TO get an idea of how wildly popular community sites such as YouTube have become, take note of Ryan Fitzgerald, an unemployed 20-year-old who has more than his 15 minutes of fame.Fitzgerald, who obviously had nothing to do with his time, decided to lend his ears to anyone who wanted to talk to him. Last week he posted a video on YouTube containing his cell phone number with the statement: "I never met you, but I do care." Over the weekend he reported receiving about 5,000 calls and was about to run out of free minutes from his provider, according to the Boston Globe.

Perhaps Royal Philips Electronics has taken a hint from the YouTube phenomenon in its latest advertising campaign. The company has launched a free service that allows cellphone users to hook into information about places to visit in major cities around the world.

Using Philips Simplicity Concierge (www.concierge.philips.com), people can send text messages querying the service, which will then send them the information. For example, send a text message DINE NYC to 82222 while in the US and you will be sent Condé Nast's five best recommendations for restaurants in the city.

Philips, which paid $5 million to Condé Nast for the service, is making it available on the internet and by cellphone until September this year.

Philips is running the service under its "Sense and Simplicity" advertising campaign, one that does not publicise the company's consumer products directly.

Instead Philips is hoping to promote the idea of doing e-commerce by cellphone.

The travel service also comes with plugs for items available through Amazon.com.****

BUSINESSES will rejoice at the announcement made this week by Research In Motion, which is about to release a new BlackBerry application that will support other mobile devices running on a Windows platform.This means businesses will not be forced to buy BlackBerry devices if they want all of their employees on the wireless service. Users will simply have to download the new software on to the other devices so as to access BlackBerry email, phone, calendar, address book, tasks, memos, browser, instant messaging and other applications.

RIM said it will begin offering the new software application suite later this year for select devices based on Windows Mobile 6. The software also allows users to switch between their existing Windows Mobile applications and the BlackBerry platform.***

A NEW version of Tweak software has come out to help you easily change and optimize Windows Vista to your personal preferences. TweakVI gives you access to hundreds of hidden features of Windows Vista, Microsoft's new operating system. In previous Tech Tattle columns I have recommended Tweak for Windows 98, 2000 and XP. The new TweakVI allows you to clean your registry files, activate system and software restrictions, display detailed system information, and create a 256 MB RAM drive among other things. There's a free version and a subscriber version, for those who need more features.Vista Manager 1.0.9 is another piece of management software available for the new Microsoft operating platform. This is free to try and $39.95 to buy. The all-in-one utility from Yamicsoft bundles together about 28 different utilities.

Both pieces of software are available from www.download.com.***

IF you are one of the many users who believe that cell phones are disrupting your brain waves, think about what the bees may be feeling. Researchers at Langer University in Koblenz, Germany, have identified cellphones as causing what they call "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD). The researchers say their study shows that mobile phones and other radio-emitting devices could be killing bees by scrambling their internal navigation systems.CCD was first identified in the US, when beekeepers started complaining that entire colonies of bees were suddenly disappearing. Bee numbers in the US have fallen by two thirds. Europe is starting to experience the same problem.