Twitter Website Faster on All Browsers

Now with more tweeting, less waiting.

You can thank Twitter's new 'Time to First Tweet' metric for what promises to be a better, faster Twitter.com.

As part of a long-term upgrades program, Twitter engineers are rolling out a series of back-end tweaks which should mean provide better front-end performance for us end-users. Changes include eliminating the 'hashbang' (#!) from all tweet permalinks and shifting most of the page-rendering  to their own servers.

So, once in place what kind of improvement can you expect?

FB Status: Scanning a Pint of Guinness

(Guinness reminds you to never scan and drive.)

Explanations, first: Yes, our lead photo (above) depicts a glass of a very dark liquid with a foamy head. And, yes, that pattern on the glass really is a QR code, the fancy computer-generated barcodes you're starting to see just about everywhere.

To be specific, the fluid is Guinness Irish stout beer, made by the world-famous Irish brewers Guinness & Co.; the unusual container is a Guinness 'QR cup' -- a beer glass with etched QR code -- and that's the creation of world-famous New York ad agency BBDO.

So, Ok -- tasty and clever. Got it? But the true genius is harder to see...

Socialmatic: Instagram for an Analog World

Looks familiar and yet it doesn't...

This my friends is 'Socialmatic', the as-yet-unreleased creation of Italy's ADR Studios; certain to delight the eye and tantalize the senses, as well as maybe giving your brain a wedgie. Oh, I know what you're thinking; you've never before seen or heard of this pretty thing and yet it seems so very, very familiar...

Twitter Sees Future in Feature Phones

The keys to Jack Dorsey's retirement fund?

Looks like Twitter, the social network is search of a profitable business plan, has decided to go mass-market. And for 'mass' read: massive. Think 'developing world'; places where the population is fairly bursting at the seams, but where cash is scarce and you'd be lucky to find a free power outlet, much less a Starbucks with free WiFi...