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It's all right watching a reality show and accepting it as mere entertainment.

It's quite another thing to face that reality and decide whether the show truly reflects it.

So before sitting down to watch "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," Bravo's real husbanding of the tech world, I went to see what these people were like face to face.

Somehow I secured a ticket to the red carpet party in a place that had a rather gray, sticky carpet in San Francisco's Marina district.

I took with me my 6-foot blonde Amazonian bodyguard, Angelina, who is … Read more

Setting up your iPad Mini doesn't take a lot of time or effort, but for those first-time iOS owners who aren't too sure about the process, it can be a bit intimidating. Don't let it be. Below you'll find a slideshow of the entire setup process, from start to finish, explaining what each screen is and means to your end experience.

Before you begin, it's a good idea to have access to a Wi-Fi connection or a computer connected to the Internet with iTunes installed. You'll need one or the other to complete the … Read more

Wake Up Time is a clock app for displaying the time, setting an alarm, and setting custom sounds. Wake Up Time is a fairly simple app in what it does, but it's handy when you want a larger clock display on your device. Wake Up Time installs easily.

The Wake Up Time interface shows an image of a clock radio. Time is shown on a simulation of an LED display. You can set multiple alarms with customizable snooze duration. The sound can be customized to whatever you wish. The free version of Wake Up Time is fairly basic but … Read more

The Ostrich Pillow personal nap tunnel already gave plenty of people the heebie-jeebies. Now, there's something even stranger invading the napping-accessories market. The UpRight Sleeper is a modified neck brace that holds your head in place so you can snooze while sitting.

The contraption is adjustable so it can sit under your chin or go up around your forehead. It moves around to accommodate different head shapes and sizes. A back strap is trapped between your back and your seat to keep everything in place.… Read more

You might decide, on viewing these two clips from the new Bravo TV show "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" that words fail you.

Please don't be alarmed.

Words sometimes know when they have been defeated. They realize that there are occasional moments in life when they can and will have no effect.

So please just click the play buttons here and marvel, say, at the straight face of VC Dave McClure, as he examines a pitch from a couple of very beautiful people -- whose words will make up for your lack of them.

Yes, one of them finds … Read more

Nokia PC Suite is a collection of tools that allows your Nokia handset to connect to your Windows machine and sync data, back up your phone's contents, push software updates to your phone, as well as share files between desktop and mobile phone. Supporting a long list of Nokia phones, Nokia PC Suite is easy to install and launch on your Windows machine.

The interface used by Nokia PC Suite is simple, using a set of icons to show different tasks. When a phone is connected, it appears with its status in the left pane of the software; the … Read more

The Talking Moose is a desktop utility that features a funny animated cartoon-like moose that will pop up when least expected and deliver a funny line, a witty quote, or insult the user. There are versions of The Talking Moose for the Mac and mobile devices as well as Windows, and the moose even has his own Facebook page and Twitter accounts.

The Talking Moose has been around in electronic form since 1986 and was one of the first animated figures on computers. Once installed the user will see the interface with links to the official Talking Moose Website and … Read more

It's lucky the Microsoft Surface RT is small, because Microsoft's coming pop-up stores look like they're going to be very compact.

Microsoft is planning to open 34 holiday pop-up stores in the U.S. and Canada. (The just-added two, announced this week by the company, are a Chicago and Times Square New York.) They are opening on October 26, the day that Windows 8 and Microsoft's Surface RT tablets/PCs are generally available.

I guess I was envisioning temporary full-size Microsoft stores -- like two-dozen-plus permanent brick-and-mortar stores they are operating already -- when I … Read more

What it must be to be ugly and in tech.

What it must be to be, oh, in one's late 20s or even early 30s and be ugly and in tech.

How does anyone cope? The Valley shrinks must never go home to their VC lovers.

This obvious truth is underlined by a new trailer for Bravo TV's forthcoming reality show about Silicon Valley -- which enjoys Randi Zuckerberg as one of its producers.… Read more