Since 2001 Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has been compulsively tracking every bit of personal data that he generates in his daily life, in the interest of finding out just how much digital storage it would take to contain it.

Bell, who works at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Research Group and is calling his project MyLifeBits, has stated that “The problem isn't putting it all in. The problem is getting it out. When I started, I couldn't find anything!” Currently Bell has been able to track all the web sites that he’s visited (221,173), photos he’s taken (56,282), emails he’s sent and received (156,041), documents written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by a SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs he’s listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). In order to collect all this information he users a desktop scanner, a digicam, a heart rate monitor, voice recorder, GPS logger, pedometer, smartphone and an e-reader.

He does suspect that there’s some need to forget though. Being able to wipe clean difficult memories of the past could be some evolutionary trick. “If you think you should forget, you should,” states Bell. “But for God's sake, keep all the papers you've written and the photos you take. Sometime down the road you might be looking for something and you won't even give yourself the chance of finding it.”

Here in my home state of Washington we’ve got a new business open, and it’s aimed at taking in lost souls that find themselves addicted to the Internet (if you believe in that sort of thing).

reSTART is a program which has been launched by the Heavensfield Retreat Center in Fall City, WA. It offers a 45-day treatment program, which consists of 12-step meetings, recreation activities, “high adventure” outings, health and fitness programs and volunteer service. This is alongside psychiatric assessments, medical treatment, scholastic tutoring and career guidance.

In order to get into the program you must show symptoms of Internet addiction (I suppose having Facebook or Twitter on your bookmark bar could be a start), and a deep wallet. The course will cost $14,500, but the folks at reSTART argue that the price is fair.

So what do you think of Internet addiction? Is it just an excuse for kids to do poorly in school, or is it a legitimate affliction? Make your voice heard in the comments.

Four people were jailed earlier today in eastern China today for selling pirated copies of Microsoft’s operating system, Windows XP.

Hong Lei and Sun Xianzhong were both sentenced to three and a half years and fined a million Yuan ($176,000) by a Suzhou city court. Along with them, two others were jailed for two years and fined 100,000 Yuan. According to prosecutors, they were members of a gang that offered free downloads of the OS and pulled money off of ads. Apparently, more than ten million people had downloaded the software.

The site gained attention from Chinese authorities after officials with the US Business Software Alliance filed a compliant last June.

With the recent introduction of the PS3 Slim, Sony also introduced a new piece of tech within it – a 45nm cell processor.

The newer, slimmer version of Sony’s powerhouse will reportedly lose its Linux support and won’t come with any kind of backwards compatibility with PS2 games. However, it’ll come with a larger 120GB drive onboard, and the improved CPU. According to a video posted by Sony on their US website, the processor is based on IBM’s Power architecture, and was a joint venture between IBM, Sony and Toshiba. No word yet on what the GPU is, but we do know that the folks responsible for making it are Nvidia.

The PS3 Slim will be available on September 1 for $299.

While the concept of a touchscreen netbook mod isn’t entirely new, it didn’t stop somebody from adding one to an HP Mini 1000. A modder named only as timm.mccoy (but vocally self-referred to as Brian Tim in his video) of the MyHPMini forums added a 10.2-inch resistive touchscreen to his machine, turning it into a pint-sized tablet.

As with most touchscreen mods, the touchscreen panel itself has been put between the LCD and the display bezel, and outputs to a USB connection. That connection is then plugged into an internal USB port (usually the one occupied by the machine’s webcam), and boom – a touchscreen netbook is born.

If you’re interested in seeing more, be sure to check out a video of the machine here.

It wasn’t long ago that the Gmail team added the feature to import your old mail and contacts to Gmail. Only catch, was that it was only available to new users, since they’d be the most likely to benefit from the process. But, they’ve finally made the feature available to their entire user base.

“Now, with just a few clicks anyone can copy all of [their old contacts and mail] to your Gmail account. It's easy — just go to the Settings > Accounts & Import page and click "Import mail and contacts." A window will pop out to lead you through the short import process. If you want us to continue to forward any new mail your other account gets for 30 days, we can do that too,” wrote Marcin Brodziak on the Gmail Blog.

They say that coping your mail over can take anywhere from a couple days to a week, depending on how much you have. Once it’s all taken care of though, you can forget about your old account and enjoy using everything in one place.

With the announcement of the brand new Performance Mouse MX and Anywhere Mouse MX, Logitech has released their brand new Darkfield Laser Tracking, which will allow their mice to track on glass (or any other surface).

The new mice, which will work with the new USB Unifying receiver, will come in two sizes – the smaller Anywhere Mouse MX which will be aimed at laptop users and the Performance Mouse MX, which will be meant for the desktop consumer. The Performance Mouse MX will also come with force-sensitive side-to-side scrolling (with the assistance of some software), while the Anywhere Mouse MX will have dedicated forward and back buttons.

They’ll both be released later in the month for $99.99 (Performance Mouse MX) and $79.99 (Anywhere Mouse MX).

If you’ve got a Lenovo laptop with a battery that’s providing sub-par performance, you just might be eligible for a free replacement.

The batteries in question don’t present any fire or safety hazard, so there’s no reason to worry about your health – the folks at Lenovo are simply looking to make nice. “Irreparable damage” and “battery cannot be charged” error messages from the Power Manager or Message Center are the main indicators that you have a bad battery.

If you’re not sure, but you have a ThinkPad R60, R61, T60 or T61 with battery FRU part numbers 42T4546, 42T4566 or 92P1141, and/or a model X60 or X61, with battery part numbers 42T4550, 42T4567, 42T4568, 92P1169, 92P1173, 93P5028 or 93P5030, it’s suggested that you should run the Battery Diagnostic Tool (available here), to find out if you need to swap it out

Drawing ever closer to their goal of having a nationwide Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G wireless network, Verizon completed their first LTE calls in Boston and Seattle earlier this month.

The calls consisted of small talk, streaming video, file uploads and downloads, as well as some Internet browsing. According to Tony Melone, Verizon’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, “Verizon Wireless, with outstanding cooperation from our partner suppliers, is fully committed to harnessing the power of LTE over our 700MHz spectrum. This combination of state-of-the art technology and prime spectrum will soon make a ubiquitous, highly mobile, super-fast broadband experience a reality for customers. This significant milestone in our LTE 4G network testing, exemplified by the first data calls in Boston and Seattle, further validates our early support and decision to select LTE as the standard for our next-generation wireless broadband network.”

Verizon hopes to extend their LTE 4G network to 30 more markets in 2010, which they claim will cover 100 million people. This would be the last major milestone before their nationwide network, set to appear in 2013.

Twitter has made recent moves to get rid of web promotion company uSocial by claiming that their means of advertising count as spam.

uSocial’s CEO Leon Hill claims that the accusations from Twitter are false. “The definition of spam is using electronic messaging to send unsolicited communication and as we don’t use Twitter for this, the claims are false.” He believes that the claims are because of their service, which allows users to buy followers on the popular microblogging site.

“The people at Twitter who are sending these claims are just flailing around trying to look for any excuse they can, though it’s going to take much more than this if they want us to pack up shop,” stated Hill. “We’re not going away that easily.”

So what do you think? Are the folks at uSocial trying to make a buck in a spammy way, or should the folks at Twitter back off? Make your voice heard in the comments.

While most of us have heard Mozilla’s claim that Firefox has had 1 billion downloads, some at Microsoft aren’t so sure. According to Amy Barzdukas, a general manager at Microsoft in charge of Internet Explorer, the milestone made for some “interesting math.”

“It's an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area,” said Barzdukas. Mozilla’s one billion figure includes every single update and all downloads since Firefox’s initial 2004 launch.

Do you think the folks at Mozilla are telling the truth, or fudging the numbers? Let us know in the comments.

Many motherboard makers believe that the desktop PC market is unlikely to see a comeback in the near future.

Intel recently held a summit in China in the interest of remedying this, but there are still those that hold their concerns. Many are already focusing on diversification into other markets, and have been for some time. Though, there are others that see Intel’s effort slowing the decline of desktop PCs.

What do you think? Are desktop PCs going to be a thing of the past, or will be they around for decades to come? Let us know in the comments.

Samsung has faced a lot of adversity when it comes to getting their fancy new SSDs to consumers. While they’re responsible for producing nearly half of the NAND flash in SSDs sold, they can’t seem to sell their own boxes.

That’s why they’re aiming their sights on the gamer crowd. According to Jim Elliott, Vice President of Memory Marketing for Samsung, “In addition to processing power, advanced graphic cards and high-resolution monitors, gamers want a fast storage drive for reduced loading times and faster game performance. Our 256GB SSD provides much better overall performance than conventional HDDs, as well as longer battery life for the notebook gamer. Clearly, all PC gamers will benefit from the blistering speeds and dazzling photorealism enabled by the Samsung 256GB SSD.”

Sure, the SSDs do cost a pretty penny, but if there’s any crowd that will pay a premium for the latest piece of hardware that will give them a competitive edge, it’s gamers. No official word yet as to when we can expect the adverts.

As some of you may or may not know, Digsby has recently come under fire for hijacking your CPU cycles while you’re away from your machine in the interest of making a quick buck. In reality, Digsby is as free as the air you’re breathing, and you can reclaim the handy IM program in a matter of minutes.

So here are the facts: Digsby’s installer comes with a pile of bloatware (Weatherbug, Yahoo Toolbar, etc.) that’s all very avoidable. Instead of hiding checkboxes somewhere in the installer, you’re simply met with “Accept” and “Decline” buttons. After a few windows filled with offers, the installer shows you exactly what you’re putting on your PC. If you decline everything, only Digsby will be installed.

It also comes with a research module that will use your computer’s recourses while you’re away. According to Digsby’s blog, “The module turns on after your computer has been completely idle for 5 minutes (no mouse or keyboard movement).  It then turns off the instant you move your mouse or the press a key on the keyboard.  We did this so it would have absolutely no effect on your computer’s performance and only uses processing power while your computer is not being used.”

This is where they’ve come under fire – but fear not. This, just like the bloatware, is extremely avoidable. By simply navigating to your menu and going to Help > Support Digsby, there’s a button near the bottom that allows you to disable this (pictured above).

So if you’re interested in keeping your favorite all-in-one IM program and not hopping on the hate bandagon, just do this. The Internet is angry enough as is.

According to Gartner, Inc., a business technology research company, cell phone sales totaled 286.1 million units during the second quarter of this year – a 6.1 percent decrease over the second quarter of last year. But, smart phone sales picked up considerable steam surpassing 40 million units in sales, a 27 percent increase from the second quarter of last year.

“Despite the challenging market, some devices sold well as consumers who would usually have purchased standard midrange devices either cut back to less expensive handsets or moved up the range to get more features for their money,” stated Carolina Milanesi, a research director at Gartner. “Touchscreen and qwerty devices remained a major driver for replacement sales and benefited manufacturers with strong, touch-focused midtier devices. However, the decline in average selling price (ASP) accelerated in the first half of the year and particularly affected manufacturers that focus on midtier and low-end devices, where margins are already slim.”

A great deal of this is credited to Apple’s expansion to a larger number of countries, which has had a clear effect on volume. Still though, companies like Nokia with their N97 and Research In Motion (RIM) with their popular BlackBerry line continued to dominate the number one and two positions respectively.

iGoogle already gives you plenty of ways to keep in touch, whether it be Gmail, Latitude or keeping up with the day’s news. But, never one to leave well enough alone, the folks at Google have decided to bolster their army of gadgets in the interest of making iGoogle a more social experience.

Among the first new gadgets to be released are Who has the biggest brain?, Chess and Scrabble. There are even news sharing gadgets from the likes of NPR, The Huffington Post and YouTube. Even keep track of a collective To-Do list with your closest friends.

These features are currently live for those of you living in Australia, and Google plans to make them available to the U.S. over the next week.

For some time now there has been plenty of talk about killing off IE6. Digg has prevented users on IE6 from certain activities, Facebook has been hinting at its users to upgrade since February 2009 and YouTube is supposedly going to cut off support altogether. But, according to a recent post on the IEBlog, Microsoft is committed to keeping support – at least for the lifespan of XP.

“The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments,” said the post. “Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have. As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.”

Microsoft has stated that they plan on keeping Extended Support for XP until April 8, 2014 – so if you’re an IE6 user, you’ve got roughly four more years to enjoy your ancient web browser.

But, if you are interested in making today the day you upgrade, be sure to check out these great alternatives!

Firefox 3.5
Google Chrome
Internet Explorer 8

Do it for the children.

According to a recent info leak from Best Buy’s inventory system, we expect that the Zune HD will cost only $220 for the 16GB model and $290 for the 32GB model.

For those keeping tabs, this puts Microsoft at a huge advantage over Apple. Currently the iPod Touch costs $229, $299 and $399 for the 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models (respectively). Apple may or may not change prices around once the Zune HD hits store shelves, but as of right now things are looking solid up in Redmond.

The global economic downturn hasn’t been nice to anyone, tech sector included. According to a recent report Acer has reduced their 14 and 15-inch ultra-thin notebook orders due to low market demand.

Wistron, an OEM that often makes large orders for the two notebook models, is now only producing 200,000 units per month, down from the projected 600,000 units. It’s expected that the drop in production will hurt Wistron’s notebook shipments in August. It also noted that the sky is blue.

While the details are currently fuzzy on the whole deal, what can be said for certain is that FriendFeed is now a part of Facebook.

Notably, Facebook has used many aspects of FriendFeed (such as the “like” feature and real-time updates), so the merger seems like a perfect fit. And, FriendFeed’s staff is made up of an all-star cast of ex-Google employees, so the acquisition will only strengthen the struggling social networking giant.

There’s been no word yet on how it all went down, but what can be said for certain is that all of FriendFeed’s employees are still going to have jobs.