Apple CEO Steve Jobs Unveils Brand New Apple iPhone:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the Apple faithful and the business community what they wanted Monday: a new, faster and much cheaper iPhone.

The new, slimmer models will feature GPS satellite-tracking chips, third-generation (3G) cellular Internet access, better audio, metal buttons and a regular flush headphone jack.

The 8-gigabyte model will retail for $199, its 16-gigabyte sister for $299 — and the latter variation will also come in white.

I didn't buy the first iPhone because the Internet connection speeds were way too slow but this model looks much more impressive. If there were a decent amount of useful programs available for it, I'd buy one immediately. Then again, the odds of getting one of these suckers anytime soon are slim to none. I'll let the Apple freaks gobble them all up and then when the 2nd swarm is released with a price deduction, I'll buy one myself. I can see the lines forming now...

'Telectroscope' Connects New York To London In Real-Time:

NEW YORK — Hello, London! Jolly good show, New York!

New Yorkers could see their English cousins across the pond Thursday without benefit of cable TV or video conferencing, courtesy of an unusual live optical hookup created by a conceptual artist with a fanciful tale of a long-lost tunnel.

An optical device called a "telectroscope" was placed at the Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn and another one on the Thames River in London on Thursday.

Spectators stepped up to the machine on both sides of the Atlantic and waved and wrote greetings to each other in real time on wipe-off message boards.

They told knock-knock jokes, asked about the weather and found time for a few shout-outs to Queen Elizabeth and the Manchester United soccer team.

How long until this thing turns into a means of insulting one another from across the pond? Still, it is a really cool toy.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Pelted With Eggs In Budapest:

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was egged by a protester during a speech he gave at a Hungarian University," Matt Asay reports for CNET.

"As this video shows, the protester rose to his feet to challenge Microsoft for stealing billions in Hungarian taxpayer money, then started hurling eggs at Ballmer, who was forced to take cover behind a desk," Asay reports.

Not quite as bad as the infamous Bill Gates pie attack of '06.

Amateurs Patrol Nation's Border for Illegals From Home:

TUCSON, Ariz. — At least a couple of times a week, Ernie Kubr gets off the night shift and fires up his computer at his home in Nebraska so that he can watch for illegal immigrants trying to slip across the Arizona desert 1,400 miles away.

Kubr uses his mouse to pan with a video camera across desert trails, and stands ready to report anyone he sees to federal authorities in Arizona. He has spotted people twice since he started doing this in November, and "that makes it all worthwhile," even though none of them got caught.

"Sometimes it can be discouraging, but knowing that I'm attempting to do the federal government's job helps inspire me," said Kubr, who works at a manufacturing business in the Omaha area and belongs to an amateur border-watching group called the TechnoPatriots.

You can watch the border from several vantage points on their website and then report any findings to the authorities. It's obvious somebody has to do something about our porous borders. The federal government should be embarrassed that it takes the ingenuity of concern citizens to get the ball rolling on a solution to deal with our illegal immigration problems. You can't fault them for trying.

New Anti-Terror Weapon Arrives - The Hand-held Lie Detector:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

I don't put much faith in the reliability of these things. I know the hand-held lie detectors to be released by the Pentagon will be a far cry from those Sharper Image toys we've all played with but they seem semi-useless. The results can't be admissible in a court of law.