Do you hate getting invites from friends requesting you to install Facebook applications that are of no interest to you? Would you like to permanently block all those annoying Facebook apps that post messages to your wall without asking?

If you are someone like me who primarily uses Facebook to connect with family members and have little interest in Facebook apps, you can choose to permanently opt-out of the Facebook apps platform. This will make your profile inaccessible to all other apps and you therefore won’t get any invites or wall posts in future.

To disable the Facebook apps platform, log in to your Facebook account, select Privacy Settings under Account and then click “Edit your settings” under the Applications and Websites section. Here you’ll see an option to turn off all the platform applications with a single click.

The above video screencast describes the various steps in detail. It is important to note that when you turn off the Facebook Applications platform, it will also disable the various social plugins that help you ‘like’ stories on other websites.

You can design everything from sneakers to skins online, so designing a suit online just takes things to the next level. My.Suit is a new store that recently opened up in New York City. What makes this new shop unique is that it allows you to design a custom “Made-To-Measure” men’s suit online. You can customize practically every single aspect of the suit – from the jacket lining, to the pocket style. For the fussy man in your life, this is a great alternative to buying him an off the rack suit, and it’s sure to make him feel like a million bucks. Heck, you can even personalize the clothing label with the name of your choice. Now if only they would come out with a similar system for ladies!

[ Visit My.Suit ]

Starting with an old cell phone a friend gave him, 17-year-old Steven Ortiz of Glendora, CA, used Craigslist to trade up 14 times over two years and eventually end up with a Porsche Boxster. Here’s how he did it.

Although Oritz’s story isn’t the first time we’ve seen Craigslist-swapping writ large, it’s the first one we’ve seen that doesn’t include any outside help. You may remember Kyle MacDonald, who famously created a website to document his attempt to trade one red paperclip for a house. It worked. But MacDonald also had a built-in fanbase and publicity from his website.

Ortiz, a 17-year-old high-schooler, had no such help. Instead, he spent the better part of two years tied to his iPhone, skimming Craigslist and carefully picking out trades he knew he could benefit from.

Starting with an old cell phone that was given to him for free by a friend, Steven used the “barter” section of Craigslist to move up to a better phone. He then traded the phone for an iPod Touch, the iPod Touch for a dirtbike — which was turned around several times for other, better dirtbikes — and then a MacBook Pro arrived, which opened the door to vehicles.

The MacBook Pro was traded for a Toyota 4Runner, which was then bartered for a custom off-road golf cart. Keep in mind that Steven was only 15 at the time, so even if he’d kept that 4Runner, he couldn’t drive it anywhere.

The golf cart was then traded for a much more expensive dirt bike, the dirt bike was traded for a street bike, and then Steven traded that for a series of boring cars, ending up with a sweet 1975 Ford Bronco.

Had we been Steven, we’d probably have stopped there, as it doesn’t get much better than an old Ford Bronco. However, by the time he acquired the Bronco he was of driving age. After enjoying it for a while, he decided to mix things up and go for a Porsche.

It was actually a trade down, one that we can’t really fault him for — everyone needs to own a Porsche at least once in their life. The Bronco was probably worth more than the $9000 asking price on the 2000 Boxster, but it’ll probably pay dividends in the halls of his high school.

The total number of trade transactions between old cell phone and Porsche Boxster? Fourteen. Reality is setting in, however, and the obnoxious maintenance costs that go along with owning a Porsche are making the car hard to live with. Naturally, Steven is turning his eye is toward a new car. He’s thinking about a Cadillac Escalade.

Low Flying Rocks is a Twitter experiment by Tom Taylor. An experiment in astronomical discovery; a reminder of the celestial activity we never see.

Low Flying Rocks scrapes the NASA Near Earth Object database, and twitters when an object passes within 0.2 AU of the earth. And that seems to happen a few times a week.