Not that the New York Times is the type of paper to goof around, but I did a double take when I saw the headlines proclaiming a social networking site a major force in international diplomacy. A glance at my calendar reassured me that today is June 17 and not the first of April. So yeah, this is real. And my world is a little bit rocked at the moment.

Protests are continuing in Iran over the results of the recent election. Coincidentally, Twitter was scheduled to go down for routine maintenance. You’d think those two sentences are totally unrelated, right? Wrong. A 27-year-old State Department official emailed a Twitter co-founder to politely request that they postpone their downtime so Iranians could keep tweeting. As another State official paraphrased the message, “It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?”

The Iranian government has blocked text messaging, and although they’ve tried to cut access to Twitter and YouTube, Iranians have gotten pretty good at circumventing the blocks (file that under unintended consequences of technological repression). Reporters have to risk their lives to leave their offices, and ordinary citizens are posting amazing footage of the protests to YouTube.

There’s something really disconcerting about shocking photos of people being beaten bloody being sent out to the world through a website that is famous for basically redefining trivial. I mean, the mascot is a cute little blue bird! I can wrap my head just fine around Iranians finding Twitter a handy way to communicate freely, but the American government actually intervening in its maintenance schedule? Boggle.

Information for this post, including the quote and photo, came from the New York Times.

Raise your hand if your phone is funny-shaped. (You can put it down now — no one can see you.) If you belong to the Funny-Shaped Phone Club, chances are you have shared my pain — it’s darned near impossible to find a decent case for your phone. My particular headaches are a sleek silhouette and a slide-out keyboard. I’ve got to give credit for ingenuity to some of the marvels of engineering out there that attempt to do the job of covering it, but effectiveness is harder to find.

I was just about ready to resign myself to carrying my Touch Pro around wrapped in a handkerchief. But before I threw in the towel, I ran across one of Proporta’s newer cases, the Maya. High tech it is not; it’s a pouch. No flaps, no cutouts, no fasteners. I’d always been leery of pouch cases because most of them seemed to be one size fits all (translation: it’ll fit everything badly) and I didn’t like the idea of fumbling with it to answer a call. However, the way my case hunt had been going, the simplicity of a pouch was appealing.

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Is it just me, or does travel manage to keep becoming more and more of a headache? Every time I check, there are fewer flights and more regulations. (Last time I flew home to see my family, I was nearly detained by Homeland Security — apparently it’s very hard for scanners to tell the difference between Gouda and plastic explosives.)  Travel is stressful enough without worrying about whether you wrote your schedule down right.

With so many crucial details to keep track of for every trip, travel information can be next to impossible to manage even when you’re not exhausted and jet-lagged. My mobile travel app of choice has been Fizz Traveller, but when top Windows Mobile developer Spb Software House announced a major update to their travel program, including a complete redesign of the interface, I decided it was time for another look.

The brand new Spb Traveler 2.0 can’t help much with the liquids rule or the absence of in-flight peanuts, but it does aim to make the life of a traveler a little bit easier with itinerary tracking, flight search, weather, a full set of conversion tools, and a jaw-dropper of a globe. To this road warrior, that sounds like something worth checking out further.

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Following the wild success of our last collaborative game review, Heather and I have teamed up again to take a look at Astraware’s Platypus, a side-scrolling shooter in the tradition of Space Invaders (only with much, much better graphics). Your home world, which looks suspiciously like it’s made of Play-Doh, is under attack by an evil enemy air force, and only you and your trusty Platypus fighter can save your cute, happy world from being bombed to smithereens.

Heather played on her Palm Centro, and I was on my Sprint Touch Pro. Read on to see what we think of Val Kilmer, classic Nintendo, and the California Raisins. Oh yeah, and the game too.

Heather: I did manage to finish the game today. What did you think?

Lauren: I beat it, too. It was surprisingly hard to beat!

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How do you get places? My father likes traditional printed maps, but those are pretty impractical if you’re traveling solo. The last place I lived, I got around using Post-It Notes with abbreviated Google Maps descriptions scrawled on them. Some of my friends liked to print the whole Google Maps directions, but that also doesn’t work great without a copilot. My other alternative is getting lost. There has to be a better way!

I recently moved to a new state, and I’ll be spending most of my work life traveling. I’d been looking at purchasing a GPS device to use in my car anyway, so I was excited to take a look at one of Navigon’s latest and greatest, the 7200T.

The Navigon 7200T is a slim, stylish black unit that also hits hard in the features department, with highway lane assistance, lifetime free traffic updates, voice entry, Bluetooth calling, a 4.3" wide screen, text to speech ("turn left on Elm Street"), and more. However, what sets Navigon apart is its map views. Interface is crucial on a GPS, and the Navigon 7200T’s packs a lot of information onto one attractive screen.

Read on for the full review!

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