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How do I … find and compare cell phone plans?

Two sites that each offer good comparisons for cell phone plans are wirefly.com and MyRatePlan.com.

Both do about the same thing, offering a set of choices based on type of phone, price plan, carrier, location and features. Both also allow a shopper to select several different phones and get point-by-point comparisons of prices and features.

Both also want visitors to order a phone through their sites. We’d suggest you use the sites, compare phones, then see if you can find other deals around the Web or at a nearby carrier outlet store.

Jargon 2.0 — g-word. (n.)

The g-word is something good software developers work hard to avoid. The g-word stands for “go to” command. It’s a program instruction that can disrupt and interfere with the expected result. If code is done sloppily, the goto command can create a loop — the repeated effort of trying to execute some step which never concludes.

.TXT Video Challenge No. 22. There’s a useful and timely video called “Xeriscaping on the Palouse,” featured at youtube.com/ watch?v=lYWaLQ 47Hn4. Xeriscaping refers to smarter and more efficient horticulture in order to consume less water.

The woman in the video says “water-wise landscaping” can save a significant amount of water. What percent of water can be saved, according to the speaker?

First person to e-mail the answer will win a coffee card on us. Send replies to txt@spokesman.com.

Smart Search: Adobe recently announced it has created a way for Google and Yahoo to search sites and index (identify) videos made in the Adobe Flash format. Those are .swf files that Google and Yahoo and all search sites could not index up to this point.

How does this work? When Google and Yahoo visit and search a given Web site, they use a “spider” to view all the different types of files found there. If the search engines now find a .swf file, the Adobe file settings will tell the spider to load a Flash player on the Google or Yahoo search server. In fact, Google and Yahoo will load that flash file and index the metatags and keywords associated with the Flash file.

Adobe says it will try to do the same for other search engines, such as Live Search and Ask.

Video of the week: What Joe Cocker really sang during his performance at Woodstock (translated). Go to wikio.com/video /285872.