I began this post as a warning of sorts. Men and women of Brown who care about your fantasy football teams (I realize this may be a very small demographic), SET YOUR LINEUPS EARLY THIS WEEK. Why? Last Sunday, millions of fantasy football slackers were shocked to find that Yahoo! Sports was down in the precious hours before kickoff at 1 p.m. Because of Yahoo!’s technical difficulties, lineups were left unchanged, players with bye weeks were in starting positions, and approximately 1.2 million pounds of hair was torn out nationwide. As often occurs these days, there was a decent-sized Internet riot in response (thank you Twitter). Last week’s debacle got me thinking, what Internet disasters would garner similar rage—most likely as measured by prevalence of clever hashtags—at Brown?

1. G-Chat fails. Again. Ffffffuuuuuu how am I supposed to procrastinate now in a way that even looks like I’m being productive? Let me take to another procrastination web site like Twitter to communally gripe!

2. BCA Spring Weekend Tickets. Too real, I guess this one is kind of inevitable. Until they book the “John Schnatter and Grover Norquist old-time string band” to headline Spring Weekend, that site is going to go down, and people are going to complain.

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Follow @techaccino for semi-instant updates, and check out our Spring Weekend playlist.

By now, you’ve already either received/purchased an iPad or heard about it from your friends enough to know that there are a million and a half things to do with it. (If not, check this out!) (By the way, I’m talking here about Apple’s tablet, unlike the AP…) From note taking to airplane crashing to star gazing, there really isn’t a lot more out there we could ask it to do. But let’s think outside the box…What about that 30-pin connector at the bottom or the Bluetooth capability? Sure you can connect it to your computer, a wireless keyboard, or (if you’re lazy and have money to waste) your digital camera, but imagine all the possibilities…So stop shopping at censoring Apple Stores, and let’s take a gander inside the intertubes to find how you should actually be using your iPad. [Read more →]

Remember when Steve Jobs died and Apple set up rememberingsteve@apple.com so that Apple employees and devotees could send their condolences and final messages to have them all compiled together somehow? Well, Apple just updated its memorial page to include a stream of all these emails. Over a million of them.

Assuming that you take about 10 seconds to read one of these emails, if you decide to read all of these messages continuously, it’ll take you over a hundred days to read them all, which means that you’ll be done around sometime next February.

Too lazy for confession? Don’t have time to waddle through the melting snow to pour your heart to a priest through an iron gate? Just too ashamed to do even that? Well, Steve Jobs is here to make your life just a bit easier.

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According to a CNN article, Apple has recently patented a new technology that could helps parents block their kids from ‘sexting’ on their iPhones. This would be like a modern day AOL Kidz (anyone else remember that?), where parents could block their child’s phone from receiving or sending texts with certain words. According to the article, even abbreviations of certain words would be blocked, and the program could be tailored to a child’s age. It’s kind of crazy that a) there are enough “children” with iPhones for this to be a seriously needed tool, and that b) there are enough children with iPhones for whom ‘sexting’ is a problem. Kids these days…

No, he won't help you with your homework.

Long Island University student Chelsea Kate Isaacs was writing a story for her journalism class about a project offering half-price iPads for students at her university. After having no luck with Apple’s PR team, she decided to kick it up a notch–and emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who essentially told her to piss off. So Isaacs, pissed off that she “probably won’t get an A” now, got back at him by posting their email exchange on Gawker. Our favorite parts?

Isaacs:

Because I have had such good experiences as a college student using Apple products, I was incredibly surprised to find Apple’s Media Relations Department to be absolutely unresponsive to my questions, which (as I had repeatedly told them in voicemail after voicemail) are vital to my academic grade as a student journalist.

Jobs:

Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry.

Then, one email later, he ended the conversation for good:

Please leave us alone.

Note to Isaacs: if you want to make the Apple CEO happy, you probably shouldn’t tag all of your emails “Sent via Blackberry.”