If you have to compete with wind, vehicles, loud machinery or other people when you make a call, this headset will solve your problem. The company crossed their own proprietary knowledge with military-grade "noise shield" technology approved by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the U.S. Department of Defense's independent research branch.

The headset interprets the frequency of distracting sounds and emits sound waves that are a nearly exact negative frequency, effectively canceling out the interference.

See the Jawbone in action.

The Jawbone Bluetooth headset gives you about 6 hours of talk time or 120 hours of standby time between charges. It comes with a battery strength indicator so you won't be taken by surprise.

The unusual layout of the buttons takes some time getting acclimated to, but once you get the hang of it, this headset gives you great results. It retails around $120, but it's well worth it if you often find yourself making phone calls in noisy environments.

You can buy one or find out more at http://www.jawbone.com

Unless you have a Library Science degree, you may have to wade through useless web pages whenever you use a search engine. Here are some easy tips to help you find more useful information in less time.

1. Use the minus sign to eliminate common results that aren't what you want. For example, if you want to look up California biking but not mountain biking, search for California biking -mountain.
2. Use quotation marks to get exact matches. Search for "cell phone reviews" instead of cell phone reviews. Using quotation marks will only bring up results for the exact phrase; omitting them will bring up pages that have the terms PC and reviews anywhere on the page.
3. Ask for definitions. If your search is define contango you'll get pages which do just that. For Google you need a colon, so you'd type define:contango.
4. Be specific. A detailed, but simple search query will usually bring highly relevant results. For example, instead of searching for auto parts, look for 1988 Volkswagen Rabbit muffler. Instead of weather report, try San Diego weather.

When you buy music downloads, it's hard to copy your files into other devices because of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that comes embedded in iTunes, Urge, and other downloaded media. It's there to protect copyrighted material, but it often penalizes legitimate buyers who paid for the content. For example, playing purchased music from iTunes on Windows Media Player is not possible without removing the DRM.

It's illegal to crack the encryption code although you can find apps that will do this, but you can legally strip DRM from your files by making new files without the DRM.

Start by creating a new playlist with all the songs you want to rip. Use the Burn Disk function to copy your files to audio-CD format from iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Next, move the original, purchased songs to a different folder in Windows Explorer. Finally, insert your CD and click Import CD to copy the songs back into iTunes or whatever application you want to use. You should now have copies of all your files, free of DRM.

Your hard drive may be more prone to failure than you think. Google and Carnegie-Mellon recently ran separate, unrelated studies. Both of them showed that the annual drive failure rate is as high as 2-4 percent, far above the 0.88% claimed by the industry. The Carnegie-Mellon Study even noted failure rates as high as 13% in some cases.

The industry isn't necessarily lying about the reliability of their drives. Part of the discrepancy is due to varying definitions of failure. Hard drive vendors base their rate on a failed effort to read or write in a set time period.

In contrast, the new studies use a more pragmatic definition of failure: any drive problem which requires the owner to replace their hard drive.

In looking for typical warning signs, Google uncovered this useful red flag: if you run Scandisk or any other error-checking software, and you find a scan error, your drive is 39 times more likely to fail in the next 60 days than a drive without a scan error.

If you detect scan errors on your hard drive, you should replace it.

The studies made a few other noteworthy finds. For example, slightly high temperatures don't increase the drive failure rate. In fact, most failures were observed in the 77-88 degree range. However, cooling is still important, since typical desktops run at 125 degrees or higher.

The study also found that fiber channel drives and SCSI drives have the same failure rate as the cheaper SATA drives (although the higher grade drives still offer better performance).

These new studies might eventually spur manufacturers to raise their standards. In the meantime, they confirm the obvious: you need a reliable backup system, and you should use it religiously.

By now you know about all the basic measures you can take to protect yourself from Identity Theft. The only problem is the time and hassle of getting it done. Luckily, there are services that can do a lot of the work for you at a modest price.

Truston guides you through a review of your credit report for suspicious activity. You pay as you need it, and you get a month's access for $20. If you provide an email address, they'll send you important notices, such as a reminder when you're eligible again for a free credit report.

Truston also has plans to offer a step-by-step guide to freezing your credit report. This keeps unauthorized parties from acquiring your credit information. Learn more about it.

Trusted ID and LifeLock offer a comprehensive suite of services starting at $10 a month. These services include monitoring your credit cards, a lock on your personal information, and $1,000,000 in identity theft insurance.

If you want to know whether anyone has tried to use your credit card or social security number, you can do a quick check for free at Stolen ID Search. If the search raises any red flags, Stolen ID Search will tell you what to do next. For a fee, they'll monitor up to 3 numbers (either credit card or social security) and notify you of any suspicious activity.