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An environmental group is offering recordings of endangered animals for people to use as free cell phone ring tones. The idea is to get people to hear the animals' sounds so they'll wonder where they came from, and question the fate of the creatures that make them.

At the Web site of the Center for Biological Diversity, you can download the sounds of the rare Pine Barrens tree frog, the howl of a Mexican gray wolf, the bellows of an Arctic beluga whale, and more.

More than 24,000 people have downloaded the free endangered animal ring tones, said Michael Robinson, conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Ring tones can help to foster change, said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute.

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The company behind a technology used often by video pirates has opened a Hollywood-backed online store.

BitTorrent Inc. has launched a Web site that sells downloads of films and TV shows licensed from studios including Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox.

The BitTorrent store offers fast downloads but is dragged down by harsh copy restrictions, according to Rafe Needleman, editor-at-large for Webware.

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The latest survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds one-third of U.S. Internet users have connected to the Web using a wireless network.

The survey also found that 20 percent of Internet users now have wireless networks available at home, double the number recorded in January 2005.

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A story by news agency Reuters got lots of play on the Internet this week. It described a plan by Marsha Egan, who calls herself an "executive coach," to help her clients manage their overflowing e-mail inboxes. Using the Alcoholics Anonymous model, Egan has come up with a 12-step program for what she describes as e-mail "addiction."

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One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the Turing Award, has gone to a went to a woman for the first time in the award's 40-year history.

Frances E. Allen was honored by the Association for Computing Machinery for her work at IBM on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers, the programs that translate one computer language into another.

Allen also made significant contributions to the field of supercomputing.

Allen joined IBM in 1957 after earning a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan.

Guest: John Hennessy, a computer scientist who's now president of Stanford University

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JetBlue Airways introduced a customer bill of rights on Tuesday that promises vouchers to fliers who experience delays, hoping the move wins back passengers after an operational meltdown damaged its brand and stock price.

CEO David Neeleman outlined details of JetBlue's post-ice storm recovery plan in an afternoon conference calls with reporters yesterday. But earlier in the day, Neeleman apologized to customers in a video the company posted on YouTube.

Crisis management consultant Jonathan Bernstein says JetBlue scored points with customers when it apologized on YouTube.

Check out the video at wavLength.

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About 90 musical acts have stopped by a small recording studio about pizza parlor in Rock Island, Illinois over the past year to record a few songs. The live songs are then posted for free download on Daytrotter, an online music magazine.

Daytrotter is basically two guys: a recording engineer with a strong distaste for overdubs and digital recording, Pat Stolley; and a part-time Quad City Times sports reporter, Sean Moeller.

The site attracts bands like Cold War Kids, Bonnie Prince Billy, Whispertown 2000, and Vietnam. Daytrotter doesn't pay the bands, but artists retain the rights to their Daytrotter songs.

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2008 Presidential hopefuls believe that Internet social networks like MySpace can help create excitement, rally the troops and raise campaign money. A new blog, techPresident, is tracking the number of MySpace 'friends' each candidate has managed to collect.

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According to a new study the data centers that make the Internet go use about 45 billion kilowatt hours per year. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that's equivalent to the amount of power used by the state of Mississippi in 2005. That sounds like a lot, but it's really much less than what some people have claimed.

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Daylight saving time arrives earlier this year, and experts say that could mean trouble from everything to stock trades to airline schedules, from voice mail to Microsoft Outlook.

In 2005, Congress decided that more early evening daylight would translate into energy savings.

Software that runs computers and digital gadgets is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not March 11 when daylight savings time kicks in this year.

Across the U.S., information technology workers are bogged down updating their systems.

Guests: Gartner analyst Cameron Haight; St. Paul Traveler's Insurance senior voice engineer Will Totten

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In an experiment to determine the extent of password attacks, researchers at the University of Maryland set up four computers with weak passwords, and watched what happened over a 24-day period late last year.

The PCs endured more than a quarter million automated attempts to crack their usernames and passwords. That's one password attack every 39 seconds.

Researcher Michel Cukier says he wanted to quantify the extent of the password-attack problem to help push people into using stronger computer passwords.

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A new report from the Brookings Institution says the shifting of American jobs offshore to countries such as India will affect the U.S. only modestly overall, but some cities will be hit much harder than others.

The report says large metropolitan areas with a high concentration of technology workers, mainly in northeastern and western states, will feel the most pain.

Report co-author Robert Atkinson says the cities that stand to be hardest hit will lose up to 4.3 percent of their jobs to offshoring by 2015.

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Today, I review three devices that turn iPods into audio recorders: the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo, Griffin iTalk Pro, and XTremeMac MicroMemo. For more information, visit wavLength.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata has a review of the same products in today's Pioneer Press.

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Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that people who play high-action video games see better than those who don't.

The study showed that people who played action video games for a few hours
a day over the course of a month improved performance on a standard visual test by about 20 percent.

Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and congnitive sciences, says video games appear to change the way our brains process visual information.

Also on today's show:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent shock waves through the music industry this week when he called for an end to digital rights management, or DRM. DRM is anti-piracy technology that prevents unauthorized copying or sharing of song and video files. Jobs joins a growing number of critics that say DRM doesn't work and is fundamentally anti-consumer.

Jobs inspired Chicago-area designer, artist and blogger Clay Miller to record his thoughts to the tune of John Lennon's "Imagine."

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This coming fall, Michigan State University will offer the country's first master's degree in the design of serious video games.

MSU professor Carrie Heeter says a serious game is one with a purpose other than fun. Heeter says they exercise the body or mind, teach meaningful skills and expose players to new ideas and perspectives.

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Banks and financial firms are trying to add another layer of security on top of passwords for their online offerings. Bank of America, ING Direct and Vanguard are using a technology called "site-authentication images."

Customers choose an image -- a cat or a paint brush for example -- that they will see every time they log in. The image is supposed to help users determine whether the site is legitimate, or a fake designed to steal their money. Bank of America calls its
authentication system "SiteKey."

Analysts expect more banks to begin using similar technology, but a study from Harvard and M.I.T. suggests that users ignore the security images.

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When you're in your car, how distracted are you? You've got your cell phone, radio, GPS, and maybe a television or two.

All that technology is competing for your attention, taking your eyes off the road.

Now, some cities are worried about how technology outside your car -- specifically electronic billboards -- could distract you even further.

The new billboards emit static images that are lighted from within and crisp like a 35 millimeter photo. But they also are capable of changing messages every few seconds. Municipalities around the country are complaining that the signs are dangerous. At least a dozen states have passed laws banning them.

Ben Fry is a visiting professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, teaching courses in time motion and communication. He says the ability of the signs to change images frequently is what makes them both appealing and controversial.

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The week-old site Midomi.com allows users to sing, hum or whistle snippits of songs. The site records the excerpt and matches it with snippits other users have posted. The process can either give you the title of the melody in your head, or you can simply match your skills against other amateur singers. It's a combination of sorts of American Idol, YouTube and Wikipedia.

The process works best if the tunes are sung a capella. So far the site has renditions ranging from Radiohead to Cole Porter. Some are better than others.

Amir Arbabi with the Molodis Corporation that created the site says he hopes to soon have a massive database of tunes people can use as a reference.

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Wikipedia has only four years left, give or take.
That's the prediction by Eric Goldman, assistant professor and academic director for the High Technology Law Institute at Santa Clara University. Goldman originally made the prediction at the end of 2005, shortly after journalist John Seigenthaler reported that false information in his own Wikipedia biography linking him to the Kennedy assassinations remained on the site for more than four months. Now, more than a year later, Goldman reaffirms his view that Wikipedia editors--the thousands of volunteers who guard the site's content--will eventually wear out from the constant onslaught of unscrupulous marketers and vandals.