Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

It's more like the "multiple device" era. It's amazing to me that there are people who can buy into conspiracy theories like questioning President Obama's "real birthplace," but when it comes to this brave new world of technology that requires us to have multiple devices, no one is suspicious this happened on purpose

The future of U.S. medical-device design may reside in developing countries. In India, where a chaotic road system spawns many accidents and hospitals are often hours away, the need for an inexpensive alternative vascular access is great.

Pixazza, a startup backed by Google Ventures, is known for "in-image advertising," a method of overlaying photographs with relevant ads--when a user mouses over a picture of, say, a bicycle, for example, he or she might see an offer to purchase a bike from an onlne retailer such as Amazon or Sears; if a purchase is made, Pixazza takes a cut of the sale.

Making purchases online is a headache: filling out your billing address, your credit card number, your zip code, and other personal details. How often have you sat squinting at your desk, slowly bobbing your head from card to computer as you henpeck away at the keyboard with one hand? But a new service launched today can make paying for goods digitally just as painless and simple as swiping your card at the grocery store.

Your iPhone can make calls (sort of) and check your email, sure, but new apps are being developed that will allow you to monitor your own health with just your phone. The iPhone is good for more than just playing Angry Birds and making on-the-fly Twitter updates

"She doesn’t need customization," WePay co-founder Rich Aberman says of a Nebraska theater major. "She just wants to get up and running quickly." Let’s say you’re a 20 year-old college student, and you want a simple way to sell the crafts you make as a hobby to help fund a summer trip. Where do you go?

When Facebook launched a new form of advertising called "Sponsored Stories" earlier this year, some folks weren't buying the plot. The new ad unit, which takes content generated by Facebook users and turns it into ads, seemed to be crossing some kind of line. Six months later, it looks like Facebook actually might have hit upon a powerful new form of advertising.

We interview Douglas Edwards, Google's brand manager from 1999 to 2005, about his new book and discuss the challenge of humanizing information technology, Sergey Brin's anatomically correct cow costume, and how Google+ might succeed where orkut, Google's first social network, failed. After spending years as a journalist for the San Jose Mercury News and Marketplace, in the late 1990s, Douglas Edwards became restless

How far will the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office go?

"Hey, I'm a Mac, I'm off to college!", new investment puts Twitter at $8 billion.

Foursquare gets hundreds, if not thousands, of brand requests every week. Here's how to forge a partnership with the in-demand service, and to reach customers who might get lost in the shuffle on Facebook or Twitter

An Oscar-winning producer talks about his interest in moviemaking, medicine, and scaleable (storytelling) design. Nearly 8 of out 10 Americans are willing to pay up to $100 for a medical device that monitors their vital signs, according to an IBM study that tracks trends in the use of mobile devices in health care. Fewer than 10% of respondents are paying out-of-pocket charges for such devices today, but more than one-third expect to do so within the next two years.

A new prototype device allows the visually impaired to more easily walk the streets using sonar-like technology to create an impromptu spatial picture. Blind and visually impaired individuals may soon be walking easier with “virtual canes.” A new device developed by a team affiliated with Israel's Hebrew University allows users to detect all objects within 10 meters for safe navigation. The cane uses sonar-like technology, turning users into virtual batmen and batwomen

The HTC Status puts its money where its mouth is: Almost the entire front end of the phone is about sharing, updating, or checking on your social-network statuses. The thing even has a "share on Facebook " button right on its chassis. The Status, coming exclusively from AT&T this summer, is otherwise run-of-the-mill

A project of the Long Now Foundation, the aim is to make sure we preserve the knowledge contained in dying languages: "If languages are our how-to guides for living on planet Earth, we are handing our descendants an encyclopedia with almost all of the pages ripped out." The Long Now Foundation--currently breaking ground in Texas at the future site of its first monument-sized 10,000-year clock --is pursuing several programs in addition to the clock. One of these, the Rosetta Project, takes as its daunting mission the documentation of every human language currently in use; some 7,000 in total, the majority of which are in danger of disappearing without a trace. Directing this ambitious venture is Laura Welcher, a linguist who has specialized in building archival resources for indigenous North American languages.