Upgrade Your Life: Wet cell phone rescue (Yahoo! News)

Did you just drop your cellphone in water? Or maybe you'd like to know what to do if that happens! This week on Upgrade Your Life, Yahoo! News' Becky Worley shows us first aid techniques for rescuing a drowned smartphone.

To test them out, Becky took a BlackBerry, a Droid, and an iPhone, and dropped all three into room temperature water for 60 seconds. Then she went through the following steps:

Step 1: Do NOT turn on the phone

Why do water and smartphones not mix? Because the water shorts out your smartphone's electrical circuits. So whatever you do, don't turn it on to check to see if it still works.

Step 2: Pull out the battery and SIM card

You want to remove anything removeable: Pull out the battery, the SIM card and the memory card, if your phone has one. As long as that battery's in there it's providing power to your phone, and that's what you need to stop immediately.

Some phones, like the iPhone, don't have a removable battery. Unfortunately, you'll just have to skip this step and hope for the best if you dunk one of them.

Step 3: Freshwater rinse

Did you drop your phone in salt water? The salt can corrode your device. So after you pull out the battery and SIM card, immerse your phone in fresh water to rinse out the salt.

Step 4: Dry your phone using compressed air

If you have a compressed air can handy -- the kind that's used to clean computers or keyboards -- run it full-blast all over your phone, with the back cover taken off if you can. A vacuum cleaner also works, even though it's pulling the air in the other direction. As long as it's blowing cool air over those circuits to dry them out, it's all good.

Don't stick your phone in the oven, even on low. The heat can warp your phone's circuits, and melt its internal components. You shouldn't use a blow dryer either, unless it has a heatless setting. A fan might help, but a microwave is out of the question.

Step 5: Cover your phone with uncooked rice

The premise of our experiment was to test if putting a wet phone into a sealed container of rice would actually dry it out, and bring it back form the dead. See, the idea behind the rice is that the dry grains will absorb moisture. So get a sealable plastic container, and fill it with enough rice to cover your smartphone. (A plastic zipper bag will work too, in a pinch.) Then bury your phone in the rice, along with its battery and other parts. You'll want to wait at least 24 hours for the rice to do its job -- Becky waited for 48 hours, in her test.

What would work better than rice? Silica gel, the stuff in those packets that keep new clothes or shoes dry. But most of us don't have a shoebox full of the stuff laying around, so rice will probably have to do. It may get pieces of rice into the crevices and cavities in your smartphone, but this is an emergency, and time is of the essence.

Should you use white or brown rice? It doesn't matter, so long as it's hard and dry and uncooked. You can even use rice from boxed meals like Rice-a-Roni. Just don't add in the seasoning packet, unless you want your phone to smell like mixed vegetables.

Step 6: Turn your phone back on

After you've waited at least 24 hours, it's time for the moment of truth. Reassemble your phone, charge it and try to power it on.

The results of our experiment weren't encouraging: the BlackBerry that Becky tested did restart, with no seeming long-term damage. But the iPhone and the Droid were dead. After two days in the rice and a full battery charge, neither phone came back to life.

One in three may be slim odds. But since water damage isn't covered by most warranties, it can't hurt to try.

Yahoo! News

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Yahoo ready to deliver on promise to upgrade email (AP)

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – Tue May 24, 7:53 am ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo Inc. is giving its popular email service a long-promised facelift in an attempt to make it more appealing to people who are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, Google and other online alternatives to communicate.

The changes announced Tuesday build upon a redesigned email format that Yahoo began testing seven months ago. The estimated 277 million users of Yahoo's free email service will be switched to the new version during the next few weeks.

The overhaul will enable updates to Facebook and Twitter accounts to be posted from within Yahoo's email boxes. The revamped service is supposed to be two times faster and capable of sending attachments of up to 100 megabytes. Other tools include better junk-mail controls and the ability to chat with friends and family logged into Facebook.

Yahoo is counting on the changes to help attract and retain email users at a time when more people are flocking to the rival Gmail service run by Internet search leader Google Inc.

Although Yahoo's service remains larger than Gmail, it has been losing ground in the past year. Through April, Yahoo boasted 277 million email users worldwide, a drop of about 3 million, or 1 percent, from the same time last year, according to the research firm comScore Inc. Meanwhile, Gmail had grown to 220 million wordwide users, up 43 million, or 24 percent during the past year.

Most of Gmail's gains appear to be coming at the expense of Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail service, which remained the global leader with 327 million users, according to comScore. But that figure was down 27 million, or 8 percent, from last year.

Cultivating loyal email users is important because they tend to be frequent visitors and they often remain logged in when using other online services run by the email providers. The return trips and logged-in activity creates more opportunities to show Internet ads, the main way that both Yahoo and Google make money.

Yahoo, though, hasn't been luring as many advertisers as Google for years, a problem that has weighed on Yahoo's stock.

The email upgrade is expected to be among the signs of progress that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz emphasizes Wednesday when she and other top company executives are scheduled to update analysts on their turnaround plan.

Yahoo! News

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TVA to upgrade coal plants in 3 states under settlement

By the CNN Wire Staff STORY HIGHLIGHTSThe 11 plants are in Alabama, Kentucky and TennesseeTVA will also invest $350 million in clean energy projectsThe EPA says the upgrades will save lives and protect public health (CNN) -- The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it had reached a settlement with the Tennessee Valley Authority to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Air Act at 11 of its coal-fired power plants in three states.

Under the settlement, TVA will be required to invest $3 billion to $5 billion, by its own estimate, to install new and upgraded pollution controls. The controls "will prevent approximately 1,200 to 3,000 premature deaths, 2,000 heart attacks and 21,000 cases of asthma attacks each year, resulting in $27 billion in annual health benefits," the EPA said in a statement.

The plants are in Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee.

In addition, TVA will invest $350 million on clean energy projects aiming to reduce pollution, save energy and protect public health and the environment, the EPA said. Those will include retrofitting low-income housing with the more cost-effective energy efficiency technology aimed at reducing pollution, energy use and saving residents money, according to the agency.

"This agreement will save lives and prevent billions of dollars in health costs," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in the statement. "Investments in pollution control will keep hundreds of thousands of tons of harmful pollutants out of the air we breathe, and help create green job opportunities that will reduce pollution and improve energy efficiency."

Asked by reporters whether the settlement will drive up power bills, Jackson said, "TVA has made estimates and says they do not expect this settlement to impact rate payers in their service district."

When fully implemented, the actions will address 92% of TVA's coal-fired plant capacity, reducing emissions of nitrogen oxide by 69% and sulfur dioxide by 67% from TVA's 2008 emissions levels, the EPA said. "Uncontrolled releases of harmful air pollution like sulfur dioxide from power plants can affect breathing and aggravate respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, especially in sensitive populations like children and the elderly," the agency said in its statement.

TVA also will provide $1 million to the National Park Service and the National Forest Service to "improve, protect or rehabilitate forest and park lands that have been impacted by emissions from TVA's plants, including Mammoth Cave National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park," according to the EPA.

"I think one thing to emphasize here is that what TVA has done is look ... across their entire fleet, (and) made a business decision that they want to move to cleaner, more efficient, newer technology and in doing that, save lives and make people healthier," Jackson told reporters.

TVA operates 59 coal-fired boilers at the 11 plants, and provides wholesale power to 155 municipal and cooperative power distributors and direct service to 56 large industrial and government customers, who supply power to about 9 million people in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and small portions of Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, the EPA said.

"The message here," Jackson told reporters, "is that we don't have anything against coal, but we have to reduce the pollution that comes from coal to our air, to our water and on our land."

The settlement also requires TVA to pay a $10 million civil penalty, with Alabama and Kentucky receiving $500,000 each and Tennessee receiving $1 million.

As part of the settlement, a consent decree will be filed in federal court, the EPA said. The states of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, along with the National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club and Our Children's Earth Foundation were involved in developing the settlement and are signatories to the consent decree.

CNN Radio's Shelby Erdman contributed to this report.

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