But facebook is a pre-existing term for a yearbook. So Facebook started off as being an online facebook. Teachbook is a facebook for teachers.

I see no evidence that Facebook have promoted the use of "book" as a suffix - perhaps if they had a range of foo-book sites or products, that would be different.

And where does it say that Teachbook is a social networking site, or anything like Facebook, anyway?

I'm waiting for a company to bring out a phone with "phone" in the title, and for Apple to then sue them... Would be no less ridiculous than many of these cases!

I agree. Here in the UK, we have to pay £140 a year for the TV licence if we watch any broadcast TV, plus there's the £10 a month I pay for TV. Yet watching via the Internet is far more convenient than remembering when something is on.

So that's £260 a year that's up for grabs if a company was to offer a legal Internet-based TV service. The technology is already here. Instead the companies would rather not offer it, shut down any sites offering it (I remember when TV Links I think it was called was shut down by police here in the UK), and then whine that piracy is killing their industry - despite the fact that people like me are still paying them £260 a year, and they're the ones refusing to offer what people want.

Given that teachbook is a social networking site but for a specialized niche

Is it, though? The article only says:

"the Northbrook, Ill.-based company, which provides tools for teachers to manage their classrooms and share lesson plans and other resources"

Not sure that implies social networking, unless you're diluting the term to mean any website where people can sign up for an account.

Not to mention that "facebook" was a pre-existing term to mean a school yearbook.

Can also do all of that on my Nokia 5800.

Does the Iphone behave anything like the Ipod btw? That's terrible - aside from being forced to use Itunes, when using on another computer, all the files appear as random gibberish (and using it through Itunes on another machine has risks of syncing issues). With normal devices like the Sandisk Sansa and 5800, they just work out of the box, and present themselves as an ordinary external drive, without corrupting the filenames.

Word games? Well by that logic, Nokia has smartphones like the 5800 entirely for "free".

Would you like to do a deal? I give you £5, and you pay me back £30 a month for the next two years. Since you're carrying a phone with you anyway, that's a great deal for you - you've just got £5 for free, right?

Since the poster ALREADY stated he "would carry a phone anyway" that rendered the subsidy point moot, since he would BE PAYING FOR PHONE SERVICE ANYWAY.

Really? I carry a phone anyway, and don't pay any contract. My phone only cost £180 in total - that's actually in total, not your pretend "word games" in total. I only pay for services I want, as opposed to paying for the phone.

As for apps - Symbian and Android all have the apps that anyone needs as far as I've seen. What examples of killer must have apps are only available on the Iphones? (And even if there are some, the same can be said in reverse - e.g., Nokia Maps which gives decent offline mapping as standard; Google Sky Maps is a cool astronomy tool only available on Android; both of these are far better than 100,000 apps that just make a stupid noise or display a logo, usually with you having to pay for the privilege.)

I can't help thinking that mp3 players have stalled, or at least, the ones that get all the hype. Years ago, you had a 20GB Ipod. But now, for the same price, people are getting excited over devices that have, wow, 16GB, or at most 32GB. I know, they have extra things like Internet and video, but if you just want an mp3 player? And the problem is that most of the cheap mp3 only players also only have even smaller amounts, like 1-8GB.

However, Sandisk's Sansa Clip thankfully has a microSD slot - at UK prices, you can get an 8GB player for £25, shove in a 32GB microSD, and have a 40GB player for £110. For mp3 playing, it beats an Ipod touch hands down (as well as a Shuffle). If you want more than that, well, an Ipod touch lacks any phone capability, and since I need a phone anyway, I might as well use that for Internet access etc.

What matters is that Apple is finally starting to get some real competition.

There was competition before Apple came along. You could just as easily say Archos or Nokia are finally starting to get real competition (not to mention other similar devices, such as touch netbooks from ASUS etc - the fact that they have a keyboard as well doesn't make them a different market).

Now what may change is that, finally the media will start covering something other than Apple devices.

Is England the only country in the world where we still, you know, have school punishments rather than shipping young children off to prison because they stole a pencil or whatever?

But what seems more odd to me that this sort of thing results in criminal charges.

Yes, in my day, if you did something like this and bragged about it, you'd be caught and given something like a detention. (Police would only be involved if it was something very serious, and at the least, something involving harm to others.)

I understand that Facebook is the modern analogy to telling everyone about it. I don't understand how police and criminal charges are now the modern analogy to school punishments.