PayPal has been embracing a whole new direction for its business. In July, the company announced PayPal X, its new initiative to give 3rd party app developers the tools and APIs to help them integrate payment systems into their social media products.

How is the payments company going about this, though? Why, by launching a developer challenge, of course! Or maybe it’s more like a PayPal scavenger hunt. We’re not entirely sure, and that’s exactly how PayPal wants it.

Sprint changes the game, and offers up unlimited everything for $69 per month

Let’s just say it: Sprint is back. First the carrier nabs the hottest handhelds with the Palm Pre, BlackBerry Tour and soon the HTC Hero and Palm Pixi. But that’s just the start.

Now, it’s offering up the $69 Any Mobile, Anytime plan which includes – get this – unlimited calls to any mobile phone, unlimited web surfing, Blackberry access, unlimited Direct Connect, unlimited text, picture, and video, and unlimited weekend minutes start at 7pm. Plus, the plan includes all the little extras like GPS Navigation, Music Premier, TV Premier, NFL Mobile Live, and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile. Wowsers.

Hopefully Sprint is successful with this latest push. If it is, then other carriers will have to follow suit which means everyone wins. Right now most of us pay a ridiculous amount each month for mobile service. My $149 plan on Verizon includes BIS and 1200 minutes, but only a small text messaging package for both lines. With Sprint, I can spend $20 less, but have unlimited everything and more minutes.

Maybe Sprint realizes that people buy into plans more than the handsets. Sure, the iPhone is cool, but the monthly plan is damn expensive which probably turns some folks off. It’s a shame too because the hardware is an amazing piece of technology. But times are tough and not everyone can afford that type of plan every month. An unlimited plan for only $70 is a lot easier and there will be a good amount of quality but affordable hardware to choose from soon anyway.

Well done, Sprint. Well done.

Microsoft’s ad blitz for Bing is still going strong, and it’s starting to hone in on a new target: your wallet. Bing’s latest TV ad, which aired for the first time last night, is focused on Bing Cashback, the program that allows users to save money when they purchase items found using Bing search. Cashback has been around for a while, most people probably had never even heard of the program until now. This is the first time Microsoft has ever aired an ad for Cashback, and you can be sure that it’s going to strike a chord with plenty of viewers.

Give a robot repairs, and it will operate for a day. Teach it to repair itself, and it will touch off a Robocalypse.

Luckily, this is just an art project. Cool, but rather sinister-looking, wouldn’t you agree?

Snow Leopard. Even the name seems to underpromise -- it's the first "big cat" OS X codename to reference the previous version of the OS, and the list of big-ticket new features is seemingly pretty short for a version-number jump. Maybe that's why Apple's priced the 10.6 upgrade disc at just $29 -- appearances and expectations matter, and there's simply not enough glitz on this kitty to warrant the usual $129.



But underneath the customary OS X fit and finish there's a lot of new plumbing at work here. The entire OS is now 64-bit, meaning apps can address massive amounts of RAM and other tasks go much faster. The Finder has been entirely re-written in Cocoa, which Mac fans have been clamoring for since 10.0. There's a new version of QuickTime, which affects media playback on almost every level of the system. And on top of all that, there's now Exchange support in Mail, iCal, and Address Book, making OS X finally play nice with corporate networks out of the box.




So you won't notice much new when you first restart into 10.6 -- apart from some minor visual tweaks here and there there's just not that much that stands out. But in a way that means the pressure's on even more: Apple took the unusual and somewhat daring step of slowing feature creep in a major OS to focus on speed, reliability, and stability, and if Snow Leopard doesn't deliver on those fronts, it's not worth $30... it's not worth anything. So did Apple pull it off? Read on to find out!

The Window Phone is a new concept mobile phone. The phone will be able to transform its appearance like a window according to the weather in your area. The phone’s design is thin, clear and transparent. The phone looks like an ice block; i stays clear during a sunny day, becomes humid during a rainy day and frosts during a snowy day.

Users can write text messages or draw pictures on the phone in different weather conditions which later transform and show as SMS characters. The phone would essentially be semiopaque, or translucent; displaying information and images on a window-like surface.

The concept mashed together iPhone-esque qualities along with modern sliding technology. The design is slender, sleek and soooooo smooth. A ridiculous feature that is ingrained into the concept is that the iPod can be controlled by thermal sensors. In my opinion, I don’t see myself using an iPod that I had to slide open every time I wanted to use it, but the concept is so ill, cant front"