Cell Bytes

Those press covering the Olympics sure do have a plum life. They bundle off to Vancouver for 16 days of watching ice-skaters embarrassing themselves, and ruthless Russian bobsledders showing their dark sides. Oh, and they get lens-shaped thermoses.

The story goes that a Microsoft employee by the name of Josh Weisberg wandered into the Canon press tent at the Olympic Press Center, and got given a 70-200mm Canon L-series lens. Or so he thought, probably tucking it safely in his backpack before Canon realized they had gifted him a lens instead of a branded pen or hat.

I hope he wasn’t too disappointed when he realized it was a thermos. I’d happily take it off his hands. [PDN Pulse via CrunchGear]

Now that the Apple Vs Google war has eclipsed the Microsoft Vs Google war, Microsoft has felt it safe to quietly slip the Android platform a freebie. Tag is a high capacity color barcode reader also available for iPhone.

It’s been around for some time on other platforms (BlackBerry and Symbian as well as the iPhone), and certainly isn’t the first barcode reader for Android—but Tag is worth checking out as not only is it a free download, it’s also a more advanced way of reading barcodes. [MSDN via SlashGear]