Far from being the overweight nerds living in their parents’ basement, it turns out that tech geeks, including bloggers and social network users, are valuable members of society. No, really.

We all have gadgets; some which we use on a daily basis, and some which we buy, mess about with for a week or two, and then abandon due to the novelty value disappearing. But how men and women approach the use of gadgets, especially when first bought, differs greatly. Men will assume they know best while women will study the instruction manual and take their time over a new toy.

The iPhone is a great product, of that there is very little debate. Even I, as an Apple hater, happily admit that the company outdid itself with this smartphone and truly left everyone else in their wake. However, as brilliant and innovative as the iPhone may be, it falls down on one key component – that of making phone calls. In essence, it’s not actually a very good phone.

A British university has found a way for computers to automatically recognize non-verbal cues such as facial expressions. It could make it easier for machines to detect emotions in users.

I sometimes wish I’d gone to law school. Not because I hold an immense desire to become a hotshot lawyer or anything, but because doing so would have meant I could pen legal-sounding letters to companies every time I wanted a refund, even if I probably didn’t actually deserve one.

The Internet has ushered in a whole new environment for marketers to ply their trade, and some manage to do it in such a way that the lines between reality and fiction become very blurry indeed. So it is with 2012, the new movie from director Roland Emmerich, which portrays the end of the world as we know it, with Planet Earth going through a cataclysmic episode. The campaign has been so effective as to entice NASA to debunk it.

Pepsi recently launched an iPhone app to promote its AMP energy drink. It’s called Before You Score and it is directly targeted at men looking to (in the nicest possible terms) have a fun night with a lady. This past week has seen Pepsi come in for heavy criticism for the app due to its politically incorrect nature. But come on, aren’t we all being a little over-sensitive here? It’s an iPhone app for God’s sake.

Google has been busy mapping the entire world at street level for the past few years. But its Street View cars aren’t able to photograph everywhere purely because they need roads to access places of interest. Which means that a great many hard-to-reach places such as landmarks and sports venues have been left out. Until now. Enter the Google Street View trike.

Twitter is many things: a micro-blogging network, a social network, a fast-growing Web site, a company which is worth a fortune without making any revenue. And it’s also a wine producer and seller. No, seriously. But Twitter isn’t a company that is looking to be acquired. Although, I’m pretty sure everything has its price.

Tim Berners-Lee is regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet alongside Vint Cerf. While working at CERN twenty years ago, the British-born Berners-Lee forwarded the concept of the World Wide Web to his bosses. The rest, as they say, is history. But Berners-Lee feels there is a blot on the Internet landscape in the form of those two forward slashes present in Web addresses. So he’d like to apologize for them.

There are some very basic rules for venturing online, such as installing anti-virus software and a firewall, and keeping your wits about you at all times. But anyone can fall victim to a cleverly designed piece of malware or phishing scam. And I mean anyone. Even the director of the FBI isn’t immune, though his wife seems to be.

As anyone who has ever tried to lose weight will know, it’s not the easiest thing in the world, no matter how much drive and willpower one possesses. Sometimes something else is required, be it a new way of eating such as The Atkins Diet or an innovative use of technology. Tweet What You Eat does exactly that by utilizing Twitter to help people lose weight effectively.

Technology can be the most amazing thing in the world, at least when it’s working as it should be. Unfortunately, it also has a tendency to go wrong, and top stop doing what you want it to at times. Solutions include buying a replacement, getting the broken gadget repaired, and threatening to shoot it with a gun. At least that’s what one guy thought was the right thing to do with his iPhone at an Apple Store when it stopped working properly.

A bra which turns into two working gas masks is among the achievements to be celebrated at the 19th annual Ig Nobel Prize awards ceremony. Other winners include Cow TLC, Tequila Diamonds, and Panda Poop. All of which may have some merit but can generally definitely be described as ignoble.

Where would we be without gadgets? Well, that really depends on which gadgets we’re talking about. While some are life-enhancing gems which most of us use on a daily basis and wouldn’t know what to do without, others are life-sapping, pointless pieces of tat that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we really have no need for. So what are the top 20 best and worst household gadgets according to women?

Lily Allen is a British singer, songwriter, and musician who is famous for using MySpace and the Web to build a following upon which she could launch a career. A career that, to this point, has been quite successful. However, the last week has seen her take a stand against illegal filesharing, have her position compromised by tales of her own copyright infringement, and then shut down her blog and claim her career is over.

Google has intrigued a few of us (with no lives) over the past few weeks with a series of logo changes and strange tweets all about aliens and strange goings-on. There were many theories as to what the search giant was up to but all has now been explained. And to be honest, it’s all a little bit dull when all is said and done.