How green is your silicon valley? Greenpeace just released the latest version of its Guide to Greener Electronics. The company rates manufacturers of electronic hardware including PCs, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles to see how well they are performing when it comes to phasing out toxic chemicals, and encouraging product recycling.

Have you ever felt as though you're drowning in files and ideas? Even with modern desktop search engines, it is still easy to lose track of what is on your PC or Mac, and before you know it, you can spend precious minutes looking for something that has long since been buried in an arcane folder structure. And then, of course, there is always the worry that your hard drive may die, and that you may have failed to back up a particular folder in which a file resides.

Today, my inbox had 374 unread emails in it. By the end of the afternoon, that was down to 89. I hardly dealt with any of them, and I've never met the person who did. So, how did that work?

File this one in the 'wish they were shipping to Canada' category. Soon to be available in the US, and internationally "a few months" afterwards, Fitbit is like a personal trainer in your pocket. The tiny system features a 3D motion sensor that measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities. It will tell you how many calories you have burned, how far you have travelled, and even how long it took you to fall asleep, and how often you woke up during the night.

So, you thought your Mac was safe? For years now, Apple has been gloating over the fact that its OS X operating system has been largely bereft of viruses. We've seen the smug commercials, where a sick-looking PC talks to a Mac and explains his sickness on the fact that he has picked up one of the thousands of viruses designed to infect him. For most PC users, that wasn't very funny. But now, things may be changing for Mac users, too.

Has anyone seen Duplicity? The film stars Clive Owen and Julia Roberts as former spies who can't help bumping into one other. The film jumps back and forth so much and the time frame is so scrambled that it's impossible not only to tell who is being duplicitous with whom, but what the hell is going on. In a recent interview with the New Yorker, director Tony Gilroy was admirably succinct about his film-making technique.

"What the fuck," he told the journalist. "I hope the audience thinks the film is broken."

The idea of a digitally stashing away everything that we do in our lifetimes may not be realistic for people today -- after all, few of us are yet wearing video cameras that can document our every move. Nevertheless, some companies are inching towards documenting at least significant aspects of our lives.

Cables such a last-decade technology. Spend long enough playing with gadgets, and you will eventually find yourself under a desk, fumbling aimlessly with USB wires, entangled power cords, and audio cables.

If you're anything like me, you probably find yourself balancing your laptop on the kitchen counter, in between a bowl of raw chicken and a plate of asparagus, so that you can watch videos while you cook dinner. Bad idea, people. One of these days, my laptop is going to succumb to a misplaced bottle of red wine vinegar, and the game will be over.

Have you ever wondered what kind of reputation you might have online? More importantly, how do you measure it? A new start-up called the Whuffie Bank aims to try and codify that for you. The non-profit organisation is using the term coined by science fiction writer and columnist Cory Doctorow in his science-fiction novel Down and out in the Magic Kingdom to describe a currency reflecting your online reputation. The idea is that the better your online reputation, the more whuffie you have.