TechBytes: Amazon Friends Facebook

July 28, 2010— -- Amazon is teaming up with Facebook, meaning your friends' faces could soon be used to sell you products. The new partnership is sure to raise more privacy concerns about the information Facebook shares with other sites.

Amazon launched this week a test program allowing customers to link to their Facebook accounts while shopping, sending Amazon information about themselves and their friends. Users will see products their friends like, and even receive gift ideas on birthdays.

If you're worried about how much electricity you're using each time you crank up that air conditioner this summer, Microsoft has a solution. It's linking up with a device called the Power Cost Monitor. It's sort of like having a dashboard for your home power use.

The real-time data is sent over your home's Wi-Fi, to a smartphone, computer or a tabletop display. The system costs about $250.

Ever get frustrated when you can't find the TV remote? Now you just need to remember where you put your iPhone. There are several devices out there that use infrared sensors to turn your iPhone into a customized universal remote. The FLPR and L5 Remote are two such sensors.

But the Wall Street Journal's Katie Boehret says using your phone as a remote creates some unique challenges. "Say you share your remote control with several people in your home, if you take off and go run an errand, you also took that universal remote with you," Boehret said.

"If you want to call somebody and in the meantime kind of channel surf -- you're on the phone with a chatty relative or something like that -- your not really able to do so."

You can read her full review of the sensors on the Wall Street Journal website.

A team of scientists is looking to "virtually raise the Titanic." They will create a detailed 3-D map of the world's most famous shipwreck during an expedition next month. It will be the most advanced scientific mission to the Titanic since it was discovered 25 years ago.