The attentive folks over at Patently Apple have uncovered an application Apple filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a Smart Bicycle System. Patently Apple compares the potential device to the Nike+iPod kit, geared towards cyclists instead of runners. The bicycle system would monitor all sorts of measurements - speed, distance, elevation and so on - all measured with sensors in an iPhone, the bike, or both. The patent - and Patently Apple's analysis of it - is exquisitely detailed, and worth a look for cycling enthusiasts and Apple fans alike.

Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit has revealed details about its forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 suite, which the company says will be released in late October of this year. Office 2011 will be offered in two similarly named editions: "Home and Student 2011" and "Home and Business 2011." The Home and Student edition costs $119, and includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger. (For an extra $50, Messenger isn't installed. Just kidding.) If you need Outlook - which replaces Entourage - that's available in the Home and Business bundle, which will cost $199. Multi-installation licenses are available, too. Oh, and while Microsoft says there are only two editions, the company also announced a third version: "The Academic Edition" includes all the available Office apps - Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Messenger, and Outlook - but costs just $99. It's limited to higher education students, staff, and faculty, and anyone else who can disguise themselves as such.

Glenn Fleishman talks with Chuck Joiner on the MacVoices podcast about the ins and outs of choosing and using an iPhone navigation app for finding your way around.

The New York Times has run a genuinely helpful "Practical Traveler" column focusing on the smartest ways to use a cell phone when you're travelling internationally, hopefully without paying usurious fees. iPhone owners in the United States are generally locked into AT&T and its GSM network; that means you can keep using your iPhone when you travel abroad, but you'll need to pay AT&T (rather generously) for a temporary international plan. The article offers practical tips, like disabling 3G and roaming to avoid incurring insane data charges, and relying on Wi-Fi instead. (AT&T's international data plan costs $24.99 for just 20 MB, which I might burn through just checking my email on the first day of vacation.) The column highlights other options, too, such as buying an international cell phone from a company like Telestial or Planet Omni, buying a local SIM card (if your phone is unlocked and you only want to make local calls), or relying on VoIP solutions like Skype.

Glenn Fleishman and long-time Windows observer Mary Jo Foley talked to host Todd Bishop of TechFlash, a Northwest tech business and venture capital reporting site, on KIRO-FM's weekly tech segment. We discussed Microsoft's missed opportunities for challenging the iPad, and the Kindle's place in the mobile device ecosystem.

In a painfully well-headlined review, Jacqui Cheng takes on Apple's new Magic Trackpad, and finds that it's both awesome and not-so-awesome. She really likes most of the multi-touch shortcuts that the trackpad can use, but says that precision is an issue, as it is with all trackpads. We won't spoil the ending, but the review does attempt to answer not just the question of whether the Magic Trackpad is good, but also whether it's $70-worth of good.

Amazon is releasing two new 6-inch display Kindles to replace the Kindle 2: a Wi-Fi only model for $139, and one with both AT&T 3G and Wi-Fi for $189. The new devices have 50-percent higher contrast, new fonts, faster performance, longer standby time (a month!), and double the storage, all while weighing less. The new models ship 27 August 2010 in the United States.

On the New York Times's health blog, Gretchen Reynolds discusses the dramatic increase in heart disease-related death for folks who sit for long periods (whether in front of a computer or television, or in the car). Even more alarming for those of us who try to get away from our screens for some exercise are recent studies that show that adding exercise to your daily routine fails to lessen the negative health impacts of a sedentary lifestyle. Rather, we desk jockeys should find ways to increase our physical activity while we work. Frequent walking breaks, pacing while you're talking on the phone, or converting to a standing desk, could truly be a lifesaver.

Apple has announced that, on Friday, 30 July 2010, the iPhone 4 will arrive in 17 new countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Customers can purchase the iPhone 4 through Apple's online or retail stores, or from any Apple Authorized Reseller.

Apple is now taking orders for free iPhone 4 cases to reduce antenna problems. Orders can be placed only through the new iPhone 4 Case Program app, which requires your iTunes account password for verification. From there, you select a case (choices include Apple's black bumper and several third-party options), enter your shipping information, submit your order, and wait 3 to 10 weeks (depending on the case) for it to arrive. You can place only one order, so once you've done so, you may as well delete the app.

New York Times contributor Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, has written a thoughtful article on the ramifications of data persistence on the Web. Those who share personal information via social networking services are being forced to come to terms with the Internet's extraordinary capability to preserve past actions, beliefs, and versions of oneself for posterity, causing problems as the lines between the real and virtual, and the past and the present, become ever fuzzier. Rosen provides an overview of the legal, technological, and social solutions we might employ to overcome this new inability to forget.

Ars Technica reports on the growing number of universities experimenting with integrating the iPad into their academic missions. While a couple of campuses will run exploratory pilot programs (not dissimilar to Princeton's Kindle experiment), others are offering iPads to all incoming freshmen, to select honors students, or to select graduate students. Also, at least one university, North Carolina State, has equipped its libraries with a collection of iPads for anyone to use (which is a little odd, given how personal these devices tend to be).

Jeremiah Grossman has discovered and explained a potentially significant security flaw in Safari 4 and 5. In essence, if you have the AutoFill option "Using info from my Address Book card" enabled, a malicious Web site can extract your name, company, city, state, country, and email address without your knowledge. For the moment, we recommend turning off that option in Safari's AutoFill preference pane. Apple told the New York Times (though not Grossman, who reported the bug) that they are "aware of the issue and are working on a fix."

Making iPhones is harder than it looks. After delaying shipment of the white iPhone 4 models until "late July," Apple has now announced further delay. The statement reads, "White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected."

Apple hoped its recent press conference could heal the bruising the iPhone 4's image has taken from the press. But for further repair there's Antenn-aid, a vinyl Band-Aid sticker sized precisely to cover your iPhone 4's antenna gap. It's mainly a gag, but if you're trying to avoid a bulky rubber bumper, you might give it a shot!