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Editors' note: This is the third of a three-part series on issues related to cell phone radiation. Revisit Tuesday's story on the inconclusive state of research on cell phone radiation, and Thursday's story about the trouble with federal safety standards, or click here for a roundup of related coverage.

When my sister--a mother of four--was shopping for a new cell phone last summer, she wanted to know: what's the safest cell phone in terms of radiation?

At first, I simply directed her to CNET's Quick Guide: Cell phone radiation levels, which shows the specific absorption rate, … Read more

If your card collection survived your mother's cleaning campaigns, there's a good chance it could be valuable, now or in the future. Sports Card Collector can help you catalog and organize your treasures. Duck Software's database engine is optimized for collectors, with quick access via name or category, customizable fields, and easy data entry.

Sports Card Collector's interface is plain but businesslike and easy to understand and use. It's divided into two halves. The left half has a window listing entries sorted by player name or card brand with a series of customizable category tabs … Read more

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, May 27.

Obama appointing Twitter CEO to advisory group Twitter chief Dick Costolo will join the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. Microsoft's Scott Charney and McAfee's David DeWalt will be appointed too. More

Microsoft to showcase new tablet OS next week? Software giant reportedly plans to take the wraps off a new operating system next week, perhaps running on hardware using Nvidia's ARM-based Tegra processor. More

Zuckerberg: Privacy anxiety is fleeting New features may initially give … Read more

A new study of various mobile application stores during the month of April conducted by research company Distimo found that the top apps chart on Google's Android Market had considerably less turnover than the one on Apple's App Store for the iPhone, which leads to less downloads overall.

In terms of numbers, that works out to 94 unique applications in the App Store for the iPhone's top 10 free and paid categories during the month of April, with just 26 in the Android Market during the same time period. For the top 300 apps in the iPhone'… Read more

Consumers should have an easier time comparing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks once new consumer labels unveiled today go into effect.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson unveiled the new set of labels this morning at a live press conference hosted on the Web.

Prior to this, car labels hadn't been updated for 30 years.

Each new label differs slightly depending on the car's drive train or fuel source. (Click for a PDF of all labels.) Labels in the set include those for gas, flex-fuel gas-ethanol blends, … Read more

A significant number of people are comfortable shopping and paying for items through their mobile devices, according to a new report from mobile media firm JiWire.

JiWire's latest Mobile Audience Insights Report (PDF) found that 79 percent of 5,000 people surveyed are OK paying online via their cell phones or tablets.

Though most of those polled are still making relatively small purchases (less than $100), 50 percent said they're comfortable spending more than $100 using a cell phone, while almost 20 percent said they're OK buying things worth more than $500.

Beyond paying for items, more consumers are also researching products via their mobile devices. JiWire found that 71 percent of those polled had researched future purchases on their phone or tablet before buying the item. Among those, 31 percent later bought the item in a store, 40 percent bought it online through a PC, and 20 percent bought it directly from their mobile device.… Read more

FineCount from Tilti Systems is a free tool that provides highly accurate document analysis and statistics; it's sort of like word count on steroids. It analyzes a document and counts the number of words, numbers, characters, repetitions, spaces, redundant spaces, lines, sentences, pages, and file paths. It can export statistics, calculate rates, and create reports. It can analyze Microsoft Word documents, text files, PDFs, HTML documents, and other file types. It's suitable for freelance writers, translators, editors, and others who provide document services.

FineCount is free for noncommercial users, but you must obtain a free registration to keep … Read more

You may not know the name Inrix, but the provider of flow data and prediction supplies the traffic data for dozens of automakers, aftermarket GPS providers, and municipalities. It's very likely that you already use Inrix's data in some way without even knowing it. Inrix's app for iOS devices and Android brings that same traffic data to your smartphone along with a few features new to its latest version 3.0 update.

Comparative Traffic is an at-a-glance look at the major differences between the current traffic conditions and normal traffic trends. Roads that are moving more slowly … Read more

Windows 7 is four to five times less vulnerable to malware infections than is Windows XP.

Those are the findings of Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (PDF), which detailed in depth the state of software vulnerabilities, exploits, security breaches, and malware in 2010.

Overall, the study found that infection rates for newer Microsoft operating systems with the latest service packs are consistently lower than those for older OSes, giving Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 the highest marks for security.

Looking at the number of reported infections per 1,000 computers, Microsoft found that Windows 7 64-bit had … Read more