If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist, right? That’s what Rumsfeld must be thinking: He’s banned camera phones in U.S. Army installations in Iraq. A total ban on camera phones in the military is coming up next, the news reports say. You can slash at the waves but you can’t hold back the tide…. […]

You probably don’t get many telemarketing calls on your mobile, do you? That’s partly because it’s illegal–but more importantly, there’s no directory of mobile phone numbers that unscrupulous marketers can use to target their campaigns. Well, you can kiss that precious bit of anonymity goodbye: the

Impressions from E3: The coming year will be pretty interesting for mobile gaming. The Nintendo DS (dual screen) is a somewhat goofy concept, but there are a lot of games in development and some of them look pretty cool. I got a chance to play with a few of the new games and was fairly […]

Video games are now a $20 billion industry, making them bigger than Hollywood (as measured by box-office revenues, anyhow; the film industry actually makes more money from videos and DVDs than they do from movie theaters). No surprise, then, that the average age of video gamers is going up–it’s now

Good advice from Jim Henley: “Start by slavishly imitating poets you admire.” And if you’re writing science fiction, be sure to avoid these overused plots. (both links via BoingBoing)

Intel’s Dothan CPUs (Intel Pentium M processors 735, 745, and 755) use Intel’s new numeric nomenclature and have dropped the clock speed designations from their names. When asked about the new names, Intel vp Anand Chandrasekher said they’re designed to reflect qualities of “goodness” that Intel chi

“Working at Google, an engineer told me recently, is the nearest you can get to having an unlimited amount of computing power at your disposal.” Simson Garfinkle explains the hidden power of Google’s server farm, which reportedly tops 100,000 machines. (free registration required)

This guide to insultingly bad movie physics explains why ricocheting bullets don’t spark, how shattering glass can cut you (even when you’re riding a motorcycle through it at top speed), and why it’s a bad idea to hang around exploding spaceships.

If it weren’t for syncing, most people would never back up anything. It’s only because synchronization is so easy that we wind up with backups of our most important data: our address books and calendars. But syncing doesn’t always back up everything (particularly files you’ve stored on your handheld

You wouldn’t put Wal-Mart tires on your Ferrari, so why are you using substandard software on your high-end PDA? Yet that’s just what many people are doing by using the default e-mail client that comes bundled with their PDA. Corsoft offers a simple and elegant solution with Aileron, a sleek e-mail

Sci-fi humorist Douglas Adams envisioned the ultimate interpreter: the Babel fish, a bright yellow, leechlike creature that, once inserted into your ear, would provide you with instant translations from any tongue. Franklin’s Audio Translator, copublished in SD-card format by MDM, is less unpleasant

True information addicts will never be satisfied with the puny screens on most smart phones. Even at high resolution, a 2-inch display just won’t cut it for reading news, checking stock charts, or powering through an overflowing inbox. If you’re a data maven, PalmOne’s Tungsten W is an attractive op