241 MetaFilter comments by Dennis Murphy (displaying 1 through 50)

Simplicity is highly overrated. Why people prefer feature-bloat.
comment posted at 6:56 AM on Sep-8-10

Facebook Places is the latest creation of the Facebook team. Similar to Foursquare, it seeks to make it easier for people to share their location with their friends. Perhaps predictably, people are publicizing steps for how to disable it on your Facebook account. Over at Slate, writer Farhad Manjoo debates the impact Places might have on society. Ready, set, go!
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Aug-20-10

It was supposed to be the iPhone killer. Instead, the Nexus One turned out to be a bust. Google announced today that they were discontinuing the phone despite the rise of Android as an operating system.
comment posted at 9:24 AM on Jul-19-10

Starting today, Starbucks is offering free wifi in all of their US and Canadian stores. This has computer security folks a little edgy, since it could allow hackers and computer miscreants new opportunities to steal the data of unsuspecting computer users, and prompted Steve Gibson, computer security guru, to advise people to "just be afraid. Be very afraid." This applies to people who use laptops, wifi enabled cellphones and pdas. But there are ways to protect yourself.
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Jul-1-10


"That stainless steel band that runs around is the primary structural element of the phone. And there are these three slits in it. It turns out, this is part of some brilliant engineering which actually uses the stainless steel band as part of the antenna system... it's never been done before. And it's really cool engineering!"
Less than three weeks after Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4's (previously) revolutionary signal-boosting design, the internet discovers a fatal flaw that causes calls to drop when the bottom-left corner is touched. Jobs personally offered one customer a solution via email: "Just avoid holding it in that way." Apple's marketing department apparently didn't get the memo.
comment posted at 2:21 PM on Jun-25-10
comment posted at 2:31 PM on Jun-25-10
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Jun-27-10

The whistle has blown in Port Elizabeth. Stoppage time in Pretoria, and three men run into the box. Altidore flicks the ball across, but Dempsey walks it straight into the goalkeeper. On the rebound, Donovan puts it in the net. The world reacts.
comment posted at 8:52 PM on Jun-24-10

Ever notice how people texting at night have that eerie blue glow? Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen? During the day, computer screens look good—they're designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn't be looking at the sun. F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day. It's even possible that you're staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.
comment posted at 10:17 AM on Jun-23-10

Joyce’s Ulysses Banned Again—by Apple, Not the Government. According to Sarah Weinman at the Daily Finance; she says that a Webcomic adaptation of the book, Rob Berry and Josh Levitas' Ulysses Seen, (previously seen here on Mefi), has been banned from iPads and iPhones because of cartoon nudity. Here is the image that is causing all the controversy. Warning: Contains crudely illustrated male genitalia. via Slate.com. And this isn't the first time. Read about the original censorship and legal battles regarding Joyce's Ulysses..
comment posted at 9:33 AM on Jun-10-10

With Apple's release today of its newest iPhone and the HTC Evo 4G released last Friday, video phones are poised to flood the consumer market. All of this raises the uncomfortable question of videophone etiquette and whether David Foster Wallace was right about the problem with videophones (excerpt from Infinite Jest).
comment posted at 1:41 PM on Jun-7-10
comment posted at 1:42 PM on Jun-7-10

The last Hummer has rolled off the line in Shreveport, Louisiana. Although the H3 shared the same chassis as the Chevy Colorado, and the H2 was basically a Chevy Tahoe with a different body, the antipathy toward the gas Goliaths was immense.
comment posted at 6:54 AM on May-27-10

"I am a Gaga supporter. I’m Team Gaga. She’s my girl. My pop Arsenal; my dance Red Sox; my fashion England." Accompanying her from her back stage dressing room to a Berlin sex club, Caitlin Moran interviews Lady Gaga. And yes we do get an answer to THAT question.
comment posted at 4:51 PM on May-22-10

Google accidentally collects private data over WiFi networks. Affects US, Brazil, Hong Kong, Germany, France. Google apologizes & explains & promises to knock it off. Plus the data was kind of all just hanging out there, unencrypted. So all is well, right?
comment posted at 5:15 PM on May-14-10

Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative
[I]n December, with the help of newly hired Beltway privacy experts, it reneged on its privacy promises and made much of your profile information public by default. That includes the city that you live in, your name, your photo, the names of your friends and the causes you’ve signed onto. This spring Facebook took that even further. All the items you list as things you like must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don’t want them linked and made public, then you don’t get them — though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.
comment posted at 9:44 PM on May-9-10

Very Mary Kate: The Unofficial Biography of Mary-Kate Olsen. It's better if you start from the beginning.
comment posted at 1:11 AM on May-8-10


Here's Why We Don't Allow Flash On The iPhone And iPad . An open letter by Steve Jobs. Some previous discussion here, here.
comment posted at 8:47 AM on Apr-29-10
comment posted at 8:55 AM on Apr-29-10
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Apr-29-10


The New York Times covers a 'new celebrity trend', Unshaven Women, Free Spirits or Unkempt?
comment posted at 11:58 AM on Apr-13-10

Woz's Ring
comment posted at 12:14 PM on Apr-3-10
comment posted at 11:38 AM on Apr-5-10

‘If You Voted for Obama, Seek Urologic Care Elsewhere’ 'A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere."' This is but a new twist in the continuing debate over a physician's right to refuse treatment.
comment posted at 5:25 PM on Apr-2-10

Apple sues smartphone manufacture HTC for patent infringement. Digital Daily has the court filings, and includes a list of popular HTC Android and Windows Mobile phones targeted in the concurrent ITC Complaint to block importation of those devices into the US. Engadget has a little more information, including HTC's initial response. Listed patents are all seemingly software patents, a controversial area of patent law. (via Daring Fireball)
comment posted at 7:25 PM on Mar-2-10

We Are the World 25 for Haiti reprises the original on its 25-year anniversary, with an 81-member chorus including Pink, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Nick Jonas, LL Cool J, Robin Thicke, Celine Dion...
comment posted at 2:49 PM on Feb-13-10

Style Guide for the Sorority Girl Cornell sorority members have been playing fashion police. A set of "style guidelines," roughly 6 pages long, was recently leaked onto the web. It insisted members consistently get manicured, pedicured, cut, colored and waxed and boasted austere fashion and beauty rules.
comment posted at 3:02 PM on Feb-12-10
comment posted at 3:05 PM on Feb-12-10

Funny. Touching. Intrusive. I wish I could let myself be half as vulnerable as this women. She's a great sport for allowing this site to exist.
comment posted at 1:48 PM on Jan-31-10
comment posted at 1:57 PM on Jan-31-10

Apple announces something: The iPad, which all signs say is a tablet computer. Various people, from the Ceo of textbook and magazine publisher McGraw-Hill and Weblogs. Inc founder Jason Calacanis have talked about their experiences using and testing the device. But the most interesting aspect of the computer may not be the technology, but rather its potential for use in creating and participating in content creation which could revolutionize digital magazines and newspapers
comment posted at 1:06 PM on Jan-28-10


B.B. King plays to a New York prison audience on Thanksgiving Day 1972 "How Blue Can You Get." Plus, bonus SRV inside.
comment posted at 2:38 PM on Jan-14-10


This year's Top 10 Sexy Geeks
comment posted at 11:10 AM on Dec-27-09




Ghosts of Shopping Malls Past. : beautiful photos of modern ruins.
comment posted at 10:20 AM on Dec-12-09




T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger probably lost all Sidekick users' data. They continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.
comment posted at 7:29 AM on Oct-11-09

Upcoming Flash CS5 will allow you to publish iPhone Apps. Today at Adobe MAX, Adobe announced that the upcoming Flash CS5 will allow you to build and export Flash Content as an iPhone App. This is not the same as Flash coming to the iPhone, it just means that instead of writing apps in Objective-C, folks can use ActionScript 3. Designers everywhere are already buzzing:perhaps time to re-purpose all those old intro screens? Perhaps the real question is: Do consumers win or lose?
comment posted at 6:27 PM on Oct-5-09

The model of the new media model (video), Leo Laporte talks to the Online News Association about new media and the origins of TechTV, ZDTv, and TWiT. (via)
comment posted at 5:59 PM on Oct-5-09

Film director Roman Polanski, who won numerous awards for films like Chinatown and The Pianist, has been detained for extradition to the US, whilst travelling to Switzerland to collect a lifetime achievement award at the Zürich Film Festival.
comment posted at 9:28 AM on Sep-27-09

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