snOMG! Where to go to keep up on Seattle’s snow storms

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Tech news never sleeps, as John and Todd know all too well. But if you live in Seattle, chances are there’s one really big news event you’re thinking about today, and it’s not made of pixels. Just snow. A couple inches could fall in parts of the region today, but the big story is what… Read More…

Know your phone, or else: The case of the philharmonic interruptor

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Did you hear the one about the conductor who stopped the orchestra because a cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing? It’s no joke. And when you get all the details, it was anything but comic. It was tech tragedy at its most shrill. On Tuesday in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, a packed house listened as… Read More…

Tickets on sale for Seattle stop of ‘Legend of Zelda’ symphony tour

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Know the “Legend of Zelda” theme? Play it in your head. Right now. “Da, daaa, da-da-da-da-daaaaa!” Feels good, right? Hearing it from a full orchestra should feel fantastic. Tickets are now on sale for “The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses,” a 12-city symphony tour that will serenade Seattle fans with themes from one… Read More…

Facebook says it’s your birthday: Respecting the ritual of the birthday wall post

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I mentioned my birthday and her eyes went wide. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” My friend stopped, gasped. Threw her arms around me in a hug. “I forgot to post on your wall!” I hugged back, smiling. Just seven years into Facebook’s existence, had the “happy birthday” wall post become this important? *Sneeze* “Bless… Read More…

What NOT to get a geek: 8 WTF items in SkyMall magazine

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To turn “Would I buy that?” to “Who would buy that?”, flip through SkyMall magazine. The 21-year-old catalog has taunted me for years. Usually I leave it untouched in the seat pocket in front of me. But when it’s time to turn off the Kindle on takeoff and landing, I can’t help myself. I slide… Read More…

UW students hack their way to Facebook campus with music sharing and syncing app

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No sleep? No problem. That’s how University of Washington seniors Ryan Ewing, Alex Juarez and Bill Cauchois and freshman Nick Barnwell tackled the 24-hour, 14-team Facebook College Hackathon finals in the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Friday. “It was pretty exciting. They put us in this big warehouse, a huge warehouse, with lots of… Read More…

Stop Online Piracy Act: An important step, or the worst Internet legislation ever?

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Stephen Colbert rarely books two guests to (more or less) seriously debate hot topics, but that’s precisely how “The Colbert Report” tackled a particularly contentious geek topic late last week — the recently proposed Stop Online Piracy Act. Proponents say SOPA will help protect American intellectual property by providing legal tools to combat mostly foreign… Read More…

A Facebook lesson from my newest friend — grandpa

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I was checking my phone on Friday, recovering from the previous night’s Thanksgiving meal, when I saw the notification bubble to the top of my screen. “No way,” I said aloud to my husband, his parents and his brother, all of us occupants in a Chevy Suburban making the post-holiday trek from Corvallis, Oregon back… Read More…

Google+ TV commercial: 5 things to note

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It doesn’t happen often, so when Google bothers to air a television commercial, we pay attention. An ad for Google’s underdog social sharing service, Google+, aired during the Lions vs. Packers football game on Thanksgiving Day. Does Google+ stand a chance against Facebook? The jury’s still out on that. As to the commercial, here are… Read More…

You’re selling yourself, and that’s OK: Welcome to the entrepreneurial generation

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Call Millennials innovators. Publishers. Mobilizers. Socialites. Just don’t call us salesmen. That’s one way to read last week’s mixed reaction to “Generation Sell,” the provocatively titled New York Times op-ed in which critic William Deresiewicz argued, among other things, that the “affect” of the social media generation is that of the salesman — inoffensive and… Read More…

It’s not a dirty word: In defense of the ‘conversation’

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When did “conversation” start sounding like a dirty word? Not long ago I was talking with a coworker about what works in social media. “Don’t say it’s the ‘conversation,’” he said, all disgust. “I hate that.” I was stunned. As an early social media champion who loves few things more than to spark meaningful discussion… Read More…

Hooked on the ‘now’: Facebook tries — and fails — to move users beyond recency

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Is there no higher relevance than recency? Facebook changed the way its popular NewsFeed works back in September to prioritize what it deemed important updates in the lives of friends. That let users see, say, a day-old post about a friend’s engagement before a link another friend posted just minutes ago, essentially demoting recent items… Read More…

Google started it: 5 reasons to hope display ads as we know them will die

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Hate when you land on a site crawling with ads? So does Google, apparently. Google spam expert Matt Cutts said Wednesday that Google is considering penalizing ad-heavy sites in its search results, putting ad-happy webmasters on notice and making business analysts scratch their heads at the latest gospel from the Google god. Ads are still Google’s… Read More…

Microsoft’s vision, and the myth of the carefree gadget

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The only thing I don’t believe in Microsoft’s video of the future is how calm everybody is around such omnipresent tech. For as long as there’s been technology, it seems, there’s been this vision of a technology utopia — of gadgets not only fitting into our day-to-day lives, but also disappearing into them, so that… Read More…