Yesterday, Verizon Wireless users in New Jersey’s Monmouth, Ocean, and Middlesex counties got a terrifying text message that the coming global superpocalypse was not only coming, but had arrived. The message, completely devoid of context, urged recipents to “Take Shelter Now” and purported to be a direct order from the “U.S. Govern[ment].” Of course, the text left a lot of questions unanswered, like “what’s going on?” and “why is there such a specific end time?” and people naturally started freaking out. Fortunately, the police were able to send out a message explaining that there was not, in fact, a civil emergency. Verizon Sends Out Bogus But Terrifying Take Shelter Alert | Geekosystem. Good gravy! I guess it’s a good thing that this exists just in case, but way to scare people! There should be some awareness about this program though, since it’s nationwide and across many carriers. Personal Localized Alerting Network...

We reviewed Facebook Timeline, the awesomely personal, beautifully designed new profile, in September. September. Facebook said it’d be open to everyone soon after. Clearly, that hasn’t happened—but the wait is over! If you live in New Zealand. What? As someone who uses Timeline daily, I’m without an explanation for why Facebook is holding out on us. There are occasional bugs, but no more than has been the case with any other Facebook feature. When I’ve asked Facebook engineers about the delay, they clam up and say Timeline will go public when “Zuckerberg is ready.” The New Facebook Is Finally Public! …In New...

Occupy Flash, a weirdly misnamed movement presumably riding on the coattails of the much more appropriately named Occupy Wall Street movement, is encouraging users to unequivocallyuninstall Adobe’s Flash player. It all comes back to the fact that Adobe has recently ended mobile Flash development in order to head in a more HTML5 direction. That being the case, Occupy Flash supporters are uninstalling Flash in hopes of forcing Adobe in a more HTML5 direction. Because it’s certainly not headed that way already. No, not at all. Occupy Flash Urging Users to Uninstall Adobe Flash |...

  Right now, the US Congress is debating a law that would give them the power to censor the world’s Internet — creating a blacklist that could target YouTube, WikiLeaks and even groups like Avaaz! Under the new law, the US could force Internet providers to block any website on suspicion of violating copyright or trademark legislation, or even failing to sufficiently police their users’ activities. And, because so much of the Internet’s hosts and hardware are located in the US, their blacklist would clamp down on the free web for all of us. The vote could happen any day now, but we can help stop this — champions in Congress want to preserve free speech and tell us that an international outcry would strengthen their hand. Let’s urgently raise our voices from every corner of the world and build an unprecedented global petition calling on US decision makers to reject the bill and stop Internet censorship. Sign now and then forward as widely as possible — our message will be delivered directly to key members of the US Congress ahead of the crucial vote. via Avaaz – Save the...

If you’ve ever sent a friend a video clip of your favorite show only to discover that “this video has been taken down due to a claim by MegaMedia Corp.”, you can thank the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that treats backing up your DVDs to your hard drive like you’re worse than a kid-toucher. But it turns out that the very people who got this law enacted, namely the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), now really, really hate it. Even The RIAA Hates The...