Oh! Gizmo

By David Ponce

It’s Friday. Go ahead and increase your end-of-week productivity by watching an awesome video. You know you want to…

This one is a brilliant production by CollegeHumour. It’s a Diabolical a view of the world, with fonts as people.

[ Original source ]

By Evan Ackerman

If I worked in a cubicle farm, this is how I’d like to spend my Friday afternoons. Plus, the video features (among other impressive Nerf weaponry) the incredibly awesome Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 (not due to be released until fall of 2008) in action:

[ Nerf ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I know it seems kind of odd to post another time waster since I doubt ‘reading OhGizmo!’ is part of anyone’s job description. But once you get through our witty quips, sarcastic digs and other humorous observations this should keep you distracted for several more hours.

The good people at Fanpop have put together a list of 101 classic Christmas videos you can actually watch online. The list is broken down into several sections including The Essentials, Cartoons, Stop-Motion Animation, Versions of A Christmas Carol, Sitcoms, Music Videos, Commercials, Parodies and Abominations. While some of the videos have already been taken offline, the site is trying hard to stay on top of things by removing links that don’t work anymore.

Certain classics like A Christmas Story and Miracle on 34th Street are missing because there are no online versions, but other than that the list looks pretty comprehensive. MST3K fans will be particularly happy to see the original version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which is so bad it seems like it was only shot so it could be made fun of later.

So head on over to Fanpop if you want to say goodbye to your workload and hello to Christmas memories.

[ Watch 101 Classic Christmas Videos Online ]

By Evan Ackerman

If you haven’t seen this yet, well… It’s damn funny (for everyone except the poor chick in the seal outfit, anyway). Next time I go to the zoo, I know what I’m wearing.

VIA [ Fark ]

By Evan Ackerman

Thrusday’s not quite Friday. So, wasting time away until five o’clock strikes is harder to justify. Still, we say “To hell with productivity!”, these videos are hot.

If you haven’t run across them yet, these two vids are very well done and show what might happen if people acted in real life as they do on the internet. Just like the internet, both of the videos have some substantially NSFW content.

By David Ponce

Some awesome footage from the Collegehumour guys. If Minesweeper was real (not just some 30KB game), this is the sort of tension and drama you could expect.

By David Ponce

Yes, it is Friday. While you’re counting down the hours to 5pm, here’s a cool slow motion video of a water balloon hitting the ground, but not bursting. It’s completely unrelated to gadgets, but darn if it isn’t fascinating.

VIA [ TechEBlog ]

By David Ponce

Having recently purchased a 37 inch HDTV, I’m in the market for the best way to bring higher definition content to it. I’m about to buy the Ziova CS-505, but now that I’ve seen the TrekStor MovieStation, I’m reconsidering. It’s basically just a hard drive, with media player hardware thrown in. You plug it into your PC and fill the drive up with whatever video content you’ve got, then plug it to your TV and watch it. It handles a variety of formats (MPEG-1 (VCD), MPEG-2 (SVCD, KVCD, DVD), IFO, VOB, DivX3, DivX5, XviD), and it can upscale them up to 1080i. Sadly there is no HDMI output, so you have to use component cables and either Digital optic (Toslink), analog stereo (Cinch) audio connection. And it’s not networkable, so you have to shuttle back and forth between TV and PC. The drive comes in sizes ranging from 250GB up to 500GB, and prices $300 and $400.

Of course, this device alone is inferior to the Ziova CS-505 (which does all this, and more, but streaming over your network), but I own an Xbox 360. Used in conjunction with the MovieStation, I may just be able to cover all my bases (since the Xbox 360 upscales DVDs over the VGA connection). Well… except for true HD content, but that’s easily solved with the inexpensive HD-DVD drive for the 360.

If anyone wants to suggest a better hardware combination, let’s hear it in the comments.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ SciFi Tech ]

By David Ponce

If there’s anything more fun than riding a roller coaster, it’s watching a roller coaster plow through a large crowd, at high speed. Trust us.

Now, we’re not homicidal maniacs. No worries. We’re talking about virtual roller coasters, of course. Just watch this video, and witness the hilarity of creating a roller coaster massacre in Roller Coaster Tycoon.