If you want an iPhone, but don't want to pay that price tag; you may want to look at 99% iPhone clone - the HiPhone, which is about half the price and can be purchased online. I've read a lot of reviews on this phone and it's a mixed bag. Some folks say it's great and say they've experienced no problems. Others say they were unable to change the language from Chinese to English and other small problems. So, if you're feeling lucky, order it and give it a go.

Here are some of the specs I found online:
1. 3.5″ screen with finger touch, touch pen.
2. Dual SIM slots and supports SIM card switching.
3. Triband GSM (900/1800/1900MHz) USA GSM standard.
4. Web browsing, WAP setting, web address management.
5. Unlocked.
6. SMS, MMS, voicemail and cell broadcast
7. MP3, MP4, file playing, recording (wow!), phone call recording (wow!).
8. Video capturing
9. Hands free speaker phone. 3D sound.
10. Bluetooth.
11. TF card supported.
12. Diversified screen switch
13. Return
14. Automatic screen rotation

Accessories: 2 batteries, Charger, USB Cable, Earphone, 512M T-Flash Card, User Manual.

Watch the unveiling of the HiPhone

I ran across a site today called Six Groups that looks like it may be some competition for Ning. Ning allows you to create and manage your own social network and join other networks. It's pretty flexible and gives you the option to upload photos, images, audio and video. Surprisingly, the video on Ning pages play immediately and have pretty good quality.

Looking at Six Groups, it appears to be a Ning clone (I don't mean that in a bad way). Six Groups also allows you to create and manage your own social networks as well as join other social networks. I have not signed up for this service, so I am not sure if it is as flexible as Ning. For instance, Ning lets you brand your page and choose to make your social network public or private. Not sure if Six Groups gives you all those options, but at first glance, it looks like a Ning-type site.

The one thing I don't like about Ning is that when you join other social networks on Ning, you always have to create a new profile page. It would be so much easier if it allowed you to have a main profile page that was used across all social networks you joined on Ning. It's kind of a pain recreating your page everytime you join a social network.

So, we'll see how Six Groups measures to Ning. I'll be keeping an eye out.

Thumb drives are great devices that allow you to carry around a ton of files, photos, music and video in a very small sized device. So small in fact, any clever thief could grab your thumb drive, copy all of your data and return it without you even knowing. Well, that would suck BIG TIME. Ironkey may be the solution to that problem. The Ironkey thumb drive holds up to 4 Gigabytes of data, but includes a hardware encryption chip that scrambles the data so as to be completely unreadable without a password. Passwords cannot be hacked on the Ironkey;

10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.

This Ironkey sounds so awesome, I plan on buying one and giving it a whirl myself.

Check out the Ironkey demo.

Wanna find a restaurant, coffee shop, golf course, nightlife, fine dining or lodging, that is halfway between you and your friends? Happy Median will help you do just that. This looks like a really neat online service. Very straight forward and easy to understand.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. With Del.icio.us, you can save your favorite websites and store them as bookmarks. They are social because you can share these bookmarks with the general public, friends, family and co-workers. You may ask why would anyone want to do this. Here are a few reasons why using Del.icio.us could prove to beneficial and helpful to you:

1. Using Del.icio.us allows you to save and store your favorite sites online vs. inside your browser
2. You can access your bookmarks from anywhere. As long as there’s a computer with internet access, you can get to your bookmarks.
3. You can share your bookmarks with your friends, co-workers, family and the general public.
4. You can view bookmarks from other people on Del.icio.us
5. All of your bookmarks are categorized using tags (i.e. if you bookmark this blog; you can tag it with the following keywords: technology, tech news, new gadgets, tech blog). So when people are looking for anything along those lines, they can click on any of those tags and find bookmarks related to them.

In the past (before I knew about del.icio.us) all of my bookmarks were saved inside my web browser on my laptop. So if I was on my work computer or at my moms on her computer or using anyone else’s computer and wanted to access one of my saved bookmarks, I couldn’t do so. But with del.icio.us, all you have to do is go to http://del.icio.us/ and login to view all of your bookmarks. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?

There are similar social bookmarking sites; such as Ma.gnolia (which is what I use now), BlinkList and a variety of other social bookmarking sites.

Trying to think of some ways you can use Del.icio.us (or any other social bookmarking site)? Let me help you out.

You can use social bookmarking to keep a list of:

1. Recipes
2. Free Windows Video Games
3. List of activities for the kids
4. Potential summer camps for the kids
5. Vacation ideas
6. Tech News blogs

Get the drift? Good. If not, don’t hesitate to email me with your questions.