cellphones stories

 
Those cute greeting cards that play a little tune seemed high-tech 20 years ago, but now an advertising campaign has taken the embedded tech idea to a whole new level. The ad, in this week's Entertainment Weekly magazine, has a screen that displays a live video feed, and it's powered by a complete working Android cellphone buried between the pages of the magazine.
 
Ever since I saw her open for Bob Dylan at Roseland just before or just after Tuesday Night Music Club hit, I've been a fan of Sheryl Crow. Everyday is a winding road. But earlier this week, Crow really did go out of her head on Katie Couric, when she claimed her cellphone could have been a contributing factor to the development of her meningioma, a benign brain tumor. Horse petooties. The odds of Sheryl Crow's cellphone causing her brain tumor are about the same as her on-stage ear monitors triggering it, or perhaps it was the one other product her head spends the most time against — her bed pillow. How do I know cellphones didn't cause her tumors? Science.
 
Here in the U.S., we're used to getting continually screwed over by our wireless providers. High cost for minimum performance and features is just the name of the game, take it or leave it. A new wireless provider in France has started offering an alternative, in the form of a "dumb pipe" that gives you everything you're getting now and more for just $25 a month.
 
There's nothing worse than buying a fancy new gadget, covering it in an expensive protective case that makes it unscratchable, and then realizing ten seconds later that somehow it's all scratched up already. A new type of coating is now in commercial production that can repair minor scratches by itself in under 10 seconds.

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