Oh Google, you will never cease to amaze me with your advanced knowledge of the interweb. It seems like not a week goes by that I don’t discover something new and wonderful tool that you’ve created. Why, just this morning I’ve stumbled onto your Autopilot for Gmail.
As you can imagine, I get a lot of email from PR companies and such, and I honestly don’t have time to read all of them. Sure, many of them are interesting, but I have the attention span of a 4-year-old when it comes to my inbox. But thanks to Gmail Autopilot, I don’t need to read them, let alone actually respond. All you need to do is let the Autopilot read a sampling of your conversations (more than 100 is ideal), then adjust a few simple settings and it will do the rest.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been meaning to update my resume, I remember hearing something about Google opening a moonbase a little while back. I totally need to get in on that.
Let’s say that you’ve had a rough day and you go out to the bar and get, well, for lack of a better word shit-faced. Now you don’t exactly have someone at home that can come pick you up, so what do you do? Cabs cost money and you don’t have any friends, so it’s a good thing that you hooked up a motor and some wheels to your barstool. Hell, now you don’t even have to get off your ass to go home. Just have someone get the door and the open road is all yours.
Yes I do have a rather active imagination, but these events actually happened. Some guy over in Ohio did these very things, and ended up wrecking his precious barstool. This caused the police to get involved, which of course arrested him on DUI charges. The man gave the officer a couple of interesting details before issuing his “Not Guilty” plea. First, the stool has a top speed of 38mph, which isn’t bad for a bar stool. He then informed the officer that he had drank 15 beers before speeding off on his power stool. “Not Guilty” indeed.
I always love a good conspiracy theory. There’s nothing quite like diving into the complex possibilities of what our government or some large company might be cooking up. Well the best one that I’ve heard recently is concerning those fancy little DTV converter boxes that the government is handing out coupons for. Why do you think that they are trying so hard to get those into our houses? It’s because they’re trying to spy on us!
While I’m sure at least a few people out there gave some thought to that last line, it isn’t actually true. A YouTube clip that surface recently showed someone taking apart such a device and discovering a small camera and microphone stashed away inside. While there were some who inevitably fell for the hoax, it was just that. Someone merely cracked open the case, carefully added the components to the board and made it look believable.
When you think about it, there’s no way that the government would plant such devices. Could you imagine the number of people that would have to sit around all day watching people who are watching TV? Now that would be a crappy job.
People have been posting Monty Python clips on YouTube for years… Not to put too fine a point on it but, YouTube users have been distributing copyrighted multimedia content without authorization. Shocking. Rather than go after poor college kids with lawsuits like the RIAA and MPAA have decided to do, the Pythons themselves started their own YouTube channel with this description:
For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.
We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.
But we want something in return.
None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.
As of yesterday, Monty Python’s DVDs are now #2 on Amazon’s Movies and TV bestsellers list, which is an increase of 23,000% (yes, thousand) over pre-YouTube sales. Okay, so this model obviously can’t work for everything, but the point is that free content can actually get people to pay for what they like. The key is to embrace new media creatively rather than try and suppress or destroy it. Easier said than done, perhaps, but if Monty Python can do it…
Never mind the dual screens, dual hard drives, Wacom tablet, and integrated color calibration… If you buy a Lenovo W700ds, your co-workers will strip naked for you.
I’ve always wondered why it is people feel compelled to give fruitcakes during the holidays. I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever tried one, mostly because I don’t know how many times its been re-gifted. Well this year, why not give someone a fake fruitcake? Sure, you’ve always got the inflatable one that we showed you, but this one looks a bit more authentic.
See, if you get someone an inflatable fruitcake, they’ll know it’s a gag gift and you’ll all have a good laugh. However, this rather real looking foam cake will actually fool them into thinking that you’ve actually gotten them the real deal. Now this can go one of two ways. The recipient can either try to eat it, at which time you’ll all have a really good laugh, or they can throw it out (or alternatively re-gift it). If the latter happens, you can really corner them by asking later how they enjoyed the fruitcake. They will likely tell you that it was delicious and thank you for the thoughtful gift. I’d personally hope this happened. At this point you’re free to ridicule them endlessly for just tossing aside your gift, or even more so for re-gifting it to someone else. Either way, $13 is going to get you countless laughs.
I love brain teasers and crafty puzzles. Anything that really makes you think for the solution. I guess it’s that rush that I get when I finally figure it out (which is usually followed by that feeling of “I wasted how much time on that thing?”, but we won’t go into that). However, this is one puzzle that I wouldn’t like to encounter, unless it were on my own terms.
This crazy-looking toilet paper holder is special. You see, there is a puzzle that must be solved before the TP can be dispensed. This is the sort of thing that you figure out how to solve beforehand, then install just to frustrate your friends and family. At just $20, this is a cost-effective way to make sure that your mother-in-law stops by as little as possible.
I love the holidays, as I’m one of those people that really enjoys giving gifts. I love seeing the look on people’s faces when they tear off the wrapping paper and see the perfect present. Of course every now and then I get a kick out of placing someone’s gift inside a completely different box, so that it looks like I got them a boring toaster or something. It’s usually good for a laugh, mostly because they don’t know what to say upon realizing that I got them a crappy gift. Of course when they open it up, they find something much better. Well I think that sort of prank is just the idea behind these crazy gift boxes.
If you’ve never been to The Onion, I suggest stopping by there for a good laugh. They come up with some of the most outrageous fake news stories. So who better to come up with some really crappy fake products than them? They’re offering up a set of 6 12”x9”x4” boxes that depict some really strange products. These include an organizer for your hat visor, a power strip for your car (complete with four outlets, two USB ports and a parallel printer port), a Peaceful Progression Smoke Alarm (wake up to the gentle sounds of the rainforest) and even a USB toaster. $30 for a set of six cardboard boxes seems a bit crazy, but if you’re a prankster it’ll be worth every penny.
I’m terrible at wrapping gifts, despite having done it for many years. You’d think that by now I’d have mastered the craft, but alas it isn’t so. There have been times where I’ve been tempted to order my gifts pre-wrapped, however, my relatives would surely be suspicious of all the neat folds and well-placed tape. Thankfully online gadget store Firebox is looking out for people just like me.
If you happen to order a gift from Firebox, they have an interesting alternative to the usual wrapping option. Instead of sending out a perfectly-wrapped gift, it will come looking as though a five-year-old (or someone like me) wrapped it. Complete with uneven cuts, uneven edges and crappy tape, your loved ones will know exactly who it came from. This extra special service will add a few extra bucks to your order, so depending on how many you’re buying, it might be fun to do.
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