Facebook, like nuclear technology, is a tool that can be used for good as well as evil. And there are clearly some people who lack the ability (or desire) to use either responsibly. One of my all-time favorite Facebook stories involved a recent college graduate backtracking it to the old Alma Mater (it wasn’t Tucker Max) on a recruiting trip. He went to a neighborhood watering hole, flashed some of that first-year cash and, later, worked on his night moves with a fine, young coed. Unfortunately, he knew she was going to Facebook (it’s a verb now) him and he still had a few days in College Town, USA. So, he did the prudent thing and changed his status to Single. He and his old old girl were on the rocks and he thought he’d enjoy the rest of the trip. This was how now ex-girlfriend found out. She was dumped by Facebook. And because this is neither Vietnam nor the Wild West, we decided to implement some rules of etiquette for Mark Zuckerberg’s handiwork. After the jump, the top 10 rules of etiquette for using Facebook responsibly in and around relationships.

Six months after putting up a Facebook profile, I’m utterly bored. I’ve said it. I’m sure I’ll be assaulted by the Facebook cultists, but it’s true.

Who are 2008’s best male bloggers? From gadget geeks to beat-makers, supadupastars to trendhunters, celebrity stalkers to street shooters, we’ve rounded up the best of the guy bloggers. Found out who they are after the jump.

Whether you’re an avid porn fan or you’ve only ever visited an adult entertainment site “accidentally,” you know the sex industry has had a huge impact on the World Wide Web. At the forefront of many of the Internet’s innovations, porn is “an ecosystem in which participants are willing—indeed forced—to experiment, and where experimentation isn’t hobbled by common sense, good taste, or bureaucracy,” says Bruce Arnold of Caslon Analytics, a research and analysis firm that specializes in regulatory issues, demographics, social trends, and technologies. After the jump, the not-entirely-dirty dozen ways porn has shaped the Internet.

“Sean recorded private webcam conversations with his girlfriend and put them on his blog. When she finds out, things go from bad to worse.” I’m not going to spoil “Dumped” by saying too much about it, but suffice to say it’s about a guy who gets dumped, and it has a surprising twist. Thanks to Kasia at Current for sending it.

Poor Nicole Kidman. Just when everything was looking up for her—a new baby, a seemingly happy marriage to successfully-rehabbed Keith Urban, a starring role in an epic film about her native Australia alongside fellow countryman and People’s sexiest man alive, Hugh Jackman—a bunch of meanies with nothing better to do started a Facebook group called Am I Taking Crazy Pills or Is Nicole Kidman the Worst Actress in the World? While it’s too early to tell if the group’s cruel intentions will be enough to drive Nic into indefinite hiding with Sunday Rose and her favorite feathered-hair crooner, for the sake of cinema let’s hope she never reads any of the group’s choice comments …

Who are 2008’s best female bloggers? From futurists to postfeminists, octogenarians to mommies, nonbloggers to celebrities, we’ve rounded up the best bloggers who happen to be women. Found out who they are after the jump.

Online dating has a pretty unfair stigma attached to it. After all, most of us probably spend at least half our day in front of a computer, so it stands to reason that we might as well multitask and meet someone there while we’re at it! Whether you’ve tried it before and been burned, had mixed results or are an online dating virgin (probably the only time you’ll ever be able to use that word again), there’s never been a better time to try it than now. There are the traditional sites like Match.com and eHarmony (which has finally gotten with the program by offering same-sex matching), as well as niche sites like Millionaire Match for wealthy individuals, FarmersOnly for rural dwellers, and TrekPassions for sci-fi fans. Who knows? You might just find the perfect New Year’s Eve date… and didn’t you say you wanted 2009 to be a year of new experiences? If you’re still mouse-shy, try a few tips from dating expert Alison Roth, who has consulted for numerous sites, including JDate, Match.com, and Yahoo! Personals, and helps people write profiles that get real results.

Salon’s Tracy Clark-Flory has a really interesting piece up this week: “Porn in a Flash.” It’s about “upskirting,” the unsuspecting women who star in it, and how there’s not always a lot the law can do to stop it. What’s upskirting? Basically, it’s an “up the skirt” photo or video, taken by a digital Peeping Tom, who shoots surreptitiously. Cellphones enabled the genre, and websites are dedicated to upskirt shots. For the women, it’s like starring in a soft-core shoot—without their knowledge. In the past, women turned to state “Peeping Tom laws,” but, in a unique twist, because the act takes place in public, women don’t have a “right to a reasonable expectation of privacy,” spawning “a frontier of rogue pornographers from all over the world.” Clark-Flory writes: “It’s such a craze in Japan that cellphone cameras now come with a shutter sound that alerts bystanders that a photo is being taken; in that country, even the iPhone 3G features an extra-loud anti-upskirt alarm.” While Britney helped popularized the upskirt phenomenon when she flashed her, um, Britney for the paps, for other women, upskirting is digital overexposure. [Salon]

Thanks to the miracle that is 21st century technology, you can now become a Muppet. Toy store FAO Schwarz’s website has a special online Muppet factory, The Muppet Whatnot Workshop, where you can build your own Muppet in your likeness. Pick your body (orange, green, blue), your eyes (girlie, droopy, catty), your hair (yellow boa, brown bob, black pompadour), your outfit (cheerleader, showgirl, mod), and find out what you look like Muppet-style. If you simply must have your stuffed Muppet self, or any other Muppet you envision, you can buy the Muppet you designed, and they’ll build it and ship it to you. Apparently, as a Muppet, I’m $90. [Boing Boing Gadgets]

The unlikely team of Hewlett-Packard and fashion designer Vivienne Tam have conspired to create what may be the chicest ever laptop for tech-savvy fashionistas. A demo of the portable computer that looks like a clutch debuted at this year’s New York Fashion Week on the Tam catwalk. If you didn’t know, you’d think it was a purse, not a high-tech gadget. The “China Chic” outside is scarlet and blooming with pink peonies, and the PC notebook’s insides are red. At 2.4 lbs., it’s totally totable, and it comes with an almost full-sized keypad, 60 gigabytes, and a mini-webcam. The best part? It’s a steal at $700. As of this week, it’s available for pre-order. Next month, the HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition will be available in silver, pink, or black. That way, you can match your laptop to your shoes.

Hold onto your mouse pads, I have a revelation for you (drum roll please): online friends are not the same as their “real world” equivalents.

I know, duh. You rarely, if ever, actually see the people you meet online. They don’t go with you to the grocery store or to check out the cute guy at Starbucks and are unlikely to ever ask to borrow your Marc Jacobs handbag (meaning you never have to humiliate them by saying no). If you’re going through a bad time, they might be there with some emailed sympathy and advice but call them in tears at 4 AM and you’re crossing over into stalker territory.

You know those QR codes that Ralph Lauren Rugby is using so you can use your phone to buy clothes instantly? Well, a couple designers have a new idea about how to use them. Marguerite Charmante and Wolfgeng Peter Schmiller put QR codes on a dress, and, hypothetically, a guy could see a girl waiting for a drink at the bar and scan the code on her dress using his phone. Instantly, he could be directed to her Facebook page (or blog, or whatever website she wanted), and he could assess whether or not he wanted to go after her. Just another way technology could help us become creepy stalkers! [Make]

The Frisky just started tooling around on Twitter and a few of our staff have iPhones, which we kind of know how to use. But maybe we could learn a thing or two about putting these handy-dandy technologies to use in business by talking to one of our local streetwalkers. Apparently, the internet has become a useful tool for sex workers to spread their gospel, and, in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal, also do a little public relations spinning. “Sex workers are sentient beings and we are very capable of speaking for ourselves,” Audacia Ray, sex worker advocate and author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration, told Wired magazine. “We are organizing politically and we do have opinions about the ways that sex work could be responded to differently by government and media.” When the Spitzer prostitution ring story broke, sex workers who are actively involved in the community wanted to have their voice hear on the issue, and used devices like the iPhone and programs like Twitter, Google Docs, and RSS feeds to be on top of hearing and responding to the breaking news. When did hookers become so…nerdy? [Wired]