Lyft, which launched last year, is a “ride-sharing” service that really looks a bit more like a pirate taxi service, but that’s cool with us, we’re not judging. In fact, the Lfyt ride-sharing service, with its pink mustaches and themed cars is about as cool a way to get from here to there as you can imagine. And with Lyft’s app-based dispatching process (and with municipalities clamping down on ehail apps for regular cabs), it’s far easier to catch a Lyft than a regular cab in many cities. Well, at least in the cities where Lyft is currently available (read on for a list of cities where you can ride the pink mustache). We also tell you how to sign up to be a Lyft driver.

RSS (which stands for either “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”, depending on with whom you are speaking) can be thought of as software running on a website that takes new content that is posted to the site, and makes either a summary of the content, or all of the content, accessible to another companion piece of software, known as an RSS reader. The RSS reader is what the end-user runs. The RSS software creates a “feed” (an RSS feed), and the RSS reader polls the feed every so often to see if there is new content to fetch. RSS feeds are accessible by URLs, just like a website, and in fact the majority of sites with RSS feeds have the feeds set-up to be at their main web address, with “/feed” appended at the end.

Move over, make room for Rover – on the couch, with the remote control! Television for dogs is now a reality, with the launch of Dog TV. Available through DirecTV or online, DogTV is quite literally a cable channel for dogs. Aimed at the pet owners whose dogs are left alone for hours at a time, DogTV hopes to ease your pet’s lonely and bored hours.

If you are sick of seeing advertising on the Internet (and yes, we realize that you will be seeing some ads with this very article – oh, the irony – but that’s how we are able to offer this free service), then a couple of enterprising entrepeneurs have a deal for you. Called the AdTrap, and the brainchild of Chad Russell, Charles Butkus, and Arlene Vazquez-Lopez, of Bluepoint Security, this device promises to remove all Internet advertising for all of your wifi-enabled devices.

Like so many others today, we received a visit from the Apple fairy. She left us a shiny new iPad Mini in our mailbox. But unlike many others, we are writing up our first impressions for you, our readers. Here is our review, and first impressions, of the iPad Mini and, of course, the mini iPad Smart Cover or, as we call it, the ‘magic cover’.

Mitt Romney’s “Binders full of women” comment is continuing to make waves as the Avery Durable View Binder on Amazon.com is gaining reviews, not so much for their organizing ability, but for their ability to keep women.

A pen for women must mean that it has lipstick on one end, right? BIC pens is the latest group to find themselves in hot water with women. Did they make politically incorrect commentary on the anatomy and physiology of women? No. Did they donate $100 million to the “I hate women for life” campaign? No. What they did make, though, is a pen. A lady pen, to be specific, and it has the women of Amazon.com fuming.

History education, whether teaching history or learning history, can be fun, catchy, and informative – and even bite-sized – when you seek history help from the history song videos put out by History Teachers on YouTube. These aren’t your mother’s history documentaries or history movies, rather they are history set to popular music – history videos (both live action and history pictures) with history songs set to such popular tunes as “Tainted Love”, “Bad Romance”, “Creep”, “Dear Prudence”, “My Sharona”, “Fergilicious”, and dozens more. If you are looking for history for kids, or even a quick refresher for yourself and seek history answers and information that will stick with you, look no further!

Usually ones thinks of the Internet as encouraging you to sit at your computer for hours on end, turning into an amorphous, overweight, lazy blob of jelly, much like the adults in the movie “Wall-E”. But not so if one has the FitBit Wireless Activity Tracker (get that? Activity Tracker, not just a pedometer) – and particularly if one also pairs it with the FitBit Aria Wireless Scale. In fact, with these two devices together, you basically have an Internet personal trainer – one that, with apologies to the Police, is with you every step you take and every move you make. In fact, it will even monitor your sleep patterns for you, if you like!

The video search engine Blinkx expanded its offerings today after signing a deal with AnyClip, another video search engine whose database is focused exclusively on movie clips. Through the new partnership with AnyClip, Blinkx was able to add tens of thousands of clips from various films to its searchable database. With the addition of these new movie clips, Blinkx now has over 35 million hours of video content on its site. This is big news in the video search engine business, and it sounds like a good partnershhip, but two questions: What is Blinkx? What is AnyClip?

If you have a Starbucks card, and aren’t already using the Starbucks app for iPhone or the Starbucks app or Android, well, you really should give it a try. And it isn’t just because Starbucks cards add to the bulk in your wallet – and it isn’t just because the Starbucks app allows you to find the closest Starbucks store when you are jonesing for some Starbucks coffe (although the Starbucks location finder is pretty sweet), lets you check open jobs at Starbucks, lets you store your best Starbucks drink in the app, or lets you send Starbucks gifts (even reloading someone else’s Starbucks card!). No, in our opinion you want the “my Starbucks card” app, because not only does it let you do a Starbucks card reload right on the spot (including using Paypal!), but it let’s you consolidate all of your Starbucks card balances onto one card – even from Starbucks cards you may have lost and not seen for years!

Now you can own a little piece – no, scratch that – a big piece of computer history, for your own, for less than $10.00! This compilation of more than 120 articles, from the Best of Creative Computing, circa 1978, is sure to appeal to and fascinate geeks of all persuasions: science fiction buffs, science fact buffs, technology history buffs, educators, and just average Joes who find this sort of thing interesting. It is at once a fabulous overview and review of both computing history, and computer predictions of the future. Now you can look back from that future, boggle at how far we have come, and marvel at who got it right, and who got it oh-so-wrong. All for just $9.99!

With the rash of deadly tornados recently, not to mention thunderstorms, blizzards, and wind storms, there are plenty of reasons to want to be able to get an urgent or emergency local weather alert – or even a national weather alert – wherever you are. Sure, you could carry a portable weather radio, but it turns out that the best sever weather alarm radio is… your phone! Weather apps turn your iPhone or Android phone into an emergency alert weather radio, and provide you with mobile weather alerts. Instead of an actual weather radio, your ‘weather smartphone’ will be your best weather alert radio; it fits in your pocket, will send you a weather alert text message, and provide you with weather radar and a weather map (unlike a radio). And even if you don’t get a severe weather text alert for weeks or months (and who wouldn’t like that?), it will gives you weather forecasts, weather conditions, and those great weather maps. So, what is the best weather app for the iPhone? Or the best weather application for the Android? Happily, the best iPhone weather app and the best weather phone app for Android are, in our opinion, the same one!

As our readers know, we have always been a fully Android shop when it came to our phones. Now, recently, we had the opportunity to put the iPhone 4S to the test and, in fact, have been using the iPhone 4S ever since. Because I (Anne) do a lot of work while on the road, on my phone, this means that I do a lot of voice dictation, which in turn means that I have had the opportunity to put both versions of the software for dictation (the Android phone dictation software, and the iPhone speech dictation program) to the test. To be clear, we are talking about the free dictation apps that come native as software dictation services on each phone, not a separate dictation app.

As many of our readers know, the Internet Patrol is part of ISIPP Publishing, a division of ISIPP (the Institute for Social and Internet Public Policy). What some readers may not know is that ISIPP Publishing publishes many websites, on topics as diverse as worms, legal Q&A, gluten-free vegan recipes, cruises, flowers, and more. We even have a site with thousands of “how to” videos! Each of our sites was created to fill a void – to provide credible and useful information where an information vacuum had previously existed. If you know of anyone who may enjoy some of these sites, or find them useful, please let them know!