mistake

Top 5: Tech Turkeys of 2011

2011 was a rather remarkable year for products and companies that were on top, taking a flop.

Here are our Top 5 moves and happenings that were hard to watch, from Flip to HP to Netflix and BlackBerry. It just goes to show that some of the biggest names can lose their way spectacularly.

Man googles self, finds out he's murder suspect

If we want to find out what the world thinks about us, we google. There, we find every reference to our delicate beings. Well, every reference that we can't find on Facebook.

Please imagine, then, the mental entertainment that played itself out behind Zachary Garcia's forehead, when he googled himself and happened to notice that he was being accused of murder.

No, he was not being accused by some crazy former lover or fellow University of Florida student attempting to enter the Prankdom Hall of Fame.

It was the Polk County Sheriff's Office, which reportedly mistakenly released … Read more

Teen sends Facebook invite to 15; 21,000 reply

So great is the excitement about a Facebook-branded phone that any privacy issues such a phone might inspire seem to have blown away in the wind.

Let me, therefore, offer a sweet and cautionary tale about a 14-year-old girl in the U.K., who thought she'd throw a little party and now seems to be about to throw a very big one.

The Telegraph has been friendly enough to reveal the Facebook faux-pas performed by the teen. She decided to hold a birthday party at her mom's house and mom kindly said she could invite 15 of her … Read more

Annoy the world with this iPod case

Few cottage industries are as hyperactive as the iPod case business. And when you combine one with the irresistible urge for people to make public fools of themselves with their music, you may have a winner on your hands.

The "Blue Beatz" case may have found this unfortunate sweet spot with a protective shell that doubles as an amateur DJ device. As Chip Chick says, you can mix multiple tunes to play simultaneously for some undefined reason.

We speculate that this "feature" was really a mistake that the manufacturer is trying to turn into a marketing … Read more

Samsung creates a digital mutant

You say you want an all-in-one device? Be careful what you ask for. Samsung has created something that looks like it would have been created by Dr. Frankenstein if he were a computing engineer instead of a nut job with a lab.

Where to begin: The SPH-P9000 is part PC (Windows XP, 1GHz Transmeta processor, 30GB hard drive), part multimedia player (5-inch screen, MP3, video on demand), part PDA (QWERTY keyboard, WiMax) and part smart phone, without the phone part (1.3-megapixel camera, CDMA, Bluetooth). And it all folds up into a 5.6- by 3.7-inch case that's … Read more