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I SUPPOSE I should hail the rise of the crossover, these car-based pseudo-S.U.V.'s that give their owners a dash of off-road bravado without the profligacy - oil, ore and parking-lot real estate - of a true truck. But while crossovers are immensely popular and immensely useful, they're also immensely boring.

So you've built a five-passenger tall wagon with a V-6 engine, an automatic transmission and all-wheel drive? Join the club. Crossovers are to cars what J. Crew sweaters are to fashion - useful and dapper enough, but not the most exciting thing you'll ever buy.

Mercedes-Benz is obviously aware that the biggest challenge facing a new crossover is the sheer volume of competition. How do you stand out from the crowd?

The answer, evidently, is through bombastic styling. The new GLK, the smallest Benz wagon, eschews the generic oblong crossover shape in favor of upright, angular bodywork. Most crossovers seem to have been shaped by the wind. The GLK, meant to evoke the boxy G-Class S.U.V., looks to me as if it were left in the path of a retreating glacier.

While the 2010 GLK appears blunt, its coefficient of drag - the measure of a car's aerodynamic slipperiness - is only 0.35, the same as a Porsche Cayenne and surely far better than the G-Class. So evidently that bricklike look is a bit of styling trompe l'oeil, with the sharp creases on the bodywork doing their part to butch up a shape that is actually rather aerodynamic.

The festival of parallelograms continues inside. While Ford went for a retro '60s feel in the interior of the Mustang, Mercedes chose a different epoch for the GLK interior - I'm thinking about 1985. The GLK's squared-off console and instrument binnacle make me want to peg my acid-wash jeans and call my friends on a giant beige phone to talk about the new Oingo Boingo album.

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Coldplay didn't walk away with the Album of the Year award at the 2009 Grammys, but Viva la Vida did grab a pretty good consolation prize: The top-selling global album of 2008. In all, Chris Martin and Co. sold 6.8 million copies of Viva worldwide, and the LP easily became the best-selling digitally downloaded album of all time only one month of release, according to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).

AC/DC's Black Ice was Number Two in the world for 2008, followed by the ABBA-filled Mamma Mia! soundtrack. A pair of debut albums also penetrated the Top 10 Global Sellers, with Duffy's Rockferry taking Four and Leona Lewis' Spirit grabbing Seven. The Top Five was rounded out by Metallica's Death Magnetic. In the 18 through 20 slot, the triumvirate of Taylor Swift's Fearless, Jonas Brothers' A Little Bit Longer and the Camp Rock soundtrack represented the buying power of tween consumers. In the recent controversy department, Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad was the world's 10th best-seller, while Chris Brown's Exclusive finished in 46th place.

The global sales chart makes an album that seemingly disappointed in the U.S. look a lot better in the grand scheme. Madonna's Hard Candy was the 50th best-selling album in the U.S. in 2008, but scored 11 on the global charts. The same can be said for Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy, a chronic Best Buy-only underachiever in the States that sold enough copies around the world to place 14th, ahead of Britney Spears' Circus, Kid Rock's Rock N Roll Jesus and Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak.

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Cairo is the capital of Egypt and, with a total population in excess of 16 million people, one of the largest cities in both Africa and the Middle East (the regions which it conveniently straddles). It is also the 13th largest city in the world, and among the world's densest cities.

Situated on the River Nile, Cairo is famous for its own history, preserved in the fabulous medieval Islamic city and Coptic sites in Old Cairo. The Egyptian Museum in the center of town is a must see, with its countless Ancient Egyptian artifacts, as is shopping at the Khan al-Khalili bazaar. No trip to Cairo would be complete, for example, without a visit to the Giza Pyramids, to nearby Saqqara.

Though firmly attached to the past, Cairo is also home to a vibrant modern society. The Midan Tahrir area, built in the 19th century under the rule of Khedive Ismail, has strived to be a "Paris on the Nile". There also are a number of more modern suburbs including Ma'adi and Heliopolis, while Zamalek is a quiet area on Gezira Island, with upscale shopping. Cairo is best in the fall or spring, when the weather isn't so hot. A felucca ride on the Nile is a good way to escape from the busy city, as is a visit to al-Azhar Park.

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We hope you're comfortable with a world that changes quickly, because on the internet not even the greatest successes can stay on top for long. Case in point: MySpace (launched in 2003), the first hugely successful social network, has been surpassed by six-month younger Facebook. Part of the reason for MySpace's past dominance was Facebook's policies about who could sign up and create a profile, but over the years Facebook has eased its restrictions. First only college students could join, then it was opened up to high school students, and then to everyone.

Facebook has surpassed MySpace worldwide, but the old champion is still on top in the United States for now.

The boom for Facebook occurred mostly over the past year, with the latest record at just over 200 million unique visitors, or a fifth of the internet-using population. How many people do you know at this point who still exclusively use MySpace? Probably not that many, especially if you're outside of the United States; most of Facebook's growth occurred elsewhere. Even the Pope has joined up!

This isn't the only example of the rapidly turning tides of the internet; Twitter is now bigger than Digg, according to the BBC. Both are extremely popular with web professionals and geeks, and Digg (a site that promotes news stories based on popularity) was one of the biggest success stories of the past few years. Twitter (a blogging service that shares quick updates similar to Facebook status changes) grew 1,000% in the United Kingdom over the past year.