A company called Genkii is hoping to rope a chunk of the 40-million worldwide web-connected phones and iTouches into a new 3D avatar-based virtual world, Sparkle. Too bad virtual worlds died around 4 years ago.

Genkii appear to have had Sparkle in the works for quite some time, but they must have spat out whatever drink they were drinking at the time when Apple announced their inter-app micro-commerce structure for iPhone 3.0, which is perfectly tailored to Second Life's "pay 65 cents, increase penis length by 200%" mini economy.

Currently, Genkii has a $5 IM app in the App Store that ties into your Second Life IM account. They hope to expand their actual standalone virtual world later this year, preserving the ability to tie into pre-existing worlds like Second Life and Playstation Home.

If there is anyone out there who can't wait to get a mini avatar on their iPhone, buy it clothes and an apartment, and seek out other mini avatars to IM with, forgive my skepticism. But I think Sparkle has missed the boat by about a half decade. We'll see what happens. [TechCrunch]

Affordable Places To Escape The Cold

Airlines and hotels in warmer locales are cutting prices to keep the tourists coming.

In Pictures: Affordable Places To Escape The Cold

Spending winter in a major city is substantially less fun than those scenic television shots might lead one to believe. The sidewalks are icy, the skyscrapers work together to perform perfect wind tunnels and crazed hordes of holiday shoppers can make December almost intolerable.

When average daily temperatures dip far below freezing, it's time to get out of the city. But with the economy struggling, sunbathing on a private beach in Maldives may not be a financially feasible option.

In Pictures: Affordable Places To Escape The Cold

Fortunately, getting warm this winter doesn't have to break the bank. Travelers who stick close to home, select up-and-coming locations and score travel deals from financially ailing resorts and airlines can get out of the cold for an affordable price.

Central America and the Caribbean deliver a major cost-saving advantage, according to Tim Leffel, author of The World's Cheapest Destinations: 21 Countries Where Your Money Is Worth a Fortune.

"If you're coming from the U.S., you don't have to pay very much to get there, and there's less jet lag, so you can really hit the ground running," he says. Better yet, both regions contain a plethora of lesser-known destinations where the U.S. dollar is especially strong.

Up-and-Coming Spots
Honduras, home of the largest coral reef in the northern hemisphere, is behind the tourism curve, as just 383,000 non-Central American tourists visited the country in 2007. This is starting to change.

Leffel recommends the island of Roatan off the country's Atlantic coast, where travelers can expect warm weather and wallet-friendly hotel deals, like the $799 low-season dive special at Anthony's Key Resort. The price includes a room for seven nights, three meals a day, a tropical picnic, an island fiesta, a buoyancy control workshop and dive equipment and transportation for up to 23 dives. Roatan is especially attractive for new divers--certification there is cheaper than almost anywhere else in the world.

Apple (AAPL) is the only company I know that can tell its customers what they want and make them like it. Nobody else has pulled that off since Henry Ford decreed that consumers could get a Model T in any color they liked as long as it was black. The latest MacBook and MacBook Pro computers suggest that Apple has not lost its touch.

The difference between Apple and the rest of the industry is stark. Dell (DELL) sells 26 laptop models, each available in many configurations, while Apple offers five, with few hardware options. The average selling price for MacBooks and MacBook Pros in September was $1,483, compared with $689 for Windows notebooks, according to market researcher NPD Group. The point isn't that Macs are overpriced for what they are but that Apple offers only high-end products. Yet despite these seeming disadvantages in variety and price, NPD notes, Macs grabbed nearly 18% of the U.S. retail notebook market in September, a jump of nearly three percentage points since last year.

It's not easy to come up with a dramatic design breakthrough in what is largely a mature product category. Last year, Apple offered the revolutionary MacBook Air, but its extreme thinness and lightness was achieved at a sacrifice in functionality that wouldn't be O.K. in its workhorse laptops.

A Solid Lineup

The latest notebooks should keep Apple's winning streak going. The two new products are a 15-in. MacBook Pro (from $1,999) and a 13.3-in. MacBook (from $1,299), now in a Pro-like aluminum case. Rounding out Apple's family are the old white MacBook ($999), the 17-in. MacBook Pro (from $2,799), and the Air (from $1,799). The last two models got processor and graphics upgrades but are otherwise unchanged.

The most striking feature of the new laptops is their huge and extremely usable touch pad. I have long preferred pointing sticks to touch pads, but Apple's latest innovation might change my mind. As in the last generation of MacBooks, this pad uses multitouch: One finger moves the cursor, two fingers scroll the display. What's new is there's no button—just press firmly on the pad, and you feel a button-like click. One finger gives a standard mouse click. Press with two and you bring up a menu appropriate for what you are doing, just like a right click on the mouse. It's simple, and it works.

The MacBook Pro is equipped with two Nvidia (NDVA) graphics adapters. Users can switch between a GeForce 9600M GT to get maximum performance for games, video editing, or other graphically intense applications, and a less capable 9400M chip for best battery life. Expect similar dual-graphics technology to show up on high-end Windows notebooks as well.

Older Hardware Connections Impacted

MacBook fans may find some other changes disconcerting. Apple is relentless in scrapping old technologies. This time, that may be painful for users of older external monitors and video cameras. Both new Mac models use an external video connector called DisplayPort that only plugs directly into the new $899 Apple LED Cinema Display. For all other monitors, you'll need a $29 adapter. Try using an older video camera and there's a worse catch. Apple has eliminated the FireWire port on the MacBook, rendering cameras that connect to computers only with a Firewire cable unusable. The Pro does have a FireWire port, but it's a new version, called 800, so you'll need another adapter cable to use it with a FireWire 400 camera.

With special software, it is now easy to run Microsoft Outlook and other Windows programs on the Mac. I use VMware's Fusion 2.0 virtual machine software on the MacBook Pro, and the results are so good that I'm longing to take a Mac laptop on the road. But that's where Apple's limited variety is a problem. At 4½ lb., even the 13-in. MacBook is too heavy, while the Air is too limited. Oh, well. Apple has never tried to be all things to all people. It may not solve my problem, but Apple's way seems to work just fine for the company and most of its fans.