Short and effective video below. Enjoy.

This list might seem somewhat boring at first. But when you stop to think about the impact of the  choices that we’ve made as consumers you realize that we’ve changed the world. This list is from the Huffington Post.

1. Calling (I prefer texting to phone calls)
2.  Fax Machines
3.  Catalogs
4.  Encyclopedias
5. Newspaper Classifieds (some might say the newspaper entirely)
6.  CDs
7. Dial-up Internet
8. Film & Film Cameras
9. Yellow Pages
10. Wires

Okay, well some of these really aren’t obsolete… yet. However, its still interesting to think about all of the things that we no longer use. Unfortunately, what can you do with obsolete items except throw them away? Think of all the trash that these out-of-date items will create.

By Christopher Borrelli
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

 
Sit down and shut up. Why? Because, folks, today, have we got a rumble for you — a debate that has been brewing for ages, both sides entrenched and livid, and both positions questionable. Indeed, for as long as humans have assembled to enjoy live music this argument has raged, a salvo of beer cups and shouted derision all around:

Is it OK to stand and dance at a concert when everyone around you is sitting?

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Let’s consider this rationally. Both sides make good points. On the one hand, if you buy a ticket to a concert and stand-able music is played, you should be able to dance and sway and throw your hands in the air as generations before you have done — rocking out should be your prerogative. On the other hand, if you spend $132 on a ticket to a concert, you should be able to see that concert, and if the audience is in a sitting mood, who are you to block the sightlines of the 56 people behind you?

Let’s argue both sides of the issue:
———
HEY, YOU! SIT DOWN!

Hey, knucklehead! Down in front! Do you think the show is any better because you’re standing? Aw, poor babies. Are your feelings hurt? Too bad. Now sit the hell down, because your concert-going experience is in no way enhanced by standing.

Here’s why.

Intensity: This quality isn’t defined by whether you sit or stand. I have been rocked harder by Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mahler concerts than metal bands. Musicians get off on crowd engagement and applause. There has been only one concert at which I have stood that I couldn’t have imagined wanting to sit: Electric Wizard at Chicago’s Double Door, eons ago. Because there were no seats. But also because it’s easier to hold your arms in the air, devil horns fully extended, when standing.

Aesthetics: Trust me, seeing a field of rhythm-less, droopy-bottomed hipsters twitching spasmodically makes you wish for enough mouth guards to keep them all from swallowing their tongues. Not a pretty sight. If the music is danceable, that’s one thing. When Sea & Cake played Orchestra Hall, some of the crowd, seized by the magic, found space along the edge of the room and shimmied to their hearts’ content.

Enough, already: Standing is like a trap. If the band goes on longer than expected, what then? It can’t be any less intense, right? And so you stand. And stand. And stand, because sitting at that point is like giving up or something. But you could be sitting, ya’ dummy.

Fairness: The person sitting behind you might not want to stand. By choosing to stand, you force the person behind you to stand. Then the person behind him or her stands and, voila, you have a room full of people who aren’t standing because they’re reallyreallyreallyreally into the music. They’re standing because they have to, in order to see, sort of a Dork Domino Theory. But the person behind you might subscribe to the Sit It, Ya’ Knucklehead Theory.
Like me. Because my worldview at concerts is like my driving worldview: I don’t care what you do, just don’t do it in front of me.

— Kevin Williams
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First, let me just say I’m a bit of a hypocrite. I’m here to defend standing at concerts and dancing when everyone around me is sitting on their hands, but I probably wouldn’t stand myself. I prefer not to have eyes on me; I have witnessed enough heated back-and-forths between concert standers and sitters to know sitters always prevail. Peer pressure is powerful.

And yet, if you need to dance, even if it’s right in front of me and I’m sitting, you should dance all night. There are exceptions, of course, like don’t dance during any performance in which the band is sitting.

Anywhere else, dance.

Dance at inappropriate times. Be that wacko in the front row who won’t sit down. The “live” in live performances already feels as though it’s bleeding from a million tiny cuts. Video screens, vocal tracking, teleprompters.

Unless you’re in a venue where sitting isn’t a real option, it’s easy to feel removed from performers these days.

The next time you’re in a balcony of a theater and someone in the front row is standing and you’re annoyed and wondering if he knows everyone behind him is sitting, remember where you are. No matter how much the concert industry has done in the name of convenience, a live show is still not hermetically sealed entertainment.

What’s that? If you just sat we wouldn’t be arguing?

True. But none of this is going away. As older performers acquire generations of fans — many of whom have reached the age where sitting is preferred, and many others for whom concert-going remains a leave-your-seat experience — concert venues say awkward confrontations between standing fans and fuming sitters are just getting worse.

What’s that? Standers should get their own section? Well, there are forward thinking concert halls and performers: For years, Bruce Springsteen has set aside thousands of tickets every show for a general-admission, standing section on the floor.

What? Majority rules? Thoughtful. But wasn’t it buttoned-down proletarian thinking that gave birth to pop music in the first place? Remember when rock was about stepping out of line?

Besides, a quick survey of venues suggests enforcement is random and etiquette murky.

Yes, energy and engagement are a two-way street — even when the performer’s knees are older than Brian Wilson. I’m reminded of the time I saw Wilco, and a man in the front row ate a sandwich, and Jeff Tweedy stopped mid-song to ask, “Do I come to where you work and eat a sandwich on your desk?” I’m reminded of my 14-year-old self, who thought quiet, obedient audiences were something other cultures endured because they weren’t democracies. I’m reminded of the woman who recently told me she tried to dance at an Eagles show and security sat her down.

Which is sad.

Surely, if you’re attending an Eagles concert in 2009, you need your exercise and you probably won’t be mall walking the next morning. Next time, stand your ground.

— Christopher Borrelli
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(c) 2009, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
—————

By Glenn Gamboa
Newsday, (MCT)

The ongoing success of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is a head-scratcher.

The song, which peaked at No. 9 on the pop charts in 1981, isn’t even the Bay Area band’s biggest hit. That would be “Open Arms” (No. 2 in 1982), followed by “Who’s Crying Now” (No. 4, 1981) and “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” (No. 8 in 1983).

Nevertheless, “Don’t Stop Believin’” continues to be a pop culture force today, even used as the finale for the current “American Idols Live” tour, where all the finalists get a crack at a few lines from the classic. And, according to Nielsen SoundScan, it is the top music download from the ’80s as of the end of July, ahead of seven Michael Jackson songs, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” (Last week, the song was still among iTunes’ Top 100 downloads, the oldest song on the current list by far.)

“The lyric is a strong lyric about not giving up, but it’s also about being young,” former Journey singer Steve Perry told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. recently about the song he wrote with keyboardist Jonathan Cain and guitarist Neal Schon, who continue with Journey. “It’s about having hope and not quitting when things get tough, because I’m telling you things get tough for everybody.”

Maybe that’s why “Don’t Stop Believin” lives on and on and on.

Here’s a look at some of its recent incarnations:

THE SOPRANOS (2007)
Used as: The theme music for the HBO series’ final scene, a seemingly regular family meal at a diner that feels ominous, especially when the song cuts out after “Don’t stop” and the screen goes black.
The reaction: The song saw an immediate resurgence from its part in the scene, which became so iconic that Hillary Clinton even parodied it as part of her presidential campaign.

ROCK OF AGES (2009)
Used as: The finale of the Broadway musical, where the entire cast gets together and ties up story lines
The reaction: The scene helped “Rock of Ages” land a Tony nomination for best musical and a nod for Constantine Maroulis as lead actor in a musical.

GLEE (2009)
Used as: The main number in the first episode of the new Fox series about a high school glee club.
The reaction: The cast’s version was an overnight sensation, with its version landing at No. 4 on the pop charts on the strength of its download sales alone.
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(c) 2009, Newsday.
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

By Sharon Pian Chan
The Seattle Times
(MCT)

SEATTLE — The same day Microsoft reported some of its worst financial results, a dozen buses left the Redmond campus. During rush hour, they headed toward Highway 520 as a phalanx of cops on motorcycles shut down the onramps ahead, clearing the path to the Pacific Science Center.

Microsoft had rented the museum for a private party and a screening of the new “Harry Potter” movie. After the screening, about 600 attendees received a free Xbox 360 video-game console.

The recipients of this VIP treatment? Microsoft’s summer interns.

“You feel like royalty to be escorted by police,” said Joriz De Guzman, a 19-year-old intern working toward his master’s degree in business administration at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

In a year when Microsoft cut nearly 5,000 jobs, the company continues to lavish money on its internship program, bringing about 1,000 college and graduate students from across the country to the Redmond campus for the summer.

The goal, the company says, is to recruit future employees and to turn the interns into walking billboards for Microsoft back at school, chanting “Microsoft gave me an Xbox” or “I went to a barbecue at Bill Gates’ house.”

“We want to cultivate a pipeline of really, really strong employment candidates,” said Kerry Olin, general manager for university recruiting.

“Objective No. 2 is to create the kind of experience and window into Microsoft that sends them back — whether they get offers or not — as people who can be advocates for Microsoft.”

The Gates barbecue, a tradition for many years, is gone now that he no longer works full time at Microsoft. CEO Steve Ballmer instead does a Q&A session with the interns, and pizza with the MBA interns.

Olin said the company added the Pacific Science Center trip to replace the Gates house party.

Last year, the U.N.-like motorcade ended at Woodland Park Zoo, where Ben Folds and Vampire Weekend gave a private concert. Free Zunes for everybody capped off the event.

The summer of intern fun is not unusual at tech companies, which compete to hire top college graduates. Google, which brings in hundreds of interns each year, puts interns into “cohorts,” small groups that bond over weekly rock climbing and paintballing outings. All the Google interns in Mountain View, Calif., went on a boat cruise.

Besides meeting with Ballmer, Microsoft interns attend presentations by division presidents. And Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division, hosted a model-rocket launch at a park with the Windows group interns to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

The benefits are one draw, interns said, as is the chance to do real work.

“It’s not your average make-coffee-and-copies-for-us internship,” said Ederlyn Lacson, a linguistics major from the University of Maryland at College Park. “People are working on products that have (shipped) or will ship.”

Lacson, at Safeco Field for an intern trip to a Seattle Mariners game, is working in the natural-language group on Microsoft’s spellchecker. She said she is weighing the possibility of coming back or working for the CIA or the National Security Agency.
De Guzman is working on compiling best practices for digital marketing for Microsoft’s Project software.

“One thing that really drew me was the (chance to have a) product-manager role, to become the CEO of this thing and drive all the decisions,” he said.

Interns get mentors and performance reviews. Microsoft offers full-time jobs to 85 percent of the interns, and more than 80 percent accept.

Olin said the company had about 20 percent fewer interns this summer than in previous years, reflecting the reduction in Microsoft’s overall work force.

Microsoft declined to give exact salary numbers; Olin said interns make about 80 percent of a starting full-time employee. That comes to about $4,600 to $6,000 a month, based on pay of entry-level software engineers.

They also receive a housing stipend and relocation costs for the summer.

Plus, there’s the baseball game, weekend outings to sky-dive and paraglide, and to balance everything out, a “Day of Caring” where the interns volunteer on projects with organizations such as Northwest Harvest and Earthcorp.

“The investment the company makes in a program like this is staggering,” Olin said.

As for the Pacific Science Center shindig, he said, “It’s actually a fairly low-budget effort because of our relationships with the studios and that kind of thing.” He said the police escort “is a nice story for the students. The truth of the matter is we just try to cooperate with the police when we’re trying to move a dozen buses across town at rush hour.”

(A State Patrol spokesman said police escorts are contracted privately and paid for by the person or company that hires them.)

The free Xboxes are an investment, too, Olin said. “We also get some of our technology on campuses in the hands of thought leaders.
“There was a Head & Shoulders commercial that ran in the 1980s, and commercial’s tag was, ‘You never get a (second) chance to make a first impression.’ That’s a pretty good truism for our internship program.”
———
JUST A FEW OF THE PERKS
—XBox console
—Housing stipend
—Competitive salary, estimated at $4,600 to $6,000 a month
—Relocation costs
—Mentors
—Sky diving
—Paragliding
—Private party at Pacific Science Center and screening of new “Harry Potter” movie
—”Intern Day of Caring,” a day of volunteering
—Puzzle day, 8 hours of 1,000 Microsoft employees working on logic puzzles
—Mount Rainier hike
—Dinner at Farestart
—Seattle Mariners game
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(c) 2009, The Seattle Times.
Visit The Seattle Times Extra on the World Wide Web at http://www.seattletimes.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
—————

Courtesy of USAA

As identity thieves prowl the Web, they don’t rely on painstaking guesswork. They’re armed with password-hacking programs that do the work for them. If you’re still using the name of your pet or your favorite sports team as a password, you’re easy prey.

The best hacker-resistant passwords are:

• Lengthy: At least eight characters, but longer is better.
• Multi-character: Use numbers, symbols, punctuation and both uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Memorable: How do you make a long, complex password that’s easy to remember? Build it around a sentence. For example, “At the NCAA tournament, Bucknell defeated Kansas 64 to 63” becomes @tNt,BdK64t63.

The most common password is 123456. If this is your password you should really consider changing it.

USAA, a diversified financial services group of companies, is among the leading providers of financial planning, insurance, investments, and banking products to members of the U.S. military and their families. For the past three years, BusinessWeek magazine ranked USAA among the top two “Customer Service Champs,” highlighting our legendary commitment of providing highly competitive financial products for approximately 7 million members. For more information about USAA, or to learn more about membership, visit usaa.com.

 ”Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” is a hoot, but Jane Austen purists will shudder.

Ben H. Masters, playwright and author, has created an amusing mash-up of Jane Austin’s classic novel using Jules Verne’s fantasy, Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures, the eldritch horror of H.P. Lovecraft, and extensive use of a thesaurus.

Austen’s original “Sense and Sensibility” covers two years in the life of the three Dashwood daughters — mostly the elder two, Elinor and Marianne — as they fall in and out of love, according to the rigid social strictures of the 19th century English Regency period. Survival dominates “Sea Monsters” where every fish lusts for human blood.

“As the party watched in horror, Miss Bellwether was wrapped inside the quavering blanket-shape of the beast and consumed, the stomach acids of the enormous jellyfish dissolved her flesh, emanating a sickening sizzling noise, followed by a sort of unholy belch. And then as quickly as it came, the creature dragged itself back into the sea, the tide withdrew; and all that was left of Miss Bellwether was a pile of corroded bones, a clump of hair and a whalebone corset.”

In Austen’s version, Elinor is known for “strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment.” Winters changes this to “an excellent heart, a broad back and sturdy calf muscles, and she was admired by her sisters and all who knew her as a masterful driftwood whittler.”

The flighty Marianne is described as “her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She spoke sighingly of the cruel creatures of the water even the one who had so savaged her father, lending them such flowery appellations as “Our Begilled Tormentors” or “the Unfathomable Ones.”

Elegant Regency London has become Sub-Marine Station Beta, an undersea glass-domed metropolis constantly under attack by the aquatic world.

“Outside the Dome, enough blood was left in the (filtration assistant’s) upper portion for him to remain conscious, and he watched in horror as his lower portion was chewed to death by the great beast. Marianne paused — and no one spoke. The anglerfish finished the legs and began its assault on the remaining portion of the filtration assistant. The ocean fogged with blood.”

“Sea Monsters” actually gives a large part to the third daughter, Margaret, who now has sharpened teeth, a bald head and mutters Lovecraftian-style chants, “K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah! K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah!”

The heroic Colonel Brandon, afflicted by a sea-witch curse, has tentacles on his face (think Davy Jones in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) while the duplicitous Willoughby, who attracts Marianne, is a treasure hunter — not too far from Austen’s original portrayal.

If you don’t take any of it too seriously — and how could you? — “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” is an entertaining addition to the overwhelming tide of Austen-related books.

———

(c) 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau on the World Wide Web at www.mcclatchydc.com. ————— BOOK-SEAMONSTERS

 ”Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” by Jane Austen and Ben H. Masters; Quirk Books, Philadelphia (344 pages, $12.95)

By Etan Horowitz
The Orlando Sentinel (MCT)

ORLANDO, Fla. — When actor Ashton Kutcher and CNN were racing last month to see who could amass 1 million followers first on Twitter, many people tracked the race at Twitterholic.com, a site started as a joke by two Florida Web developers. Alex Rudloff of Satellite Beach and Gavin Hall of Orlando built the site in a couple of hours back in early 2007, when Twitter was new and the only people using it were the tech-savvy set. The two University of Central Florida graduates thought it would be funny to quantify just how addicted people were to the micro-blogging site.

“It adds a high-school mentality to Twitter,” Hall (3,971 followers), 28, said of Twitterholic. “You take all these people that were geeks — the early adopters were the geeks — who weren’t the most popular people in high school necessarily, and all of a sudden now we are ranking them.”

But as Twitter’s popularity surged and as celebrities such as Oprah (1,019,191 followers) started joining the service, Twitterholic became an easy way to keep track of the most popular users and a go-to source for publications including The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to quantify popularity on Twitter.
“Somewhere in the process it became a great tool to find local people,” Hall said.

Twitterholic includes a list of the top 1,000 users by followers as well as lists of the top users in a particular city. The service is not foolproof, however, because not all users indicate a city in their profile.

Orlando Magic Center Dwight Howard, a relative newcomer to Twitter, ranks as the champ locally, with more than 45,000 followers, according to Twitterholic.

Howard, who likes to use Twitter to rev fans up and promote his blog, is a good example of how easy it is for celebrities or other people with public profiles to amass followers simply by mentioning Twitter on TV or other public appearances.

Others amass large followers by finding lots of other people to follow, since many users will return the favor of following someone who starts following them.

“You can get a lot of followers by following a lot of people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are interesting,” said, Rudloff (6,042 followers), who is No. 12 on Twitterholic’s list of top Orlando Twitter users.
For this reason, other sites, such as Twitter Grader (twitter.grader.com), look at more than the number of followers to determine someone’s ranking, including how often that person is quoted or “retweeted” by other users and how often people reply to that user.

The Magic’s Howard, for example, isn’t even in Twitter Grader’s top 50 users in Orlando.

Other local users with lots of followers are the official accounts of businesses or organizations, such as Know Cancer, (7,347 followers) an Orlando-based Web site that provides support and information to those affected by cancer, which launched in the fall. Nicole LaTesta, the company’s social-media director, said Twitter has helped Know Cancer easily find people who want to know more about the disease and other issues, such as healthy living.

“I’ll come across a profile that says ’sitting in the chemo chair’ or ‘just got diagnosed’ — very personal things that you wouldn’t see if it wasn’t for Twitter,” LaTesta said. “Then I’ll send them an inspirational quote or a resource for more information, such as what question to ask if you are going through chemo.”

Since Rudloff and Hall, who also run a resume-building site called emurse.com (which they recently sold to AOL), started Twitterholic as a joke, they never intended to make money off the service. It’s free of advertising and they’ve turned down offers to buy it, though they are open to the possibility.

Now that athletes, politicians and celebrities have flocked to Twitter, Rudloff and Hall often get e-mails from people who want their stats on Twitterholic to be updated more often, such as representatives for rocker Lenny Kravitz (248,853 followers).

And although the top of Twitterholic instructs visitors to follow Rudloff and Hall on Twitter so they can make their own list of top users, that isn’t the case anymore.

“We’re not going to be able to compete against Britney (Spears) or Oprah,” Rudloff said.
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What is it?
Twitter.com is a free micro-blogging service where users answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less and send their updates on the Web for their network of “followers” to read. Updates can include descriptions of something they’ve just done, opinions on books or movies and links to interesting articles. Unlike other social-networking sites, someone can choose to “follow” your Twitter updates without you having to follow them.
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(c) 2009, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).
Visit the Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (www.mctcampus.com).
—————

By Laura M. Bollin
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

If you’re heading to a movie theater this weekend, perhaps to see the new Disney-Pixar film, there’s a Web site that could help you know when to get “Up” and go to the bathroom.

Runpee.com was launched in August by Los Angeles-based freelance Flash developer Dan Florio. It touts itself as “helping your bladder enjoy going to the movies as much as you do” by telling moviegoers the best spots during films to go relieve themselves without missing any of the action.

Florio cites Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” remake as his inspiration.

“It’s a three-hour movie. By the end of it, I had to go to the bathroom really badly,” Florio said. “When I got out of the theater, there was a huge queue of people in line for the next showing.

“I wanted to go up to them and say, ‘Hey, there’s this scene with a lot of bugs, and it’s totally irrelevant, so when that happens, just go to the bathroom.”

And his site was born.

“There are more than 2,000 sites now linking to my site,” said Florio, 32, who lives with his wife, Jill, in an RV as he travels the country for different projects.

The site is a wiki, so registered users can submit their recommended break times for movies, which can be listed by most recent release date, alphabetically or by running time.

“Not all movies have pee times, because not all have had pee times submitted,” said Florio.

“Right now, I am trying to go out and see all the summer blockbuster movies, because people will be seeing those and I want to keep the site useful.”

As for that unusual name? It was the first thing that came to mind, says Florio, “the site is meant to tell you when to run and pee.”

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(c) 2009, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (/www.mctcampus.com)

By Scott Kleinberg
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

Why does everyone know about that thing you did last night with your best friend’s wife?

Probably because you tweeted about it.

How did I find out? Read it on oversharers.com. It’s a site that searches Twitter for all things embarrassing.
And it’s good.

Ever since the birth of the Internet, the same rule has applied: If you don’t want anyone to know about it, don’t type it. And whatever you do, don’t post it.

Of course, some people don’t mind their tweets ending up on oversharers.com, broadcasting delicate information “accidentally.” You can imagine their “surprise”: What’s that? It’s not private? My Twitter name is attached and now millions know what I did? Bummer.

At least at lamebook.com, basically the same idea applied to Facebook status updates, most of the names and photos are blurred out, somewhat limiting the embarrassment. Maybe that’s more your style.

Whether you’re featured on the sites or just browsing, both are worth checking out.

Moral of this story? You can’t ask the Internet to keep a secret.
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(c) 2009, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (mctcampus.com)