So you’ve sufficiently gorged yourself on turkey and deviled eggs, now it’s time to flop onto the couch and slip away into a tryptophan coma. Luckily, the Pzizz Relax iPhone app will ensure you get the perfect post-meal nap, even on your relative’s horribly uncomfortable, left-over-from-the-70s couch. From Macworld:

Pzizz Relax…enables you to create a customized, relaxing sleep soundtrack. With a combination of soothing music, positive and calming words, and just-right wake-up alarm, I found Pzizz Relax did the trick for me nearly ever time I tried to take a midday 20- or 30-minute snooze break. With Pzizz Relax playing on my headphones, I was able to fall asleep quickly and wake up, when I was supposed to, feeling refreshed. That’s what the app is trying to assist with.

So hopefully you can shake that mid-day turkey hangover and be back at it for dinner.

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iLingual (not to be confused with Linguo, the grammar robot) will help you communicate in a foreign county and make people smile at the same time.

According to Cult of Mac:

The iLingual app is clever translation software that speaks foreign phrases with video of your mouth saying the words. Launch the app, snap a picture of your mouth (or someone else’s) and hold the iPhone in front of your mouth. The software animates your mouth to make it look like you’re actually speaking French (or German or Arabic). Well, sorta.

See for yourself below:

The best part about this iPhone app? It’s free. We mean, c’est gratuit.

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Video: YouTube / jeremyw75

Technology writer Chris Stevens calculated the weight of the Internet by adding up all the computers, iphones, blackberries, servers, cables –  and just for fun, viruses and websites. The damage comes to 498,438,559,990 kilograms, which Wolfram|Alpha tells us is 1.7 times the mass of all humans currently alive.

CNET tries to help readers imagine this bulk:

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The Internet is very heavy indeed. To give you some idea of just how heavy the internet is, imagine an absolutely enormous tower of computers and servers and cables reaching up into the sky like the evil fingers of some apocalyptic demon. Now imagine sparks, thunder, electrical storms. And, on top of it all, an otter screaming pointlessly. That is the closest you are likely to come to visualising the Internet.

The author claims that “for the first time in the world, we have precisely and scientifically calculated the weight of the Internet.”

Well that’s interesting, considering that Stephen Cass, writing for DISCOVER, calculated the weight of the Internet back in 2007 and came to a very different answer. Cass ignored the hardware, and instead calculated the weight of  online information by taking the total estimated Web traffic of 40 petabytes (40 x 10¹⁵ bytes: a 4 followed by 16 zeros) and figuring out the weight of the electrons required to store that information. His total?

The weight of the Internet adds up to just about 0.2 millionths of an ounce.

However, a year before that, in 2006, Russell Seitz, calculated the weight of the internet to be 2 ounces. You can read more about his calculations on his blog.

So which is it, readers? Weigh in on whose calculation is closest to the truth.

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Image: flickr / sugree

Because using your lungs to blow air is waaay too much work, a new iPhone app will do it for you.

According to Mashable:

The iPhone app is called Blower and it works by moving air through the speakers of your iPhone (strictly speaking, the same thing happens when you play music through those speakers, but let’s not be too harsh on the novelty part of the application).

Check out the app in action:

Or you can use it to blow away “herbs.”

This actually seems like a lot more work than just, you know, breathing on the candles, or dragging your hand across the table. Whatever, it’s only $0.99.

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Video: YouTube / QneoDotNet

Stare into the backlit screen of the magic iPhone as Irene’s Spirit reveals the unknown… This spooky new app claims to have the power to bring messages from the spirit world.

OK, so this is obviously a trick. But can anyone out there explain to us how this bit of wizardry actually works? If you’ve plunked down the $1.99 for the app, please clue us in.

Also, please tell me that if you ask, “Where is my bike?”, Irene tells you to look in the basement of the Alamo.

UPDATE: The developer’s of Irene’s Spirit were kind enough to let us preview the app. I’ll just say that like any illusion, Irene’s Spirit runs on showmanship, slight of hand, and a little knowledge about your audience.

From one of our tweeps, @carolyn_w: Ok here’s a hint. “Irene” reads minds about as well as the person who is using/controlling the app.

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Video: YouTube / Irenesspirit

A new baby translator is now available for your iPhone. It won’t translate your babies gurgles and screams into “lavish attention on me, and entertain me,” or “I want what the cat’s eating,” but the inventors claim the app will analyze your baby’s cries and tell you roughly what the little one is trying to say.

According to Fox News:

The Cry Translator uses patented technology to analyze the tone and duration of the cries and match them to one of five possible types: hungry, sleepy, annoyed, stressed or bored.

No, the translator wasn’t built by Herb Powell (of the memorable Simpsons episode), but rather by Spanish developer Biloop Technologic. The developer claims that the app was shown to be 90 percent accurate in clinical trials, although they don’t say if these trials were published in a scientific journal (so presumably not). However, if your wailing baby befuddles you, or if you want to be an obnoxious back-seat parent, you can pick up the translator for $9.99.

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Image: engadget

The folks behind the best-selling book, “What’s Your Poo Telling You?” aren’t satisfied with being mere bathroom reading material. So they’ve dropped a new iPhone app, the Poo Log, which allows you to time, log, and graph your BMs—and learn about your gastrointestinal health while doing so.

Via The Presurfer:

The ‘Poo Log’ is a digital timer and journal for recording and studying the wondrous uniqueness of each bowel movement. With a clever mix of bathroom humor and legitimate medical information, the ‘Poo Log’ allows the user to track his/her digestive workings and graph their ‘poo’ – all with one hand.

According to the app‘s developers, AvatarLabs Inc, the tracker features medically accurate info that is suitable for all ages, and of course helpful tips such as, “Light a match. Now.”

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Image: AvatarLabs Inc

Listen up, iPhone users. If you’re a little uneasy flying the friendly skies, don’t worry: Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, will talk you through it. Branson has released a new iPhone app to help you make it through your flight. It’s for sale in Apple’s app store for about the same price as an in-flight beer.

Dubbed the Flying Without Fear app, it features an introduction by Branson himself, a video explaining how flying works, FAQs, relaxation exercises, and an emergency panic button to press for breathing exercises. And it’s Whoopi Goldberg endorsed!

Mashable has the deets:

The app is based on Virgin Atlantic Airways’ Flying Without Fear course, which supposedly has a 98% success rate. The idea is not bad: anything that can make your mind busy during those awkward moments of liftoff would probably be helpful, and an iPhone app seems like a perfect way to do just that. Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, claims “the app will put many travelers at ease and enable them to prepare for their first Virgin Atlantic flight.”

However it’s unclear how this app will help during the most nerve-wrecking parts of flying—takeoff and landing—since airlines require you to turn off any electronics that have an on/off switch. Guess you’ll just have to calm your nerves at the airport bar the old-fashioned way.

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Image: flickr / William Hook

Can your iPhone make you happier? But of course, according to a new application called “Live Happy.” The app is meant to boost contentedness by helping users practice “positive psychology.” It’s a technique that creates spurts of happiness that research suggests may boost overall well-being over time.

The app is based on research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, who has found that, for example, savoring common, yet pleasurable, experiences such as a hot shower can boost happiness. According to U.S. News & World Report:

The $6.99 Live Happy app allows users to track their happiness levels and practice some of her strategies—gratitude, for example, can be practiced by texting, emailing, or calling someone from your contact list. While Lyubomirsky is not profiting financially off the new app, she will be using it to study how her recommendations work in the real world.

So are iPhone users jumping to nab this joy-bringing app? Not all of them. When we offered one iPhone devotee a free trial of the app, he responded: “You know what would make me happy? Not spending so much time staring into an iPhone screen.”

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If you’ve held the new iPhone 3GS in your sweaty palm, you might’ve marveled at the way its shiny touchscreen deflects fingerprints and smudges. For that feature, you can thank an organic polymer infused into the glass screen by way of an intermediate molecule. This polymeric coating is oleophobic…meaning the oil from your fingers or face is more apt to stick to itself and to your skin than to the iPhone’s screen.

Television host and science educator Bill Nye the Science Guy explained how it works via Gizmodo:

The Applers were able to do this by bonding this oleophobic polymer to glass. The polymer is an organic (from organisms) compound, carbon-based. The glass is nominally inorganic, silicon-based… solid rock. The trick is getting the one to stick to the other. Although it is nominally proprietary, this is probably done with a third molecule that sticks to silicon on one side and to carbon-based polymers on the other side. Chemical engineers get it to stay stuck by inducing compounds to diffuse or “inter-penetrate” into the polymer. The intermediate chemical is a “silane,” a molecule that has silicon and alkanes (chains of carbon atoms)….

The polymer that the 3GS iPhone screen is coated with doesn’t let the oil of your skin stick to it very much. So, you don’t leave fingerprints. The key is in the intermediate compounds, the silanes that hold the plastic to the glass.

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