Technobabble

We all tube So what are you doing in this 100-plus-degree Chico heat while sitting under your ceiling fan or next to your swamp cooler? If you’re watching a few of the 50 million video clips streamed daily on YouTube, you’re not alone, obviously. From videos about cats (28,556) to car bombs in Iraq (39) to videos on farting (4,313), there is something to keep you occupied. Don’t tell me you don’t have a video on YouTube! About 60,000 videos are uploaded daily. People are getting famous here, folks.

Fire in the hole But you will want to be careful which computer you watch your YouTube farting videos on. A Dell laptop exploded at a conference in Osaka, Japan, in mid-June, shooting flames all around the three-piece suits trying to stay awake during the business gathering. There have also been a few reported cases of the MagSafe power connectors on the new MacBook Pros catching on fire. Apple is calling their new portables “notebooks,” trying to dissuade users from placing the machines on their bare legs in fear of minor burns from the hot battery.

Binging when you should be boinging According to Boing Boing, a Directory of Wonderful Things (www.boingboing.net), Internet stalking took a 180-degree turn recently in Florida. Two young teenage girls lured an adult man through MySpace using a photo of an alleged 18-year-old woman named “Natalia,” telling him that she was “just lookin’ for something fun.” When he showed up at the agreed-upon apartment, the 14-and 15-year-old girls pulled pistols on the man and told him to empty his pockets. Luckily, he didn’t show up for “fun” with his wallet. There is supposedly some sort of video on the Interweb but as it is coded in Windows Media Player on a Fox News Web site, it keeps crashing FireFox on both my Mac and my PC.

“Spank Thru” And for those looking to quantify their fun, the Spankometer is here. That’s right, strap it on and it records time taken to spank, number of strokes and the calories used in the process. It will store your results for a year so you can track your progress. Who needs a personal trainer and an expensive gym membership?

Fresh Breath And finally, a device that is long overdue: the LG4100 cell phone with built-in Breathalyzer. It could save your life by indicating that it is not a good idea to get behind the wheel—but more important, it could save you some serious embarrassment by not letting you call your ex as you exit Normal St. Bar at 2 a.m. Pre-program select names on certain nights after a certain hour and if your blood-alcohol level exceeds .08 it’ll save you from trying to remember what you said during that two-hour conversation with your former bedmate.