Latest Posts from Switched

Judith Griggs, the editor of Cooks Source -- a recipe magazine based out of Sunderland, Massachusetts -- broke one of the two cardinal rules of publishing: don't plagiarize. (The other being don't make stuff up.) Monica Gaudio, a freelance writer and college student, claims that Cooks Source stole an article she posted about apple pies and reprinted it without her permission. Rather than deny the accusation, Griggs fired back a rather haughty e-mail, in which she claimed that anything posted online is, essentially, up for grabs. The Web, Griggs informed Gaudio, "is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!" (Read the entire insane e-mail here.) Moreover, Griggs contended that rather than pay Gaudio for her article, the student should pay her for editing her "poorly written" piece. Let's just say that this did not sit well with Gaudio, or the reading public as a whole.

Griggs quickly found herself on the receiving end of a torrent of hate. The magazine's Facebook page was inundated with negative remarks, some pointedly stating that Griggs clearly doesn't understand copyright law, while others resorted to simple vulgarity and name-calling. The publication's Facebook page was eventually hacked and hijacked, leading Cooks Source to start a new page, which is already attracting a fair share of negative attention.

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Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.

Read:

Novelist Zadie Smith looks at the split between the real Mark Zuckerberg and Aaron Sorkin's.

We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this? Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?

Watch:

• John Hodgman and Ira Glass Take on Violent Video Games
• Angry Birds: Stop-Motion Edition

Know:

• The $24.95 Hex band wraps your latest generation iPad nano in a surprisingly sleek case. [From: ShopHex, via: Gizmodo]
• Kinect launch day joy. [From: Wired]
• Grab the new Flash Player update today to patch the media player's seemingly endless batch of security holes. [From: Download Squad]

Got a tip? Want to talk to us? In need of more choice links like these? Drop us a line on Twitter and check out our Tumblr blog.

No, your monitor isn't broken. While this week's crop of games have been drained of color, they're just as ingenious as their more vibrant brethren. Inspired by doodles, noir cinema and silent films, this batch's stark graphics present curious mechanics and clever adventures. Their addictiveness is as simple as black and white.

One of the things we love about indie games is that their designers can let loose and experiment with innovative gameplay mechanics without being subjects to stuffy investor-types. Using an ingenious lighting element, 'Closure' is a perfect example of a fun, inventive (and slightly haunting) way to rethink platform puzzles. The interplay between light and shadow is the point: in order to maneuver through each level, you must shine a light on your path at all time -- anything still in the dark will send your ghostly guy plummeting to his death. (Pro tip: take a cue from horror film ingenues, and refrain from heedlessly diving into the blackness.)

To solve each light-based quandary and find the way out, use the arrow keys and employ illuminating orbs to guide your tour de noir. The orbs are meant to be carried along, lantern-style, or placed on pedestals to permanently light specific areas. As long as you stay on solid, well-lit ground (which often requires running to keep up with your spotlight-like haven), you're golden, and sometimes the negative space lets your dude jump through once-forbidden walls (the brighter a surface, the less permeable). These quirky qualities make for a terrifically atmospheric challenge, proving that bright ideas don't need big budgets.

This week we've primarily covered iTunes as it exists on your computer, but we've left out an essential component of the iTunes system: mobile devices. Of course, managing music on your iPhone and iPod opens up a brand new set of problems and issues. By default, your iDevice is set to automatically sync with your iTunes Library; if you've got an extremely small media library and rarely listen to music on the go, auto-sync may work for you. For most, though, libraries are showing no sign of slimming down, and auto-syncing all your media is a sure-fire way to get an irritable and error-laden iTunes.

Although iTunes does let you sync specific playlists, you'll end up playing mind games every time you go to hook up your phone or iPod. "Did I add too many songs to the Late Night Jams mix? Will this overwrite my Morrissey B-sides collection? Exactly how many songs have I added to my 'New Albums' folder since last syncing?" Here is a rare Switched recommendation: Going manual is your best bet. This way, you gain complete control over the music you're carrying around, as well as the power to delete and filter without auto sync's playlist-based constraints.

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On Halloween, a group of really cool teenagers decided to remind everyone of their awesomeness, and proceeded to vandalize their Brooklyn neighborhood. Little did they know, however, that 26-year-old Daniel Cavanagh was lurking in the shadows and observing their every movement.

After doing a little research, Cavanagh friended the teens on Facebook, and headed to his blog, where he described the scene in lurid detail. According to Cavanagh, a group of "50+ teens" stormed the streets of Gerritsen Beach on the 31st, and spent the night hurling "eggs, shaving cream cans, potatoes, rocks, at anything that drove past and anyone who dared to confront them." Cavanagh added that the rugrats "even started throwing eggs at people, parents with young children and strollers."

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Google just made a small, but significant tweak to the terms of service for its Contacts API. The altered section now reads:

By accessing Content through the Contacts Data API or Portable Contacts API for use in your service or application, you are agreeing to enable your users to export their contacts data to other services or applications of their choice in a way that's substantially as fast and easy as exporting such data from Google Contacts...

In simple terms this means that any service that accesses Google Contacts must reciprocate, and allow Google to access its contact data. This is being largely interpreted as a challenge to Facebook, which allows users to scan their Google Contacts for people who also have Facebook accounts. This makes getting started on the social network easier, but Facebook does not offer similar access to Google for importing Facebook friends and contact info into Gmail, Buzz or Google Talk. In fact, Facebook has actively thwarted other services that attempt to crawl friend lists. For example, Twitter once offered the ability to find your Facebook friends on Twitter, but Zuckerberg and crew decided to block the microblogging service from importing contact info.

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The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never move from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over their creations, nevertheless.

Last week, we saw Tokujin Yoshioka's flawless take on a cell phone redesign, but big names don't always mean big success. Although this week's Alessi concept phones were crafted by some of the more notable names in the design world, they left us wanting. Still, we were wowed by Electrolux's creative use of oceanic garbage -- which also made us feel bad for the poor fish swimming through all the world's debris. Read on to see more designs after the break.

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YouTube users have repeatedly helped merchants, homeowners and police to nab evildoers. Plummeting tech prices are apparently now inspiring a new wave of YouTube citizen sleuths, and these vigilant observers are shifting their sights from burglars, animal abusers and Halloween hoodlums to perhaps the most despicable and annoying cretins on the planet -- belligerent neighbors.

The New York Times recounts the rise of these Little Big Brothers and their unceasing fight against neighborhood peepers, intruders, vandals and dog doo slingers. That fight doesn't just involve watching and finding a culprit, though, because this global YouTube Neighborhood Watch is all about abject humiliation. One victim uploaded a wacky, narrated musical video of his poo-hurling neighbor, and another created a variety of slapstick tributes to his next-door snoops.

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We've seen Google Maps misplace cities and mislead pedestrians, but we never thought the navigational service's occasional inaccuracies could spark an international conflict -- until now.

It all began when Nicaraguan military commander Eden Pastora sent a group of troops into a region around San Juan Lake, near the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Upon arriving, the soldiers promptly set up camp, and began tearing down Costa Rican flags that had been inexplicably planted in Nicaraguan soil. Turns out, however, that the flags were there because the region in which the soldiers were stationed was not Nicaragua, but Costa Rica.

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