Apparently some automatic response systems that companies use on their phones are programmed to respond to the "Dirty 7" words by sending you directly to a human operator. Seems worth a shot next time you feel trapped in endless menus and spoken commands that make no sense to the computer system. I don't think it works with human operators very well though, however satisfying it sometimes may be. I would not recommend trying this tactic at the DMV or airport either.

Lifehacker has a nice piece on Google's new Chrome OS.
The release date is a somewhat vague "later this year"...that always makes me suspicious. We'll see. As long as it's all interoperable, it's fine with me.

Random neat quote:
We don't need hope to survive or success to persevere. Resistance to tyranny is a way of life.
-French WW2 Resistance motto

Wired has a nice side-by-side comparison of the current crop of smartphones. They feature the iPhone, the Pre, the G1, and the Blackberry Storm. I'm a Pre user, but I've used iPhones in the past, as well as G1's, but never a Storm. I'm getting more and more used to webOS on the Pre, and the slide-out keyboard is worth its weight in gold (I cannot stand the iPhone's touchscreen keyboard, it's the main reason I waited for the Pre). I have lots of friends who swear by their iPhones, and another friend who loves his G1. Some things just come down to taste! The lack of apps, so far, on the Pre is a major downer.

This story immediately caught my eye in my unwieldy "News" feed. The video at the link is pretty awesome, and the auther of the piece raises the questions that popped into my head when I read the headline:

PC World has an article out about the "Dirty Dozen" cell phone design flops and failures. I have mixed emotions about bad technology design. On the one hand, you expect things like usability and affordability to be at the forefront of designer's minds. But on the other hand, (which the author acknowledges in the PC World piece) without trying something daring or risky, you may never get the reward of new technology. Imagine if Steve Jobs had listened to people who put down the idea of a personal computer? Cell phones, in my view (as well as practice to a large degree) are the logical successor of the personal computer, and becoming better and better every day (remember Newton?

A user posted screenshots at Gamepolitics.com showing a billboard in the game Burnout Paradise featuring Barack Obama on a virtual billboard. Apparently this is causing quite a stir. I personally feel there should be regular and available ad real estate in games. It can be designed in such a way as to not take away from the experience of gaming while giving valuable 18-34 eyeballs to advertisers. It may even make the game MORE realistic! We see ads everywhere else, why not our games? I realize this has been done to some extent already, but in a networked world I don't see why you couldn't change ads with the frequency of a billboard, at least. Increased revenue for advertisers means increased revenue for game developers means cheaper, better games more rapidly available for gamers. 

H/t Adage.com