Given the plethora of choices for mobile phones, tech-savvy consumers often love to upgrade to the latest on the market. So what should be done about the old pieces that might uselessly occupy the shelf? Well, recycling your old phone will not only fetch reasonable money, but is an environment friendly option as well.

The BBC reports that a mobile phone trading website called FoneBank recently conducted a survey in the UK to find out the fate of old mobile phones. It was discovered that 28% of them simply put them away in a drawer, and 23% simply chucked them away. With the global recession setting in, consumers could easily opt for many of these second hand gadgets that are otherwise wasted away. And for those who still want to delve deeper into their pockets to upgrade to higher end phones, reselling old phones can fetch some money.

Particularly benefited from second hand phones are consumers living in developing countries. FoneBank, for its part has been recycling thousands of phones in recent months in regions like Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia.

The need for recycling old phones also arises from the concern for the environment. Toxic substances like cadmium found in their batteries can contaminate the water table. Manufacturers, importers and retailers of electronic devices often allow for the resale of old phones.

So before you decide to upgrade to a brand new handheld gadget, don’t forget about your old one!

SourceForge and Freshmeat are both great web sites for finding obscure open source software packages.

Both are very old and authoritative web sites; Freshmeat was started in March of 1998 and SourceForge came along in August of 1999.

SourceForge has a larger database of projects to search, which is a major advantage.  SourceForge also has a better search feature, in that you can filter your search results by meta data fields such as Development Status, License, and Programming Language.

Unfortunately, once you find the list of projects which meet your criteria, SourceForge falls down.  SourceForge presents very little data about each individial development project and the current SourceForge design makes it very difficult to find the real homepage of the development project.  SourceForge is attempting to trap visitors within SourceForge’s limited environment.  This makes SourceForge almost useless.

Freshmeat doesn’t have a search feature with the sophistication of the one you will find at SourceForge, but when you find an open source project at Freshmeat, it gives you all the data you need — including the real homepage of the project — with a far superior user interface.

So what am I stuck with?  I go to Freshmeat and search for projects.  If I find too many or too few results, I go to SourceForge and repeat the search.  But then I take those search results back to Freshmeat to find useful project descriptions.

Freshmeat, please improve your search feature; SourceForge, please stop trying to trap visitors within your horrible new user interface.

Evil Science has just published Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Opera vs Chrome vs Safari, which contains the results of an extensive competitive speed test between five popular web browsers.

The author is an Opera user who discovered that his favorite browser has slipped to the #2 spot for performance.

The author rates each browser in nine different categories.  The final totals are:

I’m running Ubuntu Linux here, so Google Chrome isn’t really an option for me.  Firefox’s stability and performance issues have become serious enough that I may switch back to Opera.

Have you ever been interested in how a web site like The Tech FAQ gets built and promoted? Now you have an opportunity to find out.

The creator of The Tech FAQ has recently started a forum for webmasters where he shares the knowledge he gained while building and promoting this web site.

If you have an interest in helping to build the World Wide Web, Net Builders will be a great place to learn.

Bootable Linux distributions are quite popular right now. Just by booting from a DVD or other media, they allow you to possess a dedicated security auditing or forensics workstation.

Usually though, I don’t want to reboot just to use a different set of applications. I want all of my applications available to me all of the time.

I normally use Synaptic Package Manager to add each application to my Ubuntu system manually. This is time consuming, but eventually allows me to create a system with a rich set of security tools.

A better approach is to call apt-get directly. This is much quicker than using the Synaptic GUI. Then, all available Ubuntu security tools can be installed with one shell script.

secbox is that shell script. With a single command, secbox installs every Ubuntu security tool supported by apt-get. secbox isn’t sexy, but it is very convenient for me — and for pretty much anyone who uses their Ubuntu machine for security work.

Download secbox Now

The Washington Post printed a story about the Islamist terrorists who recently went on a murder spree in Mumbai India, with an interesting technological twist.

The bad guys used technology heavily:

• They trained using satellite images and video footage of their targets
• They used GPS navigation equipment on the boat they hijacked to get to Mumbai
• They used high-resolution satellite images stored on CD
• They carried Blackberry phones for communications
• They switched SIM cards between cell phones to make it difficult to intercept their communications
• They watched television to monitor police response
• They used satellite phones and VoIP to communicate to their leaders in Pakistan
• Their leaders in Pakistan used email to communicate to the news media

The Indian police, on the other hand, don’t have the financial support that Islamist terrorists benefit from. They lacked basic modern military technologies which would have provided them serious advantages in this conflict:

• Modern rifles
  with faster reloading and higher rates of fire
• Rifle scopes to allow the police to shoot more accurately and safely
• Night vision equipment to enable the police to fight better in dark buildings
• Military aircraft for rapid deployment

Technologies like cryptanalysis and nuclear weapons helped us defeat the Nazi’s and Imperial Japan. Similarly, technologies like GPS, night vision gear, and radio communications are proving invaluable against Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The technologies needed to defeat Islamist terrorism may not even exist today. Only the future will tell us what technological advances will be developed in the next few decades to help defend modern civilization against the barbarian hordes.

If you’ve dropped your cell phone in water, or just gotten it wet, then you’ll want to make sure you follow a series of steps to ensure it will continue to operate.

Remove the phone from the water source

If you are able to quickly remove the phone from the water, then you’re likely to be able to restore it. Most phones have a tight, sealed outside layer that will help keep out water for a short period of time. The key is avoiding contact between the water and the phones electronic components while they are powered by the cell phones battery.

Begin to dry the phone and remove accessories

You should quickly work to get rid of the excess water by draining the phone and then using a towel to clean off external moisture. Resist the temptation to use a hair dryer on the internal components, as this may cause damage to the circuitry, even at a low temperature. Instead, you need to use a suction source such as a vacuum, but be careful to keep it out of direct contact, otherwise static electricity might come into play. Once you have removed the water that you can directly, you should use a dessicate to absorb water on the phone.

Allow the Phone to Dry and Test It

After you have following the aforementioned steps, allow the phone to dry naturally dry. After 24 hours you should test its operation. If it’s still not working, you should visit your cellular carrier store to see if they can help replace or restore the phone.

This guest post was written by Stanley Richardson, who is an expert on cell phones. Stanley can be reached by combining his full name and adding [at] cellphones.org

It’s Christmas shopping season again and I have a recommendation for the best gift to buy your favorite techie.

Heart diseases is the number one cause of death in the United States. Diseases of the heart cause 28.5% of all U.S. deaths, even more deaths than cancer.

Many of these early deaths are preventable with little more than proper weight control. Weight control relies on two components: diet and exercise.

Personally, the only diet which has worked well for me is the low-carb Atkins Diet. The Atkins Diet works well for me because it keeps my insulin levels in check while still allowing me to keep my weight down.

Exercise is hard for techies. Most of us enjoy our work, which means that most of us work long hours. We don’t have a lot of time to go to the gym or join a softball league.

Worse, the nature of the Internet has led most of us techies to develop very short attention spans. We can’t force ourselves to jog or lift weights for half an hour, because there is just not enough mental stimulation during that time.

So what does this have to do with Christmas? My recommendation for a Christmas gift is the Wii Fit from Nintendo.

The Wii Fit is a specialized controller for the Nintendo Wii gaming system. The Wii Fit turns the Wii gaming system into a high-tech exercise system.

The Wii Fit isn’t just hardware, it comes with software which manages an entire exercise program. This software is designed to work with the attention span issues endemic among true technophiles.

Using the Wii Fit to get into shape doesn’t require extensive scheduling or coordination with groups of people.
Your favorite technie can take a break from his computer, jump on the Wii for 15 minutes, and then get right back to the Internet.

And best of all, the Wii software makes it all seem like a computer game.

Our friends at Qualys are offering free copies of the electronic version of Vulnerability Management for Dummies.

Vulnerability Management for Dummies:

• Explains the critical need for vulnerability management
• Details the essential best-practice steps of a successful vulnerability management program
• Outlines the various vulnerability management solutions - including the advantages and disadvantages of each
• Highlights the award-winning QualysGuard vulnerability management solution
• Provides a ten point checklist for removing vulnerabilities from your key resources

Our editors have just posted the latest reviews of new cellular phones.

The new cellular phones reviewed include:

• Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220
• Blackberry Storm
• HTC G1
• HTC Touch 3G
• HTC Touch Diamond CDMA
• HTC Touch HD
• HTC Touch Pro CDMA
• HTC Touch Viva
• Huawei M328
• Kyocera Cyclops K312
• LG AX-155
• LG KF900
• LG Lotus LX600
• LG Rhythm AX585
• LG VX5500
• LG Xenon
• Morpheus Aura
• Morpheus i576
• Morpheus i775
• Morpheus Krave ZN4
• Morpheus ACTV w450
• Morpheus Q-11
• Morpheus Rapture vu30
• Morpheus RAZR v3s
• Morpheus vu204
• Nokia 1680
• Nokia 2600
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
• Pantech C610
• Pantech Matrix c740
• Pantech Slate
• Samsung Delve R800
• Samsung Emporio Armani m750
• Samsung Epix SGH-i907
• Samsung Highnote M630
• Samsung JetSet R550
• Samsung M3200 Beat-S
• Samsung Pixon m8800
• Samsung SGH-A767
• Samsung Rant
• Samsung A837
• Samsung SCH-U430
• Samsung SGH-A137
• Samsung SGH-A637
• Samsung Sway SCH-U650
• Samsung T109
• Samsung U430
• UTStarcom Quickfire

The Blackberry Storm looks to be the star among all these new models, but most any of these handsets will provide years of excellent service.