!!!....Electronics world....!!!

Do you want your new  iPad  to have a soft, seductive voice? Do you want that voice to tell you what the weather will be in Copenhagen tomorrow? Do you want her to send e-mails to your lover for you? Apple, you see, is reportedly, allegedly, rumoredly  announcing a new iPad in March . Naturally, many speculate that this will be called the iPad 3, just as many speculated that the last year's  iPhone  would be the  iPhone 5 . That turned out to be the iPhone 4S. So why shouldn't one believe that the new iPad will be the iPad 2 and a half? The iPhone 4S enjoyed improvements that amused the hard-core, dual-core tech community. But there was only one reason that it caught the imagination of real human beings. That reason was Siri, the occasionally moody personal assistant that makes you feel like Ari Gold. Surely then, the first supposition would be that Siri would migrate to your iPad, so that you can demand the New York Times from her and ...

Companies take liberties. The liberty some seem to enjoy most is yours. As recessions hit and profit pressures become the sole reason for existence, bosses seem to believe that they own workers--until they discard them for younger, fresher models. Now a curiously human law has reared its head in Brazil.  According to the Associated Press , this law says that if a company e-mails you after your allotted working hours, then this is the same as if one's supervisor is giving one an instruction to perform a certain work task. (Credit:  CC ILamont.com/Flickr ) Ergo, argue Brazilian labor lawyers, if a worker receives such an e-mail and has to act on it, he or she qualifies for overtime pay. I can already hear the howling of corporate management in, say, America. I can hear sniggers suggesting that every corporate employee should be on call 24 hours a day. That is today's connected world. Some might offer, though, that today's connected world has become peculiarly inhuman-- one i...

Not everyone knows (or cares about) the finer points of technology. Many are happy just to discover that their phone works and that they know how to work it. So who cannot at least attempt to have sympathy for the man whose  iPhone   stopped the New York Philharmonic  in its tracks last Tuesday? The marimba was so out of tune with the strings that conductor Alan Gilbert downed baton and became upset. Now the New York Times  has located the man  who stopped Mahler dead, and he is mortified. Yes, they come with alarms. (Credit:  CC Brett Jordan/Flickr ) He is a regular concertgoer. He was seated in the front row. Unfortunately, though, his company had--for reasons unknown--taken back his corporate BlackBerry and given him an iPhone instead. This was its first day in the gentleman's possession. This was its first time at a concert. And the gentleman explained that he wasn't quite au fait with all of its joys. He was sure he had switched his phone off. There ...