Digsby lets users hook up Facebook, Twitter, AIM, Google Talk, and Facebook Chat accounts into one convenient client. LifeHacker recently published a good article which explains why Digsby is a bad client because of all the ways they try to install crapware along with their IM client. I am inclined to agree with LifeHacker’s opinions even though I enjoy using Digsby. However, a new version of Digsby just released today is trying to change things.

Since most people now conduct their research on the Internet, they will benefit from tools that help them organize their searches. Yahoo hopes that users will turn to their new Search Pad application, a feature currently in beta testing.

With the Search Pad, users will be able to use automated features to track their work while conducting online research. Instead of requiring the user to copy and paste content into a word processing program or e-mail, Search Pad can track websites visited as well as keep notes from the research materials. The URLs of your tracked sites will be logged along with your notes.

I don’t know about you, but spending too much time away from a computer can be a bit nerve-wracking. While withdrawal-like symptoms might be a problem for some, they show just how large a part of our lives computers have become. They’re about as ubiquitous as TVs are in the U.S. to some of us. A home without a computer seems strange, foreign. Turns out that’s not too far from the truth.

According to a Research and Markets report of computers in the U.S. in 2008, about 80 percent of homes currently have a desktop or notebook computer. While the report is a whopping 111 pages, and costs € 2,995, the important information for those of us not in the business side of things is already right there. An average of four out of every five homes having a computer is a big deal, especially if that last 20 percent of those homes might have access to computers in some other way.

It seems fairly common recently for parents to yell at their teenagers for spending possibly too much time on the Internet or computers in general. I know I’ve heard it enough, directed both at myself when I was in high school and to others. Some parents like to complain that teenagers aren’t spending their time well on the Internet when they could be reading or playing in traffic. I’ve never believed the arguments against the Internet for teenagers, and now there’s actually a study that proves it for me. Read about the study after the break.

You may or may not have noticed that along with the previously mentioned “Blu,” the letter “i” has become prefixed to every product known to man. Obviously, Apple has all the right in the world to do that (as they really popularized it) but Phillips is making a name for themselves with this “prefix-stealing,” after the goLITE Blu. Get ready for the iPill (the intelligent pill).

Most of us already know what camera pills are (pill sized cameras that you swallow), and this is really a development from that idea further into the world of medicine. The pill can essentially do three things: it can monitor acidity levels, it can release medicine, and it can record temperatures. All of which contribute towards its main aim of analyzing problems and acting upon them.

Surveys like this are always very interesting as they show the real truths behind the reliability of products, not just the output of the company’s marketing department. In this case, SquareTrade, a research group, have taken it open themselves to tackle smart phones and to see their reliability (or lack thereof, as the case may be) over the first year of purchase. And what better to use than 15,000 handsets consisting of BlackBerrys, iPhones and Treos.

As my not-so-inconspicuous title suggests, the Treo performed poorly, in fact, surprisingly poorly! After one year 5.6% of all iPhones malfunctioned, followed by a sizable jump to 12% for the BlackBerry and a massive 16% of Treos. This is incredibly worrying if you have just a bought a Treo, but comforting if you have selected the iPhone!

Read the full details after the break.

Vehicular accidents due to sleepy drivers are a leading cause of death in the United States (or the world, for that matter). And it surprises me to know that not many people give thought or try to find ways to prevent such things from happening, even though the next person to doze off behind the more »

Researchers who conducted focus-group discussions with teenagers from Netherlands have found a “shocking” discovery. Although most teens are aware of the damage that they are inflicting upon themselves by setting the volumes of their music players on high, they generally don’t care. That’s easy to understand, but what I don’t get is why many people are still puzzled as to why this is so. Shouldn’t it be general knowledge by now that most people really do prefer to listen to loud music? It’s the best way to really appreciate music anyway. And although I agree that this will have some bad “side-effects” to the listener in terms of his/her hearing abilities, I find it hard to believe that there is any other way to really feel your music, except through pumping up the volume and blocking out everything else around you.

Parents, doctors, and anyone else who thinks I’m a loose nut for saying they should leave the loud-music listening music lovers alone, consider this: what would you rather have, that your kids are a) locked up in their rooms inhaling toxic stuff and slitting their wrists or b) locked up in their rooms wearing noise-canceling headphones and the volume set to 11? It’s high time someone told you what blasting ourselves with hard rock really and truly means.

While the headline may seem familiar it seems that the latest study in Japan that suggests that cell phones are not a brain cancer risk, is the first to look at the effects of hand set radiation levels on different parts of the brain. The study was conducted by the Tokyo Women’s Medical University and more »