Fewer Americans are having trouble paying their mortgages now compared to a year ago, according to a new Harris Interactive poll.

About 22% of those surveyed last month said they had difficulty making their mortgage payments, down from 29% a year earlier, Harris said in a report released Monday. Additionally, 21% of respondents believed they were "under water" on their mortgage, meaning that the outstanding balance is higher than the home is worth, according to the report. That's down three percentage points from last year.

The findings seem to reflect an improving job market, with more jobs and lower unemployment. March's unemployment rate fell to 8.8% from 8.9% in February while the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs, the U.S. Labor Department said last week. In March 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.7%.

But the news isn't all good. Another reason for the decline in struggling homeowners is that some of those who had been having trouble keeping up their payments last year have since sold or lost their homes through foreclosure. Of those polled, 66% said they had a mortgage, down from 69% in Harris's year-ago survey.

After all, the U.S. housing market is still in flux. The median home price is February was $156,100, down 5.2% from a year earlier, while so-called distressed homes -- houses sold at a discount -- accounted for 39% of February sales, the National Association of Realtors said last week.

"These findings are consistent with other Harris Poll data on the economy that show a very modest, but, still painfully slow, recovery from the recession," Harris Interactive said in a statement. "Many millions of people are still hurting badly even if the numbers are slightly better than they were last year."

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The Need to Network

That increase in the numbers of home-based workers will both reflect and spur advancements in communications-based technology such as smartphones and tablet computers. Global tablet-computer unit sales will jump about tenfold over the next few years as computer makers like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL) and Research In Motion (RIMM) jump into a market currently dominated by Apple's (AAPL) iPad, according to reports released by IHS iSuppli and NPD Group's DisplaySearch unit last month.

Meanwhile, almost 66 million Americans owned smartphones in January, up 8% from three months earlier, ComScore said in a report earlier this month. Trumble notes that expectations of consumers' increasing desire for smartphones and communications-based technology helped spur AT&T's (T) decision earlier this week to acquire T-Mobile USA for $39 billion.

But none of those gadgets will help home-based workers if the economy turns south again.

"There's a limit to how many days you want to work from home," said Trumble. "When times get tough, you have to increase your networking because you never know when you'll need a job."

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Like a true scientist, a senior Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty member took a measured approach when recognizing results of the school's decade-long efforts to provide a more conducive environment for women professors. "This is a celebration -- with caveats," said the female faculty member, who wasn't identified in the MIT report.

Spurred largely by a 1999 report that cited gender discrimination among the reasons why women accounted for less than 10% of MIT's science and engineering faculty at the time, the school made a concerted effort to address the stereotypes and misconceptions that limited women's advancement through MIT's academia. According to an MIT report released this month, the effort appears to have paid dividends.

That said, given MIT's stature, its progress may be substantial enough to encourage more women to get doctorates in the science and engineering fields, expanding the pool of potential female professors as a result, noted University of Michigan's Corcoran.

"The closer you get to 50-50 (male-female percentage), the better the climate's going to be for women," said Corcoran, who noted a similar progression over the past three decades in her own field of political science. "At some point, you stop treating people as 'women' and more as an individual."

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One step forward, one step back. That's the story of the American consumer as the U.S. economy digs itself out of its most recent recession.

Economic analysts who feared that an improving economy and aggressive monetary policy would likely lead to inflation may be proven right. With costs of commodities such as oil and wheat jumping in recent months, many consumer-goods suppliers, food-service companies and other entities are saying price hikes will be necessary to offset the increased costs of raw materials.

Such inflation takes the buzz out of an improving job market that was expected to help out the average family. Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department said the economy added 192,000 jobs in February, while the nation's unemployment rate was 8.9%, down slightly from 9.0% in January and down from 9.7% in February 2010.

So now that the typical family will have a few extra dollars to spend, here are 10 products that are going to eat up more of that cash:

Diapers
"Nathan needs some Huggies," the Nicolas Cage character says in the 1987 Coen Brothers' classic Raising Arizona as he prepares to hold up a convenience store. This year, more of us may be inclined to do the same once diaper maker Kimberly-Clark (KMB) works in its price hikes.

The Dallas-based company said this week that it needs to offset the cost increases of raw materials such as wood pulp and oil by boosting prices on many of its consumer goods. That means the price of products such as Huggies diapers and baby wipes is going up about 5%.

So if you're thinking about toilet-training your kid, now may be a good time.

Big Macs
When your signature sandwich consists of "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun," you're looking at a lot of different commodities that are being subject to price spikes.

And the world's largest restaurant chain can only hold off for so long.

That's why McDonald's (MCD) said in January that it would boost prices on some of its menu items to cover ingredient costs that in some cases will rise as much as 2.5% this year.

The company, which had held off on price hikes for fear of alienating potential customers who were already being hit by rising grocery-store prices, didn't specify which items would get the menu adjustment, but don't be surprised if you have to shell out a little more change for that double-decker burger.

Packages
Whether the truck picking up your package is red, white, blue or brown, it's costing you a little more to ship that precious cargo than it did last year.

FedEx (FDX) said last fall that it would boost shipping rates for domestic and export services by about 4% in order for world's biggest air-cargo carrier to offset the effect of rising fuel costs.

Not wanting to pass up a chance to one-up its competitor, UPS (UPS) followed suit by announcing ground-package rates that would be about 5% higher in 2011.

And with fuel prices continuing to rise and business spending rebounding -- UCLA's Anderson Forecast estimates first-quarter year-over-year gross domestic product growth at 3.8%, the second highest figure in five years -- don't be surprised if UPS and FedEx work in another price hike by the end of the year.

Fresh Breath and Soft Hands
One may not associate minty fresh breath and the lemony scent of dish soap with the black smoke being belched out of the back of a semi-truck, but when it comes to pricing, there's a direct connection. The cost of shipping consumer-goods products to thousands of retailers across the country increases with the price of fuel.

Colgate-Palmolive (CL) said as much in January, indicating that consumers should expect prices of products such as Colgate toothpaste and Palmolive dish soap to rise as much as 2% this year.

Japanese Cars
With the price of regular gas up more than 25% from a year ago, demand for Japanese-made hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius and fuel-efficient four-cylinder cars such as the Honda Fit was already set to rise. This would force dealers to hold their prices ever closer to the MSRP and limit their discounts.

The only thing that could further steepen such likely price increases was a supply shock -- and, unfortunately, that's what's occurring in the aftermath of the magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck Japan on March 11.

While the scale of the effect on Japanese auto deliveries remains to be seen, U.S. dealers are likely to push up pricing until production issues are sorted out.

Rent
Falling home prices would seem to indicate that more people would jump into the housing market, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

After a brief reprieve last year, new home prices are set to fall again in 2011 and reach their lowest averages since 2003 as interest rates start creeping back up and banks continue to take a more cautious lending approach to prospective buyers, UCLA's Anderson Forecast says.

Meanwhile, apartment rents may rise as much as 3% this year on the combination of an improving job market and the slowdown in multi-unit housing construction during the past few years.

College
The jump in tuition for publicly funded colleges and universities over the past few years has been well-documented, with the average public school fees doubling over the past decade to more than $7,000 as cash-strapped states pulled funding. Given that even the most robust state economies such as Texas are facing deficits, tuition hikes are likely to continue.

Batteries
Count aluminum and copper among commodities whose prices are expected to advance this year as the economy recovers. That means higher prices for Procter & Gamble's (PG) Duracell and Energizer Holdings (ENR) batteries, and both companies have already indicated this year that price hikes would be in store.

Football Tickets
No matter how the labor issues between the National Football League's players and owners are resolved, owners will be sure to publicize the financial sacrifices they made to prevent professional football's first work stoppage since 1987.

Then they will raise ticket prices. And with pro football's popularity never bigger -- Super Bowl XLV was the most watched television program in history -- the fans will pay them.

Air Fares
Again, fuel costs are a primary culprit, but so is a rebound in both business and leisure travel that began midway through 2010, allowing even the low-cost carriers to start hiking fares. Also, more airlines are unbundling services that had previously been included in the ticket price -- think meals, blankets and seating in certain parts of the cabins. A ticket price that may seem the same may now include less as far as services go.

And while you're away on holiday or for business, expect car rental prices to rise as well, as companies have been de-fleeting and closing unprofitable outlets for the past couple of years, constraining supply in the process.

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"Oh, Mexico, it sounds so simple, I just got to go," James Taylor sang in his idyllic 1975 ode to our neighbors to the south.

Twenty-six years later, though, things are a bit more complicated.

Escalating violence largely stemming from the cross-border drug trade has caused Texas authorities to advise spring break revelers to avoid visiting Mexico, which drew a counterargument from Mexican tourist authorities who say that traveling south of the border remains safe. At stake is a chunk of the approximately $12 billion that tourists spend in Mexico each year. Mexico attracted about 22 million foreigners to the country last year, one in nine of whom flew there from Texas, according to the Mexico Tourism board.

In issuing its warning earlier this month, the Texas Department of Public Safety cited the murders this year in Mexico of a U.S. immigration agent and three other Texans, and pointed to figures showing that as many as 65 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico in 2010. It also warned of criminal activity at Falcon Lake, part of the Rio Grande which separates the U.S. and Mexico. A number of Americans have been victims of robberies on and around the lake, located about 175 miles southwest of Corpus Christi, Texas.

"Various crime problems also exist in many popular resort areas, such as Acapulco and Cancun, and crimes against U.S. citizens often go unpunished," DPS Director Steven C. McCraw said in a statement earlier this month. "Our safety message is simple: avoid traveling to Mexico during Spring Break and stay alive."

That warning followed up a Feb. 17 statement from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico advising Americans to avoid traveling to or through the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.

There's No Better Time to Visit, Says Mexico

The warnings have since spurred a public relations campaign from Mexico's Tourism Board espousing the fun and relative safety of the country.

"Internationally-celebrated destinations such as Cancun and Puerto Vallarta to name a few, are among the safest, most welcoming and relaxing tourist destinations in the world," the Mexico Tourism Board said in a statement last week. "There could not be a better time to visit Mexico."

What kind of effect the violence and the ensuing warnings will have on the number of visitors Mexico attracts for spring break remains to be seen. According to the U.S. State Department, more than 100,000 students go to Mexican resorts for spring break annually, with resort towns like Cancun, Acapulco and Mazatlan among the bigger draws.

With drug violence up in Acapulco as well as in the Mexico towns closest to spring break destination South Padre Island, Texas, though, the State Department's endorsement of a March or April trip to Mexico is less than enthusiastic.

"While the vast majority enjoys their vacation without incident, several may die, hundreds will be arrested, and still more will make mistakes that could affect them for the rest of their lives," the State Department writes on its website. While it doesn't suggest that spring breakers avoid Mexico, its long and detailed list of warnings and precautions for tourists offers a clear message: If you go, be careful.

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U.S. retailers are finding out what jilted wives and girlfriends have known for years: Men are cheap. As stubbornly high unemployment rates -- which have been slightly higher for men than for women -- have kept many men out of the workforce for months, if not years, men have been taking on more of the household shopping. And, on average, according to a Nielsen report released last week, they've been spending less.

Since 2004, men have increasingly accounted for a higher percentage of the household dollars spent at discount stores, mass merchandisers, warehouse or club retailers, convenience stores and supercenters. Their spending has grown the most at dollar-store and warehouse-club retailers, and they also spend more money than women at convenience stores and gas stations, according to the report.

"While women continue to dominate shopping trips in all retail channels except for convenience stores, men have increased trip shares between 2004 and 2010 in all retail channels but drug stores," Nielsen says.

Men Start to Spend More

The higher percentage of male shoppers hasn't boded well for most store owners, who already have taken a hit from the high unemployment rates. It turns out that men are more cost conscious about household shopping than women, Nielsen says. On average, men last year spent 24% less per trip to a supercenter than women, and 16% less than women at mass merchandisers.

However, the economy may soon start to return unemployed men to the workforce, pushing more of the household shopping duties back toward women. Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate had fallen slightly to 8.9% in February from 9% in January and 9.7% in February of last year. Last month's unemployment rate was the lowest since April 2009.

More good news for retailers? Men aren't as cheap as they used to be, according to the Nielsen report. In 2010, men spent about 25% more at grocery stores -- and 20% more at mass merchandisers -- than they did in 2006.

"Women are the biggest spenders per trip, an indication that they are more likely to go on the weekly planned shopping trips for their families," Nielsen says. "But in many channels, the difference between the spending of men and women is not that great."

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Augmented reality applications for smartphones and mobile computers are about to go far beyond the "gee-whiz" phase -- very far.

Augmented reality allows a mobile-phone or tablet-computer user to hold up the device's camera to a certain scene and have maps, addresses, user comments and other information funneled onto the screen -- among other things. The technology has been largely a curiosity since companies such as user-review site Yelp made its first so-called AR applications available on Apple's (AAPL) iTunes app store two years ago.

"A lot of AR stuff has been cute, but you use it once, you never use it again," said Theo Fanning, president and creative director of San Francisco-based advertising firm Traction, speaking at a digital-media conference in Los Angeles last month. "AR has some great potential, but right now, it's pure novelty."

Not for long, apparently. As smartphone deliveries continue to increase and sales of tablet-computers such as Apple's iPad explode over the next few years, more businesses will use augmented reality to market their products while entertaining their more tech-savvy customers. As a result, worldwide mobile-computer owners will buy about $1.5 billion worth of augmented-reality applications in 2015, up from less than $2 million last year, U.K.-based Juniper Research said in a recent report. The average AR application will cost about $1 in 2015, down from almost $2 last year, according to Juniper.

"High-profile companies such as Carlsberg are integrating branded AR apps into wider campaigns, while others . . . are using B2C (business-to-consumer) applications . . . to facilitate AR content," said Dr. Windsor Holden, who wrote the report for Juniper, in a statement. "These initiatives are indicative of a growing desire amongst brands to use AR as a key tool to engage with the consumer."

A "Socially Awkward" Technique

So far, the hype for augmented reality has exceeded the impact. AR has gained little traction among apps buyers because of a combination of technical challenges involved in having a mobile phone relay accurate enough location-based information to generate relevant data, and the strangeness of pointing a phone or iPad in the air in order to enact such features.

"Holding up a phone, or worse a tablet, in front of your face is just not that convenient and is socially awkward," said Sriram Thodla, strategist at Chicago-based consultant Gravitytank, adding that Juniper Research's revenue projections were "quite aggressive." Thodla said devices such as special glasses or contact lenses that can exchange location-based information with the mobile device would make AR more user friendly, but they're still about five years away.

AR Apps for Retail Customers

Still, with a rapidly expanding user base and the prospect of a surge in mobile-based product purchases, companies are starting to foot the bill to develop AR applications for sectors such as retail and travel. For instance, retail customers and store clerks alike may soon be able to point a mobile device at a certain item or price tag and immediately get sent information ranging from user reviews to inventory levels.

Companies will be more willing to invest in these features because of such a rapidly growing mobile-computing user base. Apple, which introduced the iPhone in 2007 and unveiled its fourth generation last June, regularly ships more than 15 million units per quarter. And Android smartphones will be used by more than 250 million people worldwide in 2014, up from less than 7 million people last year, research firm Gartner said in a September report.

Overall, almost 66 million Americans owned smartphones in January 2011, up 8% from three months earlier, ComScore said in a report earlier this month.

Meanwhile, IHS iSuppli said last month that global consumers will buy 242 million iPads and personal-computer type tablets in 2015, up from about 20 million last year.

Such growth has already turned mobile applications stores into cash cows. Worldwide mobile-phone users bought $2.2 billion worth of mobile applications from companies such as Apple, Research in Motion (RIMM) and Google (GOOG) last year, more than double the $828 million in applications sold in 2009, iSuppli said in a report last month. Apple, which launched its apps store in mid-2008, had 83% of the market, though that number slipped from 93% a year earlier as applications for Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Google's Android platform gained ground.

Expect that rising tide to eventually reach AR, especially if there's commerce involved, according to Thodla.

"Retailers are constantly looking for a way to take advantage of the smartphones that people are bringing into their stores," said Thodla. "Consumers might be willing to pull out their phones in the stores if they know they are going to get a deal."

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Private-label grocery brands have come a long way since their humble "plain wrap" beginnings in the late 1970s. These brands, including the Kroger (KR) Value line, Wal-Mart's (WMT) Great Value brand and Trader Joe's wide range of self-badged food products, have continued to gain popularity in tough economic times.

According to a Nielson report released last week, cash-strapped families looking to cut their food costs have been increasingly eschewing well-known brands for their slightly cheaper counterparts.

Private-label brands accounted for 17.4% of the total U.S. dollar share of food products last year, up from 15.2% in 2006, Nielsen says.

"Given the recent economic slowdown in developed markets, the value-conscious shopper is more visible across store aisles than ever before," according to the report. "No doubt, this trend will continue even as economies stagger out of the recession and rehabilitate."

Store Brands Serve Up a Higher Portion of Food

Store-brand products, which make up a whopping $90 billion industry in the U.S., now account for almost 30% of the total servings of food products sold. That represents a big surge from the period between 1984 and 2003, when their servings market share remained firmly in the 20% range.

Back then, it might have been hard to imagine that store brands could attain such heights, as the concept of buying budget brands faced the hurdles of social stigma.

The economy in the last few years has decidedly boosted private-label purchases, but the rise in the popularity of store brands actually began back in the early 2000s -- when the economy was still going strong, but the typical family's purchasing power began to slip, says Harry Balzer, chief industry analyst at NPD Group.

While the economy can affect the type of food that gets purchased, it doesn't have a big impact on the amount of food people eat. "There will never be a recession in eating; there will just be winners and losers," Balzer says. "But we will never let food costs rise faster than our income."

Humble Beginnings

The concept of private-label brands began more than three decades ago, when Ralphs, a California supermarket chain now owned by Kroger, launched its Plain Wrap brand with about two dozen products aimed at budget-minded customers back in 1978.

Other grocery chains soon followed suit, and the trend picked up steam when big-box retailers, like Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT) jumped into the grocery market with their own branded products. So-called "supercenters" made up 27% of the grocery market in 2009, up from 22% in 2005, according to Arlington, Va.-based Food Marketing Institute.

Meanwhile, grocery chains like Trader Joe's took cues from the grocery industry in Western Europe, where store brands make up almost twice as much of the market as in the U.S., and expanded into a wide range of self-branded food products.

Cheap is In

Along the way, private-label brands appeared to have shed much of their budget stigma. More than two-thirds of those who participated in Nielsen's U.S. survey said they thought private-label goods had the same or better quality than name brands. And just 10% said such products weren't suitable "when quality matters," although 17% indicated that private-label brands have "cheap-looking packaging."

The few packaging and quality concerns are unlikely to deter customers in the future, even if the economy continues to improve and gives more families the luxury of returning to better-known -- and often pricier -- brands. More than nine in 10 Americans surveyed by Nielsen said they would continue buying private-label brands even if the economy improves.

"Whoever offered you a deal tended to win this last decade," Balzer says. "The majority of brands will still have to deal with how do to beat these private-label products even when all of this is done."

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Members of Congress -- especially senators -- are far richer than the average Americans they represent, the Center for Responsive Politics said Wednesday.

About 60% of first-year U.S. senators and 40% of House of Representatives freshmen are worth at least $1 million, an amount just 1% of Americans can claim to have, according to the center's analysis of federal personal financial disclosures.

The median wealth for a first-year House of Representatives member is about $570,000, while the median wealth for a Senate freshman is almost $4 million, the research group said on its website, OpenSecrets.org. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is worth $95 million, making him the richest freshman Congressman, according to the center.

"Some are Democrats, some are Republicans, many are Tea Party conservatives while others are unabashedly liberal," Dan Auble, who manages the center's personal-financial-disclosure database, said in a statement. "What unites these freshmen is that, on balance, they're rich."

Popular stock investments among new members of Congress include Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC), both of which received federal bailout money, as well as health-care companies such as Merck (MRK), Pfizer (PFE) and CVS Caremark (CVS).

With Blumenthal factored in, Senate freshmen in the 112th Congress -- elected in November -- are richer than the 111th Congress's senators, on average, while first-year House members were worth slightly less than their predecessors. Diane Lynn Black (R-Tenn.), Rick Berg (R-N.D.) and Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) all have more than $30 million in personal wealth, according to the Center.

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It's a long way from playing to 20,000 screaming fans in Detroit Rock City, but KISS co-founder and bassist Gene Simmons made sure his message to the 60-or-so suits in a Beverly Hills conference room was clear, if not quite as loud.

"At the end of the day, you need to think about three important things: mental health, physical health and financial health," Simmons said on Tuesday, speaking to the British American Business Council of Los Angeles (BABC LA) at Beverly Hills' Peninsula Hotel. "I'm in the highest tax bracket. What are my choices in life?"

Plenty of Green Behind the Black-and-White Makeup

Simmons was pitching Cool Springs Life Equity Strategy, a financial advisory group he joined last year to help broaden their client base and attract members of the well-heeled entertainment industry. The Franklin, Tenn.-based company, whose co-founders include former Transamerica executives David Carpenter and Simon Baitler, specializes in asset protection to individuals with a net worth of more than $20 million. More specifically, Cool Springs, among other things, secures large life insurance policies with little or no cash outlay by arranging for low-interest loans to pay the premiums.

It may seem like an odd fit for Simmons, who's far better known for his fake-blood-spitting, on-stage "Demon" alter ego than for his financial acumen. But Simmons has never made any bones about making sure there was plenty of green behind his group's the black-and-white face paint.

KISS, which has sold more than 100 million CDs and DVDs, was hawking band-themed merchandise, ranging from lunch boxes to toy dolls, as far back as the 1970s. The group, which Simmons co-founded in 1973, holds merchandising licenses to more than 3,000 items.

A Rock-and-Roll Success Story

"I didn't buy my first car until I was 34. . . . I didn't buy my first house until I was 36," Simmons said in an interview with DailyFinance. "Why do you need them when you're always on the road? I lived with my mother until I was about 20. You wanna go out and have some privacy? You go to a hotel."

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The U.S. economy may be starting to show signs of life, but that's not stopping many people from begging, borrowing and stealing to make sure their cash goes a little further. And while some the largest U.S. banks and Bernard Madoff might have cornered the market on the "begging" and "stealing" parts, respectively, consumers have an ever-widening array of methods for handling of the "borrowing" part, and with far more pride and less public scrutiny.

With that in mind, here's are a few unusual items people can save money on by renting instead of buying.

Loan Riders: Car Rims

The license plate frame on your car may say "Don't laugh, it's paid for," but that doesn't mean its bling has to be. Whether you're pimping the ride or tricking the truck, dozens of stores across the U.S. let customers rent car rims. For as little as $20 a week for a set of 20-inch rims, customers can start rent-to-own programs at chains such as EZ Rims 4 Rent, which has a half-dozen stores in California and Nevada, and RimTyme, which operates primarily out of the Southeast. Both companies offer the option of returning the rims and canceling the rental agreement if your financial situation -- or mind -- changes.

Fashion Forward: Handbags

If you take pride in the logo that's on your handbag, but still care about how much cash is actually in it, take heart. Some companies will let you rent the perfect fashion accessory for a few days. Orange County, Calif.-based BagTropolis offers short-term possession of Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and a half-dozen other brands whose retail prices often run well into the thousands of dollars. Rentals range from $20 a week to about $300 a month, and the company, which takes orders online, can ship the same day as the order.

Ratchet Up the Savings: Tools

Now that average U.S. home prices having dropped back to 2003 levels, lots of folks are figuring that it's better to fix up the home they have than to sell it at a loss and try to secure financing from that oh-so-cautious bank. The good news is that you don't even have to buy the tools to tackle your projects. Some of the biggest home-improvement chains let people rent tools by the hour or day.

Home Depot (HD) offers rentals of more than 300 tools at about half of its nearly 2,000 U.S. stores. Machinery is a big draw, with carpet cleaners fetching for $18 for a four-hour rental.

"The rental business has shown strong demand as DIY customers tackle more projects," says David Dorton, vice president of tool rental for Home Depot. And if you really want to save cash, cities such as Berkeley, Calif., and Portland, Ore., have public libraries that offer tool rentals to people who show proof of city residency, meaning you can borrow everything from a hammer to a portable workbench to a carpet power stretcher. You even get charged a late fee if you bring the tool back after the checkout period expires, just like you were a kid again.

Talk of the Town: iPhones

Apple (AAPL) may be selling its iPhones to 15 million people every quarter, but that doesn't mean you need to be one of them, at least for the short term. If you're stuck in your existing mobile phone plan and don't want to shell out the $500 or so for a 3G phone, there are companies that offer people the chance to test drive iPhones before being lured into Steve Jobs's web of influence. InTouch USA charges $89 a week and $240 a month, while iPhone Trip offers iPhone and SIM Card plans that start at $11 a day for people who either want to try out the iPhone or take it on an overseas trip.

Last Chance to Save: Caskets

Your final financial decision may be a smart one if you decide ahead of time that you don't need to own your casket eternally. The concept is more compromise than creepy. For families who want a public viewing or service for a person whose remains will be cremated, some funeral homes offer the option of renting a casket. These caskets, which can cost as much as $10,000 when purchased -- are fitted with "inner containers" that can be removed along with the deceased, leaving the rest of the casket available for reuse, and giving the family one last reason to toast your frugality.

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Internet-telephone service Skype substantially narrowed its 2010 loss compared to 2009, the company reported late Friday.

Skype's net loss last year shrunk to $6.91 million from a $368.8 million loss in 2009, when it took a $344 million impairment charge. The company boosted its revenue 20% to $859.8 million as it grew its number of registered users 40% to 663 million and grew its average number of monthly paying users 21% to 8.8 million. Combined with lower costs, this broader subscriber base more than offset the impact of higher interest costs, the company says.

Founded in 2003, Skype was acquired by eBay (EBAY) for about $2.5 billion in 2005. In November 2009, EBay sold 65% of the company to buy investment firm Silver Lake for $1.9 billion. Last August, Skype announced its intention to go public, although it didn't say when, and in October, the company hired Tony Bates, a former senior vice president of Cisco Systems, as its new CEO.

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Google's (GOOG) smartphone platform, Android, has overtaken that of Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry as the most popular in the U.S., according to a ComScore report released Monday.

For the three-month period from November to January, Android's U.S.market share jumped to 31% from 24% in the previous three months, which ended in October, ComScore says. BlackBerry's share fell to 30% from 36% over the same time period, while Apple's (AAPL) share remained steady at 25%, according to the research firm.

While Android is not yet stealing market share from Apple, it appears to be gaining ground against the iPhone as more manufacturers begin incorporating Google's open-source platform into their phones. Last month, research firm iSuppli reported that Apple's global market share for mobile applications slipped to 83% last year from 93% a year earlier, while BlackBerry and Android apps revenue surged.

Meanwhile, Samsung maintained its position as the best-selling cell-phone brand in the country. In numbers that had changed little from October, 25% of the 234 million U.S. mobile subscribers used Samsung phones in the November-January quarter, while LG accounted for 21% of the phones and Motorola (MMI) made up 17%, ComScore says.

Overall, nearly 66 million Americans owned smartphones in January, up 8% from three months earlier.

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Amid high unemployment rates and rising health-care costs, a smaller proportion of Americans are getting health insurance from their employers, according to a recent Gallup survey.

The percentage of Americans with health-insurance coverage from their employers has fallen steadily over the past three years to less than 45% in February, down from 50% in January 2008, the survey found.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans insured through government-backed health coverage, such as Medicare, Medicaid and military benefits, has risen about 3 percentage points to more than one in four adults, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index released Friday. And the percentage of uninsured people has stayed steady at about 16% over the past two years.

"Government healthcare coverage has increased among all age groups, not just seniors, suggesting that unemployment, rather than aging baby boomers, is contributing more to the uptick in the number of Americans with government health care," Gallup said in a statement. Unemployment has remained above the 9% threshold for most of the past two years.

President Barack Obama last year signed a health-care reform bill designed to reduce the number of uninsured Americans. Most of those policies don't take effect until 2014, however, and many will be determined on a state-by-state basis.

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The U.S. Transportation Department has proposed new safety regulations that would limit truck drivers' hours to 10 hours per day, down from the current limit of 11 hours daily, and reduce their overnight shifts. But the National Retail Federation on Friday said the changes would not only raise business costs, but also would likely result in more -- not fewer -- collisions.

The proposed rules would increase the number of truck deliveries during the most congested hours, boosting transportation costs by as much as 20% because deliveries would take more time and, as a result, require more trucks for the same number of deliveries, the federation claims. Also, it adds, more wrecks would likely ensue.

"Any change to this daily driving limit will upset the careful balance and efficiencies that have been achieved and require changes to those new systems and processes," David French, the federation's senior vice president for government relations, said in a statement. "In addition, such changes could result in significantly higher transportation costs and could lead to less safety as additional drivers and trucks will be required to make up for the shortfall."

The Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed the limits in December in an effort to reduce the number of roadway collisions that may be caused by trucker fatigue. In 2008, trucks were involved in about 365,000 wrecks, about 1% of which involved fatalities. The safety administration, which has until July to issue the rules, in December estimated that fatigue causes between 2% and 13% of truck collisions.

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