Shopping cart goes high-tech - Yahoo! News

It may still have a wiggly wheel, but new shopping carts might prove to be a lot smarter than they look. A shopping cart that tells you if you're buying too much junk food may soon be coming to a grocery store aisle near you.

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Link - Yahoo! News

When Your Most Significant Other is a Computer - Yahoo! News

Here is an interesting article that talks about how we tend to spend more time with our personal computer than we do with our "significant other." The article then takes the issue a step further by claiming that we spend more time on our "relationship" with our computer than we do with our significant other. Of course, this is a bit of equivocation--equating a relationship with a computer with a relationship with another human being. The two are obviously two distinct types of "relationships" (after all, you haven't heard of anyone marrying their computer, right?). But definitely some people do have a relationship with their computer that approaches a "relationship" in the human sense, so there is some validity to this argument in the article, and certainly many "significant others" feel the loss of companionship due to the constant beckon that their loved ones hear from a computer, especially a networked computer. Many of us are constantly wired in to the matrix, even when we are with our significant other.

Do you feel like people in general spend too much time at the computer and not enough time with their significant other? How would you rate your level of interaction with your computer and with your signicant other?

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Link - Yahoo! News

BlackBerry as a Weapon in the Fight to Commute - New York Times

Auto-generated text messages on your cell phone and auto-generated e-mail messages to alert you to specific events (notices of school closings because of snow, notices of overdue cell phone bills, or, in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, notices of emergency situations on campus) have become increasingly popular as a means of keeping up with events that may affect us in one way or another. A service in New York, Clever Commute, has taken things a step further by providing nearly live updates to commuters of traffic snarls, train delays, road closings, and other commuter headaches. The service differs from auto-generated messages that already provided by the transit authority in that it allows commuters, using their Blackberrys, to communicate with each other through the service in a "broadcast" method like an e-mail listserv, so commuters can update each other on delays, which enables the service to be more up-to-the-minute than official notices sent out by the transit authority.

In the New York Times article describing the service, an example of the value of the interactive nature of the service was provided by the following anecdote:

On Tuesday, one rider wrote that a Mini Cooper parked at the Bay Street station had its lights on. Barry Polen, who gets on at the station, saw the note and realized it was his car.

Already in his office in the Flatiron district, Mr. Polen called his wife, who drove to the station and turned the lights off.

“Otherwise, I would have gotten back to a car with a dead battery,” said Mr. Polen, one of the first people to sign up for the service. “When it boils down to it, it’s commuters and technology helping other commuters.”

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Link - New York Times

ABC News: To Catch Two Predators: Parents Who Prostitute Children Online

Further demonstrating how the Internet provides an outlet for sexual predators and other depraved minds, ABC News has issued a story about parents who pimp their own kids online to pedophiles.

To what extend do you think the Internet is to blame for crimes like this?

Follow the link for the complete story.

Link - ABC News

Police arrest registered sex offender suspected of luring teen online - CNN.com

Demonstrating the potential dangers of social networks like MySpace, here's a story about a 15-year-old girl who got lured away from home by a 46-year-old registered sex offender whom she met through MySpace and whom she thought was only 24 years old. The man has been arrested.

According to article, the girl's father had no idea his daughter had been communicating with the sex offender, and he urged parents to talk with their children about what they are doing online.

"We've had serious talks about [not putting] information of your own out there to the people," he said. "The Internet is for information. It's not a playground."

Frank said he is installing spy software on his computer to help him monitor what his daughter is doing. "We think our children are well-behaved," he said. "We have to watch them harder. We don't know everything."

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Link - CNN.com

Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church - New York Times

This week's sign that the apocalypse is upon us (as they used to say in Sports Illustrated): Some churches are now using the popular video game "Halo" to attract a particular demographic--adolescent males--so that they can hit them with a religious message after a couple of hours of shooting-em-up on the popular video game. If it wasn't enough of a mixed message that a violent video game would use a religiously evocative name like "Halo," churches are now using the game as a beacon, or a halo, to attract adolescent males so they can preach to them about Christian ideals, including "though shalt not kill."

How weird is that?

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Link - New York Times

Teens to parents: It's our Facebook - USATODAY.com

In the wake of Facebook opening up membership to the entire world, a growing number of parents are now creating Facebook accounts and checking up on their kids' behavior on Facebook--and they're finding that their kids resent it (surprise!).

Question: Can your Mom be your Mom and also your friend on Facebook?

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Link - USATODAY.com

Verizon Adds iPhone Lookalike In Challenge To Apple -- Mobile Phones -- InformationWeek

Verizon has announced a new line of phones that includes one that is intended rival the iPhone. Verizon's new Voyager phone not only has a touch screen like the Apple iPhone, but it also has a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from underneath. The phones were announced in time to take advantage of Christmas shoppers.



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Link -- InformationWeek

At Starbucks, Songs of Instant Gratification - NY Times

The age of convenience just got more convenient, with Apple and Starbucks joining forces to provide for instantaneous downloads of songs playing over the speakers at Starbucks stores. So now you can not only get your caffeine fix at Starbucks, but you can also take even more of the Starbucks experience with you by being able to capture many of the cools tunes that they play at Starbucks, and you're also maximizing your iPod/iPhone/iTunes experience by being able to do cool things with it while you're sipping a latte.

Starbucks customers can download any song they hear in the store by using their iPhone, their wireless touchscreen iPod, or a laptop computer that has iTunes installed on it. Cost per song is the same as iTunes' regular price--99 cents. So not only is the age of convenience getting more convenient, but the price is incredibly tempting--just like that crumb top coffee cake at Starbucks.

Can you possibly say no?

It's not clear yet what effect caffeine has on impulse purchasing.

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Link - New York Times

FT.com / Mergermarket - Sony wins ‘organic’ screen race

Sony has come up with a way of using the luminescent capabilities of certain organic chemicals to produce a television that is only as thick as three credit cards stacked together. According to the article

"Organic light-emitting diode technology, which is not exclusive Sony technology, is based on the ability of certain organic chemicals to emit their own light when an electric current is applied. This means that OLED screens require no backlight and can produce crystal-clear images."

Pretty amazing. Read more...

Link - FT.com: