It’s the 100th episode of Deemable Tech. It only took us three years to get here! Jessica Palombo, co-host of the mystical, never aired “Deemable Tech Pilot Episode,” and current WJCT News Director, joined Ray, Tom and Sean for the big celebration. The foursome talked about Facebook’s new “dislike” button, a new service that promises to be “Yelp for humans,” Amazon cuts out the competition and some guy who managed to buy the domain “Google.com” from — get this — Google!

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THE RUN DOWN

Facebook ?Likes’ rumors of a ?Dislike’ button

Pretty much ever since Facebook introduced its ubiquitous ?like’ button, users have been clamoring for a ?dislike’ button. Well last month, Business Insider reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced that the company was working on one. Only, it isn’t quite what you think.

Don’t worry, the world’s most dominant social media site isn’t about to turn into a den of passive-aggressive backstabbing – anymore than it already is. Zuck says he wants to give users a way to express sympathy or empathy when someone posts that they are having a bad day or going through a difficult time.

While Facebook’s CEO promised that the ?dislike’ button would appear in the not-too-distant future, as of this recording it is not available. And you should be wary of scams. Gizmodo reports that ads have started appearing promising that people that take a survey can get early access to the ?dislike’ button. You can’t and you won’t. Although you may ?dislike’ what happens to you if you try.

The internet gives ?Yelp for Humans’ a one star rating

Ever app developer hopes that their app will go viral and gain massive media attention. Last week, one soon-to-be-released app did, although probably not in the way its creators wanted. The Washington Post ran a story about an app called Peeple, which founder Julia Cordray billed as ?Yelp for Humans’. Supposedly the app would allow you to rate anyone you had a phone # on a 1-5 scale. The people you were rating did not have to be signed up for the app.

Although Cordray promised that there would be controls in place to prevent cyber-bullying and that those who received negative ratings would have 48 hours to respond to them before they were posted, the internet backlash was swift and massive. Within hours, #Peeple was a trending topic on Twitter, with the Tweets about it almost uniformly negative. Peeple’s Facebook page was flooded with angry comments. Ironically, Peeple began to delete negative feedback from their Facebook page before taking both it and their Twitter feed offline entirely.

Over the weekend, Snopes.com speculated that Peeple was actually just a hoax intended to rile everyone up. However, there has been no confirmation that it is in fact a hoax at this time.

As of this morning, Peeple founder Julia Cordray has posted a lengthy ?clarification’ on LinkedIn. In her article, she claims that the purpose of the app has been misunderstood, that it is a ?positivity’ app, and that it will NOT in fact allow negative reviews or allow reviews of people who have not signed up for the app. This seems directly contradictory to what has been stated about the app before, including in a handful of ?webisodes’ that the team had posted on YouTube.

A further wrinkle in this crazy only-on-the-internet story: Peeple is also the name of another startup, this one a company which has developed an electronic, wifi-enabled peephole for your front-door. Wired reports that the other Peeple is less-than-pleased about the unwanted publicity. Since the other Peeple owns the trademark to the name in the US, it is not clear how the app makers will proceed. Should they choose to, their stated release date is in November.

Random guy buys Google.com from Google for $12

Mashable reports that last week a random guy was able to buy Google.com from Google for the massive price of $12. Sanmay Ved, a student at Babson University, was playing around with Google Domains when he noticed that the site said that “Google.com” was unclaimed. He added it to his cart, checked out, and a few minutes later had an email informing him of his successful purchase of “Google.com.”

Just a few minutes after that, however, his purchase was mysteriously cancelled. Ved reports that he did notify Google of the glitch after the fact. No word on why Google had its own domain up for sale in the first place.

Mashable notes that Microsoft lost Hotmail.co.uk in a similar glitch in 2003, but had more trouble getting it back.

Amazon.com to stop carrying competing streaming devices Chromecast and Apple TV

Competition in the world of streaming TV and movies continues to heat up. Several different companies now offer low-cost solutions that allow users to stream high quality video from several different services on the cheap. The leaders are Google’s Chromecast, Apple’s Apple TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. Well Bloomberg reports that Amazon.com has decided that that is a few competitors too many. It has announced that starting on October 29th it will no longer carry either the Chromecast or the AppleTV in its online store. Just in time for the Christmas season!

Amazon states that the reason for this move is that its competitor’s devices don’t “interact well” with Amazon Prime Video. Of course it would appear that it is up to Amazon to develop software for the devices, not the companies that make them.

Other streaming devices, including Roku’s set top device and Microsoft’s XBox One and Sony’s Playstation 4 are not affected