Computers-Plus

It looks like it’s time to kiss that sweet HOV goodbye for lone California hybrid drivers. No, there hasn’t been a spike in Clean Air Vehicle sticker thievery — this time it’s official. According to the California DMV, those little yellow stickers that once gave hybrid owners the right to ride solo in carpool lanes have expired, leaving some 85,000 drivers to fall in line with the rest of the state’s commuters. You’ll forgive us if we don’t shed a tear over this announcement.

We’re well into summer now, and that means lounging in the backyard in your hammock, catching a tan (and some eye candy) at the beach, bar-b-ques, and all that other stuff that’s fun to do in nice weather. And then reality hits — you live in the midwest or some other locale that constantly interrupts your summer plans with rain and other bipolar weather patterns. Screw it, you might as well lock yourself inside and fire up a PC game (turn off that console, you weenie).

If that describes your situation, or if the weather’s nice but you’d rather get your game on anyway, Steam has your back. Read more…

Zynga Chief Executive Mark Pincus wrote a letter to accompany the game maker’s IPO filing, which hit this afternoon. The letter — complete with bullet points that take the shape of Zynga’s bulldog logo — lays out Zynga’s philosophy of games. But this philosophy isn’t as fun as we would have hoped. For your pre-holiday weekend, we thought we’d substitute a few of our own thoughts in italics. (Note to editors and readers: This is a joke. You are on the Wall Street Journal’s tech blog. Do not panic.)

Dear potential shareholders,

Zynga is a company with more than 2,000 amazingly talented employees dedicated to crafting tiny virtual objets d’art such as special edition cows, cottages, groovy barns, and ponies (pink ponies, candy cane ponies, clown ponies, etc.) for anyone fanatic enough to buy them. And when we say fan

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You can beat your dual-screened Kyocera Echo Android phone against a metal table and it will not break, says a child scientist in this new ad.

As far as we can tell, Kyoceras dual-screened Echo Android phone isnt busting up the sales charts on Sprint. Knowing this, Kyocera has decided to shift its marketing strategy away from the crazy shifting dual screens and onto a more traditional sales tactic: its durability.

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