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To some people, the online world doesn't appear the way it does to the rest of us. They live their online lives not reading websites on Google or Bing, but casting about on Facebook and Twitter. They do this not because they enjoy standing apart from the crowd and being quirky (although there must be some of that to be sure), but because there are some fabulous opportunities available to them when they go about things this way. For instance, what is the best travel website you go to, to buy a round-trip to somewhere or the other? Expedia? Orbitz? Priceline?

As far as these people are concerned, that's almost like saying you use Ask Jeeves or Alta Vista (or some other sad and lost search engine) to look for information. To them, when it comes to travel deals, Twitter is where all the action is. All-in-one, it gives you access to the best flight and hotel prices, when there is a problem, it helps you get attention like nothing else, and it allows you personalized service (and upgrades).

Actually, most Twitter users do know pretty well that there are travel deals to be had. They even know that complaining on Twitter can make businesses jump like few other things can. It's just this personalized service thing that Twitter users don’t usually know enough to take advantage of. And in this way, it’s the best travel website experience ever.

For instance, you know that you’ll be arriving at a city late at night; but you still want something off the lunch menu because at that hotel, tucking into that is the favorite part of your entire stay. Sending a tweet over ahead of your visit asking for a little special consideration will usually get what you need – the lunch menu available at 1 AM in the middle of the night. For those who know their way around Twitter, the social networking and microblogging website provides them with a way of getting personalized service in a world filled with bland mass-produced service.

Twitter can do things for you that the best travel website of the regular kind never could. Need hotel recommendations from friends or self-styled experts around the country whom you've never met? Feel lonely after work in a new city and would like a temporary friend to catch a play with or go to dinner with? What other travel websites could help you achieve these things?

Certainly, travelers can go to Twitter for some extra service. Travel companies – hotels and airlines – love Twitter too though for how it allows them to stay on top of that their customers minds. JetBlue has such an entertaining Twitter feed, it has 1 million followers. In Las Vegas, the MGM Grand casino puts out to the public and classic Vegas fashion – on a large lighted sign on the strip.

Still, not everyone really understands how best to engage Twitter in a way that serves their needs. Companies, to begin with, aren't really doing all they can to entertain their regulars with tips and news bits that will keep them engaged with the company. All they do is to ply their followers with advertising and drive them away. In general, companies need to realize that there are two kinds of followers – those who like advertising and deals, and those who like information. They need to keep separate Twitter accounts for both.

As for travelers, they need to understand how to get into all of this. The first thing you need to do is to get on Twitter and broadcast your travel plans. You can be sure that hotels in the city you're going to will be listening and they will come in with some special offers.

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Workers with 401(k) plans these days do a lot more than to merely leave their plans alone while they work and contribute over the years. These days, there are such a range of products and services that they take advantage of to make the most of their retirement accounts. Roughly one out of three owners of 401(k) accounts use at least one of these services. They use target date funds, managed accounts and they use one of the most popular options around – professional 401(k) advice. So basically, this is what you want to know – is it worth it?

Well, a study put out by two major providers of these services does find strongly in favor of professional 401(k) management. The study finds that on average, you make 3% more on your 401(k) account when you accept professional advice. The belief is that apparently, people left to their own resources often do considerably worse managing risk and earning a return.

And it isn't merely over the long term that they gain the full benefit of the advice. Even those who are a mere five years away from retirement, the study tries to establish, can do far better with 401(k) advice from a professional. One possible reason why this is so, it is noted, is that those who are close to retirement, if let to their own devices, often panic over how far they have left to go, and they make some hasty decisions over how to manage their investments.

With professional 401(k) advice the other hand, they learn to put together a custom-made group of investments to go with how long they have left to work. These days, the younger 401(k) participants as a rule gravitate towards target date funds. This is where they get to put down the date they will retire so that the retirement fund manager will start with a risky (but high profit) investment plan, but will slowly switch to a more conservative one as the retirement day draws close. With people who have perhaps just seven or eight years left to retirement, managed accounts that offer a customized and conservative management policy offer the best value.

But not every provider of professional 401(k) advice charges something substantial. A study by Charles Schwab found that 401(k) participants often reject free professional 401(k) advice that they receive online – advice that could really make a difference. For instance, employers often offer free advice. But only about one in ten employees actually takes the advice.

According to Ms. Charles Schwab, perhaps companies should make their advice look more appealing – by offering them in proper one-on-one settings.

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Perhaps the whole premise of the movie Titanic was a little off. Objects of interest from the Titanic can be worth millions of dollars. They didn't have to go after the Heart of the Ocean. A few worthless artifacts would have been just as priceless. An Irish court gathered recently to try to make a decision on what kind of people had the right to salvage objects of interest from the wreck of the Titanic. They had to make a decision because there were people trying to retrieve Captain Smith's bathtub. The court sat and looked at a 3D photo of the deep ghostly interior of the Titanic – of the bathtub sitting there for nearly a century at bottom of the ocean.

The 3D photo today isn't just the province of people with access to deep pockets. If you would just like spectacular 3D photos of your children at the beach or other such heartwarming moments, Lumix makes 3-D camera for about $1,750. But what if you are just the official photographer for your own mud-pie making children and you can think of at least a dozen other places $1750 would be better spent? What if you just want to take wicked 3-D pictures of those mud pies without spending almost any cash at all?

There are all kinds of magical things possible on a little money these days. The new Lytro camera, for instance, for little money, allows you did take pictures that you can set the focus on afterwards in software. Now Kodak has a new system - that they just showed off at the Consumer Electronics Show. It allows you to take regular pictures with any regular camera and then turn them into it 3-D in the software they give you. All you need to do to gain this ability is to spend $100 on their new ESP C310 3-D photo printer.

What is it that the regular 3-D cameras do? They come with two separate lenses; every time you take a picture, you’re actually taking two pictures at different points of view. Each picture is meant for a different eye. Each eye gets to look only at the picture that's intended for it when you look at the picture through 3-D glasses. The genius of the new Kodak system is, that you don't have to have a camera that has two lenses set apart at a set distance. You just have to shoot any picture twice moving the camera a couple of inches for the second one.

You feed both images into the Windows-only software you get, and it turns both images into a single 3D photo that you can view with the supplied paper glasses. The question is though, does it work well when you can get your subjects to hold a pose until you click two pictures?

The 3-D photo that results tends to be viewable and clearly three-dimensional, if not with the kind of spectacular depth and clarity you get on real 3-D cameras. In some ways, this could be a novelty product.

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