Tag: app

Posted on

Clean up that Facebook page

If the prospect of going back over years of Facebook posts to determine whether some of them should be hidden or photos untagged is daunting, webapp FaceWash can help. “The service scans your posts, timeline, and tagged photos to make sure nothing incriminating is going on, and warns you if it finds anything,” according to a post today on Lifehacker.

“The app requires access to your basic profile information, and while it asks for permission to post on your behalf (make sure to set those posts to be viewable by “only me”) when I tested the service it didn’t post anything. The scanning process only

imgres-1

takes a few minutes, more or less depending on how many public Facebook posts and tagged photos you have. When it’s done, you’ll see each category—photos you’re tagged in, photos you’ve posted, status updates, and so on—and whether or not they’re clean. Continue reading “Clean up that Facebook page”

Posted on

Jailbreak the Binary

Tired of that nasty M/F gender thing? How about all binary thinking?

imgres-1

A new Google Chrome app will replace any gender-specific pronoun with a neutral one and will deal with a lot of other words as well.

We installed “Jailbreak the Binary” and tested in out by searching the words “woman” and “man,” coming up with the following hits: “Person (Wikipedia),” “People.com,” “Top 99 People of 2013,” “People’s Issues, Advice and Personal Stories,”, “People’s Basketball”…  Okay, so you get the idea. Then we tried the words like “maid,” “father,” and, once again, no gender whatsoever. And when we went to look up one of our favorite newsgroups, “Feminist Philosophers,”  the search yielded the correct link, but translated it as “Androgynous Philosophers.”

We think it’s great someone came up with this. The only problem is that you need to remember to turn the thing off when you need to return to the gendered world. The description from Google reads:

View the world without gender.

Based off of “Jailbreak the Patriarchy” by Danielle Sucher, but with gender neutral pronouns and as many gender neutral other words as well.   Takes all instances of ‘male’, ‘female’, ‘he’, ‘she’, and as many other gendered words and swaps them for gender neutral versions.   When ‘OFF’ is displayed on the icon then the extension is off.

Find it at: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jailbreak-the-binary/mmdlclbfhplmbjfefngjbicmelpbbdnh

Posted on

“Make Me Asian” app

Thousands of people have downloaded two apps from the Google Play Store that are now generating accusations of racism and stereotyping.

“Make me Asian” and “Make me Indian” apps allow Android smartphone users to transform a portrait by superimposing characteristics supposedly appropriate to such identities.

The apps have caused a firestorm online, with outrage spreading on Facebook and Twitter. Petition campaigns are now urging Google to remove the apps from its store.Unknown

“The Make me Asian app manipulates pictures to give the subject yellow-tinged skin, narrow eyes, a conical rice-paddy hat and a Fu Manchu mustache taken from a fictional Chinese villain,” reports NPR Continue reading ““Make Me Asian” app”

Posted on

Goodbye “Boyfriend-Maker”

“Boyfriend Maker” is a virtual dating app developed by Japanese game maker 30You and released in February. DailyDot reports that “The app quickly shot to the top of the Asian iPhone app markets, and earlier this month, the developer announced it was the #1 app for the iPhone in Japan. And it’s easy to see why: Boyfriend Maker is smart, pretty, customizable, and quick to learn based on your conversation and the conversation of the millions of others who’ve downloaded it.

Continue reading “Goodbye “Boyfriend-Maker””