Luz Claudio, writing in “Environmental Health Perspectives,” considers the way Americans and Europeans shop for clothes as “waste couture”: Fashion is low-quality and sold at “prices that make the purchase tempting and the disposal painless.” Yet this sort of so-called “fast fashion” leaves a pollution footprint, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards.

According to “Technical Textile Markets,” a quarterly trade publication, demand for man-made fibers such as petroleum-derived polyester has nearly doubled in the last 15 years. “The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil,” reports Claudio. In addition, she says, the processes emit volatile organic compounds and solvents, particulate matter, acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, and other production by-products into the air and water.

“Issues of environmental health and safety do not apply only to the production of man-made fabrics,” says Claudio, citing subsidies to the pesticide-laden cotton industry that keep prices low and production high.

In an effort to green up the industry, Earth Pledge launched its FutureFashion initiative in 2005 to promote the use of renewable, reusable and non-polluting materials and production methods. Besides putting on its own FutureFashion showcases, the group organized the January 2008 New York Fashion Week, encouraging designers to create and showcase greener clothing on their runway models. Green-leaning designers can also pick through Earth Pledge’s library of 600 sustainably produced textiles, including organic cotton as well as exotic materials such as sasawashi, pina, bamboo, milk protein, and sea leather.

Another effort underway to speed the fashion industry into a carbon-constrained future is the Ethical Fashion Forum, which provides a variety of tools and resources and runs training sessions and networking events to help facilitate moving the industry towards more sustainable practices.

One stumbling block to the greening of fashion is that only a small number of consumers—some analysts say less than one percent—will pay more for a greener shirt. But if the industry itself can improve its footprint from the inside and drive the costs of more eco-friendly materials and processes down, the benefits will trickle down to consumers, whether they are bargain-conscious or fashion-conscious.

Image courtesy Martin LaBar, Flickr.

Indeed, the ocean is the world’s largest “carbon sink”: As much as one-third of man-made CO2 emissions are stored in the oceans and therefore do not contribute to global warming. This is because its plant component, phytoplankton (its animal component is called zooplankton), pulls massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere as it photosynthesizes.

But various environmental factors are taking their toll on plankton the world over. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported recently that marine phytoplankton is declining across the oceans. Even Canadian cod fishermen are noticing that the plankton-feeding fish they catch are often nearly starving as a result of lack of this crucial food source.

A 2007 study published in the scientific journal “Nature” found that human-caused increase in CO2 pollution is altering the pH (acidity) levels in the oceans. This change in chemistry is expected to have adverse effects on the entire ecosystem. More acidic ocean water inhibits the ability of shell-forming marine organisms—from plankton to mollusks to corals—to form properly. Smaller and less healthy populations of plankton would be bad news for all the other creatures above it on the ocean’s food chain.

Higher water temperatures, also attributable to our fossil fuel addiction, can also have a devastating effect on plankton. A recent report in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom noted that, in the Adriatic Sea cooler winter conditions — which are less frequent in a warmer world — are needed for plankton production and nutrient availability. Furthermore, warmer sea temperatures can cause “blooms” of other sea life (such as happens with algae), resulting in oxygen starvation in the water, a condition that is devastating to plankton and other marine creatures and organisms.

In other situations, blooms of phytoplankton themselves—the tiny plants can gorge on the nutrients from the run-off from farms and lawns on land—can lead to oxygen — starvation in the water. “The decomposition of these multitudes of phytoplankton removes oxygen from seawater, creating oxygen-poor ‘dead zones’ where fish cannot live,” reports Carly Buchwald, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Satellite imagery shows that these “dead zones” are expanding. Some scientists are advocating “iron fertilization” — the spreading of large amounts of iron across the world’s seas—to spur plankton growth. But others worry that such tinkering with complex ecosystems could have potentially harmful effects.

Take the night vision-technology that comes, optionally, built into these vehicles. In its first incarnation, night vision cameras could see the road ahead of you by amplifying the ambient light and displaying the resulting picture on a dashboard LCD. Later developments added infrared sensing, which blasts the road directly in front of you with IR light to see when ambient conditions are dark, to far-IR temperature detecting.

The system detects changes in temperature to help you distinguish between a parked car, a deer, or a human. Better yet, the imaging software from Autoliv can recognize the heat patters, and display a “pedestrian” warning as well as tinting the person standing in front of you in yellow to make them stand out on the black and white display.

Of course, the biggest downfall to these systems is that you have to pull your eyes off the road to use them. Its one thing to glance down at your speedometer, but it’s a whole another thing to try and process images from a screen and maintain safe control of your vehicle. In the future, the company might integrate the warnings onto a heads-up-display across the windshield, which is equal parts futuristic and cool.

Several years ago, cruise control was a fancy gadget relegated only to the most expensive luxury vehicles. Now, you’ll find it on just about every car. Luxury offerings have a way of trickling down to the average consumer, and mabye one day, you’ll climb into a night-vision equipped Civic.

(image via)

However, desktop 3D gaming is actually experiencing somewhat of a renaissance, and you can actually experience pretty decent 3D gaming from your computer.  We’ve looked at the hardware offered by North Quincy, MA computer manufacturer Psychsoftpc before, but the maker has since expanded their offerings, and now you can order your gaming rig with NVida’s 3D Vision Kit with their Psyborg Extreme Gamer PCs to experience 3D gaming straight out of the box, provided you have one of the many supported steroscopic montors. And, as the computer maker points out, this is probably the closest we’ll ever get a holodeck.

The kit comes with viewing glasses that function on the same principles as the ones you wore when you watched latest Pixar flick. Each eye sees a slightly different image, and the brain integrates the two images to produce a depth of field. The best part of the entire system is that the software inteagrates with existing games, meaning most games are compatible with the viewing system. NVidia often demos the system by playing Mirrors Edge, an experience that has to be absolutely and delightfully nauseating.

As we said before, Psychsoftpc makes some powerful computers, and by offering NVidia’s 3D Vision Kit with them, the package only becomes even more valuable.

The author of our favorite webcomic xkcd redesigned his homepage today as a tribute to the passing of Geocities.

Every so often, someone will tell me something that reminds me of how old I am. For instance, did you know that kids who turned 18 this year didn’t see Aladdin in theaters? Today, it’s the passing of Geocities, which is shuttering its doors tonight at 11:59pm.

Finding that out today is just one big mixed bag of nostalgia for me. I’m writing this from a bus wi-fi connection, which has about as much bandwidth at the 14.4k modem I used way back when I made my first Geocities website. Of course I let it fall into neglect shortly thereafter and Geocities, or the current owner Yahoo, cleaned it off their servers.

For those too young to remember geocities, it was one of the first sites to allow used with a basic knowledge of HTML to code their own web pages. Five million fan pages for Jonathan Taylor Thomas later, we had what was the most garish collection of sites that were perpetually under construction displaying blink tags —perish the thought — and comic sans headlines. Yahoo purchased Geocities back in 1998 for $3.5bil, which was no small sum of money, and has taken care of it since.

However, now that personalized sites are more likely to be found on Facebook or (the equally garish) Myspace, Geocities has become something of a money bleeder, and Yahoo is pulling the plug. Users are encouraged to port their sites over to Yahoo’s paid service.

So, let us mourn the passing of Geocities as it goes into that good night.

Google saw the millions of people searching for the pop-artists name and assumed they had to of come from an automated source, either requiring them to perform a CAPATCHA or denying their request altogether. Realized they were missing a key market opportunity—second to not inventing Twitter in the first place, of course—Google and Bing have both reached agreements with Twitter and Facebook to start indexing peoples’ tweets and public status updates, respectively.

Bing’s Twitter search page is live now, as is Google’s Twitter incorporation. We tried a few searches that are trending right now (Ed: Are we really still talking about balloon boy?), and sure enough, both search engines displayed a few results. Bing also has a tag cloud with trending topics organized by how hot they are.

It will be interesting to see how well the two companies are and handling the intense amount of link and hashtag spam occurring and to see how successful they’ll be at keeping it from befuddling search results. Of course, now that Twitter has included adding spam links and non-relevant hanstags as violations to their terms of service, it looks like everyone is trying to keep a handle on the problem.

The most extensive Twitter search, set at search.twitter.com, only indexes two weeks worth of tweets, so it’ll be interesting to see how long Google keeps tweets in their indexes. Right now, there is no easy way to find a specific tweet that you sent in the past. That being said, it also doesn’t appear that the purpose of indexing these tweets is for long-term storage—Google and Bing are probably only looking for a way to figure out what’s hot now.

Critics have also been dismissive of Twitter for a long time, pointing out that without ads, the company has no monetization strategy, and will never turn a profit. While making a profit is secondary when you have millions in venture funding coming in already, but licensing its API to Microsoft and Google is a great way to make money, and Twitter may have finally stumbled upon their key to monetary success.

Google is partnering with iLike and Lala for a new music service. Both of these sites allow users to stream samples of any song in their catalogs, while Lala allows users to stream whole songs once, on-demand before requiring a small fee. The sites also allow users to embed the stream in a site. Because both sites have signed deals will all four major record labels, the vast majority of music will be available.

Google has long had a music search built into results, despite never having advertised it much, useable with a simple “music:” operator. Results included a listing of songs and albums that matched the query, with links to music sellers to purchase the songs. While this is strictly conjecture, we’re predicting that Google will start incorporating song streams directly into the search results.

While the music labels are usually seemingly adverse to any incorporation of new technology, they’ll likely be happy with all the extra eyes being directed to sites where users might purchase music legally. The offical announcement is scheduled for October 28, so we’ll let you know if anything changes.

Tumor growth is actually relatively common; however, most tumors are benign, and do not invasively grow further outward or take up residence in other locations. That process, known as metastasis, is the true killer in cancer, as the body becomes unable to fight off the multiple new tumors that begin to disrupt normal body function.

The ACS is now telling patients that we may be over-treating the less-threatening tumors, and in the process missing more-threatening cases.  Since advocating screening, the ACS acknowledges that cancer diagnoses have increased. However, for frequent screenings to actually prove beneficial to the public health, there should have been a corresponding decrease in cancer deaths. Instead, widespread screening has only led to an increase in the discovery and treatment of tumors that would have remained harmless and wouldn’t have required any intervention.

While screening has resulted in fewer late-stage cancer cases for colon and cervical cancers, unfortunately there’s no data to show that we’ve seen fewer deaths in breast and prostate cancers, and doctors are now worried that the public has been over-promised on the benefits of some cancer screens.

However, Colin Begg, a biostatistician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York told The Times that he’s worried that the message will confuse the public who will assume that all cancer screenings are unnecessary. “I am concerned that the complex view of a changing landscape will be distilled by the public into yet another ‘screening does not work’ headline. The fact that population screening is no panacea does not mean that it is useless,” he said.

For now, it will just take time for doctors and researchers to determine which tumors should be treated, and which, counter intuitively should be left alone. In the mean time, follow the advice of your doctor, whatever that might be.

(photo via)

The ability to grow new tissues in a lab is an area of much fervor. The long list of people waiting for an organ transplant certainly could use it, as could land mine victims. One of the largest hurdles in tissue engineering is the development of bone, which requires certain chemical signals to grow. While researches have long known what these signals are, they have yet to be able to deliver them in a way that leads to proper bone growth.

Now, researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a new technology meant to aide the human body in growing new bone. The scientists developed a flexible scaffolding of soluble fibers that promote the growth by trapping the growth-stimulating drugs within the scaffold, preventing them from being metabolized too quickly by the body, and holding them in specific locations to dictate the growth pattern of the new bone.

While the technology is far from being ready to test in human subjects, the scientists predict that the technology could be used at first to grow new bone for dental implants. Further developments could eventually allow the technology to be adapted for cosmetic surgeries, allowing patients to grow their own implants.

“Our fibers provide all the advantages that clinicians in tissue regeneration are calling for,” says Professor Meital Zilberman. “Being thin, they’re ideal when delicate scaffolds are called for. But they can also be the basic building blocks of bones and tissues when bigger structures are needed.”

Further research will be aimed at growing new types of tissues, and eventually developing complete sets of tissues. We may never be able to grow a new arm on our own, but science may give us a way in the future.

We could probably file this under “Obvious Science,” but officals at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate Troy, NY have warned students that the sharing of cups during games of beer pong lead to the spread of disease, and especially of the spread of H1N1 this flu season. The same officials sent out a campus-wide email detailed a group of students who had all come down the virus after a weekend game.

Area schools are reporting many cases of the swine flu; RPI, a school of about 7,000 total students has reported 21 cases this semester so far.

(photo via)

Coming in early 2010, Google will open its e-book store with 50,000 titles. The books would be indexed and searchable via the Google Books site. This also means that purchasers will have access to the purchased books via a web interface as well as on their reading devices. Users’ browsers will also allow the books to be cached for offline reading using Google Gears.

While nothing official relating to Google’s new OS announced, a web-app for reading e-books fits in perfectly with Google’s plans to moving everything into a Chrome browser-OS-web application system. Also, there are many companies currently offering e-books that have been a round for a while, so Google is hardly new to the game. At the same time, e-books have yet to truly catch on yet.

We, of course, would like to think that this is only because Google wasn’t playing the game.

While many of these discoveries are based on shoddy science, a recent study, which was actually rather elegant in design, has found that a lack of social interaction can lead to increased breast cancer tumor growth, indicating that social environment could play a role, along with environmental and genetic factors, in the determination of the severity of a cancer.

The study used genetically similar mice that are altered so that they develop mammary tumors. Mice were either housed alone or with other mice. The mice kept alone showed greater tumor growth than the mice housed together.

Scientifically, the researchers found higher stress hormone levels in the mice housed alone before there were even measurable changes in the tumor sizes. Even though the two groups of mice were genetically very similar, the stress hormones caused measurable changes in gene expression before there was even any indication that the tumors in the two groups were growing differently.

The researches point out hat they intend to focus further research on researching the specific cell types in which these genetic changes are occurring, and then targeting the pathways that connect the stress hormones to their detrimental effects rather than to suggest that cancer patients should maintain strong social contacts.

Either way, every new thing we learn about cancer is another tool in our arsenal to conquer the disease, and this is an interesting find that gives scientists a new avenue of research.

Image courtesy Flickr/Rick in Rio.

Shooting from a plane in the sky at Kirtland Air Force base at the White Sands Missile Range in, this was the first time the laser had been switched on with the intent of casing damage. And damage it caused, as evidenced by the video the Air Force released of the weapon in action.

The weapon was developed by Boeing for the military to use in dense urban environments, where highly targeted weapons are valued to minimize collateral damage. “This milestone demonstrates that directed energy weapon systems will transform the battlespace and save lives by giving war fighters a speed-of-light, ultra-precision engagement capability that will dramatically reduce collateral damage,” said Greg Hyslop, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems.

Even though it may appear that this is the Air Force preparing for a battle with Megatron, the weapon, along with a similar sibling laser to be mounted on a 747 as a missile defense system, still have more testing to undergo before they’ll be completely combat ready.

Thanks Nichole!

But no matter how much I try to justify it to myself, I just don’t have that much of a reason to personally have a car. I ride my bike around town eight months out of the year and curse the MBTA’s existence the other four. Cambridge, the place I call home, is replete with bike lines on practically every major thoroughfare, and Boston is certainly attempting to get there too. And when all else fails, I’m always up for a lovely stroll through town. It’s Boston, after all!

But there are times when it’s clear that I need a car. Like for my frequent trips to Ikea. Or like every eight or so weeks when I go on a massive grocery shopping binge because I hate walking back and forth between the grocery store, even though its only ten minutes away form my house. Or like every eight weeks when I do the laundry because I hate doing laundry with every fiber of my being.

Luckily for those times, there’s Zipcar. If you’ve been living underneath a rock, I’ll — pardon the pun — zip Zipcar up for you. The Cambridge based and founded company allows licensed drivers aged 21 and over to rent a wide variety of cars parked all over the city by the hour or by the day.

If you’re feeling eco-conscious, grab Prius Pete — every Zipcar has an adorable, alliterative name — from the Genzyme Garage in Kendall Square for $7 per hour. If you’re feeling flashier, grab Baker the BMW 328 for $13 per hour from the Boston Common garage.

To become a Zipcar member, users pay a $50 annual fee to join. For those who only grab a car every now and then, they pay the hourly or day-rate for whichever vehicle they want. For those who drive more often, users can make a minimum monthly commitment, and cash in on discounted rates. Every reservation includes 180 miles of driving, a gas card to fill the car up — and make sure to use it any time the vehicle falls beneath a quarter tank! — insurance to cover your indiscretions, and a parking pass if the Zipcar lives in a non-free lot.

Users make a reservation, tap their RFID-tagged Zipcard on the windshield to unlock the vehicle, which already has the key inside the ignition. They then zip around town, and then lock it up when finished by tapping their Zipcard on the windshield again.

Car sharing is as simple as the name sounds. The cars are meant to be parked near where users will need them. Because everyone pays a membership fee, they all in a way jointly own and share the vehicles. Everyone is expected to fill the gas when it gets low, keep the car relatively clean, and keep it from being damaged. Zipcar will even reimburse users that pay for a carwash. Another big part of car sharing is making sure the vehicle is where it’s supposed to be. When Zipcar says your reservation is over at 6:00 PM, they mean 6:00 PM, sharp. If you haven’t locked your car up by then, you’ll get a late fee. Get enough late fees, and Zipcar will suspend you from driving.

Obviously, I don’t want to turn you off from Zipcar. You have to really piss someone off to actually get your account suspended, and because it’s a car sharing program after all, users are usually rather fanatic and therefore largely respectful of the rules. Overall, Zipcar is simple, effective, and much better than having a car and insurance payment every month — plus, for me at least, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to driving a Beamer before I can ever afford one of my own.

While Zipcar got its start in Cambridge back in 2000, it has since spread to 49 cities across the world. Zipcar was founded by residents Robin Chase and Antje Danielson who based the company on car-sharing programs similar to those in Europe. By the end of 2002, the company had 6,000 users in Boston, D.C., and New York.

Zipcar got its start by stocking different neighborhoods with different cars, giving each area it’s own identity. In Cambridge, home to the recycling, biking, hippie granola crunchy type, the company filled the neighborhood with gas-sipping Priuses. In the Back Bay, Zipsters were more likely to want a showier convertible Mini-Cooper for weekend trips to the Cape.

Now in 2009, Zipcar has merged with former rival Flexcar, and now commands a fleet of 6,000 vehicles for 675,000 users in places as far as Ann Arbor, Mich., Tuscaloosa, Alab., and even across the pond in London. In fact, in one of the tougher economic times we’ve seen, Zipcar is preparing itself to go public, and is launching an IPO in 2010. The company is constantly adding cars to its fleet and expanding its user base. With the influx of cash from an IPO, Zipcar really will be going places.

What makes Zipcar so special is its amazing blend of cute personality, sharp business prowess, and of course, cutting edge technology. The technology starts when you try to start the car. Sitting in the upper right corner of every Zipcar is a little black box. When you tap your Zipcard on the windshield above it, the system sends out a signal to Zipcar HQ over EVDO — yes, that ancient data technology your old cell phone used to run — that matches your card to a reservation to a specific Zipcar. When everything aligns correctly, the black box unlocks the car door, the black box releases the kill switch on the engine, and you get in and drive off.

The black box is also hooked into the on-board diagnostics system, or OBD. When my Zipcar wouldn’t start on a particularly cold January night, I called Zipcar, and the helpful man on the phone could already tell me that I had killed the car battery by leaving my headlights during my quick trip into Trader Joe’s. If you somehow lock your Zipcard inside the vehicle, a quick phone call to Zipcar customer service can unlock it. Likewise, the black box has a simple GPS system so that the vehicles can be located should they wander off and get lost. The same kill switch that keeps the car from being stolen can also kill the car should it somehow manage to drive off.

However, the newest technology debuted at the tail-end of September is, of course, Zipcar’s new iPhone app. Up to now, users have had to make reservations though the Zipcar website, the mobile website, or over the phone. Both of the websites are robust, AJAXy, and a breeze to use. The phone however, well, lets just say it’s not Zipcar’s fault if you’re using a technology from the 19th century.

But now with the magic of the Zipcar iPhone app, users can locate themselves on a map of all of Zipcar’s offerings, make a reservation, and even unlock the car from inside the application. When I did just that with my iPhone app, I almost cried from the sheer amazingness of what I’d just done. It also made me feel amazingly futuristic, despite the fact that we’re all supposed to have personal jetpacks in the future. And OK, fine, people have been able to remotely unlock cars since OnStar in the 90s, but that still required calling someone who was sitting at a computer somewhere in Arizona. Now, I can do it from my touch screen god-phone.

Using the rest of the app was just as easy as you would expect Zipcar to make it. Making my reservation was a breeze. The app grayed out all Zipcar lots that didn’t have a car that matched my time reservation. If you needed the exact location of a Zipcar lot, the app would send the exact coordinates to your Maps application which would then direct you to the lot. While my reservation as open, I could extend the time I needed the car from inside the app as well.

Zipcar polled its users and found that 25% of them had an iPhone, hence releasing their first app on Apple’s platform. Everyone else without an iPhone can still use the mobile website to make reservations. Also, once you’ve given Zipcar your cell phone number, they’ll send you text message reminders about your reservations. You can then extend your reservation just by texting Zipcar back. “Ext30m” will get you an extra half-hour to get back while “End today 4pm” will do just what it says.

Zipcar has always been a company to embrace technology, and now every car in their fleet now comes equipped with an auxillary cord to plug into your iPod or mp3 player of choice, so you can jam out to Taylor Swift, or any other embarrassing musical offering you might enjoy. Every car has a toll-tag that auto-magically bills your Zipcar account for the tolls.

Another thing that’s hard to ignore about Zipcar is that the company is rather green—and we’re talking about more than its logo. Like I said before, I only drive a Zipcar when I really need one. But if I had a car of my own, I’d probably take a lot more places. That means I’m driving more, burning more gas, and doing my part to warm the earth with more carbon dioxide. When you factor in people who just use Zipcar instead of owning a car, that’s a lot fewer miles being driven out there.

Zipcar recognizes this, and discounts the Priuses in its fleet more than the other vehicles. Zipcar even ran a “low-car diet challenge” which in return for media coverage, encourage drivers to hang up their keys for a month and ride public transit or use a Zipcar when absolutely necessary. While the miles saved from these twelve users is merely a minuscule blip in the amount of carbon spewed into the atmosphere by the millions of drivers in the U.S. every day, the ideas are still a good one. It’s also a counter intuitive notion, considering that Zipcar essentially makes its money when people drive, but it’s just the good-nature of the company. When was the last time you saw gas companies encouraging eco-consciousness?

Zipcar is here for good it seems, and that’s something that I, and thousands of other users certainly embrace. While Zipcar advertises through print frequently, a lot of Zipcar’s brand strength comes through word of mouth. Zipcar user Matthew Lasek shared just such a story. “About two weeks ago I rented a Volvo and zipped to the hardware store to fill up on more paint, brushes and cleaner to remove all the paint I would inevitably spill. While locking the car a 65 year-old woman asked ‘So how does Zipcar work?’” Lasek then explained the entire membership and rental rental process to the questioning woman, Brookline resident Lauren Smith, who lamented how expensive it is to rent a cart through a traditional car service and how she hated asking her daughter to drive her on her errands.

When asked to sum up the Zipcar experience, Lasek put it like this: “I think this is what Zip Car is: freedom. This strong and able senior wanted to have the freedom to do something as simple as go to Johnny’s Fresh Market; while my exploits in Zipcars to the beach or Six Flags are a little more adventurous, the fact remains that Zipcar lets us do things that our own two legs can’t, or what our wallets would prohibit.”

Images courtesy Zipcar, the author, and Flickr users Andrew Currie, rakka, reinvented, and scoobyfoo.

The software uses Microsoft’s own Dynamic Signature Service which fingerprints threats constantly, without having to wait for new definitional updates. The tool is low-resource, and minimizes CPU and memory usage while the computer in use. Of course, the biggest advantage will come when the vast majority of users have installed the software, preventing the spread of malware between users. While Microsoft has no plans to push MSE out to its users, the real benefit will come when it decides to do so.

MSE has remained largely unchanged since the beta tests, and requires no registration, trials or renewals and will be available for download directly from Microsoft for XP SP2 through Windows 7, although users will have to pass a Windows Genuine Advantage test to download the product.

Obviously though, wading through all those apps can be rather daunting. While a new App Store earlier this month certainly helped, Yappler wants to take it one step further and has launched Yappler Sync, a discovery tool for Windows and OS X that allows iPhone users to share a list of their favorite apps with their friends. The tool scans a users App Store library, and sends that list to the Yappler website, where a user can share it anonymously or post it for others.

Yappler.com Sync also creates a list of the apps used by all of its users and updates the list when new apps are downloaded or old ones are deleted, generating their own Top Apps list. Users can share their own list of apps on Twitter and Facebook, or even embed the list as a widget on personal blogs and webpages, like below. We noticed that Yappler doesn’t not which apps you personally don’t sync to your phone though. We don’t actually keep multiple fart apps on our phone. Honest.

Check Yappler out, and share your app lists in the comments.

One employee of Rocky Mountain Bank did just that. He sent another email requesting that the user delete the message without reading it and to reply back to “discuss her actions.” When no one replied to discuss her actions, the bank, of course, sued Google to reveal the account owners information.

Google requires a court order to unmask clients, and even when served with papers, still allows users to object to their identity being revealed before they comply with a court order.

Last week, a California judge officially ordered Google to reveal the user and to deactivate that user’s account in the meantime. This of course brings up all sorts of other problems, especially considering that the user did nothing wrong in the first place. Consulting lawyers have said that the order likely infringes on the user’s First Amendment rights to communicate online.

What exactly deactivating the user’s account is supposed to accomplish is unclear to just about everyone, including us, unless they’re really just trying to get the user’s attention.

In any case, the biggest problem right now is that the bank has yet to notify any of their clients that their identities could have been compromised.

Micrograph showing HIV fusing with a cell membrane on entry. © 2002 by Bruce Alberts et al.

Scientists in Thailand have announced the first success, though limited, of its kind in the development of an HIV vaccine last night.

AIDS is a serious disease, as we’re sure you know. In 2007, AIDS killed approximately 2.1 million people — not exactly a small population. With million of new diagnoses each year, every major worldwide health organization has declared AIDS to be a pandemic.

Currently, the only medications available are highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimens. Developed with a patient’s doctor, three or four drugs are prescribed in combination to be taken together, in which the drugs and dosing are optimized for each patient. Those without access to industrialized medicine are without the benefits of these drugs. So, the best bet we have to defeating HIV is to prevent infection from occurring in the first place.

A vaccine that prevents HIV from infecting health immune cells or from spreading beyond them is the ultimate goal of research programs, but to date, every one has failed. The most recent program even showed an increase in HIV infection in those who received the vaccine, leading to an early termination of the program. Many scientists have actually called for HIV vaccine programs to be called off entirely, assuming that none of them would ever show any promise.

The vaccine under development is a combination of two previous vaccines that did show any benefit when used singularly. However, used together, the vaccines were able to prevent about thirty percent of HIV infections over the placebo treatment, a result that surprised

The vaccine works by shuttling three genes that code for proteins on the HIV virus in side a different, benign virus in an attempt to get the body to start producing antibodies against the HIV proteins, priming the immune system to attack HIV upon entry.

Scientists were disappointed however to see that those who received the virus yet became infected did not show lower viral loads than those who did not receive the virus. Also, vaccines licensed by the FDA in the US usually show about an eighty percent efficacy rate, so it’s very doubtful that the vaccine will ever come to market.This is why scientists stress that the study is an important starting point for the further development and optimization of a better HIV vaccine.

No, we’re not plotting the reasons for the demise of American health. These are current applications for you iPhone that allow you to place an order without ever speaking to another human! Considering that we’ll spend twenty minutes scouring websites in order to make a doctor’s appointment to avoid actually having to place a phone call, this clearly represents a marked improvement in our lives.

The application features what you would expect it to—location awareness selects the correct store for your delivery—to the unexpected—shake your iPhone to make your hotwings spicy! The application is actually very svelte, and supports the entire range of iPhone input gestures. You can pinch and pull the pizza to make it go from a personal pan size to an extra-large. You can rotate the phone between landscape and portrait, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, and you can swipe forward to move steps.

The pizza builder is our favorite part. You can drag and drop individual topping to your custom pizza, or click and drag the phrases like “ranch chicken” for predefined sets of toppings.

While we haven’t technically placed an order with the application (iTunes) yet, you can check out the official YouTube video below.

Photo courtesty lanier67, Flickr.

The war on cigarettes has taken another step forward. The FDA has announced a ban on cigarettes, in effect starting today, that are “flavored” like any fruit, candy, or clove as part of the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Ninety percent of adult smokers started smoking when they were teenagers, so the FDA’s logic says that making cigarettes less appealing should keep more people form smoking. Likewise, 17 year old smokers are three times as likely as adult smokers to use flavored cigarettes.

The FDA has sent letters to tobacco industry officials explaining the law, and warning of stern penalties for those who continue to defy it.

“Youth are twice as likely to report seeing advertising for these flavored products as adults are,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a pediatrician and the FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner. “Marketing campaigns for products with sweet candy and fruit flavors can mislead young people into thinking that these products are less addictive and less harmful.”

The FDA is also looking into regulating menthol cigarettes as well as other flavored tobacco products.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the future if there weren’t some sort of convergence, and sure enough, the app integrates with Facebook and Twitter (What, no MySpace? Twilight fans always struck us at the MySpace type) to allow users to post to their other social networks about Twilight. The app also allows users to select an avatar of their favorite Twilight character. (We wanted Bella’s dad, but that’s not a choice.)

As the release of “New Moon” approaches, the app will continue to be updated with showtimes, movie news, tickets, and and products from the Twilight series. The Twilight Tracker app is available for $2.99.

Artist's rendition of the angry mob of Google workers outside the Apple offices in Cupertino.

In the ongoing volleying between Apple and Google over the Google Voice application, Google has released an unredacted version of the letter it sent to the FCC. In it, Google states that Apple has unequivocally rejected the Google voice application for the iPhone.

The Google Voice application was supposed to allow iPhone users to access all of the features that are part of the Grand Central system that Google acquired back in 2007, including one VoIP phone number that rings all of your phone numbers, integrated SMS, and customizable voicemail and call-screening depending on the caller. Rumor has it that Apple and AT&T are worried that the Google app could replace core functionalities on the iPhone—or eat into AT&T’s bottom line.

Here are the relevant quotes. Google states in its letter to the FCC which discussed negotiations between the two companies:

Apple representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone.

This stands in direct contrast to Apple’s statement in a press release:

We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter. Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google.

In any case, one of these companies is lying, because they can’t both be true. Google claims that Apple rejected both the Google Voice and the Google Latitude applications because they duplicated functions the iPhone is already capable of doing and might create customer confusion. This is, of course, laughable considering the number of calculators, stopwatches, email apps, and all the other apps available in the store that blatantly duplicate available functionality.

Google and Apple used to be a match made in heaven, until the two companies found themselves in ever-growing competition. With Google throwing its full weight behind the mobile open-source Android platform, they’re increasingly finding themselves in direction competition with Apple—so much so, that Google CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down from Apple’s board of directors.

Only time will tell if these two companies will ever be able to make nice. We sure hope so, because the idea of using MapQuest instead of the pre-installed Google maps application on our iPhone makes us shudder.

Network neutrality is a contentious subject. In a way, everyone has an understanding that ISPs will provide an uninhibited flow from content providers to the end users without purposely affecting traffic. Companies that provide internet connections, like Comcast and Verizon, often discuss their displeasure in the fact that content providers, like Google and Amazon, make their profits using the infrastructure that the ISPs have set up, without having to pay for any of it.

In theory, ISPs could choose which traffic is allowed to travel over their pipes, blocking entire domains if they wanted to. While this has never officially happened in the US, there exist no rules to actually bar ISPs from doing so. While blocking domains is a rather draconian measure that would likely never occur, Comcast has been known to throttle BitTorrent traffic, giving other data priority over the file-sharing platform.

Comcast got a scolding from the FCC, but BitTorent wasn’t a company out to make a living, so there weren’t really any damages — other than the dishonesty over its actions to Comcast’s customers. Nevertheless, it’s easy to see how an ISP could throttle one company’s traffic over another’s, resulting in damages to a business.

The FCC panel is made up of Chairman Genachowski, two democrats, and two republicans. The panel previously voted 3-2 to favor net neutrality rules, so this could be an indication of how they will vote in the future to formally codify these rules.

"Damn Scientists" t-shirt at Threadless.com

If we were to make a list to things that we were supposed to have because this is the future, right behind our personal jetpack would be a levitation device. While we’re still waiting on that jetpack, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA has invented a device capable of floating a mouse in midair.

In everyday terms, the scientists created a magnet so strong that it could repel water molecules, which only react to magnetism is the strongest of magnetic fields. In scientific terms, the group using a superconducting, supercooled electromagnet to create a magnetic field of 17 teslas, 10,000 times stronger than the Earth’s average magnetic field. Because water molecules are diamagnetic, all of the water molecules generate a magnetic field of their own that opposes the field that generated them. The result is a force capable of levitating the mouse in midair.

Scientists have previously levitated objects and animals like grasshoppers and frogs, but this is the first time that they have used a mammal. Mice are also used as model organisms in the vast majority of medical research, hence the “gravity” of the accomplishment. (And sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves.)

The scientists plan to use the device to study the long-term effects of microgravity on the mice. While the first mice put in the device flipped around and became disoriented, adjustments have allowed the scientists to keep the mice in place, and even feed them, allowing them to basically live inside the field. Studying the physical effects of low gravity was (obviously) only possible during space flight. Now, this land-based research will prove useful for future space exploration where astronauts might have to live for extended periods of time in space.

This signifies a shift from last month when government officials were warning Americans that the swine flu vaccine could be delayed or require multiple dosing. Because the vaccine will likely only require a single dose, it is expeted that even more people will be able to receive the vaccine.

High-risk patients will be allowed to receive the H1N1 vaccine at the beginning of October, while it will be available to the general public by mid-October.

The vaccine for the general flu season is widely available now, and health officials are urging people not to wait to get it. The flu season has started earlier than usual this year, and has proven to be rather virulent, aso early and wide vaccination is the government’s first line of defense against the coming flu season.

But now, Motorola is introducing the Cliq with Motoblur, which allows you to update, post, and read everyone on all of your social networks all on the homescreen of your phone.

Motoblur is Motorola’s first offering built on top of Google’s Android phone OS. Motoblur is the “solution” that allows you to post to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, and last.fm. Content is delivered to the home screen of the phone in different categories to let users better handle the stream of information.

Updates, including statuses, wall posts, and friend feeds from social networks are delivered to the “Happenings” box, while email and networking messages are delivered to the “Messages” box. You can update all or some of your networks from the “Social Status” box, and an RSS feed reader will deliver headlines to your home screen.

The underling Android system allows tight integration between Google’s offerings, including Gmail and Google Calendar, as well as contact syncing with your Google account.

The Cliq phone itself is packed with 3G and A-GPS, wi-fi, a 5 megapixel camera, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a standard headphone jack to let you listen to music or stream last.fm playlists. The Cliq doesn’t have an official release date other than “fourth quarter” from T-Mobile. Definitely looks like something to add to the Christmas list.

The shade wagon is a high-capacity wagon capable of carrying two full coolers on either side of a storage console that also mounts an umbrella. The wagon comes with a cooler and two seats, with a capacity for twice that, plus a volcano grill. The umbrella also anchors the wagon to keep it from rolling away. Fold down a side on the Shade Wagon, and nylon straps hold it level, forming a table. When the nylon straps aren’t holding the side up, they can be used to carry folding chairs.

Unlatch them, and then you have two bench seats. No tailgating party would be complete without music, and the Shade Wagon comes built in with a battery operated Altec Lansing speaker to plug your iPod into.

While marketed as a tailgating tool, it would be just as appropriate at the beach, picnic, or any outdoor event. Fire up the grills and pass us a hot dog.

Take Acer for example. The last year has seen an explosion in the popularity of netbook computers, and Acer’s Apsire One line of $270 netbooks are all the rage. Previously, no one has heard of MSI, but now everyone and their mother is hacking their $300 Wind to run OS X. Same with Asus and their EEE PC line.

Some companies ready to break onto the scene are more familiar for their other products. At the Nokia World conference in Germany last week, Nokia announced their Booklet 3G, a sleek, 2 cm thin aluminum netbook, signifying that the company who previously made their mark on the electronics world by manufacturing phones is now trying to expand themselves back onto the PC market after selling that division more than fifteen years ago.

The Booklet 3G is powered by the same Intel Atom processor in the MSI Wind and Acer One lines, but whereas those netbooks are only wi-fi capable, the Booklet 3G will come built in with a 3G/HSPA antenna, giving the netbook data network access wherever cell reception is available, along with the assisted GPS found in mobile phones. The netbook will also have a 10.1-inch HD-ready screen and HDMI port, something typically reserved for higher-end laptops and desktop, and certainly not something offered on current netbooks.

Nokia is truly in a unique position too introduce a computer as ground breaking as the Booklet 3G is. Of course, a netbook this exciting is also rather wallet-breaking as well. While only European pricing has been announced so far, the Booklet 3G will sell for 575 euros, which comes to about 820 dollars. However, netbooks often come subsidized if they have a data antenna. No subsidies have been announced yet, but they would have to be hefty to be anywhere near the sub-$300 prices on other netbooks.

It’s also yet to seen whether or not the subsidized notebook market will even prove to be profitable. Many carriers in the US are offering netbooks for as low as $50 with a 2-year data contract. Considering how much iPhone users complain about being locked into their contracts though, the carriers will probably face some stiff resistance.

Curiously and notably absent form the netbook market though is Apple. Apple even poked fun at the concept of a netbook yesterday at their keynote, showing an image of someone failing to shove a Dell Mini into his back pocket. Apple continues to claim that people don’t want an underpowered netbook; they want fast and they want powerful. Of course this is belied by the fact Apple continues to offer their white plastic MacBook for sale, and that their “mobile computing platform” of the iPhone and iPod touch has half the processing power of current netbooks.

More over, an article Wired ran last month argued that we’re in the middle of the “good enough” revolution, stating that “the low end has never been riding higher.” An interesting point to consider.

In any case, netbooks are here to stay. It’ll be interesting to seem some the innovations that trickle down towards the end user from higher end computers. An always on data connection, A-GPS, and HDMI connectivity are a great start. What’s next?

iPod Nano.

Apple is adding a video camera to its iPod Nanos, allowing users to take still pictures or film clips for easy uploading to YouTube later, all at the same price pont as a 4 GB Kickflip.  Apple is also — and finally, in our opinion — adding an FM radio. While we haven’t listened to a radio since 2003, its always seemed a cheap component that everyone else has always offered. But in typical Apple fashion, they’ve bettered it: users will be able to live-pause the music, and tag songs to later find them in iTunes. Pricing for the Nano is $149 for 8GB, and $179 for 16GB, all of which come in Apple’s standard candy colored offerings.

iPod Touch.

Apple’s iPod Touch line also saw battery and memory upgrades and price drops. The 8GB iPod touch is now only $199. However, users can also purchase the 32 and 64 GB models for $299 and $399 respectively which include new Open GL firmware for better video and game performance, a necessary upgrade to maintain Apple’s relevance in the mobile gaming marketplace.

iPod Shuffle

Apple’s iPod shuffle is also getting five new colors and price drops. The 2 GB model is only $59 dollars, while the 4 GB model is $79. There still aren’t any controls on the player itself, meaning you’re still limited to headphones with the built-in controls. Apple did announce that many manufacturers are adding support for the controls on board, or through adapters.

All of these are solid upgrades, and while there’s still no tablet, this should definitely take Apple successfully into the upcoming holiday season.

In response to Apple’s millimeters-thick stainless steel keyboard, Microsoft’s latest announcement is the Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000, their thinnest keyboard ever.  The entire keyboard is only slightly thicker than the AAA battery that powers it at the back. The stylish keyboard has Microsoft’s familiar ergonomic curved layout.

Something missing from most laptops these days is a number pad. For anyone who uses numbers with any frequency, an external keyboard becomes a necessity. The downside is that a number bad adds a great deal of bulk. Microsoft solved this but making the keypad a standalone product that comes with its own carrying case. Pair it to your computer when you need it, and stow it away when you don’t.

The Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 will retail in October for $90, while the number pad will be $45. Certainly not the cheapest keyboard set ever, but probably worth taking a look.

The ZVOX 440.

Swampscott-based ZVOX, self-proclaimed pioneer of all-in-one home theater system, is introducing two new high-performance sound bars at affordable prices.

Made of hand-crafted wood cabinets and premium grade sound parts as opposed to the usual plastic and cheap components seen in typical all-in-one sets, the sets generate virtual surround sound from three compact speakers and a built in subwoofer all from a slim profile.  Set-up is simple, with just a single jack connecting the TV and speaker bar. And because green features are all the rage, the sets will put themselves into stand-by mode after a few minutes without any input.

The ZVOX 430.

This time, researchers collaborating between Germany, England, and Florida have found out that men are interested in casual sex no matter the attractiveness of the female asking them out. No more surprisingly, women are much more apt to judge the attractiveness of the person approaching them and are less willing to accept a sexual invitation should their suitor be unattractive.

The experiment was conducted via a questionnaire at three different colleges where the subjects were told to “vividly imagine” a slightly unattractive, slightly attractive, or very attractive person approaching them and asking them to “go out on a date,” “come back to my place,” and “to sleep with me.” The full results are below, but essentially men were willing to accept any of the three requests no matter the attractiveness of the person approaching them. Sixty-five percent of the men were willing to sleep with even the slightly unattractive female.

Women, on the other hand, were not as forgiving. Only half the women accepted the invitation to even “go out” with the slightly unattractive guy. Heaven forbid he ask to her to come back to his apartment or to go to bed with him—women accepted these invitations only 13 and 5 percent respectively.

Perhaps most tellingly, yet least surprisingly are the differences in responses between the males and females. Men wanted to get laid. Depending on the attractiveness of the female approaching them, men agreed to sleep with them between 65 and 83 percent of the time. Women, however, were only willing to sleep with the men who asked them out between 5 and 24 percent of the time.

Scientifically, this supports other observations that men tend to be much more sexual and really want to get laid while females tend to look for “good genes” in their potential sexual partners. But what does this mean for your every day life?

For the guys, look at yourself in the mirror because you’re probably not as attractive as you think you are, and the girls probably won’t even want to date you if you’re moderately attractive. Harsh, I know, but I didn’t make the rules. Girls — and I realize I’m running a fine line giving you advice as a male — do you think you could cut us a small break from time to time? Sometimes all we need is a bit of sex. Do you have to judge us so harshly?

Even if we knew what the results of this experiment would have been before it was ever conducted, it’s always interesting to be able to put numbers on every day life, even if it means that all men are skanks and all women are out to make us feel like crap.

When applying to sell a new drug in the US, companies must specify the intended use of the drug and at which dosages they will be sold. Pfizer ran afoul of drug law here by marketing the anti-inflammatory drug Bextra for off-label uses and at dosages the FDA refused to approve out of safety concerns.

Pfizer pulled Bextra from the market in 2005.

For this offense alone, Pfizer will pay a $1.195 billion fine, the single largest criminal fine ever served in the US for any matter, and forfeit another $105 million in revenue gathered from sales. “The size and seriousness of this resolution, including the huge criminal fine of $1.3 billion, reflect the seriousness and scope of Pfizer’s crimes,” said Mike Loucks, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Pfizer will also pay a $1 billion civil penalty under the False Claims Act to the government for alleged kickbacks to health care providers in exchange for increased prescriptions for several drugs including Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica. This civil penalty is the largest fraud settlement against a pharmaceutical company ever.

A large portion of the settlement will pay directly back into health care systems, important at a time when Medicare is underfunded and health care reform are in the news every day.  “This historic settlement will return nearly $1 billion to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance programs,” said Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, “securing their future for the Americans who depend on these programs.”Pfizer

Image produced of a single pentacene molecule.

Scientists have managed to do something thought impossible. Even though that actually happens every day because that’s kind of the point of science. Nevertheless, scientists at IBM have managed to produce an image of a single molecule.

Even though microscopes come in many different forms, they all work via the same premise. Light microscopes use light waves, electron microscopes use waves of electrons. Specimens reflect those waves, which our eye perceives or computers interpret. All waves have a certain wavelength, or size. Anything smaller than that wavelength is unable to reflect the wave back, just like how waves at the beach continue to wash past you when you’re standing alone, but a sea wall will stop them in their tracks.

Diagram of how atomic force microscopy forms its images.

Simple compounds, like the molecule of pentacene that the group at IBM imaged, are much smaller than any wavelengths of light we can currently use to image them. Pentacene is about 0.7 nanometers across; a typical grain of sand is about 2,000,000 nanometers across.

The scientists used an “atomic-force microscope,” which uses what is essentially a ridiculously tiny tuning fork with a single molecule of carbon monoxide at the end to poke at the molecule. The tuning fork returns different vibrations above the atoms of the molecule than above the surface the molecule was on. To eliminate any stray gas molecules or vibrations from interfering with the measurements, the experiment was performed in a vacuum at -450 degrees.

The resulting image actually shows the structure, including the carbon and hydrogen atoms of the molecule. The scientists hope to further refine the technique, where it will prove very useful in the further development of nanotechnology.

This comes as a surprise to many of us, especially considering that Apple rejected (or is “indefinitely studying”—Google’s voice applications, presumably because they pose a threat to their bottom lines. Despite that Spotify poses an obvious threat to Apple’s music selling dominance in iTunes, they seem to have done the noble thing, and approved Spotify.

Users can now stream entire multi-million song catalogue to their phones over data networks, or sync songs to the iPhone’s hard drive via wi-fi. You read that right: you make a playlist, and the Spotify app will sync those songs to your iPhone so you can listen to them even when you lack an internet connection. While the application is free, it will require its users to have a Premium Spofity account which costs £10 a month. This also entitles the user to ad free listening on the desktop player as well.

Spotify has proven very successful in its European markets. While Spotify is still in talks with US record labels to bring it to the US, this further success could be the final push we need to change the game here. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

It turns out that there are a couple ingenious hackers out there who have realized that the space your optical drive sits in is some very valuable real estate space which could easily be repurposed and filled with another hard drive. One intrepid blogger, Reid, has decided to throw his MacBook warranty out the window, removed the optical drive and replaced it with a 256 solid-state hard drive, seeing as they both run via a SATA connector. Check out his blog to see the nitty-gritty of what he did.

While Reid could have just as easily replaced the optical drive with a standard drive — did you know they make 1 TB laptop drives now? — solid state drives have many advantages over your standard drives. The flash memory inside a solid state hard drive has no moving parts, so they are more durable and last longer than your standard hard drives. Oh, and they’re FAST. How fast do you say? Reid found a seven-fold increase in speed in benchmark tests he ran.

The best part of all these shenanigans is that in the interest of bettering the human race, Reid is offering to help you trick out your laptop too. He’s posted all the instructions — be warned, there’s some soldering required — and a list of the $10 of parts you need to purchase from Amazon.com. Or for the slightly more adventurous, he’ll ship you the connector for $30. Or, if the whole performing surgery on your laptop makes you feel  a bit queasy, you can ship your laptop to him with the hard drive you want installed, and for $35 plus $14 shipping, he’ll do everything for you.

We haven’t handed our laptop over to Reid — …yet — so remember these caveats: we don’t know Reid, though we’re sure he’s a stand-up guy, so you’re shipping your precious laptop to a blogger while simultaneously voiding your warranty. That being said, comparable services on other sites run $150 plus shipping for an install alone. Granted, MCE will perform a similar service and install a brace that keeps the hard drive from banging around, which might be important if you’re not installing a SSD, but it’s still quite a bit steeper than what Reid is promising.

Either way, with optical drives in notebooks going the way of the dodo, this just may be the life saving hack that will convince us to keep our notebook around for a little while more.

The CubeGuard is a retractable barrier with a message that stretches across the entrance to your cubicle. The banner says something like “do not disturb,” or more pointedly, “go away.” They’re also interchangeable, depending on your mood or what you want to say. The idea is that the physical barrier acts as a mental barrier for the people who approach you, and provided that they respect it, you should see interruptions stop, saving you time and frustration.

Should the standard “greetings be insufficient for you, you can also order custom message cartridges, brand them with your own marketing, or just make up their own message. We suggest, “My other gadget is a laser powered vaporizer.”

The CubeGuard is available at their website or at selected Fry’s locations, and retail at $20 for one message cartridge and mounting kit, and $15 for an extra message cartridge, and $25 for a custom message cartridge.

Snow Leopard is going to be a $29 upgrade, and looks to be worth every penny. Most of the enhancements to Leopard under the hood adjustments rather than eye candy; full 64-bit compatibility, speed improvements across the board, and supposedly installation will recover 7GB of HDD space. Add to that Microsoft Exchange support, better OpenCL graphics support, and those fancy new wallpapers, and it’s hard to justify why you wouldn’t want to upgrade.

We’ll let you know our thoughts when we install it this Friday. You should feel free to do the same.

It makes sense how keyboards are so disgusting if you think about it. Our hands touch everything we come into contact with, and we handle our keyboards more on a daily basis than anything else. People often eat at their desks, and those crumbs are like little bacteria factories. All those crevices that are impossible to clean lead to uncontrolled bacterial growth, and often times, the spread of disease.

With back to school and the flu season approaching, not to mention the constant reminders how swine flu is going to kill us all, it’s important to arm yourself with the tools that can help you stay well. Cyber Clean is an anti-bacterial, gel-like membrane that molds and conforms itself to the shapes you press it into. In doing so it can clean and disinfect hard to reach places, like those spaces between your keys, behind air vents where dirt and dust particles can harbor germs, and all those ridges on your cell phones and electronics.

Cyber Clean is safe, non-toxic, biodegradable, and supposedly reusable up to 75 times, plus you can get the kids in on the fun too. Cyber Clean is available at most stores and drug stores, and retails for less than $10. We hope to get our hands on some soon and put it to the test in our lab and let you know how it holds up.

Apparently the movie studios are worried about rentals undercutting the much more profitable DVD sale business. While Mitch Lowe, CEO of Redbox, stated in an interview with the LA Times that he was convinced that Redbox has no effect on DVD sales, our bet — backed up by nothing more than anecdotal evidence — is that people who rent movies through Netflix and Redbox more than likely purchase more DVDs than others who don’t, in much the similar way that people who illegally download music purchase the most songs in the iTunes store and from Amazon MP3.

In any case, Redbox isn’t taking this laying down. The company is in the midst of a legal battle with Universal and filed suit against Fox last week. Should the trend continue, Warner Brothers is probably going to get served with a lawsuit of its own soon as well.

We should also mention that not every studio is as thick headed as the aforementioned; Walt Disney and Paramount haven’t really taken a stand on the issue and so are still supplying their movies. Moreover, Lions Gate and Sony have signed deals with Redbox worth hundreds of millions of dollars guaranteeing the availability of their movies on time.

One day, we hope that media companies will realize that consumers want their paid movies and music on demand and under our control. With how little the studios have trudged forward technologically at this point, it’s no surprise that streaming movie catalogues are so crippled, but we still find it unfathomable that our physical DVD rental catalogues should suffer the same fate.