Twitter’s “sensitive” content filter is on by default as a result of its last mobile update. “Start getting used to it,” writes Mike Isaac at AllThingsD, “if you’re a regular, non-techie normal person — like the vast majority of the 200-million-plus people who use the service — you’re probably never even going to look inside that buried settings menu in the first place.” Screw that, dear non-techie normal people. You too deserve control of your consumption. We’re going to show you how.
Silicon Valley has to get smarter about the fact that adult content has a place in society. To continue to exploit it for traffic while making it impossible for creators to equally profit is an outrage. But the worst part is what the heavy-handed treatment of all things related to sex signals, whether these things are imagery or educational materials: that sex is something that has no place in our lives. Sex does have a place in our lives.
“The first rule of relationships is communication!” books and gurus tell us, but few people really show us how to discuss these things, or what to do when efforts to do so, however well-intended, only serve to trigger a partner’s fear. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a rational fear or not, fear is fear, and fear closes previously open channels.
Sex sells pretty much everything except itself, so when it comes to campaigns to raise awareness about sexual issues, people have had to get a little creative. Here are three of the more interesting campaigns that have been launched in the name of awareness. Condom dress? Check. Digital little black book? Check. Scary as hell, bordeline entophilic ads? Yeah, sorry about that.
The acknowledgment “+1” (Google’s version of “Like”) has always helped boost post visibility within the Google+ social network — it’s one of the many parts of the equation that make posts hit the What’s Hot section, for instance. But What’s Hot can be removed from a user’s individual stream. This isn’t immediately obvious for a new feature Google+ introduced yesterday, which amplifies any posts people are “plussing” by sharing them into your stream, whether you follow the people who originally posted them or not.
“If Steve Jobs made a vibrator, this would be it!” tech talking head Robert Scoble told me, adding a few moments later: “The NexusQ team could learn a lot about hardware design from this. The NexusQ was totally over designed. This is not. The NexusQ was way too heavy. Way too large. Was way too complex. The Revel is none of those things.”
The Pain-Capable Infant Protection Act is a bill being debated in the United States that would essentially ban all abortions after 20 weeks into a pregnancy. Republican Michael Burgess made a fascinating argument in favor of an even earlier ban on abortion: fetuses might touch themselves, meaning they might masturbate, meaning they might feel pleasure, meaning they obviously must feel pain.
It’s incredible how difficult it is to create a visual representation of wedding concepts that don’t abide by the cultural cookie-cutter of what a wedding should look like. And has no one ever created a xenomorph wedding cake — really? I’m sufficiently disappointed that I will seriously consider getting married again some day just to fix that.
The world’s first and largest Android adult app store wasted no time tapping into the Glass market. This week, Mikandi, as they’re called, released Tits and Glass, an app that encourages Glass users to take advantage of their ability to generate POV content, by enabling them to upload racy pictures into a stream for other users to rate — think Instagram, minus the filter-focus, all adult themed. Sounds like a winning proposition? Google didn’t think so.
There is a saying that is never too far from my mind whenever I begin planning a sexy surprise: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This saying was perfectly illustrated one day when I decided to surprise the guy I was dating with a little late night dessert. Oh, you ask, what could possibly go wrong?
