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Now that Apple has sold 160 million iPods, reshaped the music business and inspired dozens of competitors, maybe it's time to admit it: this music player thing might be more than a fad. Yet in all this time, almost nobody has brought up the screaming flaw that's built into every one of those things: the earbuds. That's right. Hundreds of millions of times a day, music player owners jam little white discs into their ears without a thought, rendering themselves both deaf and rude to the outside world. And that's if you can even get them to stay in. A sizable chunk of the population lacks the proper cartilage formation to hold earbuds in place. (I'm among them. Don't tell anyone.) How about a little sympathy for these long-time sufferers? Where are the self-help groups? Where's the telethon?

Dynolicious tracks the changes of speed with the iPhone's built-in accelerometer, a silicon-based sensor that measures the motion of a vehicle. The software constantly measures these changes and converts the information into a good estimate of how fast the car is going. Another program, called G-Tac, does much the same thing as Dynolicious. Both G-Tac and Dynolicious also work with iPod Touch models

It heralds a new era in the allure of a mobile device - the phone is no longer a fashion statement but a digital bag of tricks.

In the U.S., the oft-touted "halo effect" from Apple's iPods and iPhones looks to be encouraging consumers to try the company's computers as well. Apple saw U.S. sales jump 38.1% in the quarter, according to Gartner (31.7% says IDC), pushing the company into third place, behind Dell and HP, with an 8.5% market share, compared to 6.4% last year.