Productopia | Carl Laron

Life insurance is one of those products that everyone hopes they never need. At the same time, life insurance can provide comfort and security for your loved ones at a time when they need it most. Finding the right life insurance policy and company is not without its pitfalls, however. To help guide you through the maze, we've created a report on life insurance that identifies the best -- and the worst -- life insurers, as well as questions you need to ask yourself and your agent before you sign on the dotted line. Read more

Walking between, around and through the monstrous booths housing all manner of HDTVs, audio gear, cameras, cell phones, computers, automotive electronics, home appliances and much, much more at the Consumer Electronics Show, you sometimes get struck by an odd sense that something's missing among all this techno-plenty. In short, where's the fun stuff? You know,  the odd and offbeat goodies that make you sit back and say, "Whoa, that's really cool!" Truth be told, at CES there's plenty of that, too; you just have to look a little harder to find it sometimes. This year, I found a neat little island of the offbeat tucked far off the beaten path, toward the rear of one of the show's cavernous halls. There, a handful of exhibitors at the CES Robotics TechZone showed a nice assortment of products and concepts that ranged from the cute and cuddly, to the serious, to the somewhat creepy (at least to me). Read more

Sparked by an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, new attention is being focused over the types of data collected by Apple iPhone and Google Android apps, and how and what is being shared with others. The bottom line, the article reports, is that lots of these apps -- 56 of the 101 that the paper tested -- passed along some types of data to a third party, often without a user's knowledge or consent. Notably, The Wall Street Journal also found that though rules protecting privacy do exist, they are easy to skirt or even ignore by app makers. Finally, while you can opt out of tracking on a traditional computer or laptop, The Wall Street Journal found that smartphone users are essentially powerless to stop apps from sharing some types of information with others. Read more

Google's march toward world domination has taken a least a small misstep over troubles with its Google TV service. As noted by The New York Times, the Logitech Revue set-top box, the Sony NSZ-GT1 Blu-ray player and the Sony NSX-GT1 series of Google-powered TVs have debuted to mixed professional and user reviews. Also troubling -- and perhaps more serious in the long term -- are content issues in the form of opposition from the four largest U.S. broadcast networks. The result is that Google TV has pulled the plug on a spate of new product announcements that were planned for January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Read more