Sean Captain, Tom Mainelli

When Apple sneezes, the world takes interest in ear-nose-throat medicine. So upon learning that their iPhones have been building a bloated file of location data, consumers started wondering if mobile service also means mobile surveillance.

Add the unrelated but scary hacking of Sony's PlayStation and Online Entertainment networks, and suddenly people are thinking about the data they are shedding and who's picking it up.

When Wired hyperbolically declared that "The Web is Dead," it didn't challenge my worldview but rather surfaced what I knew subconsciously. The browser is not always (and increasingly less so) the best window to the Internet - especially on mobile gadgets. For years on my iPhone - and now on my Droid - I've foregone digging around in a tiny browser in favor of burrowing straight to what I want through an app - the New York Times, Facebook, The Weather Channel...

At this week's Web 2.0 conference in New York, John Gruber of blog Daring Fireball tried to illustrate app supremacy by showing the absurdity of an iPad screen with only the Safari Web browser icon.

We're hearing a lot about 3D television these days- from TV manufacturers, directors, journalists and pundits. But do consumers like it? And will they pay for it?

To find out, I convened a mini focus group of adults in their 30s, 40s, and 50s,; a teenager; and a pair of kids under 10. We met at the Samsung Experience store in New York City a few weeks ago. After watching a wild assortment of clips-from The Daily Show to a Dunkin Donuts commercial to Monsters vs. Aliens-they had a mildly favorable impression. But no one was jumping up to buy a new TV and a pile of expensive active-shutter LCD glasses.

Aliph Jawbone 2 Bluetooth Headset

Monster Cable Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones

I spend an inordinate amount of time working in huge Excel spreadsheets that represent data about the worldwide PC monitor market. Excel's pivot tables and charts are useful, but sometimes I still struggle to find the trends buried in all those numbers.

So I did what any geek would do: I looked for an app that could help me. I found Tableau Software, which recently launched version 4.0 of its Desktop and Server analytical software clients. Put simply, you point Tableau at your data file, and it creates an interface that lets you drag and drop elements of the data to create visual representations that can be easier to understand than Excel's own pivot tables and charts.

I discussed in an earlier column using Microsoft's $180 Windows Home Server to turn an old PC into a media-streaming, backup-friendly server. "Great idea," wrote many a reader, "but too pricey." For those penny-pinchers, I suggest FreeNAS.

The browser-based interface of FreeNAS lets you control your server from any PC connected to the network.Based on the FreeBSD operating system (a Unix derivative), FreeNAS is a server operating system that offers lots of features, a very small footprint, and a can't-beat-it price (it's free). Developed by an open-source community, it is constantly evolving (with even nightly builds).

High-quality PC audio is important to me, as I spend a lot of time listening to music on my desktop. In previous columns I've discussed the aural advantages of lossless audio codecs (like FLAC), discrete sound cards, and specialty music player software. Alas, even with all of those tools installed and properly configured, it is possible to suffer less-than-optimal sound on a Windows XP-based PC, as the operating system has a tendency to muck with music without your consent. Happily, a free, easy-to-use program, called ASIO4ALL, addresses this annoying Windows habit. (I'm told that the app can improve sound on Vista PCs, too, but I have not tested that claim.)

So how does XP interfere with your music? Simply put, the OS hands off audio chores to a piece of software called the Kernel Audio Mixer, or Kmixer, which automatically resamples audio files--oftentimes rather poorly--creating output that differs from the original recording. The effect is typically pretty subtle, and if you are listening to low-bit-rate MP3s you probably won't notice it.