the tip of the dunce-berg for 23-year-old Andrew Kellett of Leeds, England. He posted more than 80 videos of himself driving recklessly, stealing gasoline, [...]
dan tynan on Sep 16 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Foolishness, Lists, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
What do you do with a drunken pirate? Throw her in the brig–or, if you’re Millersville University, deny her a teaching degree. That’s what happened to Stacey Snyder, a then-27-year-old student teacher who posted a self portrait to her MySpace page under the caption "drunk pirate," even though it was not clear from the [...]
dan tynan on Sep 16 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Da Web, Foolishness, Lists, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
British tennis phenoms Naomi Broady and David Rice are no longer feeling the love from the UK’s Lawn Tennis Association. The LTA nixed its sponsorship of the teens in October 2007 after discovering photos of Broady and Rice on social networking site Bebo showing them drunk, getting intimate with condom dispensers in public restrooms, [...]
dan tynan on Sep 16 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Lists, PC World, Privacy, Video, Web 2.0, youtube
What is it about firehouses that makes people want to take off their clothes? In this case, Boston fireman Alberto Arroyo got in trouble for stripping down to take part in a body-building competition last May. (He finished eighth in the 2008 Pro Natural American Championships, by the way.) There’s nothing wrong with fire [...]
dan tynan on Sep 16 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, PC World, Privacy, Web 2.0
Now that an ex-beauty queen is running for the VP slot, life may be easier for hot mommas who also happen to be office holders. It will be too late to help Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, though. The former mayor of Arlington, Oregon, got in hot water with her constituents after a family member posted photos [...]
dan tynan on Sep 16 2008 | Filed under: (anti) social media, Da Web, Foolishness, Lists, PC World, Privacy, Video, Web 2.0, youtube
It’s bad enough to dress up like you’re about to slip a dollar under some toothless child’s pillow. But former intern Kevin Colvin made it much worse by asking his boss at Anglo Irish Bank if he could take time off for a “family emergency in New York,” then flitting off to a Halloween party [...]
dan tynan on Aug 14 2008 | Filed under: Da Web, Facebook, Microsoft, PC World, Web 2.0, youtube
You can’t force anything to ‘go viral’ on the Internet, but that didn’t stop these 10 companies from giving it a big, dumb try. Guess who topped the list.
(This post originally appeared on PCworld.com)
Sure, it looks easy enough. Post a video of yourself wiggling your butt on Wii Fit, dancing your way across the globe, [...]
dan tynan on Aug 12 2008 | Filed under: Da Web, PC World, Web 2.0
Don’t like the government? Go out and make one of your own. These five Web sites can help you get informed, get active, and get those jokers out of office.
(A version of this story first appeared on PCworld.com.)
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s an election year. Along with making promises, shaking hands, and [...]
dan tynan on Jun 30 2008 | Filed under: Google, Microsoft, National insecurity, PC World
Microsoft’s cofounder says he’ll do charitable work after he retires this month. But we have some other suggestions: driving instructor, expert witness, and circus clown for starters. And Bill has experience in all of them.
(A version of this post originally appeared on PCworld.com)
For more than 30 years he has roamed among us, a strange hybrid [...]
