Peter Whoriskey / Washington Post:
Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon  —  Big Microsoft Study Supports Small World Theory  —  Turns out, it is a small world.  —  The so-called small world theory, embodied in the old saw that there are just “six degrees of separation” between any two strangers on Earth […]

Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Don’t Want to Talk About It?  Order a Missed Call  —  When Alexis Gorman, 26, wanted to tell a man she had been dating that the courtship was over, she felt sending a Dear John text message was too impersonal.  But she worried that if she called the man, […]

Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Don’t Want to Talk?  New Service Sells Missed Calls  —  When Alexis Gorman, 26, wanted to tell a man she had been dating that the courtship was over, she felt sending a Dear John text message was too impersonal.  But she worried that if she called the man, she […]

Ben Kuchera / Opposable Thumbs:
Mole attack: 360 price cuts on all hardware in September  —  It’s hard to describe what it’s like to wake up with a knife between your teeth.  You try to spit, because the taste of steel makes you think you’ve bitten down on your tongue and you’re tasting the bitter […]

Robert McMillan / Computerworld:
Apple bails on Black Hat talk  —  Engineering blames marketing department  —  IDG News Service) Apple Inc. has pulled its security engineering team out of a planned public discussion on the company’s security practices, which had been set for next week’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Cade Metz / The Register:
Privacy watchdog hoists Google by its own petard  —  Spews Street View pics of Larry Page Lexus  —  In an effort to prove that Google is a serious threat to the personal privacy of people everywhere, the National Legal and Policy Center has exposed countless Google Street View pics that […]

Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Facebook’s auto-tagging feature could be tip of tagging iceberg  —  One of my favorite Facebook features is auto-tagging.  It happened to me last night by accident and ended up being one of those very rare moments of using a product where I got a big grin on my face.