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Christopher Null offers his top 7 favorite time-wasting Web sites.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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Another holiday weekend coming up, and you're running out of things to do? Today and tomorrow we'll look at some ways to chew up a few hours on the Web with fun and entertaining sites. Christopher Null writes about technology for Yahoo and PC World magazine. He's got 15 ways to waste time on the Web.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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Future Tense news analyst Dwight Silverman says more and more Windows users he talks with are seriously considering switching to Apple's OSX. The reason? They're finally fed up with spyware, worms and other nasties that plague PCs.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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St. Paul Pioneer Press tech columnist Julio Ojeda-Zapata sought advice from experts at the Geek Squad, Make Magazine, Macworld and others on what to do with new tech products before using them in earnest.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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A study published last week in the journal Nature describes a new backpack that can make heavy loads feel lighter, thereby reducing physical strain as the wearer walks or runs. The backpack, developed by University of Pennsylvania biology professor Larry Rome, uses bungee cords to help suspend the weight. Rome says the bungee cords can decrease the force of a load by 86 percent.

To see videos of the ergonomic backpack in action, visit my new blog, wavLength.

To learn more about Rome's backpack, visit Lightning Packs.

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Still have a few presents to buy? Consider going online to making a charitable gift on behalf of a friend or family member. One convenient place to go is Network for Good, a sort of superstore for giving. You can connect to thousands of charities, many of which are promoting online contributions as virtuous holiday gifts.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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A new poll of Americans' attitudes about the Internet says the next tech titan, ala the Microsoft co-founder, is more likely to come from China or Japan than the United States. And a full one-quarter of Americans says they'd rather watch a citizen video account of a news event than a network news version.

Zogby International conducted the nationwide poll of 1,200 people for communications firm 463 Communications. Tom Galvin, a 463 executive, says the next Bill Gates has already been born, but Americans don't think he's walking among them.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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A new study from security software company McAfee finds search engines are producing slightly fewer search results that lead to spyware, adware, spam and attacks against your Web browser.

McAfee studied Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask, finding that the chance of clicking to a dangerous site declined by 12 percent. The study was co-authored by independent researcher Ben Edelman.

McAfee's Kelly Ford says 4.4 percent of all search results still lead to risky sites.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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What makes a good password for your online banking account? For your home on MySpace? For your e-mail account? Computer security expert Bruce Schneier says the best password is one that's too long and random to remember.

Schneier recommends passwords of about 10 characters in length, with a mix of letters, numbers and characters.

You can also download Schneier's free password management program.

More technology news for public radio listeners on my new blog, wavLength.

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Small USB storage devices, called thumb drives, flash drives, or keychain drives, are the new floppy disks. Many of us have older thumb drives we're not using anymorem and a San Francisco company is suggesting how we can put them to good use. Inveneo is a non-profit that brings computers and Internet access to rural Africa. It's started a thumb drive drive. Send your devices to Inveneo, and they'll distribute them to schools and community centers in Africa.

More technology news for public radio listeners at the new blog, wavLength.

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Nintendo's new video game console, the Wii, features a motion-sensitive handheld device, called the "Wiimote," which players move around to simulate bowling, golf and other video games. But there's a problem: Players sometimes lose control of the device, turning it into a TV-breaking, window-shattering projectile. Nintendo says it's investigating a problem with a faulty wrist strap.

Gordon Jackson, a blogger from Cambridge, England, is collecting reports of damage and injury on his site, WiiDamage.com.

Also today, St. Paul Pioneer Press tech columnist Julio Ojeda-Zapata has a review of the Wii.

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Microsoft hopes the wireless sharing of songs is the killer feature that will help its new Zune player make a dent in the iPod's crown. The trick will be selling enough Zunes so that users will actually have friends and family to share with. CNET News.com reporter Ina Fried has been living with a Zune for a couple of weeks. Recently, she decided to walk around San Francisco looking for another Zune owner. It took her a long time.

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Google bestrides the Internet world like a colossus, but back in January of 2000, it was just an obscure startup. That's when writer John Ince interviewed founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in preparation for a story in Upside magazine. Google was hungry for publicity then, and carved out a generous slice of time for the writer.

Ince recorded conversations with Page and Brin on a cheap, lo-fi tape recorder -- he couldn't know that almost seven years later, he'd release the tapes over the Internet. Ince rediscovered the tapes recently, and starting today, he's playing them on his PodVentureZone podcast series. You can also hear them on PodTech Network.

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A new study by the University of California-Santa Cruz finds a growing computer access gap between the children of immigrants and non-immigrants. The study says some immigrant groups are less than half as likely to have a computer in the home than native-born U.S. citizens. Study co-author Rebecca London is calling for public investment to begin closing the gap.

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Blogger Rex Sorgatz has compiled a list of 30 blogs you probably haven't heard of. They include Starbucks Gossip, Corpus Obscura, Marmaduke Explained, and History of the Button.

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A new international study commissioned by the United Nations finds the vast majority of top Web sites fail to meet minimum global standards of accessibility for people with visual and other disabilities.

U.K. technology firm Nomensa studied 100 popular sites from 20 countries. Categories included travel, finance, media, government and retail sites.

Among the problems the survey identified is the use of a scripting language called Javascript, which makes it difficult for some screen readers to understand a site's content. Most sites failed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphical elements -- again, a problem for the visually impaired who use screen readers. And they used colors with poor contrast, which is a problem for people with color blindness.

The study examined five U.S. sites, including Walmart.com, which scored highest, and nytimes.com, which was the least disabled-friendly American site.

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Sixty-two percent of of participants in an online support community successfully quit smoking, according to a new study by the University of Maryland. Compare that to figures from the American Lung Association, which show less than one quarter of smokers have success quitting.

The study examined the online behavior of 411 users of an online community called Quitnet.

The study shows once people make the decision to quit smoking, joining an online community increases their chances succeeding, said study co-author Ritu Agarwal, founder and director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The more time people spent on Quitnet, the more likely they were to quit smoking, said Agarwal.

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About two-thirds of Americans over the age of 65 do not use the Internet, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. A new company is betting many of the unwired would like to use e-mail if only they had a simple way to do it. Presto has eliminated the computer from the equation, and for $10 per month, will deliver e-mail to a dedicated printer. Presto founder Joe Beninato says to use the service, customers purchase the printer, the HP Printing Mailbox, for about $150.

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The National Institute on Media and the Family released its 11th annual video game report card this week. The group is counseling parents to take a stronger role in shielding their children from inappropriate games. The targeting of parents instead of video game makers and retailers reflects a different strategy this year, according to the Institute's David Walsh.

The primary trade group for video games, the Entertainment Software Association, is applauding the Institute's video game report card. President Doug Lowenstein says it's about time video game critics focused on parents.