By Andrew Liszewski

If you ask me, the supposed ‘pros’ of daylight savings don’t even come close to outweighing the ‘cons’ of having to change all my clocks twice a year. Even if these days the only device that doesn’t adjust itself is my microwave, and I never program that clock anyways. (It’s the principle dammit!) But if every clock was as easy to adjust as the Ora ilLegale, which you simply tip to the left or right, I might be more accepting of DST.

The clock was designed by Denis Guidone, and while it only exists as a fancy render at this point, it will eventually be produced by NAVA. But let’s be frank, you can probably save yourself a boatload of money with nothing more than a block of wood, a jigsaw and a DIY clock kit.

[ Yanko Design - A Lovely Little Clock with a Single Function ] VIA [ Cribcandy ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Having trouble finding a gift wrap with just the perfect sentiments? Well stop wasting your time at Hallmark and head on over to the Yellow Owl Workshop who sell this handy segmented LCD pattern wrapping paper that you can manually fill in to create a custom message or even crude ascii-art. The individual sheets measure 35 x 25 inches and are made from 100% PCW recycled paper, and a set of 5 will run you $19.50.

Thanks Meg!

[ LCD Write Your Own Message Gift Wrap ]

By Chris Scott Barr

If you own a Wii, there’s a good chance that you’ve played the boxing game bundled inside of Wii Sports. I spent some time playing it when I first got my hands on the then-elusive Nintendo console, and really enjoyed it. Of course it was just a freebie game, and thus lacked any real room for growth. Needless to say, I was excited to check out Ready 2 Rumble Revolution, which looked to be the full Wii boxing experience that I was looking for.

Revolution is actually the second game to bear the Ready 2 Rumble title, the first one being for the Dreamcast. I only had the chance to play it a couple of times, but I remember it as being a pretty decent game. This sequel features a host of wacky cartoonish characters for you to challenge. Of course you can create your own character and train them to be a champ. So how does the game stack up in the ring? Read on for the answer.

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By Chris Scott Barr

There’s a part of me that wishes I were a kid growing up right now, since I wouldn’t be stuck with dial-up and an NES (Though I did love my NES). Of course there’s another part that makes me more than happy that I don’t live under my parents’ roof any longer. This new GPS tracking service from AT&T would definitely fall into the latter category.

If you have a family plan with AT&T for an extra $9.99 (for two phones) or $14.99 (for up to five phones) you can track down any other phone on your plan using FamilyMaps. You can activate this feature from either your phone or a PC and find out exactly where your loved one is. Depending on how you use it, you will get text messages with location updates, or you can watch them on a map in real time. Granted, the person gets a text message letting them know you’re tracking them, but they have no way to stop you from doing so.

I can definitely see how a parent would enjoy such a feature. It’s an easy way to make sure that they’re not going places that they shouldn’t be. If you’re worried about your own privacy, don’t be. The feature can only be accessed by the account holder on a family plan.

[ AT&T ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Chris Scott Barr

There’s something wonderful about the power of the internet. Not only do we have a vast supply of knowledge at our fingertips, but we the ability to change things. No, I’m not talking about Wikipedia entries, but rather our ability to directly influence the decisions of people and companies. The latest victory for the internet masses comes from Time Warner Cable. Yes, the very same Time Warner that’s been spreading the disease of metered bandwidth.

We’ve been following the story for the last couple of weeks since Time Warner expanded their plans to bring metered bandwidth to the masses. Like almost everyone else out there, I was completely against these plans. Well apparently Time Warner has actually been listening to the uproar and decided to cancel its trial of metered bandwidth plans. You can pat yourselves on the backs peoples of the interweb, this victory is yours.

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By Evan Ackerman

Remembering and entering passwords in anything is a major hassle, which is why everything should have seamless biometric identification built in. Failing that, KDDI has come up with a gesture based system that at least eliminates annoying number codes. Using an accelerometer, the phone looks for a specific pattern of movements as you bring it up to your ear. These movements depend on things like arm length, muscle structure, and patterns such as holding methods and other habits. According to KDDI, the error rate is only 4%, which is easily good enough for casual use.

As far as I can tell, there’s no reason why something like this couldn’t be implemented into any phone with an accelerometer, even without KDDI’s fancy arm length etc. analysis software. You just have to turn the phone on, and shake shake shake it in a particular way, and it’ll unlock. KDDI eventually plans on taking this technique a little further, allowing you to use specific motions to run programs or unlock your porn folder.

[ Tech-On! ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By David Ponce

At 2:13am, EST, Ashton Kutcher officially reached 1,000,012 followers on Twitter. Why is this a big deal? Aside from the fact that he’s the first to surpass a million followers… he did it while beating CNN in a open contest. If you haven’t been following the race, that’s ok: it means you have lives elsewhere than in front a computer screen. But if you’re curious, here’s CNN’s take on it. In short, CNN and Ashton were racing to a million, and Ashton got there first.

It matters because Ashton is one (sometimes annoying, sometimes brilliant) dude, while CNN is a huge corporation. For one man to have the same voice and reach as CNN is a significant milestone in the evolution of media and highlights to what degree the landscape has changed in the last few years. Traditional, mainstream media is getting its ass handed to them by blogs, microblogging services (like Twitter), social networks and social news sites (like Digg). These services and their popularity are rewriting the game from a top-down, filtered, edited and often propagandized approach, to a disseminated, democratized and organic system of news gathering. In short, we’re entering an age where the people decide what’s news, and how to consume it.

What might have been dismissed as a passing fad by many a few short years ago now has at least 1,000,012 (and rising) dissenting voices.

By Andrew Liszewski

Were it not for the $63 price tag from the Japan Trend Shop, I’d be tempted to call these clever balloon lamps a cheap way to add some stylish lighting to your crib. They use a high-intensity LED light will run for about 100 hours on the included set of lithium-ion batteries, and instead of a traditional lamp shade, they’re designed to be stuck inside an inflated balloon. Not only does it produce a soft diffuse glow, but you can use any color balloon you like, and the lack of power cord means they can be easily hung anywhere.

[ Balloon Lamp ]

By Shane McGlaun

I can understand why some users would be interested in multimedia notebooks. The machines tend to be feature packed, have good graphics, and be able to play movies while you are on the go. The downside to the class of machines is that they are usually expensive and can be very large.

Acer has announced a new multimedia computer called the Acer Aspire 8935G. Some specifications of the machine are not announced at this time. What we do know is that the machine will use Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, run Windows Vista Home Premium, and sports a massive 18.4-inch LCD.

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