Is Japanese wireless carrier SoftBank making way for a new version of the iPhone, or are sales just sluggish? Who can say, but from Friday through the end of May, you can sign up for an 8GB iPhone 3G in Japan for a grand total of zero.
AppleInsider and CrunchGear report that starting Friday, SoftBank's new "iPhone for Everybody" campaign (translated page is here) will offer the 8GB iPhone for free, so long as you sign up for a new two-year contract. The promotion apparently runs through May 31.

Meanwhile, SoftBank will sell the 16GB iPhone for a steeply discounted price—just 11,520 yen (about US$119), and you can even pay for the handset in monthly installments, which come out to less than $5 a month during the two-year service agreement.

SoftBank subscribers will still have to pay monthly voice and data charges, of course, although as AppleInsider notes, the carrier is chopping its standard data plan (about US$62 a month) by more than 25 percent.

Here in the U.S., of course, the iPhone 3G is still $199 for the 8GB and $299 for the 16GB model—although if you're a Reward Zone member at Best Buy, you can snap up an 8GB iPhone 3G for $99 (through February 28 only).

So, what's the deal? Hard to say; as CrunchGear points out, Apple has yet to release iPhone sales figures for Japan, while Ars Technica speculates that SoftBank might be struggling to fulfill its promised sales goals for Apple given the worldwide economic crisis.

For its part, AppleInsider thinks the promotion could simply be a way for SoftBank to clear out its inventory in advance of a new iPhone, which may well arrive this summer. That said, AT&T has yet to offer any promotional deals, which suggests that it isn't having any trouble moving its iPhone stock.

In any case, if you've been pining for a new iPhone and you happen to live in Japan, looks like Friday is your lucky day.
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Marine One spending under fire

As customers begin to queue, he reaches beneath the counter for a black plastic bag. He wraps one layer of the plastic around the card and swipes it again. Success. The sale is rung up.

“I don’t know how it works, it just does,” says Mr. Azar, who learned the trick years ago from another clerk. Verifone, the company that makes the store’s card reader, would not confirm or deny that the plastic bag trick works. But it’s one of many low-tech fixes for high-tech failures that people without engineering degrees have discovered, often out of desperation, and shared.

Today’s shaky economy is likely to produce many more such tricks. “In postwar Japan, the economy wasn’t doing so great, so you couldn’t get everyday-use items like household cleaners,” says Lisa Katayama, author of “Urawaza,” a book named after the Japanese term for clever lifestyle tips and tricks. “So people looked for ways to do with what they had.”

Popular urawaza include picking up broken glass from the kitchen floor with a slice of bread, or placing houseplants on a water-soaked diaper to keep them watered during a vacation trip.

Today, Americans are finding their own tips and tricks for fixing misbehaving gadgets with supplies as simple as paper and adhesive tape. Some, like Mr. Azar’s plastic bag, are open to argument as to how they work, or whether they really work at all. But many tech home remedies can be explained by a little science.

Cellphone Losing Charge

If your cellphone loses its battery charge too quickly while idle in your pocket, part of the problem may be that your pocket is too warm.

“Cellphone batteries do indeed last a bit longer if kept cool,” says Isidor Buchanan, editor of the Battery University Web site. The 98.6-degree body heat of a human, transmitted through a cloth pocket to a cellphone inside, is enough to speed up chemical processes inside the phone’s battery. That makes it run down faster. To keep the phone cooler, carry it in your purse or on your belt.

This same method can be used to preserve your battery should you find yourself away from home without your charger. Turn off the phone and put it in the hotel refrigerator overnight to slow the battery’s natural tendency to lose its charge.

Remote Car Key

Suppose your remote car door opener does not have the range to reach your car across the parking lot. Hold the metal key part of your key fob against your chin, then push the unlock button. The trick turns your head into an antenna, says Tim Pozar, a Silicon Valley radio engineer.

Mr. Pozar explains, “You are capacitively coupling the fob to your head. With all the fluids in your head it ends up being a nice conductor. Not a great one, but it works.” Using your head can extend the key’s wireless range by a few car lengths.

Dry Ink Cartridge

If your printer’s ink cartridge runs dry near the end of an important print job, remove the cartridge and run a hair dryer on it for two to three minutes. Then place the cartridge back into the printer and try again while it is still warm.

“The heat from the hair dryer heats the thick ink, and helps it to flow through the tiny nozzles in the cartridge,” says Alex Cox, a software engineer in Seattle. “When the cartridge is almost dead, those nozzles are often nearly clogged with dried ink, so helping the ink to flow will let more ink out of the nozzles.” The hair dryer trick can squeeze a few more pages out of a cartridge after the printer declares it is empty.

Cellphone in the Toilet

It could happen to anyone: you dropped your cellphone in the toilet. Take the battery out immediately, to prevent electrical short circuits from frying your phone’s fragile internals. Then, wipe the phone gently with a towel, and shove it into a jar full of uncooked rice.

It is a low-tech version of the “Do Not Eat” desiccant packets that may have been packed in the box the phone came in, to keep moisture away from the circuitry during shipping and storage.

Longer Wi-Fi Reach

If your home Wi-Fi router doesn’t reach the other end of the house, don’t rush out to buy more wireless gear to stretch your network. Instead, build a six-inch-high passive radio wave reflector from kitchen items, like an aluminum cookie sheet.

Follow the instructions at freeantennas.com/projects/template. Place the completed reflector — a small, curved piece of metal that reflects radio waves just like a satellite TV dish — behind your Wi-Fi router. It focuses the router’s energy in one direction — toward the other end of the house — rather than letting it dissipate its strength in a full circle. No cables, no batteries, no technical knowledge required. Yet it can easily double the range of your network.

Dirty Discs

You need to clean a skipping DVD or CD, but as a bachelor you don’t have any sissy cleaning fluids? Soak a washcloth with vodka or mouthwash.

Alcohol is a powerful solvent, perfectly capable of dissolving fingerprints and grime on the surface of a disc. A $5 bottle of Listerine in your medicine cabinet may do the job as effectively as a $75 bottle of DVD cleaning fluid. Also, swabbing your copy of “Lost Weekend” with Stoli instead of fussing with a Discwasher kit is a lot more manly.

Too Much Flash

If your cellphone’s built-in camera flash is much too bright, washing out photos, tape a small piece of paper over the flash. Experiment with different colors and thicknesses of paper to tone down the flash from superbright white to a more pleasing glow for evening photos.

Crashed Hard Drive

If — no, make that when — your PC’s hard drive crashes and can’t be read, don’t be too quick to throw it out. Stick it in the freezer overnight.

“The trick is a real and proven, albeit last resort, recovery technique for some kinds of otherwise-fatal hard-drive problems,” writes Fred Langa on his Windows Secrets Web site. Many hard drive failures are caused by worn parts that no longer align properly, making it impossible to read data from the drive. Lowering the drive’s temperature causes its metal and plastic internals to contract ever so slightly. Taking the drive out of the freezer, and returning it to room temperature can cause those parts to expand again.

That may help free up binding parts, Mr. Langa explains, or at least let a failing electrical component remain within specs long enough for you to recover your essential data.

That’s the spirit of folk remedies: They may or may not work, but what have you got to lose?

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Once a day vitamin for heart health

I recently saw a television ad urging me to take a new, one-a-day vitamin pill to keep my heart healthy. It?s very unlikely that I will take this pill, or any other multivitamin for that matter. In my lectures on vitamins to medical students, I proudly stated that I had never taken a vitamin pill, until I overheard a student in the front row whisper to his neighbor, ?No wonder he looks so bad.?

The advertised vitamin pill, called One-A-Day Cholesterol Plus, is said to protect the heart because it contains policosanol and folic acid, as well as all the other needed vitamins and minerals. Folic acid is a component of all multivitamin pills, but no others contain policosanol, a substance isolated from sugar cane wax and developed in Cuba as a cholesterol-lowering dietary supplement.

A number of controlled clinical trials found that 10-mg doses of policosanol, the amount contained in this new vitamin pill, significantly lowered cholesterol and raised HDL cholesterol in people with normal or elevated cholesterol levels.

Little is known about how policosanol produces these effects. Its use was approved in Cuba in 1991 and subsequently in more than 25 other countries, mostly in South America and the Caribbean. No approval is needed in the U.S. because it is a dietary supplement rather than a drug. One possible concern is the lack of studies to determine whether dangerous interactions may occur between policosanol and commonly used medications.

One-A-Day Cholesterol Plus is marketed by Bayer Health Care. Ads on the Internet state that it does not lower cholesterol and is aimed at people whose cholesterol is in the normal range. The product was launched nationwide in April 2005 and is on the shelves of our local supermarket.

You want to see all the nominated films before the Oscars. Admirable goal. Just use our guide to find the smartest snacks at the Cineplex so you don’t gain 10 pounds doing it!

CANDY

Sweet ‘n’ sour stuff tends to be lower-fat than chocolate, but it’s still dessert. Size counts too!

Worst: Skittles (7.2 oz.) 826 calories, 9.7 grams fat
Better:Twizzlers (6 oz.) 606 calories, 3.8 grams fat

Best: Sour Patch Soft & Chewy Candy (3.5 oz.) 375 calories, 0 grams fat

Serve up these low-Calorie Super Bowl Foods for game day!

POPCORN

Yes, it’s a whole grain, but a large has close to the number of calories many women need in a day!

Worst: Large buttered popcorn 1,640 calories, 126 grams fat (That’s almost two days’ worth of fat!)

Better: Small, no butter 400 calories, 27 grams fat

Best: Kid size, no butter 300 calories, 20 grams fat

COLD TREATS

Frozen fruit? Always a winner. (7 fruits to eat this winter.)

Worst: Toll House chocolate-chip cookie ice cream sandwich 490 calories, 23 grams fat

Better: Butterfinger Loaded ice cream bar 290 calories, 19 grams fat

Best: Edy’s strawberry iced-fruit bar 120 calories, 0 grams fat

CHOCOLATE

Unfortunately, most concession stands offer only one size (and who isn’t going to eat the whole box?). So go for something in a smaller package to keep portions in check.

Worst: Peanut M&M’s (5.3 oz.) 786 calories,39.3 grams fat

Better: Junior Mints (4.75 oz.) 595 calories,10.5 grams fat

Best: Milk Duds (3 oz.) 371 calories,13.1 grams fat

Did you know that chocolate along with these other foods can boost your mood?

HOT SNACKS

In general, beware of anything with glow-in-the-dark cheese.

Worst: Nachos with cheese 894 calories, 52.5 grams fat

Better: Hot dog with ketchup 315 calories, 19 grams fat

Best: Soft pretzel 310 calories, 4 grams fat

It is an old architectural trick used since the invention of mirrored glass: covering buildings with the reflective material and declaring that they blend in with the surroundings. Most architects use it to convince wary citizens that it is OK if their building is tall because it will reflect the sky and nature. The rendering always makes the building disappear, and the reality is always a big clunky mirrored box.

But a mirrored box can be elegant, too, such as this treehouse by Swedish firm Tham & Videgard Hansson Arkitekter. TreeHugger loves treehouses (see our roundup of them here) when they are designed to minimize impact on the surrounding landscape. And in this case, it looks like the architects have pulled it off successfully.



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How not to look old

It's a question surely as old as vanity itself: how can you look young forever? A forthcoming study in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery offers one surprising idea: as you age, don't be afraid to put on a few pounds. Fat, it turns out, can significantly smooth out wrinkles and give you a younger-looking face. (Read "Beth Teitell: On Not Looking Old".)

The authors of the new study, a team led by Dr. Bahman Guyuron of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, are plastic surgeons who study faces for a living. They analyzed photographs of the faces of 186 pairs of identical twins taken at the Twins Days Festival, a sort of twins' pride event held every summer in (naturally) Twinsburg, Ohio. Because the pairs had identical genetic material, differences in how old they looked could be attributed entirely to their behavioral choices and environment. Guyuron's team had the twins fill out extensive questionnaires about their lives - everything from how many times they had married to whether they had regularly used sunscreen. Then a panel of four judges independently estimated the twins' ages by looking at photos taken in Twinsburg. (See pictures from the Annual Twins Day Festival.)

The Guyuron team's most interesting findings had to do with weight. Many of the twin pairs were of similar weight, but differences in how old they looked began to appear when one had a body mass index (BMI) at least four points higher than her sister. For twin pairs under 40, the heavier one looked significantly older. But surprisingly, after 40, that same four-point difference in BMI made the heavier twin look significantly younger. (Read "Aging Gracefully".)

The study's authors theorize that "volume replacement" - that is, fat filling in wrinkles - accounts for the rejuvenated appearance of the older twins. This theory was supported even more dramatically among twins older than 55. For them, having as much as an eight-point higher BMI than their twin was associated with a younger appearance in the face. (Read "A Brief History of Multiple Births".)

Guyuron doesn't recommend that people gain weight just to look younger, and one limitation of his study is that the Twinsburg photos included only faces. If they had showed the whole body, the judges may have knocked a couple of years from the age estimates of those who had kept a youthful figure - and added a couple of years for those who were well-fed in the middle.

The paper also makes clear that, weight aside, healthy living is crucial for keeping a youthful face. The siblings who smoked and didn't wear sunscreen looked significantly older than those who avoided cigarettes and tanning. Those twins who had been divorced also looked older (by about 1.7 years) than the twins who didn't divorce. (They also looked older than those who had stayed single, which reinforces a point I made in this article: you are better off staying single than getting into a bad relationship.)

Finally, and this was the cruelest finding: those who had taken antidepressants also looked older than their twins who hadn't. In other words, if the misery of your divorce doesn't age you, your attempt to treat it with Prozac might. Guyuron and his colleagues believe this unjust fact has something to do with the drooping relaxation of facial muscles that antidepressants can cause.

The bottom line is that if you care mostly about a young-looking face, don't smoke, don't go into the sun without protection, and try not to get into a bad relationship that will make you depressed. Instead, this summer at the beach, stay inside and have an ice cream. Make it a double scoop.

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Series "House" why 10 reason that its disappointing

Last season wasn't without its problems, it took some hits for trying to add in so many wannabe House's and for killing CTB (or Amber, if you must) but at least they were trying something a little bit out there... and the cases were cool. House trying to save a woman at the North Pole? Cool. Parasites? Always awesome. Overdose caused be something as stupid as tonic water? Brilliant. But aside from Breckin Meyer seeing people like Picassos, there haven't been any super memorable cases.



So after 100 episodes, we've got to wonder, is this procedural getting to be a little too procedural? And for the love of god, will they ever remember whose name is in the title of the show? Here are 10 reasons why we're disappointed by "House" this season:



1. Too Much Thirteen

Hadley. Thirteen. Whatever. This show is about Dr. Gregory House. Not about this whiny new character who has Huntington's disease we're presumably supposed to feel bad for. We just keep hoping she'll get early onset and have to quit her day job. Or die a sudden death. Either way. Then we could go back to the show we liked about people treating patients, not becoming them.



2. House Seems to Have Given Up

He used to revel in making people miserable, or acting really irritating around them until they caved to his ways. Now it seems like his heart isn't in it. He was being nice to Foreman last week and advising him not to throw his career away. And he didn't even retaliate against Cuddy when she started pranking him with the elevators. Who is this guy? Not the House we know and love.


3. Cameron is Rarely On
They finally gave Cameron something to do, and it was a job she was completely unqualified for, but hey, we actually got to see her. But the show giveth and then they taketh away, and now that Cuddy's back at work, they've sent Cameron off again to see ER patients and occasionally tell Foreman it is all going to be OK as long as he doesn't turn into House. That's what we call an egregious waste of an original castmember, and it's not OK, especially in light of this show becoming the Thirteen Complains About Everything Variety Hour.



4. Cuddy is Baby Crazy and Stupid

Cuddy is a smart, educated woman who runs a freakin' hospital and offers up medical diagnoses on occasion. But they've turned her from Miss Independent to a co-dependent pile of mush who can't do her job right because she's got baby brain (and she didn't even give birth to the kid) and is just desperate for House's approval that she's pulling stupid pranks to get him to notice her. And one more scene of her doing the "Who's a cute wittle baby? Who is?" and we'll scream. She can be a working mother and not be so annoying. How did she not know raising a baby was hard? Ridiculous.

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Minimum amount of excercise to stay healthy

Whenever I feel like I want to get a little lighter (usually because my jeans are feeling a little tighter), I work intervals into my routine.

Intervals are one of the fastest ways around to shed fat. Women who spent 20 minutes mixing sprints with jogging lost three times the fat off their legs and butt in 15 weeks than those jogging steadily for 40 minutes, a study from the University of New South Wales in Sydney finds. Burn triple the fat in half the time? Bring it on!

To try intervals, do this speedy slimming routine up to six days a week. Pair it with your toning session or do it solo, for results guaranteed to amaze you.

Hop on any cardio machine you like for the time allotted and the exertion level noted (1 is the easiest and 10 is next to impossible).

Warm up for 4 minutes at a level 3.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 7.
Recover for 90 seconds at a level 4.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 8.
Recover for 90 seconds at a level 4.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 9.
Recover for 30 seconds at a level 4.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 7.
Recover for 90 seconds at a level 4.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 8.
Recover for 90 seconds at a level 4.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 9.
Recover for 30 seconds at a level 4.
Sprint for 30 seconds at a level 7.
Cool down for 3 minutes, 30 seconds at level 3.

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Home job very easy