By Viet Le

I don't have a baby, nor am I a baby person -- a cat person, yes... baby person, not so much. (Although, let me know if you come across a baby that purrs and can kill mice.) Knowing this, my wonderful friends who are parents like to prank me when I come over for visits, sitting their toddlers on my lap and then tee-heeing as they race out of the room leaving me alone with their babies. It's like they've tossed a grenade at me that could explode in tears at any moment. That's why when I read about the Cry Translator, a new iPhone app, my first reaction was "where have you been all my life?"

Despite the steep app price, I'm willing to give it a shot. (It's $9.99 until November 11th, then goes up to $29.99.) But is it too good to be true? Does it really work? Next time I'm around my parent friends, I'll let you know. Although I could always test it out on myself when I'm stuck with a baby. According to its website, the Cry Translator will continue to work regardless of the child's age.

By Andy Carvin

In the last few weeks, a new feature available on Twitter has taken its users by storm. It's known as Twitter Lists, and it lets you group Twitter users by any category you wish to create for them. Lists are a handy way to sort the people you follow on Twitter, but perhaps they're more than that. Maybe they can also tell you a bit about how people actually perceive who you are.

The idea behind lists is simple: you choose a word or phrase that relates to various people you know on Twitter, such as "friends," "journalists," "Floridians," etc, and assign those people to it. For example, I've created a list called tote-baggers, for people I know who work in public radio and public TV. (Get it? Tote bags? Never mind.) Anyone on Twitter can choose to subscribe to it, which means they can easily follow the tweets from all the people I've added to the list.

So what can you learn about yourself from looking at the lists you're on? For one thing, being added to a list suggests that you're potentially interesting enough to share your tweets with other Twitter users -- or at least have your tweets categorized in a way that's helpful to someone. But for me, the most intriguing thing about lists is the variety of names of the lists themselves, because they can give you a sense of how other people define you.

Take me for example. As I'm writing this, I'm on just over 300 lists. More than half of the lists that include me define me as being affiliated with the news media, including 108 lists with the word "media" in it, 38 with either "journalism" or "journalists" and an additional 33 lists with the word "news" in it. Just over 10% of the lists I'm on define me as being involved in social media, with words such as "social," "social media," "social web," etc. And then there are all those random ways of categorizing me, such as by geography ("DC"), my profession as they perceive it ("pubmedia," "journos-politicos-wonks," "academics") or specific perceptions about me ("nerdery," "famous-in-certain-circles," "idtakeabullet4", "loud").

One the whole, the words used to categorize President Obama were matter-of-fact. The same holds true for the Twitter account used by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin while she was still in office. She's been added to more than 1,200 lists, and the majority of the list names are pretty standard, such as "news" or "politics." But stronger words and phrases come through as well, capturing the polarized attitudes people have about her. On the one hand, you have Twitter lists that categorize her according to their political or religious support, such as patriots-and-politics, pro-life, femalefreedomfighters and influentialchristians. In contrast, people who disagree with her sometimes used very caustic language to categorize her on their lists, such as asshats, wingnuts haters and douchebags. Interestingly, despite the polarization that surrounds President Obama as well, there didn't seem to be anywhere near as many of these list titles that were purposely insulting. Can that be explained by a greater respect for the office of the presidency or him personally? Or the political leanings of Twitter users in general?

Of course, all of this is rather unscientific; I did this analysis by copying and pasting list names into a spreadsheet and counting off various words. It would be interesting if someone could create a tool that could grab the names of all the lists including a particular twitter user and run some sentiment analysis on the words used in the list names, or perhaps group them in a tag cloud based on frequency, a la Wordle.

Either way, I think Twitter Lists are definitely worth exploring further, as they're a new way of gauging a person's influence or even trustworthiness online - at least in a cursory way. Because a Twitter user actively makes the choice of adding someone else to a list, it's tantamount to saying to the world, "check out this person." It's not necessarily an endorsement of you and your beliefs, but it does suggest that others might want to pay attention to you. And the language used to couch that suggestion might be able to give you a small sense of how the online world perceives you.

In the meantime, though, you can always just skim through the lists manually and ponder what they truly mean about you -- if they mean anything at all. If you're on Twitter, just go to Twitter.com, log in and click the "listed" link just below your avatar. What do you think the lists you're on say about you?

By Eyder Peralta

Is the Droid really going to dig a nice deep grave for the iPhone?

I'll say this: If I had a Droid instead of an iPhone I wouldn't be jealous of iPhone users, because with all its warts, Motorola's highly anticipated, newest mobile offering is one of the rare, true alternatives to the iPhone.

It impresses, as soon as it comes out of the box. The screen is huge and the Android 2.0 interface, which the Droid is first to sport, is intuitive. One of the nicest perks is that as soon as you click on the preloaded Facebook app, the device asks you if you would like to synchronize your Facebook contacts with your phone. A click and few minutes later, all your friends and their pictures are effortlessly in your phone book. So there's no trying to dig out contacts out of an old SIM card and if your friends are responsible and keep up their Facebook profile, no need to update your records every time someone moves or changes their number.

This is one thing the Droid does better than pretty much anything out there: Information is completely integrated. That is to say that, for example, the Google Maps app seamlessly shows a restaurant's location, user reviews and the menu. It means within that same interface, you can switch to street view for a picture of the front door; you can check where your friends are using Google Latitude and when you're ready, head there using Google Navigator, the search behemoth's entrée into GPS-enabled, turn-by-turn, voice guidance routing.

The camera app lets you send geo-tagged photos to Picasa and the open nature of the Android operating system lets you add apps that allow one click publishing to all manner of sites.

The Droid is most certainly not the prettiest thing. It's a squared, featureless black box with a matte finish and Motorola has inexplicably peppered it with dark gold accents.

The bottom part of the phone stretches just a tad beyond the screen, a stylistic choice that's been extended even to the packaging. But it's weird and makes for strange ergonomics, because it forces the keyboard and screen off-center.

In some ways, if feels as though the phone makes no compromises. Everything the iPhone didn't have, Motorola decided to throw it in.

And here's the thing with the Droid: I think everyone, me included, wants to see a formidable iPhone challenger. Everyone is looking for a phone that blows the iPhone out of the water. I want this especially because the iPhone lives in a closed ecosystem, so it'd be a huge win for everyone if a phone living off open source software and a superior Verizon network succeeds. Just imagine not having to worry that Apple or AT&T is going to reject a killer app from Google or Slingplayer.

The Droid goes a long way toward fulfilling that promise. (With it you can stream live video using the 3G network, for example.) But will it be the proverbial Craigslist to the newspaper classifieds? Will it be the death of the iPhone? No.

And it all boils down to the little things, the things that make the iPhone elegant and refined and a pleasure to use. It's the fact that on the Droid's on-screen keyboard, you can't hold down the shift key to type in all caps. It's the fact that the Droid has no pinch-to-zoom function or that the scrolling action isn't as bouncy and smooth as on the iPhone. It's the fact that when they tried to fix all the iPhone's shortcomings, Motorola also didn't make any tough decisions, like getting rid of the touchpad in favor of a more useful and expansive keyboard.

When it comes down to it, the Droid is a worthy iPhone opponent. But more importantly, perhaps, it's proof that the rest of the mobile industry is ready to make formidable devices.

In the above video from my Digital Savant blog, you can see some of the new features in the Motorola Droid, a smartphone that runs on the Verizon Wireless 3G network and which is trying to steal some thunder from Apple's iPhone.

Our own Eyder Peralta has a Droid he's been using (I just got my hands on one yesterday) and he's posted a review with his thoughts on the device, which hits Verizon stores Friday.

There's been a lot of buzz around the internet about a district court decision that clarifies how the Fourth Amendment relates to cloud computing, in other words, the procedures the government has to follow to search files you leave on a third party server.

Orin S. Kerr recently wrote an article titled Applying the Fourth Amendment to the Internet: A General Approach for the Stanford Law Review.

To understand the decision and its implications, we asked Orin S. Kerr, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, a few questions.

In a nutshell, what does the opinion say?

The opinion says that when the government gets a search warrant for an e-mail account, the government has to notify the ISP but not the account holder.

One of the parts that I found interesting was the metaphor District Judge Michael Mosman uses. He writes, "If a suspect leaves private documents at his mother's house and the police obtain a warrant to search his mother's house, they need only provide a copy of the warrant and a receipt to the mother, even though she is not the 'owner' of the documents."

In an online world that is increasingly moving toward so-called cloud computing, this seems huge. Is it?

No, it is not huge. It's a pretty minor decision, and it's not surprising: Federal law has stated since 1986 that the government can get e-mail with a warrant but does not need to notify the account holder.

So this is a pretty narrow decision? Are you saying this applies to e-mail but not to files and pictures and videos and other assets we customarily leave on third-party "premises?"

The reasoning seems to apply broadly but the truth is that we do not know. This decision is not binding on anyone: It is the decision of a single judge, and other judges are not bound by its reasoning or conclusion.

Oh, and I should add that it is not settled that the government actually needs a warrant to obtain e-mail: That is a bit of an open question.

Tell me more about that.

The 1986 statute that governs e-mail privacy required the government to get a warrant in some circumstances but not others: In those other circumstances it could compel contents from the ISP with only a subpoena or court order that did not require probable cause. It is unclear whether that statute is constitutional.

I don't think it can have much impact, as it reflects preexisting practice.

I think lawyers and judges consider this settled... But I think most regular people see e-mail like they see objects in the physical world, objects in their house. They consider that government should treat e-mail the same way. This idea that government notifies your internet service provider but not you to search your e-mail sounds like a crazy concept. But if this notion has been around so long, why hasn't it seeped into the minds of regular folk?

You suggest that regular folks think that when the government gets warrants to search their e-mail accounts, the government notifies them. Unlike you, I am not sure what regular people think about this: It's beyond the experience of most people. Or so I would guess.

On your own blog, the discussion is pretty great. Someone put forth a solution, or rather a way to protect yourself against this kind of search. They, in essence, said encrypt everything and you'll be fine. Any thoughts on that?

It depends what you mean. If you're me asking whether encryption is a useful tool to protect your privacy regardless of the law, then yes, it is. On the other hand, if you're asking for my advice to those who are storing evidence of their crimes in their e-mail accounts, and they are worried about the government getting search warrants based on probable cause to search their accounts for the evidence of your crime, then I suppose my first recommendation to them would be to not commit the crimes in the first place.

By Bill Chappell

There's a hot personal accessory out -- one reviewer uses it for e-mail; another for sushi. It's being called a timesaver -- even "the greatest thing ever invented." It's called a Laptop Steering Wheel Desk -- and you're forgiven if you haven't heard about it yet.

The platform-like device hooks onto the bottom of your car's steering wheel, putting a flat, useful surface at your disposal.

The laptop desk at work. (Amazon)

Its maker, Mobile Office, suggests you use the Wheelmate Desk to help you write and drink. As someone who devotes a fair amount of time to those two pastimes, I was intrigued.

But then, the company threw in this buzzkill tidbit: "For safety reasons, never use this product while driving."

Even that caveat tucked into the product description hasn't stopped reviewers on Amazon's site from writing about all the ways this new member of the AutoExec line is improving their lives.

Here's a sample -- the review voted Most Helpful by people considering the steering wheel desk:

Amazing! Holds my sheet music perfectly while driving
"This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving."

But even with positive reviews like that, there are always a few complainers. The 1-star review from K. Healy exposes a basic fault. "Doesn't work on motorcycles!" is Healy's gripe. Even after refitting the device to a motorcycle, Healy complains, "Everytime I lean into the turn my book slides off."

Other reviewers list more conventional (car-oriented) uses: doing crossword puzzles or changing a baby's diaper, for instance. And one scofflaw admits to using it to set up drinks when barhopping with friends.

The Laptop Steering Wheel Desk has been out since 2003, according to Amazon's site. And some early adopters had mixed reviews.

But the steering wheel desk has gained fans in 2009 -- and as it does, Amazon's users have been uploading their own photos to the product's page.

One reviewer also says that the product has proven useful on airliners -- on flights from San Diego to Minneapolis, to be exact. But they didn't post photos to back up their claim, so I can't vouch for that -- or for any of these reviews, now that you mention it.

@SantaClaus on Twitter does not use Twitter's new Lists feature. This seems unwise. clipart.com

A new feature that has been quickly embraced by users of Twitter is "Lists," which allows you to organize Twitter users into groups and share that list with others.

But apparently the news hasn't gotten all the way to the North Pole; Twitter user @SantaClaus has yet to create a "Naughty" or "Nice" list, which makes you wonder whether Saint Nick's holiday operation is really embracing technology at the speed of Elf or if Santa Claus is merely dabbling with Twitter because it's considered the thing to do.

Even apart from the obvious benefit it would provide to Father Christmas in organizing information and having, at a glance, a list of behaviorally-organized names and profile photos, I think Twitter users would benefit greatly from knowing where they stand, in regards to naughtiness/niceness. The microblogging social network, where the jolly, rotund gift-giver apparently spends a significant chunk of time, would be a very efficient place to convey that information.

I would hope that Santa would take this not a mean-spirited criticism, but as a gentle, but firm nudge in the black patent belt to embrace change before change leaves him behind. I would hate to be the first person on Papa Noel's "Naughty" Twitter list.

Update, 11 a.m, Nov. 3: The @SantaClaus Twitter account has been updated to include "Nice" and "Naughty" lists, but apparently the move was made under duress. In two posts this morning, the North Pole resident wrote, "Everyone is making a big deal over the fact I do not post a Twitter list for my naughty and nice lists. Do YOU want all to know if YOU are on the Naughty list? It is not anyones (sic) business except for me which list you are on. Does everyone REALLY want that published to all?" Perhaps I'm being oversensitive, but this does not strike me as jolly.

As of this writing, only @MrsSantaClaus is listed on the "Nice" list and no one has yet been added to the "Naughty" list.

On this week's All Tech Considered, we discuss Internationalized Domain Names. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) recently made the decision to allow countries to use their own script "after the dot." Right now, everything after the dot in a web address -- or the domain -- has to be written using the Latin alphabet.

ICANN's President and CEO, Rod Beckstrom tells Michele Norris why this is much more than a cosmetic change.

Also in the segment, a story about how Tweeters are using their micro-blogging prowess to find work in a tight job market.

We want to hear from you.

What tech stories are you seeing that we MUST cover on All Tech Considered?

Please let us know in the comments section.

An iPhone costs you 199 bucks after the AT&T rebate right? A MyTouch 3G sets you back $149? Well, once you take into account the costs of service throughout the life of your two-year contract, you're looking at close to $3,000.

Billshrink.com created a handy graphic with a side-by-side comparison of the features and prices for the iPhone, Pre, MyTouch and Droid.

The graphic below gives you an idea of the damage one of these puppies can inflict:

In case you missed it, All Things Considered (or ATC) rolled a pair of tech stories on Thursday's show. Martin Kaste finds that information doesn't really die anymore in the latest installment of "The End Of Privacy" series.

You might say that "The End Of Privacy" is the result of a revolution that started on Oct. 29, 1969 in California. Guy Raz reports on the birth of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

You can hear more about ARPANET's beginnings on Saturday's All Things Considered.

The Japanese company that designed Sarah Palin's thin-rimmed specs has released a new set of glasses to fight "dry eye." The condition affects gamers, readers and others who stare at screens or pages for long stretches of time, causing a lower than average blinking rate.

Masunaga Optical Manufacturing Co.'s new Wink Glasses feature a tiny sensor that monitors the wearer's eye-blink activity. If the users' eyes go more than five seconds without blinking, tiny liquid crystals cause the lenses to become opaque, fogging vision. The wearer is forced to blink, after which the lenses immediately de-frost.

The high-tech glasses protect customers' eyes from fatigue and dehydration. But, they're not cheap, be ready to shell out $430.

This morning, I was one of three guests in a discussion about smartphones with NPR's On Point With Tom Ashbrook called "Going Mobile."

The other guests were Wired New York City bureau chief and Epicenter blogger John Abell and Mahalo.com founder Jason Calacanis. Very interesting discussion and very insightful calls from listeners. I was a little surprised by how gaga the callers were about their smartphones; I always assume there's a huge backlash in store for those of us who swear by iPhones, BlackBerry devices and other "smart" mobile phones.

You can hear audio of the hour-long discussion at the On Point Web site (along with lots and lots of comments on the piece).

You want a fiber-optic link directly to your home, right? Your mouth waters at the prospect of boosting your download speed to numbers you only dreamed of just a few years ago. But Verizon's Fios isn't coming to your town any time soon, if ever. What to do?

An article over at Ars Technica suggests that you have your local government build its own municipal fiber network. The local telco serving Monticello, Minn., didn't have plans for a fiber network in the town until the government started to build its own. Now residents are being offered 50Mbps fiber service for $49.95 a month by TDS Telecommunications, without the need to buy additional phone or TV services.

Ars concludes that competition in the form of the city's fiber network program spurred TDS to offer a level of service it would not have otherwise provided. The telco frames it differently:

We spoke to TDS about the situation last year, and its director of legislative and public relations told us that TDS didn't act earlier because it didn't actually know that people really, really wanted fiber; once the referendum was a success, the company moved quickly to give people what it now knew they wanted.

I was at happy hour the other night and the guy sitting next to me at the bar asked me if I knew what "foursquare" was and then proceeded to tell me he was the mayor of many local establishments.

(I'm sorry, I don't understand.)

Then he went on to say that every time you hit up a bar, restaurant, clothing store -- you go to this Web site or use your phone app to "check in." If you've checked in more than other people, you become the "mayor" and may get a discount. You can also tell the app where you are and then your friends can find you.

NPR's social media guru, frequent All Tech blogger, and the "mayor" of NPR on foursquare, Andy Carvin -- calls it location based social networking. The New York Times say it's, "a combination of friend-finder, city guide and competitive bar game." And the guy sitting next to me at the bar the other night claimed, "it's the next big thing in social media."

Not so fast foursquare! Today, TechCrunch called out another -- brand new -- location based social media app called, Stalqer. Upside, you don't have to "check-in." Downside, it knows where you are ... without you telling it where you are.

I have enough trouble keeping up with my Twitter feed and if I really want to hang out with my friends, I'll call them and tell them where to meet me. Besides, I'm a woman who cherishes her freedom. I just can't imagine enjoying clocking in and out of the bars and restaurants I frequent. And I certainly don't want an online app tracking my every move. Foursquare can stay on the elementary school blacktop and Stalqer ... really ... the name says it all.

Friend or foe? The face of the future? Will Android skate past the iPhone? (Graphic courtesy of Google)

By Wright Bryan

Android is an ominous name for a consumer electronics device. It conjures up images of a science-fiction future where machines subsume humanity. Well, watch out because there's a growing view out there that the Android (mobile OS) revolution is just over the horizon.

Tech research firm Gartner recently predicted that Android, the open mobile phone operating system developed and promoted by Google, will eclipse the iPhone in sales by the end of 2012.

Over at Betanews, Joe Wilcox has taken this prediction and run with it. He sees a correlation between the rise and fall of the Mac in the marketplace and the current run of the iPhone.

Put another way: iPhone is to Android -- and somewhat Symbian OS -- handsets as Macintosh was to the DOS/Windows PC in the 1980s and 1990s.

I have to say that I see his point. The iPhone rocks. It's blazing a trail for others to follow. But Apple, no matter how smart and well endowed with cash, can't match the armies arrayed against it in the long run.

With Google as their general, a growing number of developers and device manufacturers are marching forward with variations on the Android theme. They're attracted by the flexibility of Android's open architecture. It frees them from the constraints of Apple's highly regulated iPhone ecosystem.

At some point, all of the scratching and clawing for market share by Android champions and acolytes should drive innovation and lower prices for the public. On this trajectory, Android eventually has to come out on top.*

Does that mean Apple loses? Of course not. Apple has a very profitable business making Macs, despite commanding very little in terms of overall market share. Maybe that's its plan for the iPhone, too: maximize profits, not unit sales.

*The caveat being, of course, that only fools think they can accurately predict the future.