You know, we here at New Times are always looking for ways to spit, polish, and shine up our sites to provide you with a better news-seeking experience.

We know, that makes us really awesome, but beyond that, it makes you awesome for keeping up with us.

Where can you get the latest Miami news on politics, the Heat, Florida Man, manatee molesters, Rick Ross, and the best (or worst) restaurants in town?

Allow us to show you.

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Miamians can register to vote with their touch screens.

With voter registration for the November presidential election closing on October 9, if you haven't done so already, you may not make the deadline -- unless you have a smartphone and happen to be standing next to one of ten Rock the Vote bus bench posters scattered between Morningside and downtown Miami. The organization contracted Flomio Inc., a Miami-based tech start-up, to embed the posters with social media applications that allows people to sign up for their civic duty with a simple touch of a smartphone's screen.

"Rock the Vote wanted to try something new to get young people to register through mobile applications," says Flomio cofounder Tim Ronan. "You can register in minutes."

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​Online shopping was a boon to buyers who sometimes felt a little embarrassment when buying certain products. The web's anonymity may have made them feel like no one could judge them for, say, buying an industrial-sized vat of KY Jelly. But the mere presence of social media logos like Twitter and Facebook may be bringing a bit of shame to web shopping according to a new study by the University of Miami School of Business Administration.

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Still (technically) alive

​Living in Miami actually makes it much easier to quickly judge whether reports of Fidel Castro's demise are true. Just open your window: Are horns honking? Are fireworks exploding? Is anyone running down your street yelling El hijo de puta está muerto?!

If not, then Fidel is probably not dead. Such was the case last night when the Twitterverse exploded with millions of false tweets that the dictator had kicked it. Turns out a "Fidel is Dead" email virus might be to blame yet again.

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photo by John Karakansantis via Wikimedia Commons

​What if your smartphone has secretly tracked everything you've done for the past two years: every Google search, every website, every key stroke -- not to mention everywhere you've traveled? Sounds like a paranoid fantasy from Enemy of the State, but that's exactly what a secret bit of phone software made by a company called Carrier IQ seems to have done to millions of BlackBerry, Nokia, and Android phones.

An analyst discovered the covert software last month, and a group of Miami residents is now suing the California company for breaching their privacy. "This software is literally a secret agent placed in your phone with the sole purpose of relaying your actions back to the company," says Daniel Dolan, one of the lawyers behind the suit.

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​Do you camp out by the newsstand every year waiting for our Best of Miami issue? Ever wish while you were on the road -- whether driving through Kendall thirsting for a great bar or spending a work week in K.C., Sacramento, or D.C. -- that some of that New Times wisdom could travel with you?

That's exactly why we made our free "Best Of" app for smartphones this year -- a map-loaded, citywide guide to 32 metropolises around the country with 10,000 picks for where to eat, hang out and get loaded in each. This week the mobile guide has gotten some year-end love from both Wired and iTunes, which calls "Best Of" one of the year's finest travel apps.

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Voxxi.com Chief Executive Emilio Sanchez

​Is there a market for a Hispanic focused news, opinion and aggregation website? A veteran journalist for the EFE News Agency, the leading Spanish language news service in the world, seems to think so. Emilio Sanchez, EFE's former bureau chief in Washington D.C. and Miami, is now at the helm of Voxxi.com, a Miami-based news website that will target second and third generation Hispanics.

"We're going after segments of the Hispanic community that use English as a first language," Sanchez says. "We have done research and they don't like to read in Spanish."

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When we asked it for cheap hookers...

Steve Job's first posthumous release -- the iPhone 4S -- is getting a lot of buzz for its new "personal assistant", Siri, who's supposed to be really good at setting up meetings and booking hotel rooms for high-powered types.

Or finding the nearest hookers for alt-weekly staffers, apparently. Yesterday, we asked Siri: "Where can we find a hooker and how much will it cost?"

Siri perkily responded that she had found 16 escorts in the area. She lamented that she couldn't "look specifically for price range." Maybe that more pimpin'-friendly feature will be on the iPhone 5.

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Hopefully there won't be many Fail Whale sightings.

​A Dutch airline had already booked up an entire flight to Miami using Twitter, so it was only a matter of time until a cruise ship company tries the same. This November, Norwegian Cruise Lines will set sail with what its claiming is the world's first Twitter-themed cruise. Personally, a vacation for us means a chance to temporarily cut our ties from all our gadgets, but apparently some people can't wait to Tweet about sunbathing on a cruise ship deck.

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​A modern-day nightmare swept greater Miami-Dade yesterday afternoon. AT&T's 3G cell service completely ceased to work, leaving thousands of iPhone and other smartphone addicts without on-the-go access to their precious, precious Twitters, Foursquare and Words With Friends. The unimaginable horror was almost too much to bear. We're frankly just relieved no one died or was seriously injured during the great 3G outage.

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