You know, back in my day, us kids were perfectly happy to just cop a few condoms from Dad’s drawer and get on with our business. We’ve heard plenty about kids running up ridiculous texting bills and sexting (sending erotic pictures, video, and even text via SMS and MMS) has made headlines in the last year or so. Now, though, a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that as many as 15% of teens have received or sent sexually explicit text messages.

The USB flash drive has replaced the floppy disk drive as the best storage medium for transferring files, but it also has its uses as a replacement for CDs and DVDs. USB drives tend to be higher in capacity than disc media, but since they are more expensive, they cannot (yet) really be used as a replacement. There are reasons why you would, however, choose a USB device over a DVD disc, and bootable software is definitely one of them. Not only is it faster to copy data such as setup files from a USB drive, but during usage the access times are also significantly faster.

If you're always on the lookout for the smallest computing system possible - and the newly-unveiled Mobile-ITX form factor is still a little bulky for your tastes - check out Direct Insight's TRITON-TX51.

As revealed over on Linux for Devices - via SlashGear - the TRITON-TX51 is a an entire computer crammed into a PCB the size of a stick of laptop RAM - just 6.85cm x 2.54cm.

On Tuesday, the Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) Consortium announced that the wireless technology specification for HD transfer has reached a "completed state." This means that the new standard allows consumers to throw around uncompressed HD data throughout the house by way of wireless connections. The specification had been in the works since the summer of 2008.

See what happens when a Power Supply doesn't have Over Current Protection (OCP).

Was the Internet a safer place in 2009 than it was in 2008?

It all depends on how you look at the data. According to Cisco Systems, 2009 was a good year for at least one key reason: the U.S. is no longer the spam capital of the world. Now it's only number two.

While U.S.-originated spam volumes are on the decline, Cisco's State of the Internet 2009 security report highlighted a growing rise in attacks emanating from social media outlets.

Samsung's new Bada smartphone platform will support multiple Web browsers, social networking, and multitouch screens, Samsung executives explained at a launch event in London on Tuesday. But there are still many painful questions about this nascent smartphone OS - including whether it will ever come to U.S. phones.

"We are opening a new era of smartphones for everyone by deploying the Bada platform in a massive number of handsets," Samsung EVP Hosoo Lee said.

Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year.

In a couple of years, crossing the 1Gbps threshold with a WiFi access point will be routine. That access point will likely have two radios, one for each major spectrum band, and support a host of older flavors for compatibility. Eventually, WiFi will approach the robustness and speed needed to make it a completely viable replacement for Ethernet for most users.

Amid all the hubbub over Google DNS on Thursday, the search giant also released two more helpful tools to help you get a richer search experience and improve your language skills. Google launched its dictionary project, offering a feature-rich resource that goes beyond simple definitions of words; and its new translated Web search makes it easier to find Web pages written in more than 40 languages.

Dictionary