choose

Buying a smartphone - especially your first smartphone - can be really daunting. The formula is something like: Features x operating system x handset x carrier = AARGGHH!!! Brian Cooley lays out the Top 5 things people like you consider when making that smartphone choice. Hopefully this helps!

After you've watched this video, then take a look at CNET Editors' favorite smartphones as of this moment.

They fall into your inbox like snowflakes: someone is turning 35 and asking for $35 donations to a conservation charity through a Facebook app. Another person has entered a triathlon and has pledged to raise money online for medical research. Or, this time of year, perhaps you see requests for holiday donations that will support inner-city classrooms in need.

Or perhaps you've "donated a birthday" yourself. Just about every nonprofit these days has a Facebook page, an arsenal of online donation tools, and probably a Twitter account too--and for digitally forward charities, that's no longer enough, … Read more

Wilson's back on the show to prove that two Chinese men are always better than one. He brings back news of the Kindle 2, which leads us to a discussion about the books of Scholastic yore- like Goosebumps, Choose Your Own Adventure, Flowers in the Attic, Bunnicula, and the Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Okay, I might be the only one who read that last one. We quickly move on to less awkward topics, like FarmersOnly.com--an online dating site catered to farmers looking for love...from other farmers, get your mind out of the gutter. … Read more

As a tribute to the newly released Android G1 phone that runs on a Linux-based operating system, the folks at gOS, maker of gOS 3 Gadgets, decided this week to hand-build an Android G2 PC.

This custom-built desktop computer is designed in the image of a new "Android." The G2 PC is based on the Via C7-based Nano-ITX board, and comes with an 800MHz processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and 80GB of hard disk storage space. This is not much of a supercomputer, but it's powerful enough that you can do multiple tasks.

As Google's Android … Read more

With primaries in more than 20 states next week, MTV has announced "Super Tuesday" coverage plans for its hand-picked citizen journalism corps.

In each state with a Super Tuesday primary, a member of the "Street Team" will be streaming live coverage from the video camera of a Nokia N95 handset; N95s can upload video directly to the Web, and this will be the first time that MTV has experimented with live mobile-to-Web coverage.

The content can be accessed on the MTV News site and on MTV's "Choose or Lose" election site. An online … Read more

The social network companies just left the stage at Demo 2008. Looking for inspiration from the group, I got this: The future of social networking will belong to companies that leverage the implicit, or derived, "social graph." I do not think that companies that are trying to create new online communities (from the Demo companies: iLeonardo, HubDub, AtlasPost) will own the future.

However, companies that divine the social network from what is already online are on to something. In that group there's Delver, which I reviewed last night, and these two interesting companies from the Demo session … Read more

As "Super Tuesday" on February 5 approaches, MTV and MySpace.com have announced the final installment of their ongoing "presidential dialogue" series. Co-presented by the Associated Press, the event will take place at 6 p.m. EST on Saturday, February 2; all candidates from both parties have been invited to participate, and so far, Democratic contender Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Mike Huckabee have confirmed that they will be part of it.

The remaining presidential candidates--Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards, and Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani--have been invited but have not yet … Read more

Teachers have an unlimited supply of interesting ideas for classroom projects, but have often been limited to the resources they could afford to contribute from their own pocketbooks.

Seven years ago, a history teacher in the Bronx started a Web site that directly connected teachers and donors to fund classroom projects. This week DonorsChoose announced that its program has expanded to include every public school in America.

This "open source" approach to supporting public schools encourages teachers to be innovative and entrepreneurial. Their proposals compete in the marketplace of ideas to attract support. Everyday citizens are invited to become philanthropists who can make a big difference by pooling their contributions, from $10 on up.

As a donor, I found that my experience on DonorsChoose channels reminded me of the thrill of an eBay purchase. But instead of making an impulse buy for something that I didn't really need, I was making a contribution to a worthy cause. In return, my family has received wonderful thank-you packets from teachers and students that include letters and photos of the projects we funded. … Read more

Over the past several years I have watched in dismay as the budgetary consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) force schools to adopt zero-tolerance policies toward education. I have seen in my own neighborhood a "successful" school reduce its science instruction down to 20 minutes a week for 1st-3rd graders because of fears that a single child's lack of performance on a standardized test might result in a budgetary take-down. Mr. Holland's Opus was a poignant and sadly prescient story of a bureaucracy that had its sites set far too low when it came to … Read more