U.S. texters send 4 billion SMS messages ... a day

By Ben Patterson / Yahoo! Tech

"Twice a year, the organization representing the wireless industry puts out a bunch of facts and figures on how much we're using our phones in the U.S., and each time, I can't help but marvel at the results.

The big number this time around, according to the CTIA: In the past six months alone, Americans sent an estimated 740 billion text messages, which comes out to about 4.1 billion messages each day.

Put another way: That's 11.7 text messages a day for every man, woman, and child in the country. (Of course, the average American teen can fire off 11 text messages in the time it takes you to read this paragraph.)

Or, how about this: An SMS has a maximum capacity of 160 characters, so let's say (for the sake of example) that your average text message is about 80 characters long. And let's assume that your average novel contains about 100,000 words, and each word has about five letters.

So ... assuming all that (and keeping in mind that my math is a little shaky), we here in the States are writing the equivalent of about 656,000 books—all via SMS—every 24 hours. At that rate, we could match the entire catalog of the entire New York Public Library system (which holds about 20.4 million books) in a little over a month. Amazing ... although whether you'd really want to read all those SMS books is another question.

In any case, if the CTIA's tally of 740 billion text messages in the past six months stays on track through the rest of the year, we'll pass 2008's total of one trillion text messages easily, ending up at nearly a trillion and a half messages for 2009 (and remember, that's just in the U.S.).

A few other facts and figures from the CTIA survey:

* The average cell phone bill in June 2009 was $49.57, up more than a buck from June 2008;
* The average length of a voice call was just 2.03 minutes, shorter than any other year since the CTIA started keeping records in 1988;
* There are about 276,610,580 wireless subscribers in the U.S., up about 14 million from last year, and more than double the number in 2002;
* The various wireless carriers (or at least the ones who reported figures to the CTIA) raked in $151.2 billion in revenue from June 2009 to June 2008—again, more than double what they made in 2002."

GameStop to hire 15,000 seasonal workers

By msnbc.com

"As usual, GameStop Inc. plans to hire about 15,000 seasonal, part-time workers to help with the holiday rush, the video game retailer said Tuesday.

But the company expects more applicants for the jobs — which pay minimum wage — than in previous years because of the economic turmoil that's left millions unemployed.

GameStop usually hires temporary employees in the fall, until Dec. 24, and said Tuesday the number of the new part-time workers this year is 'consistent with' its seasonal hiring in 2008 and 2007.'
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The move will temporarily increase the company's employee base by 46 percent. The number of its in-store 'game advisers' — people who help shoppers pick out video games — will grow by about 78 percent.

The company said the temporary jobs are spread out evenly across its stores around the U.S.

Shares of GameStop, the world's largest video game retailer, rose 47 cents, or 2 percent, to $24.55 in midday trading."

GeoCities closes today -- farewell!

By Christopher Null / Yahoo! Tech

"It's the end of an era in the world of the web: Yahoo!'s GeoCities service is finally shutting down today. The shutdown was originally announced in April of this year.

GeoCities was one of the early success stories of the nascent online world. Launched in 1995, its popularity quickly exploded. By 1999 it had become big enough to attract the interest of our very own corporate bosses, and Yahoo! paid over $3.5 billion for it that year, making it one of the web's most legendary acquisitions.

GeoCities let anyone build a simple website hosted by the service, for free. Over the years an endless number of quirky and, some might say, utterly useless websites, and in recent years a whole host of competing offerings have come on the market. Most notably, GeoCities was a key precursor to the blogging industry, which rose to prominence as similarly free services such as Blogger and WordPress, which also let anyone create a website about anything -- only with a little more structure than the notoriously free-form GeoCities.

As the BBC notes, at one point GeoCities was the third most popular destination on the Internet.

While GeoCities may be gone officially, it will always be remembered. In fact, GeoCities lives on indefinitely courtesy of the Internet Archive, which has been busily archiving GeoCities-hosted sites since its closure was announced. The 'historical record' of GeoCities can be found on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, though of course that record will never be 100 percent complete.

Ah, well.... Join me and raise a glass to GeoCities as we see it off into that great digital graveyard in the sky."

21 Ways to Customize Windows 7

By Michael Muchmore / PC Magazine (CLICK to read more)

"Customizability reaches new heights in Windows 7. New themes, backgrounds, gadgets, mouse pointers, user images, and more give you more ways than ever to change how your PC looks and works. Most of the customization options can be reached just by right–clicking on your desktop and selecting the Personalize option, but there are plenty of other places to look for options that make Windows 7 your own. Here are some of our favorites."

Ballmer Launches 'Simple' Windows 7

By Chloe Albanesius / PC Magazine (CLICK to read more)

"Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer officially unveiled the company's new Windows 7 operating system at a Thursday launch event in Manhattan.

'I'm Steve Ballmer and I'm a Windows 7 PC,' he announced.

The idea behind the new OS is to make computing 'simpler, faster, more responsive,' he said. That was possible thanks to an 'intense collaboration' between Microsoft and its partners – 50,000 software, hardware, and peripheral vendors, as well as 8 million beta testers, he said.

'Windows needs to be an incredible opportunity for innovation, for hardware companies [and] software companies, and it needs to be a place that is simple and easy to use and opens up the world of diverse innovation … in a way that is manageable and consumable by billions of people around the world,' Ballmer said.

Ballmer pointed to three key components of the OS: it works in the way you want it to work, it simplifies, and it enables new technologies."

Windows 7 operating system makes its debut

By Jessica Mintz / msnbc.com (CLICK to read more)

"Microsoft Corp. put a new edition of Windows on sale Thursday, hoping for a fresh start after a bad reception for the previous version of the software that runs most of the world's personal computers.

Windows 7 is now available on new computers, and as a software upgrade for some older PCs.

A Fry's Electronics store in Renton, Wash., several miles south of Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, opened at midnight to give customers an early shot at buying a new PC or a disc that they could use to put Windows 7 on their existing computers. Such upgrade discs start at $120.

'We're geeks, that's what geeks do. This is our excitement,' said Mike Naramor, 55, who runs a consulting business called My Computer Guy and was one of about 50 people who were waiting outside the store when it opened.

Naramor said that he also had bought copies of the last two operating systems, XP and Vista, the nights they were released and that he planned to go home and install Windows 7 right away.

'Vista took me about 72 hours,' he said. 'I expect this to take me 20 minutes.'

Indeed, Microsoft hopes people like Windows 7 more than its most recent predecessor, Vista, which was slow and didn't work well with existing programs and devices. Microsoft fixed many of Vista's flaws, but it was too late to repair the system's reputation."

Microsoft says it can restore Sidekick data

By Rachel Metz / msnbc.com (CLICK to read more)

"There may be a happy ending after all for owners of Sidekick phones who thought they might have permanently lost contact numbers and other personal information they had put on the gadget.

Earlier this week, T-Mobile said information stored by many Sidekick owners was 'almost certainly' gone for good following a failure of the computers that remotely stored the data.

But Microsoft Corp., whose Danger Inc. subsidiary makes the phones that are sold through T-Mobile USA, said Thursday it recovered 'most, if not all' of the missing data and will restore it as soon as it validates the information. Microsoft also apologized for the glitch."

HP jump-starting Compaq brand with ultra-cheap machines

By Christopher Null / Yahoo! Tech

"Remember Compaq? Hewlett-Packard acquired the venerable computer company way back in 2002, but it's kept the name alive as a secondary brand ever since, mainly relegating Compaq to overseas markets (Compaq is particularly popular in Asia) and as second-tier PCs sold on the cheap at warehouse-style stores.

But now HP is looking to breathe a little new life into the Compaq brand, positioning it not just as a label for extremely cheap computer equipment but also as one with mainstream appeal in the U.S.

Today the company is announcing the rollout of a line of ultra-inexpensive PCs, both laptops and desktops, with extreme budgets in mind.

Consider first the Compaq CQ61z (pictured), a 15.6-inch laptop with an AMD Sempron CPU, 2GB of RAM, DVD burner, 160GB hard drive, and discrete graphics. Running Windows 7 Home Premium, the machine costs a nearly unfathomable $399. That price point probably sounds familiar -- it's the usual cost for your average netbook, which in comparison offers a tiny screen, minimal hard drive, and an ultra-low-power Atom CPU.

With the $400 laptop's arrival, Compaq wants potential buyers to ask: Why not jump up to a much larger and more capable system for exactly the same price? I'm having a hard time seeing any reason not to. Seriously, it even has a numeric keypad.

Even better bargains abound for desktop shoppers. The attractive Compaq Presario 4010f has similar specs (with a 250GB hard drive) and starts at just $309 after a $100 rebate.

Both systems are available on Windows 7 launch day, October 22.

Compaq's aggressively inexpensive hardware -- particularly the $399 laptop -- could have massive ramifications for the computer market. Will netbooks finally feel the pinch that they've been giving to standard laptops for two years now? And what kind of pressure will machines like this bring to bear on more expensive notebook PCs? Price war in 3... 2... 1..."

SHOW #83 - NerdBoyTV: CrazyTalk 6.12

In this episode of NerdBoyTV, Ryan Yee demos CrazyTalk 6.12 by Reallusion. Last week, Ryan interviewed John Martin of Reallusion (maker of WidgetCast) and this week shows a quick-and-easy way to create an animation using CrazyTalk.

Gelato = online dating, plus a dash of Facebook & a pinch of Twitter

By Ben Patterson / Yahoo! Tech

"So, think your perfect match is probably a '30 Rock' fan? Then check out Gelato, a new online dating site that lets you find potential mates who've, say, added '30 Rock' to their Netflix queues, mentioned it on Facebook, tweeted about it, or watched a recent episode on Hulu.

Gelato (which I first learned about thanks to the New York Times) bills itself as 'real-time search meets online dating,' and that's more or less on the mark. The idea here is that rather than trying to find that special someone based on the standard, sterile profile info (such as 'Favorite movies,' 'Likes,' 'Dislikes,' and so on), you'll probably get a clearer picture of a someone by checking out their latest Facebook updates, tweets, Flickr photos, and Netflix rentals.

So here's how it works (and don't worry, no one's going to be pouring over your Facebook updates without an OK from you first): First, you create a Gelato account and connect it to either your Facebook or Twitter profiles, and then you go ahead and add some of that generic info (relationship status, looking for, ethnicity, religion, politics, and so on).

All pretty standard, but here's where it gets interesting: You can then connect a variety of other accounts to Gelato, including feeds from your Netflix, Hulu, Flickr, Amazon, Pandora, and Last.fm. Once that's done (and you can specify whether you want all that activity public, or restricted to your Gelato friends), all your updates will appear in a 'lifestream' on your Gelato profile—and it's all searchable by other Gelato members (provided you've made your feeds public).

So, for example, if you want to find single guys in Seattle who've watched, tweeted about, rented, or otherwise mentioned '30 Rock,' you can do so in a Gelato search. Or ... if you're looking for single women in Manhattan who've been tweeting about (or listening to, in the case of Pandora and Last.fm users) the Black Eyed Peas, you can search for that, too. (Of course, the only people you'll find in Gelato's search results are fellow Gelato members who've agreed to make their various feeds public.)

Pretty cool, but as usual, there are a couple caveats. First: You should be comfortable with letting a third party (like Gelato) handle your Facebook/Twitter/Netflix/Hulu feeds and profile info (again, plenty of privacy options are available, and connecting your account to Facebook and/or Twitter is performed via Facebook Connect and Twitter's official APT). Also: Because Gelato is so new, there aren't a whole lot of people to choose from yet.

Still ... real-time searching for love? Nice. Why didn't they have this when I was single?"

Netflix boss says DVD has two years left

By Christopher Null / Yahoo! Tech

"The days of building your precious DVD collection may be coming to an end sooner than you think. If Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' comments are any guide, the DVD era may be set to come to a rather abrupt halt.

Specifically, Hastings said in an interview with The Motley Fool website (digested here) that DVD will only be the 'primary delivery format' at the company for the next two years, though he did add that it would stick around in some fashion for the next decade or two. That's a huge pull back from Hastings' previous prognostication; the Netflix boss had formerly predicted DVD would remain the company's primary format until as late as 2018.

Strangely, Hastings didn't note what would supplant DVD as the company's major movie format, but considering that Blu-ray remains a niche product, with 10 percent penetration or lower among most consumers, he's probably talking about streaming.

Netflix has embraced video streaming in a major way in recent years, and its $99 set-top box remains the method I use to watch more streaming content than any other, outside of the occasional YouTube clip, anyway. (And yes, I know the Xbox-Netflix combo is undoubtedly popular with a huge number of people, too, at least those who don't futilely shun and fear video game consoles.)

Netflix continues to expand its streaming options -- about 20 percent of my queue is now available for streaming, up from roughly 8 percent a year ago -- but Hollywood keeps resisting, much as Big Media did in the early days of digital music downloads. Is Netflix hinting that more studios are climbing aboard the digital bandwagon? And at what point does streaming hit enough of a critical mass to become the dominant movie delivery method? 50 percent of titles available to stream? 80 percent? It's hard to see those kinds of numbers panning out in a mere two years... but maybe Hastings has tricks up his sleeve that we're only just now starting to hear about."

A Recipe for Riches - Common Traits of Billionaires

By Duncan Greenberg / Forbes (CLICK to read more)

"Want to become a tech titan or hedge fund tycoon? Up your chances by dropping out of college or going to Harvard and working at Goldman Sachs.

Are billionaires born or made? What are the common attributes among the uber-wealthy? Are there any true secrets of the self-made?

We get these questions a lot, and decided it was time to go beyond the broad answers of smarts, ambition and luck by sorting through our database of wealthy individuals in search of bona fide trends. We analyzed everything from entrepreneurs' parents' professions to where they went to school, their track records in the early stages of their careers and other experiences that may have set them on the path to extreme wealth.

Our admittedly unscientific study of the self-made members of the Forbes 400 yielded some interesting results."

When Cloud Fails: T-Mobile, Microsoft Lose Sidekick Customer Data

By Om Malik / Gigaom (CLICK to read more)

NerdBoyTV says, "This happened to my daughter, Alex...and no, she ain't happy."

"If you ever wondered what would happen when a cloud service fails, then you don’t have to wonder much. Earlier today customers of T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft lost access to all their data. There are some who believe that this data wipeout is because of a botched upgrade. Why it happened matters little to those who are unlikely to get their data back, according to a note posted on T-Mobile forums."

Will Barnes & Noble Break E-Reader Price Barrier?

By David Coursey / PC World

"Bookseller Barnes & Noble appears to be readying its own e-reader, due to go on sale as early as next month. The new model could help e-readers become the hot gift this holiday, but prices still need to come down.

Even with this week's price cut, the Kindle, at $259, still seems expensive. Will B&N beat Amazon's price and turn e-readers into mainstream devices? It just might.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the new B&N device would have a touch screen and virtual keyboard. Pricing was not disclosed and the bookseller refused comment on the e-reader rumor.

In July, B&N introduced an online e-book store, claiming some 700,000 titles that can be read on a variety of devices, including the iPhone. B&N is also the exclusive content provider for the Plastic Logic e-reader, due next year.

Gizmodo reports that the new e-reader is powered by Google's Android operating system.

The device supposedly has a 6-inch screen, using E-Ink technology, and will offer wireless downloads, according to media reports.

On Tuesday, Amazon lowered the price of its rival Kindle e-reader by $40, to $259 and said it would be offered for sale in 100 countries. The Kindle now costs $100 less than when it was introduced.

Consumer electrics giant Best Buy said this week it will begin selling Sony e-readers, which start at $199. The devices are expected to go on sale this weekend.

The B&N e-reader rumor appeared as the company was announcing sales drops and that it expects to take a loss during the current quarter, ending Oct. 31.

My take: B&N is in a good position to market e-readers, with the content distribution infrastructure already in place. Its storefronts will expose many people to the devices who have read about the Kindle, but have never actually touched one. If its device is a good one, it will generate sales for B&N, though it is hard to imagine they will offset the continued softness in its business.

The key for big sales this holiday is for e-readers to fall below the $200 price barrier. Throw in a couple of books and the devices will seem like a good value. Unless Apple (unexpectedly) gets its tablet out in time for Christmas, e-readers could be the hot item this year.

I have avoided purchasing a Kindle, mostly based on price and the availability of content I am interested in. I do not find $259 very interesting and the $199 Sony device is not interesting, even though the price is better.

However, a next-generation e-reader at $199 could become this year's holiday gift. It is not clear B&N will hit that magic price, but we can all hope. I would like to start reading books electronically."

The Web Browser Turns 15: A Look Back

By PC World (CLICK to read more)

"The Web browser turns 15 on Oct. 13, 2009 - a key milestone in the history of the Internet. That’s when the first commercial Web browser - eventually called Netscape Navigator - was released as beta code. While researchers including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications created Unix browsers between 1991 and 1994, Netscape Navigator made this small piece of desktop software a household name. By allowing average users to view text and images posted on Web sites, Netscape Navigator helped launch the Internet era along with multiple browser wars, government-led lawsuits and many software innovations. Here are 15 highlights in the history of the Web browser."

Android will leapfrog the iPhone by 2012

By Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech

"Watch out, iPhone—Android's nipping at your heels.

Researchers at Gartner (via AppleInsider) are predicting that the global market share for Google's Android mobile OS could overtake the iPhone's in a little over two years, with Android poised to leapfrog Apple into the No. 2 spot.

That would leave the iPhone in the No. 3 position—right where it is now, behind BlackBerry and Nokia's Symbian OS, according to Gartner. The industry researchers believe that by 2012, Research in Motion (the company behind the BlackBerry) will have lost 7 percent of its market share, causing it to slip into fifth place (behind even Windows Mobile). Android, meanwhile, will get a 12.9-percent boost to become the No. 2 smartphone platform in the world, with Symbian still safe in the No. 1 spot (with a dominating, although dwindling, 39 percent of the global market).

Those are just analyst predictions, of course, and two years is an eternity in the wireless world; after all, two years ago today, we were still getting used to the first iPhone.

That said, I think the gist of Gartner's prediction—that Android is poised to take the wireless market by storm—is spot on, and we've seen evidence of that in the past few months and weeks.

Google's open-source Android platform—which boasts one of the finest touchscreen interfaces out there, iPhone included—came slow out of the gates in fall 2008 with the solid, if uninspiring T-Mobile G1. We had to wait almost a year for the next Android phone in the U.S., but we finally got one this past August with the G1's follow-up, the HTC-made myTouch 3G (also on T-Mobile).

Soon after, what started as a trickle quickly became a flood. Sprint trotted out its first Android phone, the eye-catching, touchscreen HTC Hero, and then T-Mobile followed suit with the Motorola Cliq, its third Android handset ... followed by the Samsung Behold II just a few days ago. On Tuesday, Verizon Wireless announced it would launch a pair of Android phones before the end of the year, while Sprint announced its second Android phone—the Samsung Moment—a day later. Oh, and now there's rumors that Dell wants in on the Android action, with a new handset possible slated for iPhone carrier AT&T.

Let's see, that's ... one, two, three, four ... five new Android phones in in the past few months, with two more—and possibly even a third—due by the end of the year, from two (or maybe three) different manufacturers and three (possibly four) carriers. Some will be better than others, but consumers will have plenty of models (and carriers) from which to choose.

Of course, a bunch of new phones on the market doesn't mean diddly unless someone buys them, and for now, Apple has a solid 10.8- versus 1.6-percent lead over Android in terms of global smartphone market share. But Apple is the only company making iPhones, while the open-source (and high-quality) Android platform is available to all manufacturers and carriers—and from what we've been seeing, they're taking the ball and running with it."

Twitter in Google, Microsoft licensing talks

By Reuters: Yahoo! Tech

"Microblogging service Twitter is in advanced talks with Google Inc and Microsoft Corp about licensing its data feed to the companies' search engines, a Web blog associated with the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Twitter's discussions with Microsoft and Google are being conducted separately and would allow each company to incorporate the 140-character messages, or 'tweets,' that Twitter is known for into their Internet search results.

The ability to cull through the flood of tweets as they are posted, known as real time search, is gaining popularity as an important new way to search the Internet for up-to-the-minute information on the latest news events and happenings.

The AllThingsDigital blog quoted unidentified sources as saying the companies are discussing several types of deals. Details could include Twitter receiving a payment of several million dollars and various types of revenue-sharing agreements to allow Twitter to benefit from the ad revenue that Microsoft and Google generate from search results.

Twitter has emerged as one of the fastest-growing Internet social media services. But the company has yet to generate any significant revenue from its free service. Twitter has cited advertising and premium features as two potential money-making plans.

Last month, Twitter received $100 million in new funding from investors including T.Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners, based on a $1 billion valuation for Twitter, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Representatives from Twitter were not immediately available for comment. Google and Microsoft declined to comment."

CNET Top 5: Best Cell Phones

TIP: How to Make a Firefox Shortcut to Your Unread Gmail

Amazon cuts Kindle price, adds global version

By Rachel Metz / AP: Yahoo! Tech (CLICK to read more)

"Amazon.com Inc. is cutting the price of its Kindle electronic-book reader yet again and launching an international version, in hopes of spurring more sales and keeping it ahead of a growing field of competitors.

With Wednesday's $40 reduction on the Kindle, the device now costs $259. It debuted in 2007 at $399 and started this year at $359, before another price cut in July.

In an interview, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company can now afford to reduce the price because of the increased number of Kindles the company is making — and selling.

Bezos called it Amazon's best-selling product, but Amazon has not disclosed sales figures for the Kindle, which has a 6-inch screen that displays shades of gray, room to store 1,500 books and the ability to download books wirelessly."

SHOW #82 - NerdBoyTV: Reallusion with John Martin

In this episode of NerdBoyTV, Ryan Yee interviews John Martin, VP of Marketing for Reallusion, creator of CrazyTalk and WidgetCast. John talks social media and explains how his products fit into today's Web 2.0 world.

Lack of computer skills foils many job-seekers

By Alex Johnson, msnbc.com (CLICK to read more)

"After working for the city of Zanesville, Ohio, for 27 years, Sharon Newton had to go back to school.

Newton lost her job this year, and when she went to look for a new one she discovered that, even with all of her experience, she wasn’t prepared for the modern work force. When prospective employers asked about her computer skills, she had no answer.

It turns out “that is extremely important,” said Newton, who needed help with using spreadsheets and other entry-level office computer tasks. She is now enrolled in computer training courses offered by Zane State University and by Experience Works, a nonprofit national job training organization."

Verizon's $150 Netbook Deal Is No Deal at All

By Jeff Bertolucci, PC World

"Attention, suckers: Verizon Wireless will soon offer a Gateway LT2016u netbook with the carrier's Mobile Broadband service built into the device. The Gateway mini-note costs $150 after a $100 mail-in rebate, and the deal requires a 2-year 3G contract. The plan is available starting Oct. 4.

Run, don't walk, from this offer. Even at $150, the Gateway netbook is overpriced, and subscribers will get a bum deal. Here's why:

The LT2016u is a ho-hum netbook. Its specs — a 10.1-inch SD 1024 x 600 display, Intel Atom N270 processor (1.60 GHz), 1 GB RAM, and a 160 GB hard disk — are virtually identical to those of the Acer Aspire One D250, which sells for about $300 at Amazon. The Gateway system does include built-in 3G broadband; but customers are locked into Verizon's usurious monthly fees. (More on those below.) Bottom line: The Gateway discount is far from spectacular."

No texting at dinner! Parenting in the digital era

By AP: Yahoo! Tech (CLICK to read more)

"Holly Kopczynski always prided herself on raising her kids the right way, teaching them etiquette basics like saying 'please' and 'thank you.'

Then it happened.

'We were at a restaurant for my mom's birthday. I looked over and there are my daughter and my oldest son texting, holding their phones under the table,' said the mom of four in Lewiston, Idaho. 'I just came unglued. I was like, `Are you kidding? You're at your grandma's birthday party. Put those phones away now!''

We all know teens love their gadgets — more for texting than talking. But the devices are posing some new challenges for parents. How can they teach their tech-savvy kids some electronic etiquette?

So far, parents are learning on the fly, imposing new rules for their young offenders such as 'no texting at dinner.'

Beth Herina of Ringwood, N.J., made that rule two years ago because her 13-year-old son was texting friends at the dinner table. She has another rule, too: No texting on family outings.

'He can text en route but not when it is family time,' she said. 'And I ask questions about who he is texting.'

Her son Dylan may not like mom's rules, but she considers them mild. Her brother-in-law goes into his children's cell phone accounts to read their texts.

When it comes to gadgets like cell phones and computers, some kids and even some adults don't seem to consider their gadget behavior rude, said P.M. Forni, co-founder of Johns Hopkins University's Civility Initiative."