BlackBerries, iPhones, iPads  and other devices are to blame for making women feel more guilty and distressed, a new study of mostly married men and women with children suggests [via CNN.com].

According to University of Toronto Sociology PhD candidate and lead author Paul Glavin, women surveyed felt 40% more distressed than men when family life is frequently interrupted by these electronic devices and other forms of communication. This is so despite having the same amount of work pressure.

The study of over 1000 respondents also showed that when co-workers contacted women at home, they felt guilty twice as often as men when contacted at home. Researchers were surprised by the differences between the emotional response between men and women even when all factors including ability to manage work and home life were held equal.

“We examined the extent that work actually interfered, and our results were focused on controlling for all those factors,” says Glavin. “At the end of the day, the only thing left was guilt, and that’s where the distress came in. We can only speculate about why.”

So why this difference in guilt? There is no definite answer, but Glavin says one theory is that society still holds, perhaps sub-consciously, the belief that women’s priority should still be the home with their children.  In other words, mothers at home who get that work-related call may feel more guilty about handling it because it takes time away from their duties at home.

What do you think?

Network data transfer tests on 57,000 iPhones all over the United States show that, on average, AT&T iPhone data transfer rates are about 2 times faster than Verizon iPhone’s.

Wired reports:

Ookla, creators of the Speedtest.net broadband test, compiled data from tests run by iPhone customers using the Speedtest.net app on both AT&T and Verizon. On average, the reported AT&T iPhone transfer rates were roughly two times faster than the Verizon iPhone’s.

The AT&T iPhone’s average download speed was 1,769 Kbps, and the average upload speed was 730 Kbps. By way of comparison, the Verizon iPhone’s average download speed was 848 Kbps, and the average upload speed was 506 Kbps.

The results come from 43,000 AT&T iPhones and 14,000 Verizon iPhones all over the United States. Most Speedtest.net app users ran the tests multiple times, totaling 106,000 results from AT&T iPhone users and 49,000 results from Verizon iPhone users.

Wired also notes that in the reporter’s own tests, tests show that the Verizon iPhone is able to complete all tests while AT&T iPhones were not, leading to the conclusion that AT&T’s coverage isn’t as good as Verizon’s.

Of course, this may not seem like news to most people. AT&T has been notorious for dropped calls while Verizon continues to tout its broad and reliable cell phone coverage. In my continuing saga of cell phone shopping, I have to make a trade-off if I really want an iPhone. AT&T’s iPhone is faster than Verizon’s iPhone, but AT&T has poorer coverage than the Verizon iPhone.

The conclusion? Go with AT&T’s iPhone if you plan to use it primarily to surf the web and other online activities, but go with the Verizon iPhone if making and receiving quality calls is more important to you. What do you think?