So that fake USB Chainsaw from the other day is indeed fake. Hence the fakeness. It’s instead an eye-opening ad campaign aimed at educating the public about the wastefulness of printers.

Instead of buying a USB chainsaw, you can download a little program that plays the sound of a chainsaw whenever you print something.

That’s supposed to remind you that paper is made from trees — trees that have to be cut down in order to make paper to go in your printer.

I’m all for going paperless, but I’d rather have an actual USB chainsaw than a program that makes a chainsaw noise the five times per year that I print something. I know it’s wasteful, you know it’s wasteful, and the fact that toner cartridges cost more than what I paid for my laser printer is enough to keep it sitting on my desk doing nothing for the next ten years.

[via Wired]

Seriously. Please spend the extra cash and get this Pioneer BDP-120 over the $98 Magnavox Blu-ray player. You will be oh so happy that you did. Why you ask? Let me explain.

Ok, so first off this player is Profile 2.0, which means you will have access to all the interactive goodies on the latest Blu-ray titles. Plus, it has an Ethernet port for easy firmware update. Oh, and did I mention that it’s a Pioneer and not some random Walmart rollback special. That alone should make you opt for this one instead.

Use coupon code AFL5 to drop the price from $199 to $189.

Sixth Avenue Electronics via Dealnews

Looks like the South Korean government has forced Apple to recall the first generation iPod nano over concerns that the battery can overheat, leading to fires. It’s the first time that the iPod nano has been recalled.

There have been four cases of exploding batteries in South Korea since December. If three’s a trend, four’s a cause for panic!

The battery is a lithium-ion one, the same kind that’s probably in your cellphone right now.

That’s about it. Splenda has nothing to do with this story, I just liked the contrast.

ThinkGeek has the exclusive on Caffeinated Nixie Tubes. Five tubes nets $9 plus shipping and each tube contains about 20% more caffeine than a standard cup of coffee. So if you don’t like the taste of coffee and your insides have been rotted by carbonated beverages, looks like powder form might be the next best way to get your fix.

Caffeinated Nixie Tubes [ThinkGeek.com]

So the Hadopi Router is currently swirling about the Internet. Be careful what you read!

The router, called the Hadopi Router, was initially reported by Le Monde, France’s paper of record. That article is rubbish, it turns out. The story was that a hacker space in Paris had created the router in order to prove how futile it’d be to enforce the Hadopi law.

The fact of the matter is that the hacker group, /tmp/lab, have been working on a custom firmware, based on OpenWRT, that’s called HostileWRT. When a compatible router is flashed, it’s able to automate the process of cracking wireless security passwords. The whole point of the exercise is to prove that wireless security is largely a joke—I cracked a Wi-Fi network last year in Barcelona, and ended up saving my roommates several euros in the process.

The HostileWRT firmware isn’t available to download yet.

Flickr

Here’s a quick look at App Expose in Snow Leopard, a feature I was really looking forward to. It’s quite cool and works like a treat in the latest update. There are also a few improvements to the contextual menus in the dock but this is the only major UI improvement I saw.

Sorry for the sound quality. I was trying something new. But the most important stuff is there.

I observed that Google’s not in the operating system business, so Chrome OS isn’t expected to be their bread-and-butter. It’s expected to be one mechanism (of many) to allow their bread to continue to be buttered by making the online experience better for the casual user. The less barriers there are to an enjoyable online experience, the more of a market Google can enjoy. All the fancy offline features of various Google products are ancillary benefits to a small segment of their userbase: the bulk of Google services and applications are intended to be used and enjoyed online. I’d wager that Google would be happy to drop Chrome OS development if Microsoft Windows presented a demonstrably superior online experience.

Abu-Hadba gets this. He recognizes that Chrome OS isn’t a direct threat to Microsoft’s cash cows, the Windows and Office product lines. Chrome OS may eventually be one part of a larger paradigm shift, and it may even be a major part of that shift, but it’s important to remember that this does not represent a significant change in Google’s strategy. They’re not abandoning their core services to become an operating system developer, any more than Microsoft is abandoning their core offerings to become a search provider.

The thing that interests me vis-à-vis Google and Microsoft is the manner in which each pursues these secondary, and in some cases tertiary, endeavours. I think we can all agree that Google makes some cool stuff, and then just floats it out there for people to use. They seem to focus on making products that are genuinely useful, and allowing the customers to figure that out on their own. Microsoft, on the other hand, sets out to compete in new product spaces, and aggressively works to market their stuff against the competition. Silverlight, anyone? I suspect, without having done any analysis at all, that this is one of the reasons why everyone is so quick to claim that Chrome OS is or is not a threat to Windows: because all of Microsoft’s products are intended to be a threat to some established player.

And I can’t pass on the irony of Microsoft calling anyone else’s products as “defensive”. What was the last truly original thing Microsoft created? I suppose a case could be made for Bing — I admit I haven’t looked at it at all yet, because it doesn’t really interest me.

There are some things in our culture that most people consider to impossible to improve on: the mousetrap, the hammer. Some things are just so simple and useful that it’s really difficult to make it any better. I felt the same way about the ubiquitous “hoodie,” which is a staple of my personal wardrobe. Living in the high desert like I do, where it can (and will) get quite warm during the day, after the sun goes down it gets quite chilly.

When I first saw the Scottevest cotton hoodie on their site, I thought it looked like an interesting product, but didn’t give it much more thought. I have to say though, after having used the various features in the hoodie for a while, it really is possible to improve on such a basic article of clothing.

It’s quite remarkable really. Small changes that seem quite obvious when you think about them (in a “duh, why didn’t anyone else think of that” kind of way) really make a big difference. Things like magnetic closures, a keychain lanyard, and coin storage built into the front pockets. The interior pockets aren’t just haphazardly stitched in either - the MP3 pocket and cell phone pockets are up at the top, the sunglasses and water bottle pockets are located low, and in the front. So while you might have all 13 pockets full of stuff, you won’t look like a shoplifter trying to run out the door at Wal-mart.

In fact, I’ve even started wearing it when I’m out taking pictures. I normally carry a couple of lenses, a flash, lens cleaning kit, notebook, pen, GPS, cell phone, iPod touch, and a bottle of water with me when I’m shooting. Previously, I wore a backpack, which has a tendency to get in the way, and can be inconvenient to access. Now I just load up the pockets with what I want to take with me, and head out the door.

At $70, the Cotton hoodie is admittedly not cheap. But it is of a significantly higher quality fabric and better construction then your typical $20 throw-away that you can pick up just anywhere. I can honestly say that it’s worth the extra scratch for a product that’s not just a cool piece of geeky kit, but a well made product too.

I’ll admit I was a little skeptical when the Morpheus Culinary watch first slipped out of its little leather pouch and onto my table. It looked as garish as an overweight, open shirted tourist wearing cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. But then, to continue the metaphor, the watch seemed to get give me a plate of hot wings and a beer and said dig in, slowly getting me drunk as it told me stories about fishing expeditions involving copious amounts of alcohol and scantily clad island women. In short, this is one fun watch.

The overall design cue comes from high end cookware. The watch has a small handle that acts as a crown guard and the buttons and crown are supposed to look like stove handles. The hands are huge and brightly lumed and it is running an ISA 8173 quartz movement with alarm, small seconds, day of week, and second time zone. The register at 2 o’clock shows the seconds while the one at 10 o’clock shows the alarm status and the “battery power.” The 6 o’clock register shows day of week while the arrow hand shows the alarm time and the ball-tip “seconds” hand is actually a 2nd time zone.

The watch is aimed at cooks so it’s big and bold and, most importantly, inexpensive. At $375 it’s inexpensive enough to be a nice gift for the cook in your life and it’s durable enough to survive a few bake cycles.

Yes, the gold is quite gaudy but you’re not wearing this watch to the opera. It also comes in stainless steel, which will reduce the anguish considerably. Gold bracelet is comfortable if slightly on the light side. In all the design is quite nice.

It is waterproof to 5 ATM.

Now for a few problems. First, the 2nd time zone hand looks too much like a traditional second hand. This could confuse the novice. Second, there is no chronograph. I use my Seamaster Chrono as a cooking timer with abundant regularity. Sure you can set an alarm to warn you when your quiche is done but the stopwatch - with it’s one step start and stop - is a much better solution. This watch seems to suggest that cooks are also culinary globetrotters, which is a fine sentiment.

Bottom Line
This is the company’s first watch and they’re obviously limited by the feature set of the quartz movement they chose. I’ve always said that watchmakers should target chefs. Their hands are always on camera and their wrists are quite prominent when they are deboning chickens and the like. Looks like Morpheus has taken this idea to it’s obvious conclusion and created a whimsical and quite cool watch for the chef in all of us.

Product Page

Friday controversy! Eidos (remember: now owned by Square Enix) has flatly denied the allegations that it is trying to influence review scores of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Said allegations first popped up on The RAM Raider’s blog earlier today.

Quoth the Raider:

Several mags have their review code already, but have to sit on their reviews until a hateful embargo expires at the end of the month. But Eidos, ever the helpful fellows that they are, have been offering a way around this embargo. If you dedicate the cover of your mag to Arkham Asylum and guarantee a score of at least 90%, Eidos will allow you to run the review early.

To which Eidos has called a load of rubbish (scroll down):

With regards an article posted on RamRaider alleging that Eidos has fixed review scores for Batman: Arkham Asylum, we want to state that no discussions have been held about review scores with any magazines. In short there is simply not one shred of truth in this article, except for the title of the game.

Can I just say that I love the fact that there’s a guy out there called The RAM Raider who’s causing such a commotion? If only he used his obvious powers to draw attention to Wall Street excess…

You’ll recall that Eidos was involved with a bit of review score shenanigans about a year ago vis-à-vis Kane & Lynch.

Of course, in the year 2009 you’re certainly much better off just visiting your message board of choice to see what other like-minded gamers think about a game. Magazine reviews are sorta antiquated, IMO.

via Kotaku

UPDATE Let the record show that the word “influence” was spelled wrong in the headline. It’s not the first time, and it probably won’t be the last time.

Yet another possible glitch affecting the MacBook Pro, this time having to do with “strange clicking and beeping noises.” It seems that several people with the 7200 RPM hard drive (the Seagate Momentus 7200.4) have reported those “clicking” issues, as well as general performance issues. Can’t have that.

Apple hasn’t addressed the issue, and trips to the Apple Store to fix the problem haven’t quite worked out. Other World Computing—they sell Mac stuff—says the problem could be caused by the Seagate hard drive’s “G Fore” technology, which could be conflicting with the MacBook Pro’s built-in anti-shock protection. As a result, the hard drive may well be spinning up and down frequently, thus reducing performance and quite possibly shortening the life of the drive itself.

Solutions? 1) Deal with it. 2) Get a different hard drive, one without G Force. 3) Spend even more money and get a solid state drive.

Flickr

Greg Grunberg and his partners August Trometer and Rick Yaeger have a successful iPhone App called Yowza - it’s basically a location-aware coupon app that gives you great deals at major merchants - and Greg plays Matt Parkman on NBC’s Heroes, a program I’m told is quite popular with a certain demographic. They are two very cool guys.

I got a chance to talk to Greg and August about building iPhone apps, acting while topless, and was quite close to getting Hayden Panettiere’s phone number for you all.

CrunchGear: So… Yowza, is this your fallback move? Is this what happens when the bottom falls out of this whole acting fad?

Greg Grunberg: Exactly. This is for when they’re thinking about firing me and I’m like “I don’t understand, why is make-up putting some sort of an STD sore on my face? What’s going on? You know, is my character going to be killed off?”

I have always been business minded, always been sorta an entrepreneurial guy, I played a character on Felicity that was modeled after me actually. JJ Abrams is one of my closest friends so when he was creating that show, he was like, I’ve got the perfect character Sean Blumberg, He’s always looking for the next idea.

I mean I’ve been friends with JJ since preschool, believe it or not. All through college I was selling this and selling that, different businesses and stuff.

CG: So how did you get this idea?

GG: I love the iPhone, I’m a huge Mac and apple fan. About that, 9 months ago my wife and I were just complaining that we once again forgot our Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons. We’ve got 3 kids and I thought wouldn’t it be great to harness the GPS capabilities of the phone and have deals you know, coupons, hundreds with you, without having to pack them with the kid’s things.

So on Twitter about 2 months later I met August Trometer and Rick Yeager and August is here right now. August had been very successful with apps since the app store started.

I was like “Guys, I have this idea I dunno if it can be implemented, I don’t know if its even possible, I’m not kinda guy who can actually manipulate the SDK and actually write code for the app. But what do you think of this idea.” And they both turned white. They took the idea, the concept, and just ran with it.

Rick from a design standpoint, and August on the technical side. I’m really excited about the project. I catch myself on the set, and “I’m like oh shit, I should look at the script!” I’m so into Yowza right now. Don’t tell NBC that.

CG: The idea of GPS-based coupons isn’t brand new. Nokia’s talked about this, I think NEC talked about this years ago. What is it about today’s marketplace and the iPhone that really made this all come together when so many others have failed?

August Trometer: One of the things that I think differentiates the Iphone from all the previous efforts is just some of its capabilities. You’ve got GPS. A high res screen so you can put barcodes right there on the phone. That said there are still competitors on the iPhone that do similar things. But we took a completely different look at what everybody was doing, and we started with the shopper first, and we said if I was in the middle of a mall, how would I want this to work? And that’s the attitude we took when we were developing the application. And that’s why I think ours is the best of the bunch.

GG: There are so many, 50-60,000 apps that are in the store. You have to have the marketing dollars, or the marketing plan at least, to get the word out about it, and that’s kinda where I come in and help. I’m doing all the talk shows, I’m doing press. There’s another side to talking to me. People want to talk about heroes for 5 minutes and then talk about my iPhone app.

CG: How do you approach the stores, do you actually go out to the stores or do they call you. What’s the process there?

GG: At the beginning it was a tough chicken and egg situation. Where I was calling and saying “Hi its Greg Grunberg, star of NBC’s Heroes, can I talk to the head of marketing please,” and I would get them on the phone.

I’m not ashamed to say I’m using that to get to these people because they are being bombarded right now, by every type of marketing: email, text, traditional couponing and advertising in the papers and stuff. So I get them on the phone, and once they see the app they’re hooked. And it’s easy to demo.

That’s the good thing about this is then I can say do you have an iPhone, if they say no I say get someone in the office and get it. Turn it on and they can see how easy and intuitive it is.

CG: Are you thinking about expanding this to other platforms, Pre or Android or anything else?

AT: Yeah those are definitely on the road map. We don’t have a time frame for them. We really want to make sure there are plenty of merchants and plenty of shoppers to make the merchants happy. Definitely are looking at those platforms and will be expanding to them, we just don’t have the time frame right now.

CG: In terms of value add, for the merchants themselves, do they get any specific information on foot traffic walking by carrying iPhones. Are there any statistics you guys can gather from the data when folks run the app outside?

GG: Yeah, we have set it so that the merchants, all they need is access to the Internet. There is no set up, no equipment to buy, not even a set up charge. It’s a location-based app so the merchants are charged per location. What they have access to is unprecedented in this area: a minute-by-minute and location-by-location analytics, they can see the statistics how many people are pressing “Use Coupon,” then compare that to the actual reduction at the register.

Not every offer is one that needs to be redeemed if it’s a sale announcement then they would look at the number of uses. But they can really tailor this they can change offers on the fly. We just made a deal with Madison Square Garden Productions and it’ll be something that they can put up offers up during a sports game. Then they can take it down when everything is over. They want to be able to put an offer up so between the first and second periods of the game it’ll be a different offer they put up the next period.

Grocery Chains are excited about, if tomatoes are going bad they can immediately respond to that, and they can get rid of some inventory.

CG: Who do you have lined up right now?

GG: Pier 1, Sears, REI, the Container Store. We have a deal with Sysco foods and they provide all the foods for 400,000 restaurants nationwide. They’re encouraging the all the restaurants they service to take Yowza cause it’s so affordable, and so trackable, and you can control it, you can cater for a holiday then take it down.

AT: We collect a tremendous amount of data, the views and uses is just a small part of that. Over time we will be exposing more and more of that data to merchants so that they’ll be able to really see what’s going on with their coupons. And it is unprecedented for any advertising media for a merchant to be able to see this kind of data. You can’t do it with print; you can’t do it with TV or radio. It’s a really amazing thing for them.

CG: How has been your experience with the app store? I guess some folks have had mixed experiences with them. Did this all go through smoothly, almost immediately? Did they fly you out, put you up in the giant UFO hovering they have?

AT: Yeah there were no speed bumps at all really. Apples been great to work with and they’re really excited about Yowza.

GG: We both had a relationship with apple. I’ve known them for a long time, I produced a movie called Group Sex And they were instrumental in providing all the computers for the movie, for the in front of the camera and also behind the scenes.

It was great when, they actually contacted us, there was an article on me for Twittering, they contacted me and said thank you so much for saying I Twittered on an iPhone, I said that’s all I use.

They were very very helpful and continue to be. They’re very excited about having sort of a celebrity attached and an an app that people can turn to every single day and it can be useful in more than an entertaining way, but something that really can help people save money.

AT: I cant remember if Greg mentioned it in the beginning, but your readers might find it interesting, We all met on twitter, this whole business started on Twitter.

G: Yeah, that was a cool thing. I have a lot of people following me now, I didn’t at the beginning. At the beginning it was who Rick contacted me and said yeah, I can help you really take advantage of this social media thing if that’s what you want to do. And we started talking, he had a previous relationship with August, he said I should meet this guy, he develops apps, we have an idea for your product. Yeah thank God for Twitter.

CG: I have some questions from the guys at TechCrunch. First Jason Kincaid wants Hayden’s phone number, if you could send that over.

GG: Next.

JB: And then I’m supposed to ask you experience about being “shirtless fan” in Austin Powers: Gold Member.

GG: In nutshell I would have done anything in that movie, I love those movies. My brother auditioned for one of the other shirtless fans. I also did a commercial for Rolaids years ago, I don’t know how old you are, but it was a while ago, over 20 years ago.

JB: I’m 34 so maybe I saw it.

GG: Yeah, it’s pretty funny, and anyway, it was on for 2 years and it was about a guy who tailgates at the Buffalo Bills football game, and his father and grandfather are there, all topless, all shirtless. When we were cheering they had our bodies in slow motion so literally a ripple fat, its not an appealing thing. And anyway that became kinda famous; I was in the Today Show for it. So when they were casting the movie, and they met my brother they’re like “Go get Greg to come and do this with you.”

Carlos Deleon first told you about the FlipSide back in January and the fine folks from the revolutionary wallet company have informed us that they’ve gone 2.0. The RFID blocking wallet is now smaller, thinner and supposedly ‘smarter’ than the first generation FlipSide.

The following improvements were made from the 1.0 to 2.0. It’s now 5/8-inch thick (what it was before, I don’t know), has a redesigned button and locking mechanism, improved card slots (stronger and grippier, but with more room for finger space, says FS), and it comes in a bright “look at me” orange color. At least the price dropped down to $40.

FlipSide [FlipSide]

Do you have North Korean Cyberwar Blues? The latest news is that, though the “attack” seems to be waning, the Evil Doers have one more trick up their sleeve: they’re going to delete all your data? Or are they?

SecureWorks, which is in the business of warning people about Internet-related security threats, says some of the PCs used in this great North Korean Botnet of Doom are infected with a version of the mydoom virus. And, sometime today, these PCs are scheduled to begin erasing the data of the hard drive on which they reside.

And, just as I write this, it does look like some of these PCs are beginning to self-destruct.

What to make of all this? I don’t know. I use a Mac. (Hopefully Chrome OS takes off in numbers; the Internet is suffering under the weight of all these Windows viruses and whatnot.)

You can follow the news, as it breaks, on Twitter.

I get the feeling that anyone out there who does this will not look like the person(s) in this video. However, it’s nice to imagine vaguely Rastapunk Brazilian girls doing this to each other. Interestingly, I realize that came out horribly wrong but I know you kids are thinking the same thing.

via Instructables

Oh, how I wanted to hate this video. Yesterday was the thousandth episode of Attack of the Show—how did you celebrate?—and while I only caught about two minutes in between commercials of whatever else I was watching (I think it was a documentary about salt; I’m not joking), I did manage to catch the tail end of this video. It’s “The Girl at the Video Game Store,” a song written by Parry Gripp; the video was directed by Michael W. Shaw, of G4.

The premise is simple: there’s always one girl at the local GameStop, and she’s always the center of attention. This song is about her, played here, with aplomb, by Olivia Munn.

I tell ya, if I had been drinking water or whatever when I first heard the line “she’s my final fantasy” I would have done a spit-take.

Well done, I say, and I hate everything, as you all must know by now.