The freezing Northeast hasn't been a terribly fun place to spend time this winter, so when the chance came for a weekend to Sarasota, Florida, my bags were packed before you could say “sunshine”. I left for the land of warmth and vitamin C(维生素C), thinking of beaches and orange trees. When we touched down to blue skies and warm air, I sent up a small prayer of gratefulness. Swimming pools, wine tasting, and pink sunsets(at normal evening hours, not 4 in the afternoon) filled the weekend, but the best part - particularly to my taste, dulled by months of cold- weather root vegetables- was a 7 a.m. adventure to the Sarasota farmers' market that proved to be more than worth the early wake-up call.

           The market, which was founded in 1979, sets up its tents every Saturday from 7:00 am to 1 p.m., rain or shine, along North Lemon and State streets. Baskets of perfect red strawberries; the red-painted sides of the Java Dawg coffee truck; and most of all, the tomatoes: amazing, large, soft and round red tomatoes.

Disappointed by many a broken, vine-ripened(蔓上成熟的) promise, I've refused to buy winter tomatoes for years. No matter how attractive they look in the store, once I get them home they're unfailingly dry, hard, and tasteless. But I homed in, with uncertainty, on one particular table at the Brown's Grove Farm's stand, full of fresh and soft tomatoes the size of my fist. These were the real deal- and at that moment, I realized that the best part of Sarasota in winter was going to be eating things that back home in New York I wouldn't be experiencing again for months.

Delighted as I was by the tomatoes in sight, my happiness deepened when I learned that Brown's Grove Farm is one of the suppliers for Jack Dusty, a newly opened restaurant at the Sarasota Ritz Carlton, where - luckily for me - I was planning to have dinner that very night. Without even seeing the menu, I knew I'd be ordering every tomato on it.

    What makes a gift special? Is it the price you see on the gift receipt? Or is it the look on the recipient's face when they receive it that determines the true value? What gift is worth the most?

    This Christmas I was debating what to give my father. My dad is a hard person to buy for because he never wants anything. I pulled out my phone to read a text message from my mom saying that we were leaving for Christmas shopping for him when I came across a message on my phone that I had locked. The message was from my father. My eyes fell on a photo of a flower taken in Wyoming. and underneath a poem by William Blake. The flower, a lone dandelion standing against the bright blue sky, inspired me. My dad had been reciting those words to me since I was a kid. That may even be the reason why I love writing. I decided that those words would be my gift to my father.

    I called back. I told my mom to go without me and that I already created my gift. I sent the photo of the cream-colored flower to my computer and typed the poem on top of it. As I was arranging the details another poem came to mind. The poem was written by Edgar Allan Poe; my dad recited it as much as he did the other. I typed that out as well and searched online for a background to the words of it. The poem was focused around dreaming, and after searching I found the perfect picture. The image was painted with blues and greens and purples, twisting together to create the theme and wonder of a dream. As I watched both poems passing through the printer, the white paper coloring with words that shaped my childhood. I felt that this was a gift that my father would truly appreciate.

    Christmas soon arrived. The minute I saw the look on my dad's face as he unwrapped those swirling black letters carefully placed in a cheap frame, I knew I had given the perfect gift.

    The new study shows that we spend more time using the mobile Internet reading newspapers or magazines or doing some other things. According to the European Interactive Advertising Association(EIAA), the average European spends 4.8 hours reading newspapers and magazines but 1.6 hours more using the mobile Internet a week.

    The EIAA questioned 15,000 people in 15 European countries, looking at how people are using the Internet and its influence on their everyday lives. It found that the mobile Internet is increasingly finding its way into the public awareness. Over 71 million Europeans now have Internet access on their mobile phones. In the UK, 10 million people now access the Internet through their mobile phones and spend 6.3 hours doing so in a week.

    Unsurprisingly, younger generations in the UK are leading the way, with nearly half of the country's 16-to 24-year-olds and a quarter of 25- to 34-year-olds using the Internet, spending 6.5 and 6.2 hours online each week.

     Entertainment plays a main role in our mobile Internet lives, with one in five British people using their phones for online games, a third listening to the online radio and 39 percent watching films, TV or other videos at least once a week. One third of those using an Internet phone said they received videos, images or other multimedia on their mobile, and 61 percent said they passed on contents they received.

    From a communication point of view, 80 percent of those questioned agreed that the Internet had made it easier for them to stay in touch with friends and family.

    Alison Fennah, director of the EIAA, said the mobile Internet use had come to the point that marketers should be looking to develop strategies (策略) that connect with consumers more effectively. “Better devices as well as improved consumer motivation that start coming together in 2011 can make a great difference to extending the online experience.” Fennah said.

    A new web standard is expected to kill passwords, meaning users will no longer have to remember difficult logins(登录) for each and every website or service they use.

    The Web Authentication (WebAuthn网络认证) standard is designed to replace the password with tools that users already own, such as a security key, a smart phone, a fingerprint scanner or webcam. Instead of having to remember long characters, users can authenticate their login with their body or something they have, communicating directly with the website through Bluetooth, USB or NFC.

    "WebAuthn will change the way that people access the Web," said Jeff Jaffe, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that controls web standards. One example of how WebAuthn will work is that when a user visits a site, they put in a user name and then get a message on their smart phone. Tapping on the message on their phone then logs them into the website without the need for a password.

    WebAuthn promises to protect users against phishing attacks(钓鱼攻击) and the use of stolen information as there will be nothing to steal, the authentication sign is produced and used once by their special tool each time the user enters.

    "After years of increasingly serious data and password being stolen, now it is the time for service providers to end their dependency on easily-attacked passwords and use phishing-resistant FIDO Authentication(快速身份认证联盟) for all websites and apps," said Brett McDowell, CEO of the FIDO Alliance, one of the bodies pushing the new standard.

    WebAuthn should also help people use special login details for each and every service they use, instead of using the same login and password for every site, which many people still do, leaving them further attacked if one site is hacked(黑客攻击).

    The W3C has moved WebAuthn to what's called the "candidate recommendation" stage – the last-but-one step before it becomes an approved web standard – inviting sites and services to begin using it. The web standards body announced that Google, Microsoft and Mozilla had been devoted to supporting WebAuthn, meaning that all major web explorers except Apple's Safari will use the new standard.

    "While there are many web security problems and we can't fix them all, relying on passwords is one of the weakest links. With WebAuthn's solutions we are removing this weak link," said Jaffe.

    Several sites and services already use similar methods to enter, including Google and Facebook, which can both be entered using a USB security key. But a single cross-platform, cross-service standard approved by the W3C will mean that many more sites and services will be able to kill the password as the login method.

    WebAuthn is the top of many years of work and the change will not happen overnight. But as it increasingly seems unavoidably that our email or other online services will get hacked into, removing the password is an important step in improving online security and making using sites and services easier.

    The Lumière Brothers had their film shows, taken over 100 years ago, to 100 paying customers on December 8, 1985. One of their earliest films was a 30-second piece which showed a section of a railway platform. As the train approached, panic started in the theatre: people jumped and ran away. In their confusion, the audiences feared that a real train was about to crush them. That was the moment when cinema was born.

    Early cinema audiences often experienced the same confusion. In time, the idea of films became familiar, the magic was accepted — but it never stopped being magic. Film has never lost its unique power to embrace its audience and transport them to a different world.

    One effect of this realism was to educate the world about itself. Cinema makes the world smaller. Long before people travelled to America or anywhere else, they knew what other places looked like and how other people worked and lived. Undoubtedly, in the lives recorded in film people knew more about American life. Hollywood has dominated the world film market. American imagery — the cars, the cities, the cowboys became the primary imagery of film. Film carried American life and values around the globe.

    And, thanks to film, future generations will know the 20th century more familiarly than any other period. We can only imagine what life was like in the 14th century or in classical Rome. But the life of the modern world has been recorded on films. We shall be known better than any preceding generations.

    The “star” was another natural consequence of cinema. The cinema star was effectively born in 1910. Because everybody in the world seems to know who they are, they appear more real to us than we do ourselves. The star as magnified human self is one of cinema's most strange and enduring legacies(遗产).

    Cinema films originally were planned as short stories, because early producers doubted the ability of audiences to concentrate for more than the length of a reel. Then, in 1912, an Italian 2-hour film was hugely successful, and Hollywood settled upon the novel-length narrative that remains the dominant cinematic convention of today.

    And it has all happened so quickly. Almost unbelievably, it is only 100 years since that train arrived and the audience screamed and fled, perhaps, suddenly aware that the world could never be the same again — that, maybe, it could be better, brighter, more astonishing and more real than reality.