With The Fly, for example, users can draw a calculator and then touch the numbers to trigger a calculation heard through a speaker or ear phones.

WSJ: The Shape of Computers to Come?

Also annoying when you ask them something without realising they are oblivious to your voice because they have those small ear phones that you hadn't noticed.

BBC: The pleasures and perils of the open-plan office

We looked over and saw a guy alone at a table, holding one of those giant, newfangled portable phones to his ear.

FORBES: Cell Phone Time Machine

To find out how much time phones spend keeping one ear open, Shin and Zhang conducted an extensive trace-based analysis of real WiFi networks.

ENGADGET: New 'subconscious mode' could improve smartphone battery life, supress your WiFi id

That's not the sirens' fault -- a mind-numbingly loud "whoop whoop" really doesn't have the bandwidth to reveal that kind of information to the human ear -- but now that SMS-capable phones are ubiquitous, it's time to smarten things up just a tad.

ENGADGET: Sprint Nextel first national to test emergency alerts

When we left a few minutes later, our transformation went in the opposite direction, or silk purse into sow's ear, since after several delicious blowsy hours of la vie en rose, our beeping cell phones signaled the impatience of the world outside.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Hungry for Paris'