Oprah Winfrey has legions of devoted followers.  Sure, the luster on her brand has dimmed since her heyday in the late 90′s, but she still wields a great deal of power, and fortunately for us, she occasionally uses her power for good.  For example, she has declared that today, the roads are a no-phone zone.

That means no talking while driving.  No texting while driving.  No playing games while driving.  No browsing the web while driving.  However, you can still drive while driving.

I have to admit that I have, on occasion, used the phone while driving.  I try not to do it, or I try to do it only on surface streets where I’m mostly sitting at the light, but I have done it.  Then again, I’ve never gotten into a wreck while doing it, and I generally don’t dial the phone while I drive (wait until the stoplights, people!).  So maybe I’m not like everyone else who drives and uses the phone, but I’m more than willing to give it up for today, if only because Oprah told me to.

Connected by Kasey McMahon, Via MAKEZine.

Ahh, the 3.5 inch floppy disk.  Once, you were the only way to transport documents from computer to computer.  Now, you’re just another relic on the dust bin of history, alongside Beta, VHS, HD DVD, and the magnetic tape.

Sony has announced that they’ll stop making the venerable 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan, with production lines grinding to a halt by March 2011.  It’s a little surprising because Sony sold 8.5 million floppy disks in Japan in 2009, which seems like a large number until you realize that, in 2000, 47 million floppy disks were sold.  The rest of the world lost access to Sony’s floppy disks in 2009; Japan accounts for 70% of all floppy purchases.

That’s a solid 30 year run of performance, from when Sony perfected the format in 1981.  The first computer to ship with the 3.5 inch floppy drive was the Macintosh.  Mac was also the first company to abandon the format in 1998.  Now you have to special order a computer with a 3.5-inch floppy drive, or buy a USB drive that reads floppies.  Not like anyone uses floppies anymore since Flash drives do the same job but store a thousand times the information, but still.

If you need a last box of floppies for whatever reason, I suggest you stock up.  They’re going fast.

The comparison between the MacBook Pro with the new Intel i7 processor and the Fujitsu with the i5 processor isn’t an exact one.  After all, you can’t really compare an i7 with an i5 in a fair manner.  Still, while that comparison might be invalid, one thing is for sure:  the new Apple MacBook Pro is really hot.

We’re talking 100 degrees Celsius hot.  We’re talking 212 degrees Fahrenheit.  That means you can put water on your MacBook and boil it.  If you’ve ever wanted to play games and make hard-boiled eggs at the same time, the Mac is your $2500 solution to that problem!  Yeesh.  My old laptop gets hot, but not *that* hot!

There’s a reason why these companies have stopped calling them laptops and started calling them notebooks.  Then again, you can use a notebook on your lap without scalding your nether region (unless the notebook is on fire).  This should prove that, while the MacBook’s all-aluminum case is really attractive (and it is), there’s nowhere near enough ventilation to support any kind of serious computer usage like video processing or image editing.  Even with having the laptop on a flat, hard surface, it still overheats.

In the video As Seen on TV, You Are Doing It Wrong, some mad genius has put together a montage of all the little failures that plague the life of the average person who stars in an infomercial.  Just watching it makes me feel like my life is spectacular by comparison simply because I’ve never hurt my back putting on shoes, my blankets cover my feet, and I’ve never gotten broken glass in my French toast.

That’s the thing I love most about infomercials.  They pose problems that are usually just mild annoyances, but they carry the results of those annoyances out to extreme levels.  “Have you ever stubbed your toe?”  Yes… “Well imagine if you stubbed your toe and were eaten by badgers!  Would you want to leave your family in that position?”  Well, no.  Maybe I need to get that electric badger barrier for my home AND my office… and look, they’re running a special!

Image via Gizmodo, magic via Bob Evans.

Once again, I must remind everyone surfing out there to be wary, because malware writers will stop at nothing to get their claws into your computers, including jumping on the biggest story on the Internet right now, the lost iPhone G4 saga.  They’ve jumped on the name Gray Powell.  He’s the young man who lost the iPhone prototype at a bar in Redwood City, California.  Here’s the real story about him and how he lost the iPhone 4G.

As people Google him, the search results yield a lot of infected pages designed to load malware onto your computer via browsers.  This is an incredibly common tactic for people trying to distribute a massive amount of viruses with as little effort as possible.  They create a dummy page, shoehorn in whatever the day’s top Google Trends are, and then put it out into the wild and wait for people to stumble across it.  Most folks, when Googling, don’t pay too much attention to what they’re being linked to, and the next thing you know, they’re secretly installing viruses left and right.

This is why good security is very important.  Update your antivirus software, and update it often.  Make sure you’re running a firewall.  If possible, add in something that will disable scripts on webpages, or will only run secured things with approval.  Even that might not be enough to protect you, but it’ll certainly keep you from being hit by most of the drive-by threats online.  Even the best AV software and safest browser can’t protect you from yourself.

It’s something that’s happened to everyone who has a cell phone.  Through some twist of fate, some incompetence, or just a poorly-designed pocket, you’ve lost your phone.  I’ve left mine in restaurants, movie theaters, my car, work, and pretty much every possible place where my phone could be left overnight, dropped, or misplaced.  I can only imagine how much worse that feeling of dread is when you’ve lost a prototype of Apple’s iPhone 4.

However, that employee’s loss is the world’s gain, as Apple’s latest upgrade of the iPhone has ended up in the hands of Gizmodo.  If you’re waiting to see what generation four of the iPhone is like, wait no more.  Gizmodo has pictures, video, and a full breakdown of all the new features, changes, upgrades, and design quirks of the latest in Apple’s line of smartphones.  It looks as if Apple has given as much thought to function this time around as they have form.

Among my favorite upgrades, aside from the glass/plastic back for improved reception is the metallic buttons.  Volume, power, mute… all the buttons you press on a common basis are now metal, so they’re not going to lose their polish or get those finger-shaped smooth marks due to frequent digital manipulation!  This happens to every gadget I have, and it always kind of bothers me because it causes an otherwise flawless gizmo to show its age.  That won’t happen to iPhone IV:  The Quest For Peace.

This is Iggy.  Like most cats, he’s a little slow to take to technology, but once he figures out how to work the touch screen on his owner’s Apple iPad, there’s just no stopping him!  Adorable little fellow, isn’t he?

I hope, for that owner’s sake, that Iggy is declawed, otherwise he may as well just smash that iPad.  Those screens are pretty easily scratched up, touch pad or not, and there’s no telling what a little kitty’s razor-sharp talons would do to a sensitive touch screen.

I’m a little surprised that the cat would play with the iPad, but when my cat was young, she loved to chase the computer mouse around the screen (and she loves to chase laser pointers now).  She was never one for watching television or looking at herself in the mirror, unlike other cats.  I’m not sure why some critters will take the time to pay attention to stuff like that, and others won’t.

While it’s not exactly the portable CD player for the vinyl set, the Crosley Revolution CR6002A just might be the most portable record player on the market today.  You can’t exactly walk around listening to your 45s or anything, but if you wanted to drop it in a backpack or box, toss some records in with it, and carry it to a friend’s house for some listening?  It’s just about perfect, and for $150, it’s the right price, too!

The Crosley Revolution features a USB connector for ripping records on the go, two headphone jacks, built-in stereo speakers, and a carrying-case.  It’s the perfect solution to free your record collection from the basement and bring it up into the light again.  The platter plays both speeds, features a rubberized surface for non-slip purposes, and takes up space less than the size of a teacup on the desk!  That’s pretty staggering, from an engineering standpoint.  The record takes up more space than the player!

I’m really thinking about picking one of these up.  I don’t have many records, but I’d love to start picking them up.  It’s always my first stop at a swap meet or garage sale.