national

It's hard to believe that 10 years ago a cell phone was still a novelty. Now it's nearly impossible to imagine life without mobile communication.

As new modes of communication open up, will others go by the wayside? There may be a generational divide opening here, as younger adults in particular start asking themselves what good is a landline anyway? About a quarter of adults age 18 to 29 rely on a mobile phone as their only telephone service.

I am tempted to dump my landline, not because I have an amazing relationship with my mobile phone, but because telemarketers have turned my ringing landline into an incredible nuisance. An admittedly unscientific study of my caller ID log reveals that I've been getting four junk calls for every call I actually want to receive.… Read more

The upcoming reality show Kid Nation was designed to show what happens when 40 children, ages 8 to 15, are thrown together in a desert "ghost town" to manage their own community for 40 days. Parents and commentators across the country are appalled by the idea that the kids were left largely unsupervised, and that some were injured in mishaps including four children who drank bleach and one who was burned in the face with hot grease.

CBS maintains that their set was legal and adequately safe and supervised. While that investigation goes on, details are coming out … Read more

Comedy house National Lampoon, which has brought the entertainment world everything from Animal House to the more recent Van Wilder, is courting the babes. A Media Week article details the brand's impending launch of 8228, the latest addition to the online National Lampoon Humor Network, which is a network of gossip and entertainment sites for a female audience.

We're guessing the tone will be a little different from TeamSugar or iVillage.

Expanding its Web presence is inherently a good move for National Lampoon: Van Wilder was a hit on DVD among the college crowd, but the once-iconic comedy … Read more

This week 3,400 Army National Guard members in Idaho learned they were the potential victims of identity theft. A USB drive containing personal information was stolen out of car in suburban Boise, according to news reports.

Police attribute the theft to a rash of car burglaries in the neighborhood and speculate that the thieves might not have realized they had stolen the guardsmen's personal data. Additional information can be found here.

If you happened to visit the official Web site for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the weekend, you may have found its signature list of news releases swapped for an antiwar message in red capital letters.

"Hacked By kerem125 M0sted and Gsy That is CyberProtest Hey Ysrail and Usa dont kill children and other people Peace for ever No war" was the line repeating itself over and over on the affected pages, according to published reports and screenshots taken by bloggers. The perpetrators appear to have used a well-known and highly preventable technique called SQL injection, which … Read more

Magellan must be one happy camper, as the veteran GPS manufacturer has teamed up with National Geographic for its new line of outdoor handheld GPS devices. The Magellan Triton series includes five models--the Triton 300, 400, 500, 1500, and 2000--and are compatible with National Geographic's topographic maps. Prior to this, you could only download waypoints and routes to the company's other handheld GPS devices, but now you can get full-color maps. Just be aware that these are sold separately by National Geographic, though the Triton quintet comes preloaded with Magellan's topographic maps. Other highlights include touch-screen controls, … Read more

ZION NATIONAL PARK, Utah--I've been on Road Trip 2007 long enough now that I've reached 4,000 miles of driving. And while the actual spots where I hit 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 were nothing to speak about, that was certainly not the case when the odometer rolled over from 3,999.9 to 4,000.0.

That's because I was in the middle of this incredible national park when all those zeroes appeared, with gorgeous sandstone and shale cliff faces surrounding me.

Now, to be perfectly honest, when I hit 4,000 miles on … Read more

Paul Barton, founder and chief designer of PSB Speakers loves his job. He'd have to--over the last the last three decades he's probably logged more hours at the Canadian National Research Council's facilities in Ottawa, Ontario than any other speaker designer. There he dotes on his prototype designs in the acoustically neutral environment of an anechoic chamber, measuring and evaluating every aspect of their performance. Barton typically spends two to three years designing a new line of speakers.

I met with him in NYC a few weeks ago to check out his latest, Synchrony. After discussing the technical highlights of his new babies he handed me a Synchrony One B ($1,999/pair) bookshelf speaker to look over. PSB speakers have always sounded great, but they weren't the most gorgeous looking things. The new ones are altogether sleeker, slimmed down, and really pretty in an understated sort of way. Their heavyweight extruded aluminum front and rear baffles; and curved, seven-layer composite wood side panels display a new, more sophisticated level of fit and finish. The speakers are available in snazzy real cherry wood or black ash veneers.

The sound, especially the top of the line Synchrony One tower speaker ($4,499/pair) was spectacularly vivid. Bass was not only subwoofer deep, it was also taut, so it rendered pitches of bass with rare precision. Listen to Paul McCartney's bass on the Beatles' Sgt Pepper CD and you'll know what I'm talking about. Rock drummers came off particularly well; the sense of hearing sticks beating skins was remarkably clear and clean. Barton's new tweeter was equally astonishing when reproducing the cymbals' brassy shimmer. Livingston Taylor's folk vocals from his Ink CD had just the right combination of body and soul. That's exactly what separates "good enough" mainstream speakers from high-end models; the best ones make you feel like you're in the presence of live musicians. Ah yes, that's the point after all.… Read more

LOS ALAMOS, N.M.--I spent Wednesday night and Thursday here, in the town that gave birth to the atomic bomb. And even though it's been 62 years since the Manhattan Project finished its work, its aura still pervades Los Alamos.

For example, the main drag through the eastern end of town is Trinity Drive. And one can't help but understand, when driving in from Santa Fe, why the government chose to place the Manhattan Project here: among other reasons, that road is a windy, two-lane affair with a sheer cliff on the north side that made it … Read more