Recently at a boutique hotel I was given the advice to ask the front desk person to pull up a travel website for an on the spot price match and ask for complimentary parking or breakfast to sweeten the deal. Parking in a big city is easily 10-20% of the room rate.

Anybody have a suggestion on where to get a replacement back for a 3G (seriously)? Mine is cracked and there's plenty of hits on Google but I'm looking for actual experiences with replacing the back cover. I want a new one so I can try the mayte finish. Thanks.

I use it to store articles to read on my iPad and iPhone when I'm on the treadmill at the gym or traveling on a long flight. No ads or no crappy formatting, just plain text in a column in filling the whole screen. The next page is just a tap or swipe away.

Hey Giz, wouldn't it be better to suggest checking this info on Monday rather waiting until the day of?

Last year I rode the "old" Shanghai bullet train and the Japanese bullet train. You seriously don't feel the speed (except when it leans while cornering) like when you're in an airplane. I wish the LA to San Francisco or Las Vegas bullet train would get built in my lifetime. But I doubt it.

There's an insightful Boondocks episode regarding the adoption curve of communication technologies based on ethnicity. Enjoy. And for those that don't know, its definitely NSFW.

Hey Matt,

Cut AT&T a little slack in this very specific area. They want towers more than you because more towers = more customers. The problem is really your hypocritical neighbor who complains about dropped calls AND thinks that cell towers are ugly and irradiate brain cells and won't let his city council approve building new…

Using Fill Flash to effectively balance the subject (foreground) & ambient (background) light is tough ESPECIALLY on a P&S with minimal manual controls. Everyone who sees this shot (thinks that it's a fake green-screen shot. I guess people are just so used to seeing poor night shots. [www.flickr.com]

@SulabhaJobonee: I caught that irony too.