Ostensibly, this movement is in support of charity – the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation – but most women polled do not seem to be aware of this underlying purpose. “I say it to people even before I greet them – sometimes I don’t even greet them”, said Margaret Chapman. “I giggle a little when people look at me all confused,” she added. And she confesses that the embarrassment of saying “white” every day has convinced her to buy a new palette of bras to talk about.

Though women are laying the colors on thick, some people remain oblivious to the concept. “I had no idea why my wife was saying ‘red’ to me all day long until that night when we were in the bedroom,” said Josh Richter, adding, “she was not amused.”

A parade of consumer goods now bears the ‘multi-touch’ label: typewriters, lamps, musical instruments, bras, and of course, phones. The craze started with the eyePhone sold at Apple Whole Foods stores which was smooth and pleasant to touch. People could not get enough of stroking and caressing the new gadget, and other manufacturers sought to emulate its appeal.

New phones including the Hand Fore and Blueberry Precipitation Event are also multi-touch, mimicking the smooth surface of a pebble. But smoothness has gone beyond phones. Users are clamoring for smoother and more soothing experiences with everything they buy. Appliance makers have rushed to create multi-touch surfaces for all of their products and even granite counters are getting the multi-touch treatment. And in a multi-touch world, buyers are now upset when what they buy or use isn’t.

People are abandoning rough turtles and spiny fish for softer and more touchable domestic animals including dogs, cats, and sheep. Across the country, people have staged burnings of 2-ply toilet paper and Scott’s has introduced a 16-ply version in response.

“When you buy one of these newfangled Le Go-Go Nexus thingamajigs, you expect a certain level of touchability”, said John Sellers of Inglewood, while standing in a long line to multi-touch “The County’s Softest Multi-touch Horse and Lamb” at a local petting zoo. On Tuesday, the line was four hours long – another symptom of the multi-touch craze.

“I wish my wife were multi-touch..” mused Eric Weitzman of Santa Ana, standing in the same line. His wife, standing next to him, agreed.

“Over the last couple of years, social norms have been changing. People are sharing more than ever, and we are simply following that trend,” Sugarhill explained.

The company began to make these changes in December of last year. The company used to install curtains and walls by default, but now often leaves entire sections open in new buildings and has even retrogutted many of its older homes. The changes have revealed to the public all manner of once-private items including family photos, birth certificates, and embarrassing wall posters. The company offers to reinstall walls and cover windows, but only does so at the specific request of the owner.

All of these changes were made without the consent of the owners, which has led some to criticize FaceBuilding and its history of disrespecting the rights of homeowners.

Jen Gabriel of San Mateo is one such member of the the group that owns FaceBuilding homes we happened to profile. “I took a little vacation time and came back to see that the entire front of my house was gone! Suddenly everyone could see the pictures that my friends and took while we were out partying and dressed kinda slutty! All kinds of random people were writing stuff on my walls and requesting to be my friend – it was horrible!” she wrote in a note to her friends that we found on her kitchen table.

“Other companies would be too timid to innovate as much as we do – they wouldn’t go knock down walls and remove roofs from 350 million existing houses. But we are always trying to improve and keep up with the latest styles,” added Sugarhill. And he vowed that FaceBuilding would continue to innovate, noting that a possible direction for the company would be selling new ‘virtual’ buildings with no walls whatsoever.

The form factors varied, with some vendors showcasing additional features like built-in ‘bookmarks’ and ‘appendices’. A particularly high-end offering from Ericsung boasted ‘pop-up’ technology, which allows viewers to experience wholly-immersive 3d scenery.

Users have warmed to the ‘flipping’ paradigm of reading and the brief moment between the current and next pages no longer seems to be a significant handicap for the devices. Noting readers’ hunger for new features, the new paper displays allow for instant annotation and are compatible with pencils, pens, highlighters, and even markers of all makes and models. The newest displays even offer eraser compatibility and white-out friendly pages.

Of course, consumers can expect to pay a bit more for the extra features – especially for the fact that books are physically present and tangible. They run from $14.99 for the lower-grade paperback lines to premium hardcover offerings at an average price of $24.99. Buyers in Canada can expect to pay several dollars more for the same product thanks to the longstanding envious grudge held against them for socialized medicine.

Whispers abounded on the CESPOOL conference floor about a new book or ‘tablet’ reading device from Apple Whole Food. Rumored to be chiseled from the finest granite, the holy buzz around this new product is palpable.

Riding the wave of new reading products, books are coming as the e-reader phase wanes. All of these products, however, face a challenging trend – the average adult reads less than five words per day on average (including traffic signs), down from several hundred just a decade ago. This dramatic decrease has been blamed by some, particularly the on the widespread availability of audio cassettes and dirty magazines with color pictures. Equipment makers hailing books as the new device to save reading certainly have a lot to prove in the coming months.

Developed by a team of Le Go-Go engineers over the past two years, the Wave is now being tested by a select group of engineers and those that they have taught it to. New users are allowed to teach it to a limited number of their own friends too. All in all, however, just a few thousand people know how to ‘wave’.

Penelope Johnston is one of the privileged few. “I got it a long time ago when it first came out – one of my friends works at Le Go-Go,” she bragged. When asked what use she found for it, however, she conceded that she had ‘absolutely no idea.’

“It’s just a cool thing to have,” Johnston said. “Not all of my friends have even been taught how to wave yet, so here I am just waving to random people on the street. Some of them don’t even know how to wave back, so yeah, sometimes I feel like an idiot.” Like others I spoke to, Johnston likes to tell people she knows how to wave, but rarely does so herself.

I managed to get a hold of an invitation to the Wave craze myself through a friend. Excited, I waved to as many people as I knew, but I ran into the same problems reported by so many others. Nobody I knew had it, and out of the people I knew who did, none of them knew how to use it. I really did feel stupid waving at people and like everyone else, I eventually gave up and waved good-bye.

The error went unnoticed for several weeks until parent Todd Nesbit of Flint, Michigan published a Letter to the Editor of the local Times protesting the ‘offensive’ image pairing. Since then, parents across America have reacted. On a recent family trip to Akron, Ohio, Sue-Ellen Merchant of Mobile, Alabama and her two children aged four and five read “Alphabet Zoo”.

“I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when I read it,” said Merchant, “but it’s that damned liberal agenda again trying to poison our nation’s children.”

Her husband John, a self-identified lifelong Republican and devout conservative, sees it differently: “When I first saw that picture, I was just laughing hysterically – the best things are funny and true at the same time.”

Liberals are not laughing. The image has stirred up sharp political rhetoric, with some liberal organizations including MoveOver and WALNUT declaring the image ‘racist and misleading’. Animal rights advocate PETA has also chimed in, calling the image ‘deeply wrong’ and ‘an act of animal humiliation’.

The White House has issued a statement condemning the book and requesting that the image be altered in subsequent editions. A White House staffer commenting off-the-record, however, confided that the President had a hearty chuckle at his wife’s expense, saying that “they got the ears right.” This comment was reportedly followed by a fist-bump.

While it is making no moves to honor the White House’s request, the publisher did take out an ad in one of its own wholly-owned circulars apologizing for and explaining the situation. The statement from Le Go-Go reads: “Our indexing and filing policy is very strict and cannot be helped. This was the image returned to one of our design editors after consulting our image librarian. We apologize for the insult that we may have caused the First Lady, however we have no direct control over the system and people we have put in place.”

They answer this query all the time, everywhere, no matter what they’re doing – loudly and to nobody in particular. Upon waking up, they scream about how they feel for the benefit of their neighborhood. When they break bread, they yell about their food and often hold it up for others to see. They have coined a moniker for their newfangled habit and it is ‘to twit’. And it is clear that they will twit about anything, from rightfully juicy hearsay to the consistency of daily bowel movements.

The phenomenon is catching on. One can barely walk down the street in one of the big cities of New York or Chicago without hearing a twit raving and ranting. Famed New York socialite Adele Stevens is a noted twit. Her large following hangs on to her every twit as she strolls down Madison Avenue. A recent sampling includes this gem: “Just found out Susan Pritchett plans to wear an identical white gown to the Debutante Ball – going to kill that bitch.”

“Knowing that others understand what I am going through and find my life interesting is really important to me,” says Sanchez to me. He started twitting two months ago and has found it to be a tremendous ego-booster. As Harvard social psychologist Eric Bowdoin said when describing the twit epidemic, “It really boils down to social masturbation, plain and simple – these goddamn twits sometimes even yell about it literally.”

At the end of our meal, Sanchez suddenly seems deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. After a long pause, he screams out to our fellow diners: “Just finished a great free meal with my dreadfully ugly interviewer. At least I got a free piece of steak and I am going to be in the paper!” He looks at me and says, “Phew, I really had to work hard to keep that twit under 140 characters.”