There was a time not long ago when you could Google the name of any product plus the word “sucks” and get a search result yielding a fairly clear and passionate taste of what Internet users thought of the said product and how it stacked up against other products. Try that trick today, however, and you’re likely to find that according to the results returned by a Google search, pretty much everything sucks.

For example, take the two popular Blackberry Twitter apps, ÜberTwitter and Open Beak (formerly Twitterberry). Popular opinion is split: Internet users enjoy both, and likewise feel both suck. And that makes it a bit harder to decide which of the two a Blackberry user ought to download. So we asked withbeans.com’s technology correspondent to load both apps on his Blackberry and report back. Some observations:

– ÜberTwitter is pretty. Its balloons are easier on the eyes than Open Beak’s interface.

– ÜberTwitter has far more menu choices than Open Beak via the all-purpose Blackberry menu button.

– ÜberTwitter allows you to drill down more with your menu choices, but that can make it all too easy to back all the way out of the application when you’re hitting the return key to get back to a screen. Here Open Beak’s simplicity is a plus – you won’t find yourself inadvertently leaving the app as much.

– ÜberTwitter has “@[your Twitter name]” as one of its menu choices, not so with Open Beak. Also when our tech correspondent was cited in a Tweet, ÜberTwitter sent an alert; Open Beak did not.

– Both apps provide a glimpse of your Twitter timeline; Open Beak took a shorter amount of time to retrieve it.

So while neither app sucks, ÜberTwitter, by a comfortable margin, doesn’t suck more.

According to yet another Google search there is one thing Blackberry and Twitter fans do seem to agree on: Twitter is taking a bit too long certainly took long enough to come out with their official app for the Blackberry.

If you’re just starting up your blog or Web site and you’re not sure if you want to monetize it or if you don’t know if how well it’s trafficked even matters to you, you may not see the immediate need for installing and using Google Analytics. And that would be short-sighted.

Let’s start with the fact that Analytics is fiendishly easy to install – a withbeans.com correspondent added the tracking code to his Web site within a few minutes and was also pleased to discover that when he moved his site pages over to Wordpress, Analytics continued analyzing without interruption (by the way, Wordpress users running analytics would also do well to install this plugin that tracks lots of links from within posts).

But the main reason to install Analytics right away isn’t just because it’s there, or its ease of installation or use. The first day you install this program is akin to the first day you start shooting a time-lapse photograph of a flower growing – you’re not getting instant gratification from this puppy. You may have to wait a week or two or a month to see appreciable changes. And the moment you see visitation start to claw upwards on your site is akin to that joyful moment in the time-lapse photo when you see the flower petals starting to open. In short, even if you don’t think you need Analytics now, it needs a little time to cook.

Our aforementioned withbeans.com correspondent didn’t need Analytics at first, either, but once he incorporated more jump pages and posts into his site, he did have a desire to see which pages were underperforming. His favorite Analytics feature? The simple “day/week/month/year” toggle that gives him a glimpse of site visits and reassures him that he isn’t the only one visiting his site. Because let’s face it, admit it or not, how well your site’s trafficked always matters to you.

Image source: Google

Bluetooth speakerphones that do double duty as a hands-free car kit and conference speaker are not so common that they’ve become passé but enough have come to market that it’s already a struggle to figure out which of these gadgets is ahead of the pack. Well, if having your Bluetooth go green packs appeal, Scosche Industries unveiled a solar Bluetooth speakerphone at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show that also ended up in a CES travel gadget round-up by Travel & Leisure.

Like most Bluetooth speakers designed with motorists in mind, the solChat, as it’s called, will take a charge from an old-school USB hookup or car adapter, but thereafter can be clipped to the windshield visor or can be suctioned directly to the windshield to soak up the sun’s rays; according to the manufacturer the “integrated solar panel continuously re-charges the lithium ion battery.”

In all other respects the unit functions like most other similar Bluetooth speakers do, so the embedded how-to video, while not absolutely necessary, gives you a good idea of how delightfully small the folks at Scosche managed to make this product.

Image source:  Scosche Industries

Portfolio compiled a list of the 67 most important and happening places for young people to live. They define young people as those in their mid 20’s to mid 30’s. They only looked at cities with populations over 750,000. High tech cities who were winners included: Austin, San Jose, San Francisco & Houston.

Factors including the following:

Opportunity Score

Rate of Population Growth

Rate of Employment Growth

Share of Population (this age group VS others)

% of Households with incomes over $100K

% of Households with bachelors degrees

Considering all these items weighted equally, here are the results:

To get the full list, visit Portfolio here.