With the introduction of its new copy-restriction video service, Google has diverged from its corporate ethos. For the first time in the company's history, it has released a product that… Read the rest of the article: Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?

Technorati's David Sifry continues his quarterly "State of the Blogosphere" report, wherein he sums up the conclusions to be drawn from Technorati's amazing, deep data-set of information on how blogs… Read the rest of the article: New blogs can move into the "A-list"

Todd Vanderlin documents an experiment: "I bought a $10 electronic baby in china town. I cracked it open and soldered a couple of switches to the the speaker. Now the… Read the rest of the article: Hacked robot baby-toy

CNet's posted a ten-part pictorial series on the history of the hard drive, starting with IBM's 1956 5MB System 305 drive all the way up to Hitachi's 2003 femtoscale read-heads.… Read the rest of the article: History of hard-drives in pictures

A seventh-grade student in New Tampa, FL, compared the water in fast food restaurants' toilets to the water used in their drinks-ice and concluded that the ice was higher in… Read the rest of the article: Fast-food toilet-water has less bacteria than their drinks-ice

A shop in Tokyo hopes to overcome the unmasculine stigma attached to consuming sweets in public by cleverly disguising its wares as fast-food burgers and fries. The hope is that… Read the rest of the article: Cakes disguised as burgers help men who are ashamed of sweets

This site sells fingerpuppets of famous philosophers and historical figures from Darwin to the Buddha, Trotsky to Mozart. Link (Thanks, Leonardo!)

A phishing operation created an incredibly convincing fraud by exploiting a weakness in the way credit-card companies mask numbers and by tricking a careless security guarantor into being complicit with… Read the rest of the article: Phishers trick Internet "trust" companies

The Tattooed Banana blog features photos of bananas that have been tagged with what looks like magic marker "tattoos" (darkened scratches made in the peel's surface) — pictured here, the… Read the rest of the article: Decorated banana gallery

This HOWTO covers the construction of cardboard geodesic domes from a design field-tested at Burning Man; the domes go up in 3-4 hours with a three-person team: These domes have… Read the rest of the article: HOWTO Build a recycled cardboard geodesic dome

The ELP laser turntable reads LPs with lasers — the manufacturer claims that the lasers can read "virgin" parts of the grooves that haven't been touched by needles and produce… Read the rest of the article: Laser turntable plays records like CDs

Well, I've just had my second flight cancellation from London-Boston in 24 hours, and my new flight doesn't land until 5PM. As many of you know, I'm scheduled to be… Read the rest of the article: Cory's gonna be late to his MIT talk tonight

PCs with expensive video-cards won't be able to play high-definition DVDs unless they're built by big companies like Dell and Sony. PCs you build or upgrade yourself with "HDCP"-compatible high-end… Read the rest of the article: Only big companies' PCs will play high-def DVDs

dj BC has released a second album of "Beastles" (Beatles/Beastie Boys) mashups called Let It Beast. dj BC is one of my all time favorite mashup artists, not least because… Read the rest of the article: New album of Beatles/Beasties mashups – drop-dead awesome! — UPDATED

An enterprising modder has produced this beautiful alternative housing for a flat-panel display, dispensing with the boring black photo frame and replacing it with a pimped-out glowing transparent sheet of… Read the rest of the article: Tricked-out flat-panel display mod with glowing red clear frame

A Canadian trademark lawyer has posted an analysis of the Canadian Red Cross's claim that video games' use of the red cross emblem to indicate health-kits is a violation of… Read the rest of the article: Canadian Red Cross's dumb trademark claims are legally dubious

A great absurdist dialog between a father and son in 2019 shows what the outcome could be if the phone companies and big ISPs are successful in deploying "guaranteed delivery"… Read the rest of the article: What if the telcos rolled out tiered Internet service?

A former Australian city councillor has been charged with assault for shushing a woman who wouldn't stop talking on her phone at a screening of Brokeback Mountain. Pauline Clayton was… Read the rest of the article: Aussie tourist charged with assault for shushing Texas movie phone-talker

LA's Gallery 1988 is hosting a new exhibit called Remixing the Magic, which features 50 artists' reinterpretations of Disney works, opening on February 17. There's tantalizingly little info on the… Read the rest of the article: 50 artists remix Disney images at new LA gallery show

A Flickr photo-pool devoted to a Photoshop plugin has accumulated hundreds of beautiful pictures. The "High Dynamic Range" plugin merges several shots of the same scene taken at different exposures,… Read the rest of the article: Flickr group produces astonishing color pix with new plugin