friends

Ford to use recycled clothes in next-gen Focus

Ford's spin on "reduce, reuse, and recycle" includes your old blue jeans.

The auto maker today announced that the 2012 Focus, on sale early next year in North America and Europe, will use cotton from recycled clothing for carpet backing and sound-absorption materials inside the car. These materials will supposedly provide a much quieter cabin.

"Ford is continually looking for greener alternatives," said Carrie Majeske, product sustainability manager. "Recycled content is a way to divert waste from landfills and reduce the impact of mining virgin material."… Read more

A toast to robot cupcakes and ice cubes

Much has been written about the eventual robot uprising. However, until that time comes, Earth and the sky above are the domain of humans; clearly, we should make the most of it while the time is ours. With Skynet in its incubation stage, we humans are free to toast and enjoy the fruits of our creations, with a cold drink and a cupcake, of course. Naturally, the best way to enjoy this meal would be with robot-themed accessories.

For whatever reason, finding a robot drink to toast over a robot cupcake has never been too easy. Luckily (or not), times … Read more

New parent for Diapers.com

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Amazon is buying the parent company of Diapers.com and Soap.com

Google tests a product to let you record Google Voice calls in Gmail

Google disallows Facebook from pulling Gmail contacts to find friends

The BlackBerry Torch is now available for $99 in black, red, or white

A Chinese company is set to unveil a color e-ink eReader

November 17 will be the day to unfriend your undesirables on Facebook

But don't unfriend the Queen of England because she just joined Facebook

The Hex band gives you a way to be … Read more

Kimmel launches day to delete your Facebook friends

Are your friends obese? Is the burden of too many Facebook friends weighing you down? Do you spend your days so concerned about those hundreds who hang on your every word that you can no longer function as, say, the CEO of a major tech company?

Jimmy Kimmel, the talk show host who isn't Jimmy Fallon, has a solution. He would like you to observe National Unfriend Day.

On November 17, he encourages you to remove some of the friend fat in your life. William Shatner helped Kimmel in his announcement by philosophizing: "These people on Facebook..they'… Read more

Bing goes live with Facebook social search

Bing has rolled out its new social search, a feature that can display profiles and updates from your Facebook friends as part of your Bing search results.

This step of the Facebook integration has been in the works for a few weeks, but the techs at Bing fine-tuned the feature before yesterday's rollout, according to a post on the official Bing blog.

The new social search integrates with Facebook in a couple of ways.

If you opt to link your Facebook account with your Bing log-in, searching for the name of one of your Facebook friends in Bing brings … Read more

The 404 668: Where we like our Grizzly Bear Eggs over easy (podcast)

Congratulations to frequent guest and friend of the show Clayton Morris for reaching 100 episodes of his own podcast, The Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe!

Clayton joins us on The 404 this morning to chat about podcasting, backyard wrestling, and the tornado that hit New York last night!

We invited our buddy Clayton Morris of Fox and Friends to help us celebrate our 404th episode, so we're returning the favor for the 100th episode of The Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe, a podcast he does with Chikara founder and pro-wrestler Mike Quackenbush.

Girl Scout Weekly describes the show as "an omnibus podcast of pop culture, news, and tales from two rather odd lifestyles..." and Clayton tells us the origin of the name, because bears apparently do not lay eggs, which is news to all of us.

To celebrate his 100th episode, Wilson also cooked up a brand new logo for the show with a semi-embarrassing story to go along with it- apparently it's kind of difficult to purchase a single egg in New York City! We're also chatting with Clayton about the ins and outs of running a successful podcast and he even gives us a preview of some of GBEC's upcoming guests that include veteran artist Stan Bush and David Byrne from The Talking Heads!

Finally, join us after the break for Calls From the Public which features an appearance by one of our new favorite callers that sounds like the bastard child of Bill Cosby and Harry Caray.

There's also another voicemail ripping into yours truly for missing out on Shawshank Redemption, but I'd rather watch stuff like this anyway. Thanks to Clayton for waking up early to Skype with us this morning, and look for his physical being on a very-near-future episode of The 404! Have a great weekend everyone!

Episode 668 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS VideoRead more

Facebook friend request gets man in jail

There is now ample reason to believe that the mere existence of Facebook may cause human beings to do things that they know they shouldn't. Such as poke people and send them dead fish, or whatever virtual beings it is that people send to each other.

Somehow, the temptation seems too great, the user interface too attractive, and the immediacy of the communication just too powerful for anyone to resist.

As evidence, might I bring you the alleged behavior of Harry William Bruder from Florida? According to a report from the Pasco Sheriff's Office, Bruder, an employee of … Read more

Back-to-school media-friendly laptops: Blu-ray, Intel Wireless Display

Blu-ray, Intel Wireless Display, HDMI--there are a lot of ways laptops can make themselves killer TV-friendly media machines. In fact, for a reasonable price, there are a lot of options out there. Between Blu-ray playback and wireless streaming of online video, it's easier than ever to get your laptop to effortlessly play nicely with a big-screen HDTV. The trick is knowing which machines have these features. While Blu-ray laptops are often heavily plastered with stickers, Intel's Wireless Display technology is often invisible, and sometimes not even mentioned as a feature at all.

For your convenience, we've rounded up notable media laptops from our back-to-school 2010 retail laptop guide, focusing on the features in each. We've also noted whether these laptops have discrete graphics for gaming (it's not always a given). Whether or not they're gaming friendly, they're all well suited for video. Our roundup came up with several laptops from Sony and Toshiba, including a Sony Vaio EA24FM/W that offers an affordable Blu-ray/Wi-Di one-two punch for $799.

Note: we've seen some other compelling Blu-ray and Wi-Di laptops recently, including the Gateway NV5933u, but our list below focuses on retail configurations from our recent guide.

Editors' note: See our roundup of retail laptops in all price ranges.

Check out details of each system below:… Read more

YouTube cuts music license deal with Rumblefish

YouTube users who want to add music to their uploaded videos can now buy lifetime licenses for certain songs thanks to the company's new deal with Rumblefish.

Unveiled on Tuesday, Rumblefish's new music program, dubbed FriendlyMusic, offers a catalog of copyright-cleared songs, which YouTube videomakers can purchase for $1.99 each and legally edit into their videos before posting them online. The new feature is YouTube's answer to users who have had their videos blocked in the past due to the unauthorized use of copyrighted music, according to the company's blog.

The new deal confirms reportsRead more

Facebook promotes Bret Taylor to CTO

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that Director of Platform Bret Taylor has been promoted to chief technology officer--a position that the company had not previously counted among its ranks.

Taylor joined Facebook last summer when the company acquired his start-up FriendFeed, a social-media aggregator that was rife with ex-Google engineering talent and Silicon Valley early-adopter hype, but slow on mainstream uptake. Shortly after Taylor and his team joined Facebook, the company open-sourced the Tornado server, which powered FriendFeed's impressive real-time streaming capabilities.

The reasoning behind Taylor's promotion appears to be logistical, judging by an internal e-mail from Facebook that was conveniently forwarded to TechCrunch. &… Read more