Hiya! Things are sweet over here in geek land -- I'm working on a few surprises for you all, which you'll be hearing about in the coming weeks.

Next up on my agenda, though, is FINALLY heading up into the wild blue yonder as part of the 'Let's Go Flying' program! On Saturday, I'm stepping away from my precious navy blue Dell laptop for a few hours and piloting a 2-seater plane (with an instructor) for a few hours over my home town. But more on that next week!

Until then ... today's a summery day, so get a bottle of lemonade from the office caf and let's browse some headlines!

Facebook's pint-sized gajillionaire CEO, 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, says the social networking site is open to partnerships and investments, but is not going to take the company public for a few more years.

Please indulge me while we visit my bachelor of arts degree in physical anthropology (I so rarely get to use it) ... An early skeleton found in Germany is shedding light on the evolution of
primates. OK fine, so I'm the only person that finds this interesting...

This is a slightly pathetic list of the top 5 reasons the Zune is dead. Funny, mine still works fine.

Whoa, hold the phone: XBox is coming out with a Wii-style wand controller?

Rumors have it that July 17 will bring a new iPhone announcement from Apple. But in other funny news on Apple products, the company has officially warned users of static shocks from using the iPods and iPhone.

For those of you looking to get a jump-start on Father's Day, our friends at CNET.com have a list of some of the top techy gifts out there for dads ... and grads, too.

Want to vote for the top gadgets of 2009 so far? Visit PopSci.com and check out their list of thinkers and their big ideas!

Labels: facebook, father's day gift ideas, iphones, Microsoft Zune, xbox controller

Let's talk tech this Monday morning. Here are the top headlines that made my eyebrows perk up:

Google's search team made a funny error Saturday by blacklisting every single site on the Internet as 'potentially harmful.' Oh, Google, you do so amuse me. Blacklisting, btw, means that a particular site is considered to be threatening to your computer due to reports of bugs, worms and other creepy crawlies meant to make your machine not work. Blacklists are also a way you can prevent spam from clogging your inbox -- by blacklisting it, you are preventing your computer from accepting mail from a particular source. Anyways...

All you iPhone and BlackBerry holdouts may now have a smartphone just for you: Rumors have it that Dell is looking to announce two new smartphones -- one touchscreen, the other with a slide-out keyboard -- on the Windows Mobile 6 and Google Android platforms. I like Dell a lot, and I can't wait to see what colors it comes in. I'm such a girl.

Microsoft is planning to roll out new Zune models in time for Holiday 2009. These ones will hopefully be without zero-day loop coding errors. But, do they honestly have more to offer than the market-darling iPods? Gosh I hope so -- otherwise, Microsoft's effort is going to prove futile. Sigh.

Cool news if you live in Calif.'s beautiful Bay area -- San Fransisco's BART (re: subway system) will offer full Wi-Fi services on all 104 miles of its tracks to all commuters by 2011 for around $30 a month.

Here is a great factoid for you all: When you see commercials for Apple and all of it's lovely toys, you must think that, by golly, everyone must now have a Mac in their house. Well, according to this report on the market share of operating systems, Apple has 10% market share, compared to Microsoft's 88%. The other 2% is taken up by a bunch of little players, like Linux and Microsoft's beta of Windows 7. it is worth noting that Apple is growing and Microsoft is shrinking... but the gap is still pretty big between the two.

'A 35-year-old computer programmer pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he planted a computer virus designed to destroy all the data on 4,000 Fannie Mae computer servers.' Yikes, poor guy. I hope he didn't do it -- because that's a serious virus with some serious implications.

In the same vein, if your company was subject by a data breach, how much can you expect it to cost your bottom line? According to this study, you should consider yourself and your company lucky if you can come out on the other side for less than $6 M. On, average, this is the figure the loss of company data will take on a business, including public embarrassment, extra security features and PR cleanup.

In an article titled worthy of a NYTimes bestseller, MIT's The Dark Side of Pet Cloning offers insight into replica pets and what the researchers don't tell you about the procedures and failures. Def. an interesting read -- can you imagine spending $150,000 to clone a pet? I love my kitties very much, but part of their wonderment is that they are one of a kind. Once, again, I turn to Pixar for my words of wisdom: 'When everyone's special, no one will be.'

I think that's quite enough for today -- check back here Wednesday and Friday for more of the day's top technology stories and snippets, and tune in next week for the first annual Byte-Sized Valentine Gift Guide for all your super-sweet geeks! :)

Labels: Dell smartphones, Google search error, Microsoft Zune, pet cloning