Non Sequitur

I can think of some people who would pay $4,839 for the chance to wind up on a beautiful tropical island where Matthew Fox routinely takes off his shirt--even if there were man-eating smoke monsters and vicious polar bears involved.

Buzz started spreading around on Twitter that you can find something awfully funny on travel search site Kayak.com: search for a one-way flight from Sydney to Los Angeles to take place on September 22, 2010, and one of the search results that pops up is Oceanic Airlines, the fictional airline made famous by TV sci-fi drama "Lost.&… Read more

I'm only moderately familiar with vacation rental exchange HomeAway.com because a few of my longtime friends use it to book the house for our annual ski weekend (outdoor hot tub absolutely mandatory!) But it looks like this online service is going to get a big boost in publicity: Not only will it be running a TV commercial during the Super Bowl, but the commercial will feature actors Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo in their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold from "National Lampoon's Vacation," the 1983 comedy about a holiday gone horribly awry.

A … Read more

Somehow, recently, Bill Gates turned into Mr. Awesome. He's tweeting and blogging, and now, according to the New York Post, he was spotted "dancing, Paris (Hilton) style, on a banquette" at a Microsoft-sponsored party at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

"He gyrated in a VIP booth until 2 AM," a "spy" told the Post's Page Six--a gossip item, so take it with a grain of salt. "Everybody was snapping photos of him until his security rushed him out the back door after he tipped a waitress $500." … Read more

When the biggest pop-culture sensation on television details the adventures of a bunch of loudmouthed, lowbrow twentysomethings, of course the buzz on Twitter is going to be a big deal.

So for the Thursday season finale of MTV's "Jersey Shore," the network has launched a "Twitter Tracker" to see which of the reality show's excessively tanned, middle-finger-flipping cast members are getting talked about the most.

Created in sync with social-media firm Radian 6, the tweet aggregator brings up extremely scientific graphs pulling in data for Twitter searches for the show's characters so that … Read more

LOL OMG 6 MORE WKS WINTER?

It doesn't quite have the gravitas of Barack Obama announcing his vice-presidential pick via text message, but this year Punxsutawney Phil, arguably the world's most famous groundhog, will be telling enthusiasts via text message whether they're going to get stuck with six more weeks of winter.

Before February 2, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club invites everyone to text "Groundhog" to the SMS short-code 247365. When Phil ventures out of his burrow on Gobbler's Knob that morning--well, let's be honest, usually they have to prompt him out--text messages will … Read more

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put out an "open letter" to the site's massive membership on Tuesday, explaining the site's revised privacy controls that are finally going into effect after being announced this summer, and additionally announcing the milestone that the site has reached 350 million active users around the world.

But CEOs are notoriously deft with spin, and Zuckerberg is a clever fellow. So, luckily, CNET has translated his entire letter for you! In italics are Zuckerberg's words. Below are the ones we found to be an appropriate substitution after extensive research, experimentation, and a … Read more

The North American Aerospace Defense Command isn't messing around this year.

Each year since 1955, the military agency--a joint U.S. and Canada operation--has been providing data on Santa Claus' annual trek around the world for kids (and non-kids, I guess) who really, really, really want to know when those coveted electric hamsters or whatever the big material sensation of the year will be getting shoved under their Christmas trees.

For 2009, the NORAD Santa Web site will also have offshoots on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Earth, and Flickr. A partnership with navigation company OnStar also means that subscribers … Read more

Perhaps in a sign of how the plague of social media has numbed us all to the value of legitimate human connections, the New Oxford American Dictionary has picked the verb "unfriend," or "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook," as its 2009 Word of the Year.

At the very least, it's a testament to the ubiquity of Facebook, which now has well over 300 million members around the world.

Facebook itself takes the process of "friending" and "unfriending" very seriously. It once sent warning notes to players of a third-party game called PackRat … Read more

Well, this hacker has quite the sense of humor.

Reports started spreading this weekend that iPhone users in Australia had been falling victim to "ikee," a worm that replaces default wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley, the British pop singer whose song "Never Gonna Give You Up" has gained eternal infamy thanks to the mainstreaming of the "Rickrolling" prank craze. The photo is accompanied by the message "ikee is never gonna give you up," and it's apparently quite difficult to remove. According to security firm Sophos, this is the first worm detected that targets the iPhone.… Read more