Mevio Tech

Our first twitter trend of the day is brought to us by rum and the lash:

Pirate Finder

Rumors abound that the British government is considering creating a “Pirate Finder General” with powers akin to the Witch Finder Generals of years past. The British Secretary of State would gain the power to pass any law he wanted, without Parliament’s approval, all in the name of protecting copyrights. I have a suggestion: a crack force of ninja assassins to take out those pirates once and for all!

Twitter trend number 2:

#nottosayonafirstdate

A few things tweeters can all agree shouldn’t be uttered on a first date:

“Don’t worry about the rash. The doctors say it’s probably not contagious”

“Let’s get this over with. My wife expects me home by ten.”

And “Oh sweet Jesus Noooooo!”

Twitter trend number 3:

#openwebawards

Mashable’s 3rd annual Open Web Awards nominees are up, and voting is open until December 13th. You can vote for me in the category: Best Female Host of a Web-based Show Covering Social Media Trends in a Snarky Manner.

Award nominated trend number 4:

#nothanksbillyocean

I am NOT getting out of my car, and I am by no means going anywhere near those dirty, dirty dreams of yours. Comedian Ross Noble has suggested that we not follow Billy Ocean’s romantic advice, and Twitter users concur.

And our final twitter trend of the day:

And our final twitter trend:

Droid autofocus fix

Verizon’s new hotness, the Droid, is already hitting a rough patch as users are complaining that the autofocus feature is pooping out on barcodes. Luckily, there is a quick fix: CLEAN THE LENS, YOU MORON!

Tweet at us at twitter.com/twitrdish.

Holy Boxee breakthrough, Batman!

It looks like media sharing darling Boxee is headed for a hardware home-run with its recently unveiled plans to release its very own home media center.  It’s speculated that the box will directly compete with Apple’s Apple TV and other internet TV hardware units like Roku and Slingbox.  You might remember that Boxee has run into some spats with Internet powerhouses Hulu and Apple over content ownership and digital rights management issues.

It seems like Boxee finally decided that, if you want something done right, do it yourself.  Go Boxee!

More details are to be released at Boxee’s Beta Unveiling event on December 7th.  RSVP here, if you’re in the New York area.  Until then, check out Boxee inventor and co-founder Dave Mathews on this week’s episode of CrankyGeeks!

Beware, all ye Facebook-friendly fans of free social networking!  Just when you thought you’d mastered your News Feed and harnessed your favorite friends into one, easy-to-view filter, Facebook is here to keep you on your toes yet again…

Behold! The New Facebook Redesign!:

Mashable (among many) reports that the redesign has not officially been announce and that a “confidential” document was leaked earlier this morning.  Gotta love the power of the Internet, eh?

The big features that Facebook is unveiling have mostly to do with it’s recent acquistion of FriendFeed.  They wasted no time in putting their talent to work…and it shows.

Facebook users will now have the option of quickly switching back and forth between Top News items and a Recent Activity view.  It’s meant to personalize the experience of the Facebook Home Page further by filtering out the less “important” or popular news items.

But how will Facebook calculate which posts are more important than others?  When Facebook starts using AI to judge what I want to see in my News Feed, things are starting to get a little scary.  And if you’re a Facebook addict like me, I will generally sift through the entire News Feed until I see a post that I recognize from the last time I logged on (which, admittedly, doesn’t take very long).

Another feature of the new Facebook is the reintegration of certain personal information that users complained about losing in the last update.

From Facebook’s document:

“Facebook has also put information back into the stream that people have asked for, including photo tags, friend acceptances, relationships, Event RSVPs and group memberships. In addition, birthdays are now viewable above the fold.”

I’d actually forgotten that some of those things had gone missing, so I’m curious to see how well they are able to integrate them back into the system.

Groups and Pages are also getting a refresh.  Check out the so-called “confidential” redesign document below for all the gory details.

Facebook Document on Homepage Redesign

Yes yes yes yes please!  Where do I sign up?!

In nearly every futuristic sci-fi movie on the market these days, denizens of the future are inundated with images and information in ways we never thought would be possible.  Whether or not art imitates life or life imitates art, we were wrong.  The further we move into the 21st Century, the closer we get to realizing some of these fantastic ideas.

For example, augmented reality.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog on Yelp!’s latest iPhone app update, which includes the device’s very first foray into the world of augmented reality.  Having used it, I have to say that I am impressed by, not only the Yelp! software, but the implications of the future uses for it.  Lo and behold, I came across an article this morning that caught my eye…literally.

Scientists at the University of Washington, Seattle, have begun producing contact lenses that are powered wirelessly via RF waves and project a single LED display into the user’s line of vision.

Check out the article in ieeeSpectrum for all the details and then hear what resident geek guru Cali Lewis has to say about the future of Augmented Reality:

On this weeks Tech 5 Top 5 Countdown John C Dvorak finds out who Bing has been searching for, why Nokia and Dell are trading places and who Google have just beaten in the email market. MP3 players are also in the news with some exploding iPhones and some apps for the Zune.

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