A week after the Senate voted to extend until June 12th the date for TV stations to switch their broadcast signals from analog to digital, Congress yesterday followed suit. Even though broadcasters have said that they were prepared to make the switch on the previously mandated February 17th, lawmakers and consumer advocates have argued that citizens need more time to figure out which set-top boxes they'll need to ensure that they can keep watching their shows.

That sounds reasonable in theory. But in practice, the way that this delay has been structured could make this transition more confusing than it would otherwise have been. According to the Los Angeles Times:

TV stations will be allowed to seek a federal waiver to turn off their analog signals before the new deadline. So instead of nearly all broadcasters making the switch Feb. 17, stations now may do so at different times over the next four months....Several broadcasters have already stated their intention to make the switch Feb. 17, regardless of whether Congress moves the date.

Some stations will maintain their analog signals for a while; others won't. Some will switch early--in fact, 143 of the nation's 1800 stations have already gone all-digital--others will wait. All of this will only serve to befuddle TV watchers and frustrate TV stations, some of which are now facing added costs to maintain their analog signal for another four months. Only time will tell whether the cure was worse than the disease.

Google Book Search is no longer tethered to the PC. Earlier today, Google announced that its service, which provides free access to scans of public domain books, would immediately be available to users of iPhones and Android mobile phones. I tested it on my 3G iPhone by pointing my browser to http://books.google.com/m, where I perused William Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus" and Victor Hugo's novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

As one would expect of Google, the service is quick and responsive. There's a dialog box that lets you search for new books, links to books that you've recently viewed; a short list of featured books; and a list of categories ranging from Adventure to Travel. Once you've made a selection, you'll be dropped into the start of the book. Each Web page contains 10 or so scanned pages' worth of text; you can advance Web page by Web page, or navigate via a table of contents. You can even click on individual paragraphs to load in the original scanned image of that paragraph.

Even so, Google Book Search mobile isn't perfect. It would have been nice if Google had reformatted the text to better suit the iPhone screen's dimensions. Or let me change the size of the fonts. Or download the entire text for offline reading. Nevertheless, it's a nice first step, and I'm curious to see what Google will do next with it.

I was a late convert to Facebook, the social-networking site that turned five years old Wednesday. I joined about a year ago at age 47, swept up in the massive wave of people turning the corner to the back nine of life, and pitifully trying to do what comes so naturally to our sons and daughters. My own 16-year-old, Grace, literally cried from embarrassment when I told her I was signing up, and she begged me through her tears not to do it. When it was clear that I was serious, she made me promise never to "friend" her. Since I didn't know what that meant at the time, I agreed. Last week I redeemed myself in her eyes, because I signed off of Facebook forever--or at least until Tuesday.

I had one of those Hallmark movie moments. I was sitting here at work thinking up my next pithy "status update," which is where you broadcast to all your online buddies in a few words what you're up to at that very moment--and finally came to my senses. "What the hell have I become?" I cried.

So goodbye 157 Facebook friends, 75 of whom I wouldn't recognize if I saw you on the street. Goodbye super nifty "Pieces of Flair" application, and the 1,332,359 members of the "I Don't Care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like a Dumbass" Crocs-hater group. Goodbye, William and Mary alums I barely remember from 25 years ago. Not you, Tom, the other Tom. Hello to actually working at my job again. Well, a little anyway. I wouldn't have been able to write this story about quitting Facebook if I didn't quit Facebook because I wouldn't have had the time.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

1. They're annoying.

2. They're really annoying.

3. I'm referring, of course, to "25 Random Things About Me" -- those self-cataloguing Facebook notes that everyone is clogging up my News Feed with.

4. If you've been mystified to see yourself tagged in one of these notes, then you know the rules.

5. "Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you."

6. They're spreading virally, a cross between chain letters and HPV.

7. At least a dozen, probably more, have slid down my News Feed in recent days.

8. They recall earlier Facebook irritants like the "If 100,000 People Join This Group, Then _____" groups, which promised payoffs like "...My Girlfriend Will Have A Threesome" and "...My Wife Will Let Me Name Our Child Spiderpig" and "I'll Eat Every McDonald's Value Meal #1-12."

9. None of those things ever happened.

10. "25 Things" is uniquely pesty, combining navel-gazing with obligation.