How to Communicate with Body Language

It is often said that in face-to-face communications, the words we speak actually account for less than 10% of the meaning that we convey, while body language accounts for more than half of our message (our tone of voice supposedly communicates the rest). Body language is important, and if your words say one thing but your body says another, the person you are speaking to is more likely to believe the message your body is communicating. Here's how to start using body language to improve your day-to-day communications and, more importantly, to improve your quality of life.

10 things your IT department won't tell you

The Wall Street Journal talks to 3 IT experts to find out what risky computing they try to keep you from engaging in, then asks 3 productivity mavens (including our very own Gina Trapani) how to get around the blocks. The list offers a nice point-counterpoint of why your IT department considers something a risk, how you can bypass their roadblocks and do it anyway, and—perhaps more importantly—how to get around it in a manner that won't completely freak out your IT department. (I'm not saying it won't just a little.) For more, see how else you can.

Geek to Live: Survive IT lockdown

by Gina Trapani

I visited a friend at her office recently, and watched her launch Internet Explorer on her computer.

"Um, there's this new-fangled thing called tabbed browsing," I told her, teasing. "You should try it some day. It's totally bleeding edge."

She looked at me, annoyed.

"I'd use Firefox but I don't have privileges to install anything on this computer. It's for SECURITY REASONS."

Sound familiar? Using a workplace computer with limited user rights can be a serious pain in the arse. Now, we here at Lifehacker would never recommend that you break your workplace's IT department computer usage policy (ahem) but there are ways to get stuff done with the software you need on a machine where your user login has restricted rights.

Run portable software from an external disk

They may be able to restrict your ability to install software, but they most likely haven't blocked access to your computer's USB ports.

Whether it's a thumb drive or your iPod, you can run the software you want at the office from an external writable disk. Namely, Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird will let you browse the web with extensions and tabs, and check your Gmail, Yahoo Mail and personal email all from the plugged-in drive. Tons of other standalone, self-contained apps exist from word processors to media players for an external drive. The more space you've got the merrier, so if you don't have a thumb drive, be sure to use the extra space on your iPod in disk mode.

Here's a quick rundown of portable app downloads for your escape from IT lockdown:

• Portable Firefox web browser - includes extensions & plugins
• Portable Thunderbird email client - take your email settings with you
• Portable GAIM instant messenger client - if you can't install AIM or Trillian, includes your buddy list

A whole bunch of other portable software downloads are available at PortableApps.com, the IT lockdown inmate's best friend. Also, if you've got an iPod you want to use at work but you can't install iTunes, see yesterday's feature on playing music on your iPod without installing a thing on your computer, The Self-Sustaining iPod.

Route around web site blocks

So you were playing Yahoo! Games at the office happily for months, and then one day the site was blocked. What to do? Well, there are a bunch of methods for routing around web site restrictions, and it'll take some trial and error to hit on the one that works for you.

Here are a few options:

• Use Google's translation service as a 'proxy'
• TorPark anonymous browsing for a thumbdrive
• Browse restricted web sites with Virtual-Browser
• Use Google Mobile as a 'proxy'

Lifehacker reader Amit Agarwal also compiled a list of 7 different approaches in his article How to Access Blocked Web sites.

Luckily I'm administrator on my machine on an unrestricted network, so I want to hear from the lifehackers out there dealing with lockdown. Necessity is the mother of invention, so how do you deal with IT restrictions at work? Let us know in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, wishes everyone free access to the tools and information they need to work (and play) efficiently. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

MamaPop Reviews the iPhone

Comments for: http://www.mamapop.com/mamapop/2007/07/mamapop-reviews.html

jelus beyond language. YOU WHORE. (sobs)

Posted by: Tracey (Sweetney) | July 05, 2007 at 12:42 PM

YOU WHORE I HATE YOU. lol, had to say it. Yes, jelus over here too. I still loves mah way outdated razr but I wouldn't turn my nose up at an iphone.....

Hacker. Dropout. CEO. When Mark Zuckerberg showed up in Palo Alto three years ago..

...he had no car, no house, and no job. Today, he's at the helm of a smokin'-hot social-networking site, Facebook, and turning down billion-dollar offers. Can this kid be for real?

“I'm just lucky to be alive." Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old founder and CEO of social-networking site Facebook, is talking about the time he came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun. It was the spring of 2005, and he was driving from Palo Alto to Berkeley.

Just a few hours earlier, he had signed documents that secured a heady $12.7 million in venture capital to finance his fledgling business. It was a coming-of-age moment, and he was on his way to celebrate with friends in the East Bay. But things turned weird when he pulled off the road for gas. As Zuckerberg got out of the car to fill the tank, a man appeared from the shadows, waving a gun and ranting. "He didn't say what he wanted," Zuckerberg says. "I figured he was on drugs." Keeping his eyes down, Zuckerberg said nothing, got back into his car, and drove off, unscathed.

Today, it is an episode that he talks about only reluctantly. (A former employee spilled the beans.) But it fits the road he has taken--an adventure with unexpected, sometimes harrowing, moments that has turned out better than anyone might have predicted.

Zuckerberg's life so far is like a movie script. A supersmart kid invents a tech phenomenon while attending an Ivy League school--let's say, Harvard--and launches it to rave reviews. Big shots circle his dorm to make his acquaintance; he drops out of college to grow his baby and Change The World As We Know It. Just three years in, what started as a networking site for college students has become a go-to tool for 19 million registered users, including employees of government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. More than half of the users visit every day. When a poorly explained new feature brought howls of protests from users--some 700,000--the media old and new jumped to cover the backlash. But Facebook emerged stronger than ever. According to comScore Media Metrix, which tracks Web activity, it is now the sixth most-trafficked site in the United States--1% of all Internet time is spent on Facebook. ComScore also rates it the number-one photo-sharing site on the Web, with 6 million pictures uploaded daily. And it is starting to compete with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and other tech titans as a destination for top young engineering talent in Silicon Valley. Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer, says it is on track to bring in $100 million in revenue this year--serious money indeed.

Yet there is an undercurrent of controversy about whether Mark Zuckerberg is making the right decisions about the juggernaut he has created. Late last year, a blog called TechCrunch posted documents said to be a part of an internal valuation of Facebook by Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO). The documents projected that Facebook would generate $969 million in revenue, with 48 million users, by 2010. The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) and others reported that Yahoo had made a $1 billion offer to buy Facebook--and Zuckerberg and his partners had turned it down. This followed an earlier rumor of a $750 million offer from Viacom (NYSE:VIA). Yahoo, Viacom, and Facebook would not comment on the deal talk (and they still won't). But Silicon Valley has been abuzz ever since.

"It's all been very interesting," deadpans Zuckerberg, sitting in a conference room in Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters. He looks every bit the geek in his zippered brown sweatshirt, baggy khakis, and Adidas sandals. He came into the room eating breakfast cereal from a paper bowl with a plastic spoon. He still lives in a rented apartment, with a mattress on the floor and only two chairs and a table for furniture. ("I cooked dinner for a girlfriend once," he admits at one point. "It didn't work well.") He walks or bikes to the office every day.

Zuckerberg's college-kid style reinforces the doubts of those who see the decision to keep Facebook independent as a lapse in judgment. In less than two years, the two reigning Web 2.0 titans have sold out to major corporations: MySpace accepted $580 million to join News Corp. (NYSE:NWS), and YouTube took $1.5 billion from Google. Surely any smart entrepreneur would jump at a chance to piggyback on those deals.

Looming over the Facebook talk is the specter of Friendster, the first significant social-networking site. It reportedly turned down a chance to sell out to Google in 2002 for $30 million, which if paid in stock, would be worth about $1 billion today. Now Friendster is struggling in the Web-o-sphere, having been swiftly eclipsed by the next generation of sites. The same thing could happen to Facebook. New social-networking sites are popping up every day. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) bought Five Across, which sells a software platform for social networking to corporate clients. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is beta-testing a site named Wallop. Even Reuters is planning to launch its own online face book, targeting fund managers and traders.

So is Zuckerberg being greedy--holding out for a bigger money buyout? If so, will that come back to haunt him? If not, what exactly is his game plan?

Zuckerberg's answer is that he's playing a different kind of game. "I'm here to build something for the long term," he says. "Anything else is a distraction." He and his compatriots at the helm of the company--cofounder and VP of engineering Dustin Moskovitz, 22, his roommate at Harvard, and chief technology officer Adam D'Angelo, 23, whom he met in prep school--are true believers. Their faith: that the openness, collaboration, and sharing of information epitomized by social networking can make the world work better. You might think they were naive, except that they're so damn smart and have succeeded in a way most people never do. From a ragtag operation run out of sublet crash pads in Palo Alto, they now have two buildings (soon to be three) of cool gray offices and employ 200 people who enjoy competitive salaries and grown-up benefit packages--not to mention three catered meals a day with free laundry and dry cleaning thrown in. And they continue to crank out improvements to a Web site that is in every meaningful way a technological marvel.

Right now, the folks who fronted Zuckerberg that $12.7 million back in the spring of 2005 and the other venture investors whose money and connections have helped juice Facebook's growth describe themselves as content. After all, since news of the Yahoo deal surfaced, the user base has continued to boom, arguably increasing Facebook's value. But when those money guys start agitating to realize a gain on their investment, can a sale--or more likely an IPO--be far behind?

"What most people think when they hear the word 'hacker' is breaking into things."

Zuckerberg admits to being a hacker--but only if he's sure you understand that the word means something different to him. To him, hacker culture is about using shared effort and knowledge to make something bigger, better, and faster than an individual can do alone. "There's an intense focus on openness, sharing information, as both an ideal and a practical strategy to get things done," he explains. He has even instituted what he calls "hackathons" at Facebook--what others might call brainstorming sessions for engineers.

But it was old-fashioned breaking-and-entering hacking that spawned Facebook--and Zuckerberg was the culprit. Zuckerberg grew up in the well-to-do New York suburb of Dobbs Ferry, the second of four kids and the only son of a dentist (he has no cavities) and a psychiatrist (insert your own mental-health joke here). He began messing around with computers early on, teaching himself how to program. As a high school senior, at Phillips Exeter Academy, he and D'Angelo built a plug-in for the MP3 player Winamp that would learn your music listening habits, then create a playlist to meet your taste. They posted it as a free download and major companies, including AOL (NYSE:TWX) and Microsoft, came calling. "It was basically, like, 'You can come work for us, and, oh, we'll also take this thing that you made,'" Zuckerberg recalls. The two decided to go to college instead, D'Angelo to Caltech and Zuckerberg to Harvard.

"I'm here to build something for the long term. Anything else is a distraction. "
-Mark Zuckerberg

That's where the hacking episode occurred. Harvard didn't offer a student directory with photos and basic information, known at most schools as a face book. Zuckerberg wanted to build an online version for Harvard, but the school "kept on saying that there were all these reasons why they couldn't aggregate this information," he says. "I just wanted to show that it could be done." So one night early in his sophomore year, he hacked into Harvard's student records. He then threw up a basic site called Facemash, which randomly paired photos of undergraduates and invited visitors to determine which one was "hotter" (not unlike the Web site Hot or Not). Four hours, 450 visitors, and 22,000 photo views later, Harvard yanked Zuckerberg's Internet connection. After a dressing-down from the administration and an uproar on campus chronicled by The Harvard Crimson, Zuckerberg politely apologized to his fellow students. But he remained convinced he'd done the right thing: "I thought that the information should be available." (Harvard declined to comment on the episode.)

Study: Fellatio may significantly

Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 9:19 AM EDT (1319 GMT)

(AP) -- Women who perform the act of fellatio and swallow semen on a regular basis, one to two
times a week, may reduce their risk of breast cancer by up to 40 percent, a North Carolina State
University study found.

Doctors had never suspected a link between the act of fellatio and breast cancer, but new research being performed at North Carolina State University is starting to suggest that there could be an important link between the two. In a study of over 15,000 women suspected of having performed regular fellatio and swallowed the ejaculatory fluid, over the past ten years, the researchers found that those actually having performed the act regularly, one to two times a week, had a lower occurance of breast cancer than those who had not. There was no increased risk, however, for those who did not regularly perform.

"I think it removes the last shade of doubt that fellatio is actually a healthy act," said Dr. A.J. Kramer of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. "I am surprised by these findings, but am also excited that the researchers may have discovered a
relatively easy way to lower the occurance of breast cancer in women." The University researchers stressed that, though breast cancer is relatively uncommon, any steps taken to reduce the risk would be a wise decision. "Only with regular occurance will your chances be reduced, so I encourage all women out there to make fellatio an important part of their daily routine," said Dr. Helena Shifteer, one of the researchers at the University. "Since the emergence of the research, I try to fellate at least once every other night to reduce my chances."
The study is reported in Friday's Journal of Medical Research.

In 1991, 43,582 women died of breast cancer, as reported by the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Len Lictepeen, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said women should not overlook or "play down" these findings. "This will hopefully change women's practice and patterns, resulting in a severe drop in the future number of cases," Lictepeen said. Sooner said the research shows no increase in the risk of breast cancer in those who are, for whatever reason, not able to fellate regularly. "There's definitely fertile ground for more research. Many have stepped forward to volunteer for related research now in the planning stages," he said. Almost every woman is, at some point, going to perform the act of fellatio, but it is the frequency at which this event occurs that makes the difference, say researchers. Also key seems to be the protein and enzyme count in the semen, but researchers are again waiting for more test data.
The reasearch consisted of two groups, 6,246 women ages 25 to 45 who had performed fellatio and swallowed on a regular basis over the past five to ten years, and 9,728 women who had not or did not swallow. The group of women who had performed and swallowed had a breast cancer rate of 1.9 percent and the group who had not had a breast cancer rate of 10.4 percent. "The findings do suggest that there are other causes for breast cancer besides the absence of regular fellatio," Shafteer said. "It's a cause, not THE cause."

Why You May Not Want An iPhone

Give Steve Jobs credit: He's managed to get the entire tech community--and much of the rest of the world--talking about a pricey gadget that only a handful have seen or touched.

Apple's iPhone finally goes on sale June 29, and for many potential buyers, the only issue is whether they'll be able to get their hands on one, as it's certain to sell out immediately. But whether you are a music lover, a business e-mail addict, a mobile power-user or just a normal consumer, there are several good reasons to think twice about dropping $500 for the first-generation iPhone.

Will that be enough to slow iPhone sales after the initial rush? There are, after all, plenty of other options for consumers who want a smart phone, which is essentially a high-end phone with the ability to do other functions, like e-mail. Previously just expensive toys for information technology nerds and executives, smart phones are gaining mainstream appeal. Research firm Yankee Group projects that smart phones will grow from 11% of this year's mobile-phone market to about 20% of phone sales in 2010.

Jobs hopes to pick up 1% of the market by the end of 2008. But consumers are finicky and have options. If Apple's iPhone doesn't stack up, numerous competitors, like Samsung, LG Electronics, Nokia and a host of phones running rival Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, will be happy to take their business. Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that has invested in Forbes Media, has announced plans to buy a 25% stake in iPhone competitor Palm.

The iPhone's battery is one example of a feature that could flop. By all indications--Apple is still being mum about almost all details regarding the device--the iPhone's rechargeable battery is sealed inside its case. That's what Apple does already with its iPod devices, presumably to save space. The company says the battery will last up to five hours of talking, watching video and browsing the Internet.

But it's not clear how those claims will measure up in the real world. What happens if you use the phone's wi-fi connection heavily? Or a Bluetooth earpiece? Without a midday charging pit stop, iPhone owners may have to consistently choose between using its Web and multimedia features or saving battery power for phone calls.

Other smart phones have similar battery drawbacks. Palm, for example, says the battery in its newest Treo 755p will last for up to four hours and 12 minutes of talk time. But when that's up, you can easily swap out the Treo battery for a charged replacement. Many people carry a spare, especially while traveling on business. With the iPhone, it seems you may be tethered to a backup-battery accessory, which is far from ideal.

Making matters worse, rechargeable batteries have a limited lifespan and can be charged only a finite number of times. This number varies, but Apple says a properly maintained iPod battery--whatever that really means--can retain 80% of its original capacity after 400 full charging cycles. Eventually, it will hold a charge so short that it must be replaced, which could at best mean a trip to an Apple or AT&T store, or at worst, an annoying, mail-in battery replacement service.

The iPhone's stripped-down data features could also provide incentive to wait for a better offer. Apple's boilerplate is that the iPhone is a "revolutionary" device for browsing the Internet on the go. To an extent, it has a point: Apple's Safari is arguably the most powerful mobile Web browser. And the iPhone's large display will surely make surfing the Web more enjoyable and functional than on a tiny Motorola Razr screen.

But for whatever reason, Apple decided not to allow the iPhone to work on AT&T's fastest, "third-generation" (or 3G) wireless network, opting instead for its slower "EDGE" network. The difference is apparent even on a small-screen device browsing scaled-down, mobile-edition Web sites. When you're surfing full-size Web pages, as Apple touts on the iPhone, the slow speeds could be a deal breaker.

During Apple's first-quarter earnings conference call, finance chief Peter Oppenheimer said the company is "very much sold" on the slower network because it is more widespread in the U.S. This is a valid point, sort of. AT&T says it has 3G coverage available in 165 major U.S. metro areas, with dozens more on the way, and EDGE coverage in 13,000 cities and towns. But a 3G device can seamlessly hop between the faster and slower networks. And many of the iPhone's competitors, like the 7-month-old Samsung BlackJack, do just that. So why did Apple skimp?

One reason may be the iPhone's built-in wi-fi capability, meaning it can connect to local hot spots and avoid AT&T's data network altogether. This is much faster than using the cellular Web, but imperfect. Wi-fi access is not as universal as you think, and often it's not free. Spending $10 to use a faster Internet at Starbucks doesn't sound practical on top of a $40-per-month, all-you-can-eat EDGE data plan. You may already have a wi-fi hot spot in your home or office--but chances are, you have a computer there, too, with a screen larger than 3.5 inches.

Then again, wi-fi may be a cool feature if Apple opens the iPhone up to developers to write interesting software like network or peer-to-peer games, on-the-go photo sharing software or any other mobile-friendly apps. Jobs is particularly fond of the iPhone's Google Maps software, which he says "blows away" any previous version, and the iPod music software, which he says is "the best iPod we've ever made." But it's not clear if Apple will let other people write software for the iPhone, at least right away, and that could be a reason to stay away.

For example, if you're looking to check your corporate e-mail with any ease, you may have to wait. It's not clear if the iPhone's e-mail software will initially--or imminently--support "push" e-mail from Microsoft Exchange e-mail servers or Research in Motion BlackBerry servers. Apple has a deal with Yahoo! to support real-time "push" e-mail delivery. But CrackBerry addicts should be iPhone-hesitant, at least until we get more information about compatibility. (RIM did not immediately return a request for comment.) Jobs said recently that Apple is "working to find a way to allow developers to build applications" but that security is a sticking point.

Rabid e-mailers or texters may also be skeptical about the iPhone's keyboard-free design. Jobs dislikes the tiny QWERTY thumb keyboards on many of today's smart phones, with good reason: Typing is slower and less accurate than on a normal, full-sized keyboard.

But it's not apparent that typing on a touchscreen will necessarily be any better. Many BlackBerry users, once familiar with the keyboard, can type without looking. Can you thumb out a text message on an iPhone screen without undivided attention? Will it work in the rain? Or if you're wearing a bandage? Will it scratch, as the iPod screens have been infamous for?

Lastly, one of the most anticipated, unknown iPhone features is its real price tag. We already know that it will cost $500 to $600, depending on storage capacity. But AT&T's contract requirements could easily quadruple that price. To qualify for the lowest pricing on many smart phones, carriers require that you subscribe to an all-you-can-eat data plan for around $40 per month, in addition to a $40-or-more-per-month calling plan.

So much for getting the cheapest calling plan and just using the wi-fi feature for the Internet. Add text messaging and taxes, and you're looking at a bill near $90 per month. Over the two-year contract period, that's more than $2,000.

Businesses manage that expense for executives' BlackBerrys, but will consumers happily pay that much? AT&T says existing customers will get the same deal as new customers switching from Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel--but subscribers will have to extend their contract for two more years. Will AT&T offer a version for prepaid service subscribers? Many consumers can justify buying a $500 smart phone/iPod hybrid. But AT&T's service terms could break the deal.

Ready Or Not, Here Comes The iPhone!

MOUNT POCONO, Pa. - Some folks at AT&T are planning a hardball debut for their customers--at least those they're hoping might become their customers on Friday courtesy of the Apple iPhone.

At the AT&T store on Route 940, just down the road from a Wal-Mart Superstore, manager Narene Hassan is ready for the hordes she expects to show up Friday afternoon to grab for the brass ring--Apple's latest must-have gadget.

She's expecting a shipment sometime on Friday, but like her counterparts in other AT&T-owned stores, she has no idea how many devices will be in the shipment. All she does know is procedure. She'll close the store at 4:30 p.m. and re-open at 6. Then she'll start selling the device to the throng: first-come, first-served, one to a customer until they're gone.

What if she sees 400 people lined up at 2 in the afternoon, and she knows she has only 25 iPhones? Will she tell the last 375 that it's hopeless and they can go home? Nope, not at all. "They'll find out when we open at 6 p.m.," she says sharply to a visitor. "Do you know how many lines I've had to wait in--at Wal-Mart, Target, everywhere ... and I still haven't gotten a Wii for myself." She's referring to Nintendo's latest videogame console--just one of the hard-to-find devices that are so often sold out as soon as they appear.

Vengeance is sweet. Dangerous, too, apparently.

Standalone stores like the Mount Pocono AT&T are contracting security guards for two days over the weekend. They're also installing new, larger safes. Some managers of the 1,800 AT&T stores nationwide are also thinking about metal barriers outside for crowd control, and portable toilets for those who may be camping out for a long time, awaiting that 6 p.m. announcement that will provide the first clue as to whether they'll get one of the coveted devices.

Meanwhile, clerks in each store have been given a script they're required to stick to--the same one Narene recites to every visitor. "They'll go on sale at 6 p.m. on Friday. That's all we're authorized to tell you," says one clerk at a store in nearby Stroudsburg.

The big question for AT&T is a simple one--why would you outbid all the competition to acquire rights to sell the device-of-the-decade, calculated to attract as many customers as possible, then promptly do your best to alienate them?

They're not, insists an AT&T spokesman. "Any customer who shows up and cannot purchase an iPhone--and walk away with it that day--can purchase it at the store and have it delivered to the store or to their home for later," says AT&T spokesman Michael Coe. "Any customer can order a phone that day. We do have a direct fulfillment process."

Neither AT&T nor Apple will say just when they might be able to produce that shiny new device, why they aren't shipping enough immediately to satisfy intense demand or, for that matter, why the all-but-unprecedented secrecy regarding the two companies' marketing techniques.

Certainly, that's been Apple's modus operandi in the past--a company totally paranoid about any disclosure of any aspect of any new product.

It could also be quite a crafty move on the part of AT&T: Make sure you snag that customer at the point of contact (and for a mandatory two-year contract), then worry later about satisfying the demand. At the same time, the company's operations department says it is now giving store managers the right to tell customers lined up in Friday's sweltering temperatures just what their chances are for walking away with one in their pocket at 6 p.m.

As for Apple, the first techno-nerd is already in line Tuesday morning at the company's store on New York's Fifth Avenue. Lounging in a portable canvas folding chair, a banana in his left hand, he points out that he was also at the head of the line for Sony's PlayStation 3 videogame player when it launched.

The question of consumer demand for the iPhone has been examined in some detail by Parks Associates, the Dallas-based market research firm. They believe there will indeed be a substantial audience of "early adopters, the core audience"--but they make up only 3% of those surveyed, especially considering the iPhone's price points of $599, or $499 for the cheaper model.

"Beyond that segment, we do see a cliff," says Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming at Parks. "It is a chasm between early adopters and the mass market that will certainly be a chasm for Apple to cross."

And in the case of the iPhone, the chasm may be even bigger than Apple's other most-sought-after devices. When Parks' researchers moved the price point down to $399 or $299, demand remained virtually unchanged. "It was not until we reached $199--the average cost of a smart phone--that demand began to rise," says Cai.

What worries most of those surveyed? Some 50% cited the high price, 32% feared the battery drain of a multi-use device, 30% worried it would perform none of the functions particularly well, and 29% feared it would be too complex to use. Indeed, many were cautious about putting all their digital eggs in one electronic basket. If the battery dies, they've lost their phone, iPod and PDA in one horrible moment.

Still, there are always folks like Narene Hassan who are still ready to stand in line forever for a Wii.

"The Wii was so successful because it wasn't just targeting a small core audience," Cai observes. "After two days, lines for the PS3 disappeared. After six months, you still can't find a Wii, because it's appealing to a mass audience."

So, the question is, Does Apple have a PS3 ... or a Wii?

Getting the Video out of Your New iPod--for Cheap!

So I buy a video iPod, figuring it would be a cool toy. (Gotta get those toys.) It arrives and I'm ready to give it a whirl. I pony up my two bucks, download the pilot episode of Desperate Housewives, insert a standard A/V-to-RCA cable into the earphone jack and try to play it back on my TV.

No Luck. Damned Apple.

I'm here to tell you not to worry. You don't have to fork out for an outrageously priced "proprietary" Apple video cable. You don't even have to buy an expensive dock. You can connect your Video iPod directly to a TV, and you can do it with the ordinary camcorder A/V-to-RCA cable you probably already have lying around your house.
You just have to be tricky.

Here's how: What You'll Need

Find out How!

Source: MacDevCenter.com by Erica Sadun, author of Modding Mac OS X

haaaallloooooo!!!!

MyFreshEgg

What works for bananas, works for eggs. Aptly naming their site wheresyoursfrom, UK-based Chippindale Foods was the first company to offer customers full egg traceability. Also check out intermediary MyFreshEgg, which aims to be bringing the same services to a host of farms and egg producers.