Tony Craine

If you weren't already overwhelmed by the colossal array of choices available on Internet radio, maybe you will be soon. Rogue Amoeba has released Radioshift 1.5, an update to its Internet radio player/recorder software. Version 1.5 can pull in thousands more streams than its predecessor.

Radioshift allows you to search for Internet audio streams by name, genre, or location and either play them live or record them for later. Recorded streams can be easily transferred to iTunes or an audio editor.

Runtime Revolution has released version 4.0 of its self-titled application-authoring software. New in this release is the ability to deploy applications directly to the Web in any of the major browsers running in Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Developers working within Revolution can create desktop applications and convert them into revLets--standalone Web apps that require no prior knowledge of HTML or other Web standards. A revLet can vary in size and power, ranging from a simple banner or survey to a full-fledged multimedia presentation, game, or database frontend.

Live streaming video on the iPhone and iPod touch is neither "madness" nor the exclusive domain of the heavy hitters anymore. Livestream on Thursday unveiled its free service for streaming live video to the popular Apple devices.

But producers won't need to navigate the tricky waters of the iPhone-app-approval process to take advantage of the technology. Content broadcast via Livestream's service can be accessed through Mobile Safari.

Ever find yourself needing to know, on a moment's notice, how many calories you've eaten in a day? Or how much saturated fat you've consumed? Or how many more grams of potassium you need to reach your recommended daily allowance? There's a badge for that.

Food IQ for the iPhone or iPod touch lets you choose any one of 18 nutrients to assign to the app's icon badge so you can check your daily intake just like you'd check for unread e-mails. Granted, you may not care how many grams of Vitamin B-12 you've had in the past 12 hours, but surely somebody does. Leave it to a developer with a name like Obsessive Code to cater to that person.

Looking for an ideal holiday gift for that brooding philosophy student in your life? Check out Lose/Lose. It's reminiscent of classic arcade games like Space Invaders, but with a sobering twist: Each time you destroy an alien, the game deletes a file from your Mac. Forever.

Created by Zach Gage, a digital artist in New York City, Lose/Lose puts the player in the position of shooter as aliens rain down from above. Get touched by an alien, you lose. Kill an alien, you score points--but you also vaporize a random file from your home directory. If your ship is destroyed, the game deletes itself from your hard drive.

You've got your own reasons for wanting to cut your energy consumption. Maybe you'd like to save a few bucks each month. Or maybe you want to help reduce the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

In either case, as you're scaling back your use of electric devices, you can monitor your savings in one of two ways: wait for the electric bill to arrive, or keep tabs on your energy use throughout the month so you'll know before the bill arrives how much electricity you used.

You're at the grocery store, in the shampoo aisle. You're scratching your head. No, you don't have lice, you're just trying to make a decision.

To your left is a sturdy, economy-sized bottle branded in military-stencil lettering with the words "Head Cleanser." To your right, there's a curvy little decanter with a label that reads "Aimez vos Cheveux" in an elegant-yet-perky script font. Head Cleanser sells for $42.79 for a generous 2.75 quarts. Aimez vos Cheveux will cost you $4.99 for a precious 236.5 milliliters. Which is the better deal?

Administrators at a high school near Houston recently alerted parents to an alarming fact: some of the school's pupils had been caught trying to get high in class. But the "drug" in question wasn't chemical, it was digital. The precocious students were experimenting with sound files on their MP3 players. These files, with names like "Cocaine," "Marijuana," and "Peyote," had been downloaded from a Web site that promoted them as "doses" of mood-altering "binaural beats."

Can you really get stoned through your ears? There's little, if any, scientific evidence to back it up, but proponents of binaural beats (sometimes called binaural tones) claim that bombarding the brain with precisely timed bursts of low-frequency sound can produce all sorts of transformative effects--from a mellow buzz to a wired euphoria. The belief is that the pulsating sounds, when administered through stereo headphones, can alter brainwaves, producing specific benefits.

Creative writers trying to wrestle their way out of a block sometimes use a simple exercise to summon the muse: They open a dictionary, pick three random words, and write a scene or a character monologue that includes those words. The specificity of the three words pulls a writer's head out of the fog and provides some small, achievable goals to work toward.

(Image Caption: Word Up: Find a novel way to say just about anything with Word Twiddle.)

Every circle of friends seems to have that one person whose best talent is weaseling out of paying their fair share for a meal or who's always there to ask for favors but never there to hand any out. If you know somebody like that, or if that somebody is you and you're trying to mend your ways, you'll want to take a look at Bank of Me by Architechies.

(Image Caption: Balance Sheet: With Bank of Me, you can see at a glance who owes you money, drinks, meals, and other favors as well as who you're indebted to.)

Developers are finding all sorts of nifty uses for the accelerometer in the iPhone and iPod touch. The accelerometer detects motion. It's how your phone knows, for instance, when you're shaking it while finding a restaurant with Urbanspoon or tilting it when you want to scroll text in Instapaper.

Measurements on the Fly: AccelaRuler gauges distances by detecting your iPhone's movement.

You were being totally sincere last New Year's Eve when you yanked that lampshade off your head and shouted out some semi-lucid babble to nobody in particular about this being the year you finally lose some weight. And though you've definitely worked broccoli into your diet since then, you're not seeing results. You've tried to keep your trips to the fast-food drive-thru to a minimum, but they sure do add up fast, don't they?

You Want Fries With That?: After getting a glimpse at the nutritional data stored in Fast Food Calorie Counter, you may wind up rethinking your order.The best way to curtail fast-food consumption is to force yourself to confront the brutal nutrition numbers before you order. Fast Food Calorie Counter for your iPhone or iPod touch is here to help.