Businesses everywhere are using social media as a way of gaining and retaining customers, but driving a taxi is one occupation you might not expect to jump on the bandwagon.

For Chicago cab driver Rashid Temuri, it couldn't be a more natural evolution of his business. Tweeting under the username @ChicagoCabbie, Temuri is building up his business by staying in touch with his customers and communicating with them the same way many of us are staying in touch with friends.

The way most cab drivers work is they'll let their dispatching company know when they're on-call, so the company can contact them for service when a call comes in to the dispatcher. Temuri operates a little differently, announcing on his Twitter when he's available for pick-ups, and occasionally special promotions for his followers.

"Honestly, I never looked at it as marketing nor I had that in mind when I started @ChicagoCabbie account," Temuri told Ars Technica in a recent story. "I started Twitter thinking I'll talk

If you ask my mother why she carries a cell phone around, even though she never answers it, she'll give you the same reasoning that many others will: "I keep it just for emergencies." Whether you begrudgingly carry a phone like her, or you're afraid that when you really need your smartphone, the battery might be dead, the SpareOne could be your answer.

Xpal Power has designed a cell phone that only uses a single AA battery, but what really makes it stand out is the promise that it will keep its charge for up to 15 years. To put things into perspective, that's the equivalent of about 76 Kim Kardashian marriages.

Of course, this battery life hasn't actually been tested, but the company says the phone can hold its charge for up to 15 years without use, or provide up to 10 hours of emergency talk time. It's a dual-band GSM phone that will operate anywhere you can get reception in Canada or the U.S. All you have to do is insert a SIM card and the AA battery, and you can start making calls.

It might seem odd for a company to celebrate the dwindling use of their product, but Microsoft has done just that. With a cake, and a little of the bubbly.

"Time to pop open the champagne because based on the latest data from Net Applications, IE6 usages in the U.S. has now officially dropped below 1 per cent," shares Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer marketing in his blog.

And with this in mind, Microsoft seems keen on killing off the old version of its iconic browser, a move it hopes will persuade users to upgrade to IE8 or IE9.

"We hope this means more developers and IT pros can consider IE6 a 'low priority' at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser," explains Capriotti.

An outdated product makes the celebration a little more understandable, but Richard Edwards, principal analyst at Ovum, believes there's more to it.

"I think it was rated one of the worst software products of all time by one tech magazine at the time of

Children under 16 in South Korea have been ordered to stop playing video games late at night, but it doesn't seem to be working.

After about a month of the law being in place, kids are finding ways to sneak onto the banned games and usurp the ban. The law, which is also known as the "Shutdown Law" or the "Cinderella Law," forbids kids under the age of 16 from playing online games during the nightly shutdown. Depending on what gamers chose, that can be between midnight and 6 a.m., 1-7 a.m., or 2-8 a.m.

A panel commissioned by South Korean video game website This Is Game suggests there has been little impact on kids' playing habits, as many instead sign in to their parents' accounts in order to keep playing online games, which are the focus of the ban. There's also no enforcement in place for single player games without an online component, although the biggest problem in South Korea is the addition to MMORPGs.

A youth referred to as Maemi says the ban isn't really having an impact on

On the same day as the first Republican caucus, U.S. President Barack Obama made his move to become not just the first social media president, but the first one with a hipster side, too.

Obama joined photo-sharing service Instagram, which allows users to upload photos from their iPhone and tweak them using a variety of filters, then share with Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr friends.

The first photo posted to the account (seen above) showed Obama speaking with Iowa caucus voters via video chat. All the photos from Instagram will be posted to the Obama's official campaign Tumblr.

User response was mixed to the president's first post, with some users posting supportive words and pictures of their own using the #Obama2012 hashtag, many others voiced their complaints about Obama's latest policy moves in the comment sections on the first two photos.

The high-profile participation of the president will certainly be a boost for Instagram, who have amassed over 15 million users since they

The demand for compact yet powerful digital cameras with interchangeable lenses began long before your television screen was inundated with ads featuring Ashton Kutcher groping the new line of Nikons.

But it's true many Canadians scooped up this relatively new breed of cameras over the holidays and throughout Boxing Week. And for good reason: they offer the best of both worlds. You've got a small form factor not much bigger than a "point and shoot" model, yet they deliver the speed, performance and versatility of those bulky digital single-lens reflex (dSLR) cameras.

These "tweener" cameras are also priced somewhere between inexpensive point-and-shoot models and pricier dSLRs, but still supports multiple lenses for you to capture the shot you want.

Here's a look at a few of the compelling options now available.

Nikon 1 J1

Nikon is leveraging its heritage in DSLRs to create a small but powerful compact system camera: the Nikon 1 J1 ($649.99 with 10-30mm vibration reduction lens).

CES attendees wear 3D glasses while watching a 3D demonstration in the Sony booth during the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show.The annual Consumer Electronics Show is always good for a sneak peak at a few game-changing tech trends. The netbook was all the buzz at the event in 2009, e-readers and 3D televisions led the highlights from 2010 and last year, Android tablets emerged as viable competitors to the iPad.

With this year's event set to kick off next Tuesday in Las Vegas, we're taking a look at a few anticipated debuts that could become the 2012 show's breakout product.

Ultrabooks

The emergence of these super-slim laptops, with improved state drives and superior battery life, dealt a major blow to the netbook back in May. Models such as the Acer Aspire S3, Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z835 proved to be solid alternatives to the MacBook Air, but many are expecting an onslaught of improved ultrabooks this year in Vegas.

As many as 50 fresh models are expected to crack the market next week. Many believe Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini will discuss the Ivy Bridge Core processors, a

If you're still looking for a resolution for 2012, consider this one: an artist is proposing that Facebook users take a break from the social networking site.

Designer Ivan Cash is offering up his Facebook Sabbatical kit for anyone willing to take on his challenge. According to Internet Evolution, Cash said the following in an email promoting the website: "I encourage you to consider slowing down and taking a break from Facebook for a relatively small duration of time starting on Jan. 1, 2012, as your New Year's resolution."

Cash's website offers users a pre-made profile image that announces if the user is departing Facebook for one month, one week, or just a couple of days. While it's past the January 1 start he suggests, there's still plenty of time to start the challenge for yourself.

The inspiration for the website was an essay by author Pico Iyer in the New York Times, "The Joy of Quiet." Iyer takes a much more extreme approach, saying that he doesn't use Facebook, Twitter or a