It seems like every day there's a new mobile game that takes the world by storm. Whether it's Flappy Bird or Candy Crush, there's something about simple games that appeals to our need for quick, instant gratification.

I have a love/hate relationship with Waze. The idea of peer collaboration regarding traffic, combined with the technology to accomplish it on an enormous scale is truly amazing. Yet, every time I've used Waze myself, it's been an exercise in frustration. It has insisted I turn left off a bridge, and then it refused to reroute me when I didn't.

I never have a Twitter app crash in the middle of a Tweet. That wouldn't be too terrible to deal with. No, for me, it seems my e-mail application decides to crash after I've spent 20 minutes thumbing out a reply while sitting in a crowded airport. If you've ever lost a love letter, term paper, shopping list or world-class Facebook post, Type Machine is the perfect app for you.

Whether you're a fan of the shambling brain-munchers or you prefer your undead to sprint from victim to victim, zombies are amazingly popular. In an ironic twist, the most unhealthy members of humanity, or former members, can help you become the healthiest!

My favorite scene in Star Trek IV is when Scotty tries to use the computer in the 1980s. When he's told he must use the mouse, he responds, "how quaint", and then proceeds to try speaking into the mouse for the computer to respond.

I really don't understand folks who use songs as their ringtones. Isn't it annoying or confusing when the song comes on the radio? If it's your favorite song, don't you get desensitized to it when you listen to the CD (or digital equivalent of CD)? Nevertheless, you probably hear dozens of ringtones every day. Those probably vary from "super annoying" to "what a cool ringtone".

Android, as a platform, is one of the fastest growing on the planet. It is available on smartphones and a series of different tablet sizes. Most devices also include a full spectrum of sensors that are available to programs you install, so it's a very inviting platform for development.

I've mentioned geocaching before, but if you've never taken the time to go out and do it, you're really missing out. Whether you're dragging your family through two feet of snow in the middle of the woods (yeah, I did that last year, I'm still not sure they've forgiven me) or following your GPS around a parking lot looking for a tiny micro-cache, geocaching is fun.

As luck would have it, shortly after I purchased a Flickr Pro subscription, Yahoo decided to eliminate the pay-for option with Flickr and give everyone a free Terabyte of space to store photos. Although I'm still not convinced Flickr is the best way to store photos, I have found it to be very flexible, so for now, my family members dump all their photos to Flickr from all their devices.

When my family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, last year, one of the biggest adjustments was dealing with city parking. While we usually remember what side of the mall we parked on, there was a time downtown that I couldn't remember what parking garage we used, much less what level or spot.

In a recent career shift, I went from an employer who provided me an iPhone to one who provides me with an Android (Galaxy S4 to be specific). Although I was happy to move to a Linux-based handset, I was concerned about replacing the "Find My iPhone" capability that Apple provides.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows I love mobile devices. Phones, tablets and other shiny glowing gadgets are almost an addiction for me. I've talked about my addiction in other articles and columns, and Kyle Rankin even made fun of me once in a Point/Counterpoint column because my household has a bunch of iOS devices in it.

I'll admit, I've always been impressed with Apple's iMessage program. With its integration into texting, it seamlessly combines instant messaging and SMS into a single communication stream. Whether on an iPhone, iPod, iPad or Macintosh, the messages can be seen and sent to other Apple devices.

I sleep poorly. In fact, insomnia has plagued me for years. As it turns out, even when I think I'm sleeping well, I'm usually not. There's nothing worse than a shoddy night's sleep followed by an abrupt alarm going off when you've finally settled into a deep slumber. Enter: Sleep as Android.

The Face of a Toaster Science-fiction geeks have very specific definitions for their (okay, "our") jargon. A cyborg is a hybrid mechanical and organic creature.

Many free software fans, if they were like me, breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Android operating system hit the market.

When the Space Shuttle program shut down, I have to admit, it deflated my excitement about space exploration just a bit. Although it's not fair to pin the future of manned missions to space on a fleet of aging crafts built in the 1980s, the Space Shuttle represented the latest step in a process that would get us to other planets.

Kyle finally has found a replacement for his beloved Nokia N900, but maybe not for the reasons you might suspect.

Gurk really shouldn't be awesome. The controls are awkward on-screen arrow keys. The graphics make the original Nintendo look state of the art in comparison. The gameplay is slow. And yet I just spent two hours straight playing it!