I can only imagine the angst that Jessica Vascellero at the Wall Street Journal inserted into countless minds this evening with her article about the difficulties people are having defining what is and isn’t a “friend” for online social networking purposes.

Most Americans who aren’t teenagers or a little older are just getting used to the idea of social networks in general. But the complicated and evolving rules about what constitutes friendship online is adding even more stress.

One young woman had to face someone she defriended on Facebook in a chance encounter on an elevator, and re-added the person to rid herself of the guilt. A middle aged jeweler frets over the implied meaning a competitor unfriending him. Meanwhile, the web-savvy David Dalka, saying he doesn’t need to know “you’ve changed to a new brand of peanut butter,” has unceremoniously dropped people from his friend list at LinkedIn.

So What Is An Online Friend, Anyway?

The social networks themselves, and those of us who spend a lot of time there, are still trying to work out the details on what it means to be a friend with someone online. With friendship comes benefits – you get a stream of information about the person, but it also has costs (you have to wade through a stream of information about the person, and they get access to your intimate details).

Facebook in particular has struggled with this. For a time they really just wanted users to be online friends with people they already know in the offline world. That messaging has subtly changed more recently, though, to a less rigorous position.

It’s clear that the more friends you have on any given service, the more noise you have to wade through to find the golden signal. In the real world when you don’t want to be friends with someone, you just find ways not to spend time with them. But online, you click that friend button because it seems so easy, and it’s considered insulting if you don’t. And then you pay.

Social networks are taking two approaches to dealing with this. MySpace and Facebook (and those like them) have added different buckets to throw friends into. You can share more or less information with different groups of friends. So if you aren’t really friends with someone but don’t want to insult their friend request, you can throw them into the unwashed masses bucket (or whatever you want to call it).

The other approach is the one taken by sites like Twitter and Friendfeed. Anyone can follow anyone and watch what they’re up to, but you are under no pressure to reciprocate. The problem with this approach is that there is still a lot of social pressure to follow people back. I suggested a “fake follow” back in August so that you can just pretend to follow those people. Friendfeed now has a feature which allows just that.

But bucketing friends just seems like a bolted on way to fix the problem. And managing the changing relationships you have with of hundreds or thousands of people across multiple sites is a real time sink. In the future, the services should be able to do a much better job of just figuring out, through your gestures, who you are really close to and who you aren’t. It may also define a relationship with someone I don’t know at all based on whether or not we have friends in common. So even if there is no interaction at all, Facebook and MySpace (or whoever) can theoretically have an idea of how much personal information to share between us.

Ultimately, though, our culture is adapting just as quickly as the networks are. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has said users are becoming more and more comfortable sharing online. Sometimes (ok, often) Facebook is pushing the envelope when it comes to deciding on my behalf what is shareable and what isn’t. They’re placing aggressive bets on where this is all evolving. And sometimes they lose the bets (but not always).

But where they are correct is that there is no bright line of right and wrong when it comes to defining online friendship. The algorithms and the humans will meet somewhere in the middle.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Go here to see the original:
The Meaning Of Friendship

This little gizmo tells you what plants will do well in your little patch of earth (and what you’re doing wrong if they’re not). It measures soil conditions, sunlight, temp and humidity, and checks your data against an online database. You still have to water the plants you stick in the ground or plunk on your windowsill.

See the rest here: 
USB Stake Helps Brown Thumbs Turn Green, Monitors Soil Conditions

Editor’s note: The poem and illustrations below were submitted by an engineer in Silicon Valley who works for a big company and wishes to remain anonymous. The views expressed are not (necessarily) those of TechCrunch. The awesome illustrations are by Doug Shannon

Every geek
Down in Geek-ville
Liked searching a lot …
But Bill Gates,
Who lived just north of Geek-ville,
Did NOT!

Bill Gates hated searching and search advertising!
Now, please don’t ask why. It’s not that surprising.
It could be his brain had slowed up with age.
It could be, perhaps, that he loathed Brin and Page.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
Was his wallet was feeling 2 sizes too small.

But,
Whatever the reason,
His wallet or brain,
By Jan of ’08 he was feeling the pain.
Looking down on the web with a Gatesian stare,
At the billions of people just becoming aware,
That web search NOT windows was the new way to think.
That it’s really more fun to surf popular links!

For,
Tomorrow, he knew …
That some Google shareholder
Would make many more billions
Than him or Steve Ballmer.
They’d start BIGGER foundations
To improve world health
And they might even give away
MORE of their wealth!

And THEN
They’d do something
He liked least of all.
Every googling fool, the tall and the small,
Would sit at their laptops like Sergey and Larry
They’d open their browsers and type in a query!
They’d search! And they’d search!
AND they’d SEARCH! SEARCH! SEARCH! SEARCH!

“They’ll be clicking those ads”, he snarled with a sneer.
“I smell a monopoly! It’s practically here.”
The he growled, with his fingers nervously drumming,
“I must somehow stop that monopoly from coming!”

Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
Bill Gates
Got a wonderful, awful idea!

“I know just what to do!” Gates said with a laugh.
Then he called his pal Ballmer, to plan an attack.
And he chuckled, and clucked, “What a great business trick”.
I’ll buy up Yahoo and I’ll buy them up quick.
All I need is a deal
To get their web stuff
31 dollars per share seems enough!

So Ballmer sent Yahoo his generous offer,
But was told by Yang to return to the coffer.
Did that stop Bill Gates …?
No! He simply said,
“If I can’t buy Yahoo, I’ll sink them instead!”
So while Yahoo’s board was asleep at the wheel,
He asked Steve Ballmer to walk from the deal.
“Now, that is a lesson in playing hardball!”
Said Gates, as he watched Yahoo’s stock in free fall.

Well, it looked like Yahoo was certainly done.
It seemed like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had won.
But, let’s not forget, that in Silicon Valley,
You’re one hack away from printing more money.
So Yang and his gang started coding from scratch.
They made up a product that no one could match!
“Part open, part social,” Yang said with a grin.
“We’ll rewire Yahoo from outside to in.
And open up search, the home page, and then
We’ll double our profit by 2010.”

And Gates, in ‘08, who’d lost half of his dough.
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How can it be so?
Is there any way Yahoo can help MS Windows to sell.
Or keep Office sales from going to hell.”
And he puzzled for hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then Bill Gates thought of something he hadn’t before.
“Maybe Yahoo,” he thought, “is more than just search.”
“Maybe Yahoo … perhaps … HAS significant worth!”

And what happened then …?
Well … in Geek-ville they say
That Bill Gate’s small wallet
Magically grew 3 sizes that day!
And the minute his wallet didn’t feel quite so bare,
He made a cash offer of 30 per share.
Then he opened HIS browser and did something new.

And he
… HE HIMSELF …!
Tried a search on Yahoo!

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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A Silicon Valley Christmas Tale

Personally, we wouldn’t want to be within 15 feet of a Centro being mercilessly overclocked to a mind-numbing 936MHz, but we reckon that’s where our fearless readers come into play. We’re told that this sucker reached prompt criticality and melted into the Earth’s crust shortly after this screen shot was taken, and you know what

See the original post:
The gigahertz Centro, also known as ‘the Palm-powered grenade’

When are nunchucks not just nunchucks? When they’re made from giant glowsticks. Continue reading to see more. (Thanks, Kristin)

Here is the original: 
Feature: When Lightsaber Meets Nunchucks

Though just a concept (for now), this gun-inspired Nokia phone concept may come in handy for military and law enforcement agencies. However, we would like to see a newer model integrated into the device

See original here:
Nokia Gun Cell Phone

Master modder Ben Heck is back at it again, and he’s managed to cram an Xbox 360 into a Pelican case. Featuring a “17-inch widescreen LCD, speakers, top loading DVD-ROM, removable hard drive, USB and ethernet ports — all set in brushed aluminum.” Video after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.

View original here:
Ben Heck Crams Xbox 360 into Suitcase

Unveiled at Vertu’s Wynn Las Vegas store, the Vertu Signature Dragon might be the world’s most expensive phone, and most unique at that. Technical specifications have not yet been announced. Even so, since the Cobra retailed for over a quarter of a million bucks we’re guessing this new handset ain’t gonna be cheap

Read the original here: 
Vertu Signature Dragon

Next month is the annual Lotusphere conference. IBM is giving two free tickets to TC readers–leave a comment saying why you’d like to go to Lotusphere, and we’ll pick the winners by Monday morning. (Note: Passes cover conference registration only, not travel/hotel.)

Few pieces of software are as polarizing as Lotus Notes. When my last job forced me to use Notes, I found the interface clunky, the graphics Win 95′esqe, and the workflow architecture non-intuitive. Granted, I was using Version 6.5 (Notes is now on Release 8), but even so I found it frustratingly unproductive. And I’m clearly not alone.

Which leaves me wondering–has IBM’s Lotus Notes lost touch with the user-centric web 2.0 world?

To answer these questions, I interviewed Kevin Cavanaugh, IBM’s VP in charge of the Notes/Domino group. Also joining us was Ed Brill, IBM’s Director of Messaging and Collaboration.

Excerpt from: 
Two free tickets to Lotusphere–is IBM’s Lotus Notes Out of Touch With Web 2.0 World?

Wow, talk about spreading that holiday cheer. Psion Teklogix has apparently hired a legal team to write up cease & desist letters that are being sent out to select netbook enthusiast websites. One particular letter is pictured above, and we can only assume the URL is hidden for the safety of those involved. jkOnTheRun dug a little deeper into the matter and found that the outfit did indeed produce a Netbook and Netbook Pro back in the day, and while the surprisingly netbook-like devices (imagine that, right?) have since been discontinued, it is still making compatible accessories.

Continued here:
Psion Teklogix sending out cease & desist letters to netbook-centric websites