Sony’s had a few laptop problems in the past couple of years.  Back in the mid-00′s, Sony’s laptop battery division was the source of the above pictured exploding laptop.  That particular unit’s a Dell, but Sony’s faulty laptop batteries fell across a wide swath of manufacturers and brand names.

Now, Sony’s back again with another faulty laptop (or, I guess, perfectly functional lap-placed omelet maker) in the form of the Sony Vaio laptop.  As it turns out, some 539,000 Sony F and C Vaio laptops sold throughout the US, Europe, and Asia are also prone to overheating, to sometimes dangerous levels.  Well, dangerous to the technology, not to you.

According to the company, “In rare instances, these notebook computers may overheat due to a potential malfunction of the internal temperature management system, resulting in deformation of the product’s keyboard or external casing, and a potential burn hazard to consumers.”  If you own one of the affected, you can either do a firmware update or send your laptop off to Sony for repairs.

Image:  Ghost in the Machine

Digg founder Kevin Rose is a guy who knows about building a website from the ground up.  He’s on a lot of boards, he’s got a lot of friends, and most importantly, he hears a lot of rumors.  Take, for instance, the news that he posted on Twitter late Saturday night:  Facebook might soon be getting competition from Google in the form of Google Me.

Now Google has a lot of products that do the same thing Facebook does:  Google Latitude, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Profiles, and even a Facebook competition site currently up and running called Orkut.  None of these, aside from Latitude, have made a dent in the market.  Some (ahem, Google Buzz) have been outright disasters.  However, if you take all these pieces, mash them together, add them to your Google Profile, toss in Google Talk, YouTube, and GMail and… do you have something?

I don’t know.  I don’t think anyone’s going to leave Facebook for a new social networking website any time soon.  Whatever happens will happen slowly, and will take years to really make a dent in Facebook’s market share.  I mean, people still use Internet Explorer, MySpace, and even AOL, don’t they?  Google can’t kill Facebook, but they can at least finally get serious about entering the social networking arena.

Oh Apple.  Will you ever get the iPhone to work as a phone, rather than just a tiny computer that occasionally makes phone calls?  After all the issues with the iPhone 3G,  you’d think the iPhone 4G would be an improvement, but it just might not be.  After all, with the 3G, you never had to worry about how holding your phone in your left hand would keep it from working.

Seriously.  Due to the placement of the antenna, for most people who use their left hand for phone-use, their hand blocks the antenna.  That’s enough to degrade or completely interfere with the iPhone’s ability to hold a cell phone signal.  That’s poor design, no matter how you slice it.  I don’t care how pretty something looks on the outside, if you’re not doing it right on the inside you may as well just smash the thing with a hammer for all the good it’ll do me.

Apple’s solution?  Don’t hold your phone that way.  Great, thanks!

View all four Bruce Campbell’s Soup labels via Sci-fi Wire.

It took 28 days to sell a million iPads.  It took 58 days (30 days later) to sell two million iPads.  Now, just 22 days after the two-million-sold mark, Apple chairman Steve Jobs is crowing about three million iPads sold.  In 80 days, the iPad has moved three MILLION units in one of the worst economic crises in recent history.  Staggering.

In spite of budget cuts, job losses, pay increase freezes, and general austerity all around, people are just lining up to give their money to the Cupertino fruit company.  Is the iPad providing a way for people to squeeze a few more years out of their current computer by giving them something mobile?  Is it allowing them to bypass upgrading to a smartphone in favor of a new gadget?  I’m not quite sure how this thing is making the splash it is, but the numbers don’t lie.  People are loving them some iPad.

Tell me, gentle reader.  What exactly would you do with an iPad?  As for me, I’d probably trade in my old laptop.  The battery life is awful; while I do like the ability to game on the road, it’s a few years too old for any newer games, and even kind of strains under the weight of World of Warcraft anymore.  I’d love something more portable for quick jaunts to the coffee shop or wherever free WiFi can be had.

Odds are I wouldn’t turn it into a desktop replacement, like in the picture above.  Though if I did, could I write it off on my taxes?  Hmm… perhaps something to consult with an accountant about.

Image: Terpstra Brett

It’s the perfect combination of an iPhone, an iPad, and a Nintendo DS!  Toshiba has launched a new line of netbook dubbed the Libretto, which features dual screens, a virtual keyboard, and touch-sensitivity on both screens, all of which are features stuck in a clamshell-design powered via Windows 7.  Basically, it features all the best features of both the tablet computer and the traditional laptop computer, in an ultra-portable, incredibly thin setup.  Staggeringly, the WiFi and 3G-capable Libretto W100 comes with a 63GB solid state hard drive!

Toshiba’s newly-announced products features two other units:  the Portege R700 and AC100.  The R700 is a traditional laptop with a state-of-the-art cooling system, while the AC100 is an Android-powered netbook that’s only 14mm thick!  There have been no prices announced, as of yet.

Man, that Libretto is a thing of beauty, isn’t it?  I’m sorely tempted to pick one of those up, just for the portability and the wow factor of something more capable than a tablet but more flashy than a netbook.  This just might be the device that encourages me to trade in my old laptop once and for all.  If it has netbook-style battery life, the Libretto will be made of win.

Technically, this isn’t a video, it’s a live stream via UStream.  Either way, it’s cats listening to Devo, how can this possibly go wrong?  It’s the preeminent geek band of the 80′s, meshed with the most inescapable meme on the 2010-era Internet, and it’s coming live through your browser!  It’s like… the best of three straight decades all merged together to form a Voltron of awesomeness.

This is undoubtedly put together to promote Devo’s new album, Something For Everybody.  It’s the first Devo album in 20 years, and judging from what I’ve heard off of it, it’s really spectacular work.  It’s just as good as their classic albums.  Plus, y’know, it’s got kitties. Basically, it’s perfect. Feel free to check it out!

Technorati Tags: cats listening to devo, Devo, fun friday videos, live video streams, something for everyone, ustream, viral videos

One of the perils of owning a cell phone is that, inevitably, you’re going to misplace it.  And once you lose it, you generally won’t be able to get any peace until you find it again.  Since I tend to leave my phone on vibrate and forget to turn the sound back on, I spend a lot of my time mashing redial on my house phone, trying to listen for the telltale rattle of plastic that announces my phone’s buzzing.  Apple, wise as they are, has figured all that out and has an app to help you find your lost phone.

Find my iPhone, the cleverly-named app, is actually just an app version of the Apple MobileMe program already in place and accessable via web browsers.  Basically, you install the free app, subscribe to the $99-per-year-service, and you’ve got complete control over your phone remotely.  If you want to wipe it, it’s wiped.  If you want to make it display a message and make noise for you to find it, you can do that too.  If you just want to lock it down until it gets returned, that’s also a possibility.

The service works with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch (basically anything capable of running apps).  The only downside, aside from the subscription to MobileMe, is that you have to put your phone on battery-eating Push mode for the service to work.  Still, if you’re absent-minded like I am, this might be perfect.

Image:  Chocolate-Covered iPad via Mashable