News Blogs

iPods for peanuts

Troll the Web all you want--you'll almost never find price breaks on iPods. Unless you go straight to the source, that is: Apple's own outlet store sells refurbished players for pennies on the iPod dollar.

For example, you can snap up a 4GB nano (last year's perfectly cromulent model) for a mere $99--half the original selling price. Other current bargains include a 1GB Shuffle for $49 and a 30GB video iPod for ~~$199~~ $179. I say "current" because the deals and availability change on a fairly regular basis. So if you see something you like, don't more

All hail Google Maps!

GROVELAND, Calif.--I suppose I should read what my colleague Elinor Mills writes a little more closely.

If I had, I would already have known about a ridiculously useful new feature of Google Maps that simply by dragging an existing route line through another location.

Instead, I had to discover it on my own. But luckily I did, and things will never be the same.

Last night, I was sitting in my hotel room in this tiny mountain town near the western entrance to Yosemite National Park, feeling fortunate simply to have found an open Wi-Fi connection. After all, Groveland more

More mashing of Google Maps

Google Maps is launching a new feature Wednesday that enables people to create customized maps with content from multiple mashup Web sites.

For instance, I made my own map of San Francisco with an events search from Zvents (salsa dancing Monday at the Jewish Community Center, for example); Google Real Estate Search (there's a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in San Francisco's Mission District selling for a mere $389,500); temperatures from WeatherBug (62 degrees in downtown San Francisco); prices at gas stations near my office from GasBuddy ($3.79 a gallon at the Shell on Bryant and 4th Street); more

The rules for space tourism

The U.S. government may have more serious security concerns than it can handle, but that won't stop it from contriving rules to regulate an industry that has yet to materialize.

The Associated Press reports that the FAA has published a novella of proposed regulations governing the future of space tourism.

"Final" regulations are due in June, 2006, governing everything from medical standards to preflight training requirements.

Richard Branson must be relieved to learn they have it all figured out.