by Amar Toor on March 25, 2011 at 02:00 PM

Isaiah 'TriForce' Johnson recently ran into some trouble with New York City police, who didn't much care for the way he was standing outside a local Best Buy. Little did they know, though, that TriForce was just lining up to get his hands on the new Nintendo 3DS, which launches on Sunday. Then again, the cops probably had no way of knowing that, since TriForce was the only person in line. ...
by Amar Toor on March 15, 2011 at 08:23 AM

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A Brooklyn teacher could be out of a job very soon, after making some controversial comments about her students on Facebook.
Just a day after a 12-year-old girl drowned on a school field trip to the beach, fifth-grade teacher Christine Rubino posted a status update, implying that her students may deserve the same fate. "After today, I'm thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I ...
by Amar Toor on February 17, 2011 at 02:40 PM

A handful of New York's homeless residents are now on Twitter, thanks to a new awareness initiative called Underheard in New York.
Created by advertising interns Rosemary Melchior, Robert Weeks and Willy Wang, the program provided four homeless men with their own pre-paid cell phones, a month of unlimited texting, and separate Twitter accounts. The four men -- Danny (@putodanny), Derrick ...
by Amar Toor on October 19, 2010 at 02:00 PM

Bruce Slutsky, a 61-year-old from Flushing, NY was recently called to jury duty to hear a civil case, which involved a plaintiff filing assault charges against his neighbors. Unlike most jurors, however, Slutsky decided to document his courtroom experience on his blog. And, although the Queens, NY court ultimately determined that Slutsky's online actions didn't pose a threat to the trial's ...
by Matthew Zuras on October 18, 2010 at 03:00 PM

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People, people! When are you going to learn that Facebook is not the place to air your grievances about your job, bully your dying next-door neighbor, or post pictures of strippers washing your cop car? It's also the wrong place to make a pass at your pupils! (Not that there's really a right place to do that.) But in the last six months, at least three New York City high school employees ...
by Amar Toor on October 18, 2010 at 09:20 AM

A few months ago, former actress, model and Columbia graduate Carla Franklin took legal action against a mysterious cyberbully who posted defamatory comments about her on YouTube. At the time, Franklin said she had a pretty good idea of who the crude commenter might be, but her lawyers decided to file a court petition for Google to formally reveal his identity. The petition, which was initially ...
by Thomas Houston on October 7, 2010 at 06:54 PM

Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.
Dial 979-997-3041 and, if you can get through, your voice will be blasted out of the Urban Speaker in New York's Tompkins Square Park. [From: BuzzFeed]
Tonight at 9 p.m., Bloomberg TV is launching an 11-episode 'Game Changers' series on Facebook, documenting the history behind ...
by Switched Staff on September 28, 2010 at 02:15 PM

The Switched team arose early last Saturday to trek out to the New York Hall of Science in Queens for the city's first-ever Maker Faire. As we chugged coffee, we watched the modders, hackers and DIY-based designers of the world strut their stuff. Feeling a bit like kids again (possibly due to being alongside budding mechanics and entire areas devoted to teaching kids how to solder and ...
by Terrence O'Brien on March 25, 2010 at 05:40 PM

Traditional wanted posters found in post offices across the nation take significant investments of time and effort to produce and distribute. Yet, outside of the Ten Most Wanted list, the FBI has not made significant use of the Internet to distribute notices about fugitives. Now, however, the message is beginning to emerge with the gradual rollout of BanditTracker.
The system debuted in 2007 ...
by Amar Toor on March 22, 2010 at 08:30 AM

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Since 2002, the NYPD has conducted over 50 raids on the same house in Brooklyn. Each time, it has made the same mistake, all thanks to one computer glitch.
According to the New York Post, the whole snafu began in 2002, when police entered the Brooklyn address of Walter Martin, 83, and his wife Rose, 82, into an alert database. They originally used the address to run a test on the system, ...
by Tim Stevens on December 11, 2009 at 02:15 PM

For the past few years, social network mega-sites Facebook and MySpace have been getting a little safer thanks to each making efforts to block sex offenders. Now, much of the rest of the Internet is getting the similar treatment, with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announcing that 13 more sites are finally following suit, hooking into the state's database of sex offenders and filtering ...
by Amar Toor on November 30, 2009 at 01:57 PM

That Twitter avatar may look cute and docile, but once that bird starts hangin' with the wrong crowd, dangerous things can happen.
The New York Daily News reports that gangs in New York have taken Twitter to the seedy part of town -- and the police have caught on. Several recent incidents of violence between rival teenage gangs have been instigated by intimidating tweets; one youngster was ...
by Warren Riddle on November 20, 2009 at 05:20 PM

The Internet turned the big 4-0 this year, and the commercially available wireless phone celebrated its own quarter-century milestone. After all of that time, it seems that state and national governments are finally ready to accept the crazy notion that both modes of communication can be used to instantly disseminate urgent information during times of strife.
Japan introduced a cell phone ...
by Switched Staff on September 14, 2009 at 10:12 AM

For one week every six months, even the most backwards, style-un-savvy New Yorker turns into a bit of a fashion nut. New York Fashion Week takes over the fair city, sending flocks of twig-legged girls dashing down Broadway, trying to get into (or out of) shows. Resident fashion nerd Leila Brillson takes the whole thing seriously while the rest of the staff admires her unflagging commitment to ...
by Lee Bains on August 14, 2009 at 12:21 PM

Yesterday, New York City police identified and arrested a man wanted for public masturbation, thanks to one concerned citizen and her camera phone. According to the New York Daily News, 41-year-old Harlem resident Cileane White was minding her own business as she sat on the Number 3 subway train last Friday. Out of nowhere, from across the aisle, Kevin Bishop, 44, of the Bronx, exposed himself ...