We were just thinking earlier today that there just aren’t enough ways to alert our friends and family to all of the truly exciting goings-on in our lives, and like magic, Google introduces Buzz. Yet another avenue for our ceaseless, self-aggrandizing blatherings intended to completely break down centuries of spoken interpersonal communication until we all become nothing more than walking magazines focused on our own day to day lives. We can’t wait until the day that we never actually have to engage in direct communication with another human being and neither can Google. Enjoy!
Perhaps you’ve heard of Texts From Last Night (or TFLN, as it’s more widely known). It’s a simple enough premise: gather absolutely mortifying (and private) texts and display them for all the world to see. Simple though the formula may be, it’s made some pretty big waves. Maybe you saw the site featured on MTV. Maybe you’ve seen (or purchased) their top-selling iPhone app. Maybe you even heard that they have a book deal in the works. Well, what you probably didn’t know is that one of the masterminds behind the incredibly popular site is one of Brand Labs’ own: Brandon Bayer. For the sake of clarity, it’s important to note that the real mastermind is Brandon’s partner, Lauren Leto. It was she who conceived the idea and Brandon who designed it. Even with this sizable success under their belts, this powerhouse team isn’t content to rest on their laurels. They’ve just launched Mom’s Messages.
Clearly Lauren and Brandon revel in the misfortune and embarrassment of others, because momsmsgs.com shares a format similar to textsfromlastnight.com, but this time, the target of their ceaseless ridicule is our poor, defenseless (and often socially clueless) elder population. Of course it’s all in good fun, but you gotta believe that an empire built on this much bad karma is bound to come back and bite these fledgling entrepreneurs in the ass. They can only hope that the targets of their first site are too blasted to be aware of it, and that the targets of their newest venture are too addled to do anything about it. If not, Lauren and Brandon are likely to find themselves on the bad end of an octogenarian, drunk-texting, pitchfork-wielding mob, screaming for their blood.
… but until that day comes, congrats to both Lauren and Brandon!
Firefox has announced that despite the economy-crushing recession in 2008, their earnings for the year exceeded those of the previous year by 5 percent. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: There’s gold in them thar tubes!
Our friends at Google have just introduced a new service called Google Dashboard. Using it you can find out just what information their superintelligent omninetwork has collected about you with the ultimate goal of enslaving you for their as yet unrevealed and certainly nefarious purposes (editor’s note: this may or may not be a gross mischaractariztion of our benevolent overlords).
Okay… so there’s a good chance that you either need to be an Internet professional or a complete and utter nerd in order to fully appreciate this, but Firefox 3.5 was released today. Granted, a good number of the features to get excited about have to do with open video and developer-related features that may not be all that sexy to most end users, but the increase in overall speed is something else. This latest release is twice as fast as Mozilla’s previous version and shorter load times are something we can all appreciate.
Here’s an interesting piece from 1994 on the crazy, science-fictiony future of a little thing called “The Internet”. Apparently, all of the cool kids are doing it.
Perhaps you’ve heard of 
Clearly Lauren and Brandon revel in the misfortune and embarrassment of others, because momsmsgs.com shares a format similar to textsfromlastnight.com, but this time, the target of their ceaseless ridicule is our poor, defenseless (and often socially clueless) elder population. Of course it’s all in good fun, but you gotta believe that an empire built on this much bad karma is bound to come back and bite these fledgling entrepreneurs in the ass. They can only hope that the targets of their first site are too blasted to be aware of it, and that the targets of their newest venture are too addled to do anything about it. If not, Lauren and Brandon are likely to find themselves on the bad end of an octogenarian, drunk-texting, pitchfork-wielding mob, screaming for their blood.
