Untangle those earphones

Tired of losing your iPod or digital media player earphoness? Or how about those endless tangles? A new $49 product called the Rivet RHYTHM Earphone Lanyard promises to end those issues. You wear it around your neck, always keeping the earphones untangled and accessible. It fastens to the back of your device with a special clip. It comes in different colors, too.

MySpace is old news

You know that old saying…by the time the media calls it a trend it’s long over? So it apparently is with the MySpace social networking site. Kids today seem to be moving to other sites, says this TechNewsWorld story. Among the ones most mentioned as MySpace replacements, Bebo and Facebook.
I’m sure the predators and perverts are right there with them because kids are still posting way too much personal information and parents clearly haven’t a clue about the pictures and profiles kids are putting out there for all the world to see.

Check traffic from your mobile

Stuck in traffic and want instant conditions? Starting this week you can call 866-698-7232 and get live traffic reports for roads in 40 different metro areas around the country. You need to register your mobile phone and route at the traffic.com Website. Then you’ll get a Pin number to punch in. The free hotline, goes live just in time for the Memorial Day holiday.

The “Party Line of the Planet”

Here’s a Web site you’ll thank me for. Radio Handi. It’s a free service that allows up to 20 people to talk together free, using landline or Internet telephones. You get a six digit code and a local phone number. Friends cand family numbers call that number, punch in the code and are connected. They call it “The Party Line for the Planet.”

Get at Electronic Virtual Assistant

Now you can get your own administrative assistant - virtually. She’s called EVA - for Electronic Virtual Assistant - and it’s an online service that claims to blend digital recordkeeping with the intuition and know-how of a live person to run your life. With a starting price of $69 per month, users can have a US-based assistant available to them around the clock to help with personalized data storage and retrieval, sending e-mail on their behalf, scheduling meetings and reminders, filling out sales reports and keeping real-time to-do lists - all completed while away from an office or computer.

Freepcast podcast for Thursday posted

Check out Mike Wendland's "Freepcast," a special podcast featuring the work of Detroit Free Preee writers. In this Thursday May 18 Freepcast, Mike interviews:
David Crumm, Free Press religion writer, on the da Vinci Code movie.
Mike Duffy, Free Press TV critic, on tonight's big Will and Grace finale and the season ends of 24 and Lost coming next week.
And Free Press writers Shawn WIndsor and Jim Schafer on their "Sex, Booze and SIlense" story in Thursday's paper.

Social networking site for sports fans

Call it the MySpace for sports nuts. A new Web site called PicksPal.com is a virtual gathering place for sports fans to prove who really knows their sports. Among other things, it runs a national contest for sports fans to compete in a weekly game, earning points by picking real events based on real odds. The site describes itself as “a competitive outlet for fans who want real bragging rights over their friends.”

Online safety guide for parents

Controversial social networking sites like MySpace abound in cyberspace. They're hugely popular with teens, who swap way too much personal information. That’s why parents need to get involved.
The Wired Safety site is filled with tips for parents and information about fighting online threats.
Blog Safety offers a very handy guide to the lingo and secret acronymns and code phrase kids use to fool nosy parents.
Then there are the secret surveillance tools like Keystroke Recorder, a $29 application that creates a file of everything done on a computer so parents can monitor their kids activity.
Even more powerful is $100 program called Spector Pro that takes a snapshot of Web sites or pictures or anything that appears on your child’s screens for you to review.
Finally, when you’re at work and the kids are home at the PC alone, another $100 program called eBlaster will instantly email you an exact copy of everything your child does online… all the e-mail, all the instant messages, who they are talking to.
Here's another parental tip: Learn leet speak. Need help? Try this translator to see how it works.
Here's my NBC-TV "High Tech Talk" report:

Channel surfing on the Web

Everybody is used to channel surfing on TV. A Web site scheduled to go live today called Stumble Upon offers a free, downloadable application that works with the Firefox Web browser to exentially do the same thing online.

As you surf and click the Net and find sites you like, the program finds and groups Websites, news articles, online photos, and videos that relate to personal areas of interests with just one click of a button. The company behind the site describes it as a Web disceovery service.

Skype offers free phone calling

This is huge for fans of the popular Skype Internet communications service. Through the end of the year, users can now use the so-called Skypeout feature, which allows users to make calls from their computer to regular and landline telephones. The company, owned by eBay, used to charge for computer-to-telephone calls. The free service is for calls to the U.S. and Canada only.

Windows Mobile alternative to Treo

There’s a another Windows Mobile 5 smartphone I’ve been testing that I think may be a better alternative to the Treo 700w. It’s the XV6700, a slick-looking, all black Verizon-branded phone that features a sliding keyboard for easier typing. My tests around town show it getting better reception than the Treo 700w I’ve been carrying. The screen is bigger, too, and the sliding keyboard gives you enough room to type without squishing down two keys when you meant to hit one. Cost is $299, same as the Treo.

New Treo 700 version coming

Almost six months after the introduction of the Treo 700w smartphone that runs on the Windows Mobile platform, Palm has released another version of the powerful phone - the Treo 700p - that works on the original and more familiar Palm operating system. It’s a move to get around criticism from many users that Microsoft’s mobile phone platform is too clumsy. The new Palm version will work with Verizon and Sprint.
I’ve had an on-again, off-again attraction to the Treo 700w. I tried a preproduction unit that kept crashing and then a replacement for a couple weeks until I got tired of having to do multiple navigation moves to accomplish what my BlackBerry 8700 could do in a single click.
Once again, I have a Treo 700w in my pocket running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5 on Verizon’s BroadbandAccess network. It’s supplied by my company and I’m slowly trying to get used to the Microsoft os. My observation this time is that it seems to have more trouble grabbing a network signal than with other smartphones I’ve tested.
At any rate, the Treo 700 seems here to stay. It will be interesting to see if the Palm model outsells the Windows version.

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