Photo: Getty Images //

New Year’s resolutions tend to get a bad rap for being, well, fruitless. But making resolutions with a partner can help you stick to your promises and can also strengthen your relationship. This list of resolutions-for-two will help you ring the New Year in right, and keep your relationship rockin’ all year long.

1) Do “Good Things” together (and not just around the holidays). Everyone feels generous around the holidays, and in December, soup kitchens get so many volunteers that they have to turn helpers away. These organizations need volunteers desperately at other times of the year, so you and your sweetie will make a huge impact if you skip the Christmas day goodness and volunteer year-round instead. If you’re a Christmas lover, do your good deeds on the 25th of each month. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

2) Eat mindfully. When you’re coupled, it’s easy to cozy up on the couch and shovel down Chinese food while watching movies. Not only does this habit pack on the pounds, but it skips the fun and intimacy that can come with preparing and sharing food, too. Choose healthy recipes, and make your date nights special by cooking and eating together. Better than an overpriced restaurant any day!

3) Sweat together. If you’re part of a tubby tandem and serious about ditching extra pounds, enlist your partner as a workout buddy. If you’re not overweight, exercising with your partner is still a great way to improve your overall health. And everyone knows that the rosy cheeks and heavy breathing exercise brings reminds us of other things that involve rosy cheeks and heavy breathing. Speaking of which…

4) Make sexytime a priority. When we’re busy, sex can get lost in the shuffle, but it’s too good for your relationship, your health, and your mood to skip. Make time to reconnect with your partner in the sack by scheduling a weekend “staycation.” If the sex has become lackluster, put some energy into figuring out how to make it exciting again. It might be a new position, a new toy, or just a straight-up change of venue (kitchen, anyone?).

5) Stop squabbling. If you have a serious beef with your partner, it’s important to bring it up, but try to avoid petty arguments and insults. One nitpicky fight isn’t a big deal, but over time, small backbiting comments can erode the foundation of your relationship. Pick your battles. When you sense a fight on the horizon, try to calm yourself momentarily and ask “Is this worth disturbing the peace for?”

6) Strive for emotional honesty. Even the bluntest among us has avoided explaining feelings to a lover at one time or another. It can be hard to share with your partner (especially if you’re experiencing a thorny, irrational emotion like jealousy) but it’s important that you keep your mate in the loop so that he can act appropriately. Saying “I feel” instead of “you made me feel” will help you and your partner stay focused on resolving the negative emotions without it turning into a blamefest.

7) Nuke multitasking. When you’re spending time with your sweet, banish buzzes, bleeps and chirps from your computer and phone. Don’t scroll through your texts while your partner is talking to you, or IM a friend while you’re supposed to be planning dinner. You may think you can do two things at once, but when you do, you’re sending your partner the message that they’re not worth your full attention. If you both have things you must do on your phone or computer, set a block of time aside to accomplish the tasks, and then move on with your evening (and don’t even think of counting your tech time together as a ‘date’!).

Treat your partner as well as you treat your friends. It’s easy to take your romantic partner for granted, and sometimes we don’t treat our lovers as well as we should. Like family, we assume that they’re in it for the long haul and when we’re stressed, our romantic relationships that take extra abuse. Ask yourself if you say or do things to your partner that you wouldn’t do to your best friend, and if you discover that you do, adjust your behavior accordingly. And, remember, it takes practice to change a habit; don’t give up if you don’t change overnight.

9) Listen. Don’t nod automatically as he talks. Don’t wait for your turn to speak. Don’t do the dishes while he tells you about his day. Sit down, look him in the eye, pay attention to what he says, and ask follow-up questions. This is one of the best things you can do for your relationship. Active listening is a skill that has to be honed with time and effort, but it’s incredibly important. Work at it.

10) Criticize less than you praise. When you spend a lot of time with someone, it becomes easy to overlook the things that are great about them. Instead of dwelling on his bad habits, remind yourself of the reasons you fell for him in the first place. Then remind him! Couples who have been together for a long time tend to forget to compliment one another. Try to dish out three compliments for every criticism, and don’t be shocked if he mirrors your actions. Shared appreciation breeds kindness and consideration, and what couple couldn’t use more of that?

11) Break a bad habit together. If you and your man share a habit that’s less-than-great for you, help one another break it instead of encouraging the behavior within your relationship. Instead of nudging one another outside for smoke breaks, make a pact to limit yourselves to a certain number of cigarettes a day. If you drink too much together, make a two-drink rule and try to stick to it.

12) Play! One of the worst things about being an adult is the total lack of juice boxes, naptime and recess. (What’s up with that?) Thankfully, the dullness of the workday world doesn’t have to extend to your personal life. Infuse your partnership with a sense of play. Have pillow fights, talk in funny voices, and draw mustaches on the models in your ladymags. Do something creative together… take a guitar class, throw pottery, or learn to roll sushi. Whatever. Stepping outside of your routine can bring you and your partner closer, and it’ll ensure that things never get boring between you.

Paramount Pictures

We all know the classic bitches: Women who speak their mind rather than bite their tongue. The women who rage against anything that provokes them: the man, the kids, the boss, their PMS. While we like to think their bad behavior is simply a case of bad judgment, new research shows that “bitchy” may be a gene.

Sorry, guys, but it’s been scientifically proven that a woman can now blame her anger and aggression on her genes. Scientific research found that some women are genetically programmed to be angry and aggressive by a serotonin receptor gene. The good news is that not every woman carries it.

What does this mean for you? Not only is anger and aggression in a woman the fault of her genetics, but it may be passed down to your daughters, too. Yikes.

Why men are attracted to bitches
Ever heard the slogan “men love bitches”? The psychology behind the trend is quite simple: Anger, aggressiveness and stubbornness are sometimes perceived as self-confidence and associated with those who have strong boundaries. That kind of personality is sexy to both genders. So, if you happen to be one who feels safe and secure in the presence of a strong personality, then you might also be unknowingly helping to pass those genes. It’s like Darwin’s survival of the fittest: If men keep choosing the bitches, the bitchiest women will live on.

If you have chosen a bitch and aren’t as enamored of her true colors, is there a solution? The answer is in the nature vs. nurture argument. If you want your woman to be less bitchy, nurture, nurture, nurture her. Environment has the ability to overcome, influence and even change our genetics. Likewise, the success of our behavior influences the likelihood that genes will be passed down to future generations. If it’s too late to change your woman, you can keep hope for your daughters. Parental nurture, the way parents bring up their children, may also govern who children become.

Manage her bitchiness

So, how can you help nurture, you ask? The best ways to defend and prevent a woman’s bitch factor are to:

Make your woman happy
You know the smallest things can make us happy. The thing is you have to do it because you want to, not because we asked you to. And if you’re really with the right woman, why wouldn’t you want to do things that make her happy?

Let her win the argument
Even if you don’t completely agree with the new pair of Jimmy Choo shoes she bought, don’t let a small argument turn into a huge blowout. A lot of the time when couples get into huge fights, they bring up past issues that heighten the argument. Avoid this by downplaying our mistakes and realizing we’re human too.

Accept that, yes, sometimes women are bitches
It’s how we rise in power and gain control. No one would care about what we had to say if we were just that shy, overly generous woman. Male domination and aggression has occurred since human evolution. If we want to be recognized as equals, we need to be aggressive too.

For those of you guys who are brave enough to tackle these angry, aggressive women, beware that there are health risks involved. Anger and aggression can be a predictor of medical conditions such as high blood pressure. They are also commonly related to heart disease and hypertension. But don’t worry, guys, not all women are genetically programmed to be angry and aggressive.

If you can’t handle bitchy women, I suggest you don’t date them or procreate with them. Until then, you can just patiently wait for that magic pill to come out that treats or curbs anger and aggression.

The content — in the form of links, videos, and images — began to appear Monday and includes doctored photographs of celebrities such as Justin Bieber in compromising situations, acts of violence and self-mutilation and even bestiality.

“We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com. “We are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms. Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us.”

The flood of explicit material appears to be linked to some sort of spam virus that propagates when unknowing users click on infected content, according to tech site ZDNet.
Facebook users took to Twitter to vent their rage, some even threatening to quit the social network once and for all.

“Facebook, I can handle old person porn but please no more beaten, bloody animals … NOT COOL,” complained one.

“Seeing a dead dog on my Facebook newsfeed… Officially deactivating it,” another person tweeted.

“Our parents & grandparents the only ones still on facebook & suddenly a porn section pops up,” joked one user. “Awkward.”

Graham Cluely, a senior technology consultant from Internet security firm Sophos, said it was not yet clear how the malicious content was being spread, but added that the website could face long term consequences.

“It’s precisely this kind of problem which is likely to drive people away from the site,” he wrote in a company blog. “Facebook needs to get a handle on this problem quickly, and prevent it from happening on such a scale again.”

Steve Jobs leans against his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis)

Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer — a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.

While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his private life, there’s plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.

1. Early life and childhood
Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.

Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged parents. His birth mother, Joanne Simpson, was a graduate student at the time and later a speech pathologist; his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 and reportedly now serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs reconnected with Simpson in later years, he and his biological father remained estranged.

2. College dropout
The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never graduated from college, in fact, he didn’t even get close. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, California — a town now synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple’s headquarters — Jobs enrolled in Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in Portland, Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to the financial burden the private school’s steep tuition placed on his parents.

In his famous 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: “It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”

3. Fibbed to his Apple co-founder about a job at Atari
Jobs is well known for his innovations in personal computing, mobile tech, and software, but he also helped create one of the best known video games of all-time. In 1975, Jobs was tapped by Atari to work on the Pong-like game Breakout.
He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the possibility of an extra $100 for each chip eliminated from the game’s final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak (later one of Apple’s other founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed to whittle the prototype’s design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus — but Jobs kept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend only $375, according to Wozniak’s own autobiography.

4. The wife he leaves behind
Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the public eye. Thinking back on his legacy conjures images of him commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, and those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs was raising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who attended the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton business school and later received her MBA at Stanford, where she first met her future husband.

For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs actually skipped a meeting to take Laurene on their first date: “I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, ‘If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?’ I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she’d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we’ve been together ever since.”
In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park, and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a Zen Buddhist monk.

5. His sister is a famous author
Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.

After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told a New York Times interviewer: “We’re family. She’s one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.” Anywhere But Here is dedicated to “my brother Steve.”

6. Celebrity romances
In The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography, a friend from Reed reveals that Jobs had a brief fling with folk singer Joan Baez. Baez confirmed the the two were close “briefly,” though her romantic connection with Bob Dylan is much better known (Dylan was the Apple icon’s favorite musician). The biography also notes that Jobs went out with actress Diane Keaton briefly.

7. His first daughter
When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter’s education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.

8. Alternative lifestyle
In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: “I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug’s therapeutic use.

In a book interview, Jobs called his experience with the drug “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may have contributed to the “think different” approach that still puts Apple’s designs a head above the competition.

Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking, alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned to the U.S. as a Zen Buddhist.

Jobs was also a pescetarian who didn’t consume most animal products, and didn’t eat meat other than fish. A strong believer in Eastern medicine, he sought to treat his own cancer through alternative approaches and specialized diets before reluctantly seeking his first surgery for a cancerous tumor in 2004.

9. His fortune
As the CEO of the world’s most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salary of just $1. While the gesture isn’t unheard of in the corporate world — Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually — Jobs has kept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple’s lead executive. Of his salary, Jobs joked in 2007: “I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.”

In early 2011, Jobs owned 5.5 million shares of Apple. After his death, Apple shares were valued at $377.64 — a roughly 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years that shows no signs of slowing down.

He may only have taken in a single dollar per year, but Jobs leaves behind a vast fortune. The largest chunk of that wealth is the roughly $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. In 2011, with an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion, he was the 110th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. If Jobs hadn’t sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (before returning to the company in 1996), he would be the world’s fifth richest individual.

While there’s no word yet on plans for his estate, Jobs leaves behind three children from his marriage to Laurene Jobs (Reed, Erin, and Eve), as well as his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.

Image credit: Ben Stanfield, Heinrich Klaffs

The main page of apple.com displays a black-and-white photo of the IT-genius and the years of his life – 1955-2011.

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being,” the company said. “Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

His wife Laurene and other family members were staying with Mr. Jobs during the last minutes of his life.

Steve Jobs passed away the next day after the presentation of Apple’s new line of products. It was the first time, when Apple’s founder did not attend the presentation, which became a huge disappointment for the fans of the company. Without Jobs, the presentation was not as successful as they were before. Many people claimed that instead of unveiling the new iPhone 5, the corporation presented an updated version of last-year’s innovation. It did not even occur to anyone that Steve Jobs was at the point of death.

U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement praising Jobs as one of the greatest American innovators who has brought joy to millions.

“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it,” Obama said.

“By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun,” he added.

“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote.

“Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives,” Jobs’ longtime rival, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, said. “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come,” RIA Novosti reports.

Twitter erupted with a fast-moving stream of emotional reactions, and the hashtags #ThankYouSteve, RIP Steve Jobs and Only 56 became trending topics within hours. The online community also created hashtags #iDead, #iHeaven, #iClouds and #iSad – similar to names of Apple’s iconic products.

There have also been numerous re-twits of the Apple’s founder’s famous phrase “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

When McCann came to after a stroke, first she thought she had completely lost the gift of speech. Luckily, it turned out to be wrong, but when she regained her ability it was with an outlandish accent that people took for Chinese.

Then her pronunciation altered again, making her sound more like an Italian donna.

Of course, it is not anything unheard-of – she is believed to have developed Foreign Accent Syndrome, a condition that was diagnosed in about 60 people the world over.

It’s not a thing you can live down easily – the Glasgow lady is getting harassed with people always asking her where she hails from. Her accent is so pronounced that she feels uncomfortable every time she speaks out.

Photo: getty Images //

It ended just recently, a mere few days before I found out I was pregnant. I’m about 4-5 wks preggers and I told him in an email. The relationship ended because he said I was a nobody and I didn’t mean anything to him, after telling him off I deleted his number. So now all I can do is email him. He doesn’t want anything to do with me which is fine because the feeling is mutual. I want him around for the baby’s sake though. I don’t know what to do in this situation. He’s acting like he doesn’t want to be bothered with the baby. He doesn’t even know who his own biological father is so I would think he would want to break the cycle. What should I do? Should I continue bothering him about the baby or just leave him alone? I want to do what’s best for the baby.

A specially if your friends have one enormous boob across their chests. Unfortunately for Dinora Rodriquez, she had to learn that lesson the hard way. From ABC News:

After going into surgery for a simple repair of her breast implants, Dinora Rodriguez, 40, awoke from the procedure to find that her plastic surgeon had left her with conjoined breasts – a uniboob, essentially. Without her knowledge or permission, the surgeon had also nip/tucked her eyelids, leaving Rodriguez with eyes that to this day cannot close all the way.

The doctor in question was licensed to practice as a plastic surgeon in California, where Rodriguez lives, but she was not board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.
A new surgeon has managed to fix Mrs Rodriguez’s breasts, who was able to pay for the new operation with a settlement after suing her previous surgeon for malpractice.

Busted: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a keynote during the Facebook f8 Developer Conference at the San Francisco Design Center

But the social network’s new Timeline feature looks set to really enrage users after it emerged the ability to anonymously ‘defriend’ people will become a thing of the past.

Using the new feature, which is set to be rolled out in the near future, users will be able to see all their entire Facebook history – including their shifting friends lists.

Along with every picture, message and app used, Timeline will allow people to see which of your previous ‘friends’ at somepoint decided to end the relationship.

Speaking to BuzzFeed, community manager at Mashable Meghan Peters said: ‘There is a way where you can go in to a certain point in time and basically, if you look at your friends tab, maybe from three years ago, and you see the ‘Add Friend’ button from someone in that list, that will basically tell you that they have defriended you since you became their friend.
‘I think that people will definitely be upset by it.

‘I mean, it always hurts to know that someone isn’t your friend anymore.’

The Facebook is trying to evolve from an Internet hangout where people swing by to share tidbits, links and photos to a homestead decorated with the memories, dreams and diversions of its 800 million users.

In what may be the boldest step yet in the company’s seven-year history, Facebook is redesigning its users’ profile pages to create what CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is a ‘new way to express who you are.’

It is betting that despite early grumblings, its vast audience will become even more attached to a website that keeps pushing the envelope.

To that effect, it is introducing new ways for people to connect with friends, brands and games while also sharing details about their lives from the mundane to the intimate.

‘If you look at Facebook’s history, obviously they are not afraid of making change,’ said Sean Corcoran, an analyst with Forrester Research.

As it turned out, a typical lady spends nearly a third of her wake time gossiping – 298 minutes per day which is equivalent to nearly five hours. In addition to the total amount of time that women devote to this occupation, the researchers have identified the most favorite topics for ladies to discuss.

Thus, it turns out that ladies spend about 24 minutes every day talking about their weight, diet and clothing sizes. One third of the participants of the study admit that they regularly discuss what they eat with friends and colleagues, and a quarter of all the respondents also exchange interesting recipes. As one of the leading authors of the study, Steve Barton, says, he and his colleagues did not expect food to be such a popular topic for women to discuss.

The weaker sex also likes to discuss makeup and various procedures, as well as the celebrities’ private life. Most often the women’s interlocutors are neighbors, shop assistants or even unknown women as, for example, in public transport. In addition, women eagerly talk about children, shopping, ways of spending a holiday, series, common acquaintances, and relationships. What is nice, the ladies very rarely complain about their own partners.