Tech Week: Egg Innovation, Twitter's Future, The FCC's Defense

By Elise Hu

Published May 3, 2014 at 5:36 AM EDT

Debate rages about the Federal Communications Commission's proposed net neutrality guidelines.

It's the weekend, which means it's time for your review of the technology and culture headlines from NPR and beyond.

ICYMI

Eggcellent: Our most popular post this week was our Weekly Innovation choice — a kitchen tool that scrambles the egg inside its shell, making for a unique culinary creation. You can still get one through the Kickstarter campaign, which surged past $100,000 in pledges this week.

Tepid Twitter: Twitter made its revenue announcement this week, explained in more detail by CEO Dick Costolo in a conversation with All Things Considered. That Twitter's active users increased five percent during the quarter to 255 million wasn't good enough for Wall Street — its stock dropped 10 percent and hit a new low on the news. More interesting than the top line numbers was the debate over whether Twitter means less to us users now. The Atlantic made a case for Twitter's decline, rebutted by Slate's Will Oremus who says Twitter's on the cusp of something bigger.

TheBig Conversation

Facebook's New Logins: At its f8 conference this week, Facebook announced a slew of changes, including a new login format that will let users be anonymous when they sign into other apps through Facebook, or select the information they share with those apps. Our Steve Henn reminds us that even though you could choose to share less with the third-party apps, you'd still be sharing data with Facebook.

FCCAnd TheOpen Web: The Federal Communications Commission chairman tried to reassure open Web advocates that its proposed new rules for the open Web would indeed outlaw anything that slows existing service or harms competition and free speech. Wheeler wrote the blog post after a backlash to the proposed rules, which would let Internet service providers sign deals with content providers for faster connection speeds to their sites. TechCrunch breaks down Wheeler's post.

Curiosities

Slate: Google Agrees to Remove Deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Center Ads

Google takes a position in a white-hot policy debate by pulling down misleading ads from anti-abortion centers.

iStrategy Labs: The SELFIE Mirror

This has happened, folks. The people behind the pizza button have created a mirror that will automatically take a selfie and tweet it out when you hold your smile in the mirror.

The Verge: Twitter is experimenting with a mute feature in its mobile apps

Twitter is letting some users mute the accounts they follow. The feature is handy if, for example, you don't want to see live-tweeting of certain events or if you are only following someone for social reasons. The option, already available on Tweetdeck and third-party apps, is showing up for some users on Twitter's iOS and Android apps.