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Ready for your WTF moment of the day? Go to Amazon.com and do a search for "girl scout cookies."

It seems like an innocent enough search phrase right? What would you except to find after searching for "girl scout cookies"? Maybe some Girl Scouts related merchandise and perhaps some cookies? Nope. How about slutty adult Girl Scout outfits, vaginal surgical instruments and a 32 oz. bottle of wolf urine?


Hopefully someone at Amazon.com will see this blog post and fix the search results soon. Here's a screenshot of the Amazon.com page just in case the search page is fixed before you read this article:



Last year we saw a similar incident where Barack Obama Halloween masks were listed on Amazon.com if you searched for the phrase "terrorist costume." Thankfully Amazon.com quickly stepped in and fixed that.


methodshop

Labels: internet, offbeat

A fishermen and his dog thought they had found a nice quiet place to park their boat and cast their reel. But apparently the spot was already claimed by a crazy Canadian goose with a major bias towards Yellow Labrador Retrievers.

Moments after pulling into their quiet fishing spot, the psycho goose jumps into the boat and starts attacking. In an attempt to save his dog, the fisherman places the goose on a nearby dock. But then the goose just jumps back into the boat and resumes his dog attack.

In just 2 minutes, the fisherman has to forcefully remove the goose 7 times from his boat. Unfortunately the poor dog gets the brunt of the bullying. Realizing that the goose won't stop attacking his dog, the fisherman has to flee the area and floors his boat in order to outrun their feathered attacker.

A video of the incident has already become a hit on YouTube and was even featured on the American TV show Inside Edition.





methodshop

Labels: offbeat, video

If you are a Windows user, then you should take the time this weekend to make sure your operating system is fully patched (via Windows Update) and that your virus scanner's definitions are up to date.

There's a new worm called Conficker C on the loose that has already infected millions of computers and is set to 'turn on' some particular feature (unknown as of right now) on April 1.

That feature could range from the benign to the outright destructive, so don't take any chances.

Via GizmosForGeeks.com

Labels: computer, microsoft, security, virus, windows, worm

What would Death himself do if he were surrounded by ultra-cute critters? Kill them, of course! In the game Bloody Fun Day, you play the reaper, who needs to kill red cuties in order to stay alive. Killing other cuties will help charge super powers that make it easier to get to the red cuties. Click an adjacent hexagon to attack it. Use the buttons along the bottom of the screen to activate your any special power ups. Your health decreases every time you make an attack, but killing red cuties will give you back health. Your health is in the top left of the screen. Don't let it reach zero!

How long can you survive before the dwindling cutie population stifles your life? You can’t help but have a bloody fun day in this addictive puzzler. Good luck!




Game: Bloody Fun Day


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Labels: games

Continue reading: Legacy Locker passes on your digital assets to your beneficiaries when you die

methodshop

Labels: internet, software

When was the last time you got excited for a laptop? Pull down your pants and say hello to the HP Mini Netbook. Slender, lightweight, and ultramobile, the HP Mini represents a convenient alternative to carrying your primary laptop everywhere you go. Need to write a blog at a trade show or a press conference? Thinking about bringing a computer with you on vacation? Does your back hurt? Finding a reason to own a cute light-weight netbook isn't hard.

Cute is one thing, but what about functionality? True to its "netbook" name, the HP Mini makes getting on the 'Net easy. Besides having a great built-in WiFi antenna, Ethernet port and Bluetooth, an optional 3G broadband wireless capability enables basic Internet access from almost anywhere with cell phone coverage.

We had a camera handy and took some HP Mini unboxing photos. Here's how it went...







methodshop

Labels: gadgets, pics, review

After working 5 flights in one day, this Southwest Airlines flight attendant can't bare to recite the same boring passenger announcement one more time. So he raps it. Here's the video clip.



If you want to download this clip and convert for your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV, then check out this tutorial: How to Copy Videos Off YouTube.



methodshop

Labels: offbeat, video

Are you stuck with a BlackBerry at work but really want an iPhone? There's no magic trick to physically convert your BlackBerry into an iPhone, but you can install the free "bPhone for BlackBerry" theme and make your BlackBerry feel like an iPhone.

The theme will reskin your Blackberry icons with iPhone icons and even replaces the hourglass with the OS X spinning beach ball.

You can install the bPhone theme here if you are reading this on your phone right now or check out the author's website here.

Here's a step-by-step bPhone install tutorial:

1. open this link on your phone
2. Select your BlackBerry phone model (ie. the curve is the 8300).
3. Select the "Icon" theme
4. Enter in your BlackBerry email address
5. A download link will be emailed to your phone
   
6. Download the bPhone theme on your phone
7. Go to Prefs on your phone
8. Select the bPhone theme
9. Enable the bPhone theme
   

That's it!


But before you install the theme, please make sure your BlackBerry meets the following requirements:

• 8700 series: BlackBerry OS 4.2.1 or later. WARNING: You MUST have OS 4.2.1 or later or you may render your BlackBerry 8700 unusable! Go to Options > About to check your OS version.
• Pearl (all versions): BlackBerry OS 4.2.1 or later
• Curve (all versions) and 8830: BlackBerry OS 4.2.2 or later
• 8800: BlackBerry OS 4.2.1 or later

methodshop

Labels: iphone, mobile, tutorial

Yesterday, Apple disclosed some details about the new iPhone 3.0 operating system, due this summer. The beta release, now available to registered developers, will deliver 100 new features, including:

• cut, copy and paste (was it really that hard?!)
• MMS (finally!)
  
• landscape view for Mail
• Text and Notes
• stereo Bluetooth
• Notes syncing
• shake to shuffle
• parental controls for TV shows
• movies and App Store apps
• a new Voice Memo app
• automatic login at Wi-Fi hot spots.
  

Apple also disclosed some stunning figures about the iPhone platform. There have been more than 800 million apps downloaded; there are now more than 25,000 apps to choose from at the App Store and over 50,000 companies have joined the developers program to date.


methodshop

Labels: apple, gadgets, mobile, tech news

Four Leaf Clover is pretty mindless and easy enough to play while your still a little hungover from the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The goal of Four Leaf Clover is very easy: you have to find all 7 four leaf clovers in the field. But hurry. You are being timed. And guess carefully. You lose points each time you make a wrong guess. Have fun and may the luck of the Irish be with you!



methodshop

Labels: games, holiday

Every year on March 17, we honor Saint Patrick (circa 385–461), one of the patron saints of Ireland. Whether or not you choose to celebrate the holiday by wearing green, eating Irish foods, imbibing Irish drink (usually Guinness), or attending parades, we wish you a safe a happy holiday.

Everyone wants to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day... even computer operating systems (WARNING: Serious nerd humor below). So as you raise your glass to St. Patrick this year, try to pretend your beer was a computer operating system. It might go a little like this...



Macintosh Beer
Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.

DOS Beer
Requires you to use your own can opener, and that you read the directions carefully before opening the can. The can is divided into eight compartments of 2oz each, which have to be accessed separately. A lot of people keep drinking it after it was discontinued.

Windows 3.1 Beer
Was the world's most popular beer in the mid-1990s. Looked a lot like Mac Beer's. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you open it.

Windows NT Beer
Windows NT beer could only be purchased by the truckload. This caused most people to have to go out and buy bigger refrigerators. The can looked just like Windows 3.1 Beer. Touted as an "industrial strength" beer, and suggested only for use in bars.

Windows XP Beer
Tastes like Windows 2000 beer but comes with a pretty dress. It opens sometimes without asking and if you leave a case of it open for awhile, it might explode all over your basement. Oh best of all, sometimes Windows XP Beer likes to open your front door and let people in to hang advertisements all over your house and steal your credit card number.

Windows Vista Beer
Windows Vista Beer looks a lot like the newest Mac Beer but tastes more like Windows XP Beer. Most people will probably keep drinking Windows XP Beer until their friends try Windows Vista Beer and say they like it. Many people try Windows Vista Beer, then spit it out and spend hours trying to put Windows XP Beer back into the same can.

UNIX Beer
This very heavy beer comes in 32oz cans, and has been around for years, rumor has it that it was originally brewed as a hoax by a couple of bored workers, only for them to find that some people actually liked the stuff. It tends to be drunk only by freaks or eccentric academics, often with beards; and drinkers of it do not like drinkers of any other beer. In its basic form it doesn't look particularly impressive, but with the addition of a magic ingredient named "X", it can be converted into an all-singing all-dancing beer on a par with the others. Many other varieties exist, with a huge range of flavors and (often unpronounceable) ingredients. Mac Beer has many of the same ingredients as Unix Beer.

OS/2 Beer
Tasted like a mix between Unix and DOS Beer. Allowed you to drink several DOS Beers and a Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously, but slowly. You never saw anyone drinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer Manufacturing) claimed that 9 million OS/2 Beer 6-packs were sold. The best place these days to find a an OS/2 Beer is inside an old ATM machine.

Amiga Beer
The company went out of business, but their recipe was picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer is an import. This beer never really sold very well because the original manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, Amiga Beer fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. When this can was originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design never changed much over the years, so it looked dated in its later years.





VMS Beer
Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top and sipping. However cans have been known on occasion to explode, or contain extremely un-beer-like contents. Best drunk in high pressure development environments. When you call the manufacturer for the list of ingredients, you're told that is proprietary and referred to an unknown listing in the manuals published by the FDA. Rumors are that this was once listed in the Physicians' Desk Reference as a tranquilizer, but no one can claim to have actually seen it.


methodshop

Labels: holiday, internet

Is your Apple TV freezing when you launch Boxee? Do you see a quick flash of the Apple logo and then just a blank "black screen"?

You aren't alone. If you were one of the early Boxee beta/alpha testers, you might have some files leftover from an old install. Don't even bother reinstalling Boxee or trying a factory restore on your Apple TV. These won't solve your Boxee problems. You need to remove the old user data files using a SSH client.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the steps to remove these old files and return your Boxee software to normal functionality on your Apple TV.






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Labels: apple tv, gadgets, tutorial, video

Last night Apple released iTunes 8.1. The new version of Apple's popular digital media player application features performance enhancements, support for CD imports to iTunes Plus, a smarter Genius function and iTunes DJ.

One of the biggest enhancements of iTunes 8.1 is speed. As users' iTunes libraries continue to grow, the application has had trouble keeping up. But according to Apple, iTunes 8.1 is now "faster and more responsive," and users "will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing." We definitely saw a major speed increase when backing up an iPod Touch.

Another update to iTunes 8.1 is the re-branding of "Party Shuffle" to "iTunes DJ." iPhone and iPod Touch users can now use the "Remote" app to request and rate songs to any computer on the same wireless network using iTunes. We can't wait to try this out at a party.





In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides several other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• 
Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• 
Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• 
Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• 
Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• 
Includes many accessibility improvements.
• 
Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.
• New Visualizer
  

You can download iTunes 8.1 from Apple's website here.


methodshop

Labels: itunes, tech news

The Internet, in some form or another, has been around since the 1960s. But you couldn't register .com domain names until the mid-1980s. Ever wonder what the first registered domain on the Internet was? Believe it or not, it was www.symbolics.com. Symbolics, Inc. was a software development firm who obviously had someone on staff who kept their finger on the pulse of the events leading up to the birth of our modern Internet.

Here's a list of the first 15 registered .com domain names:





You can see the full list on tgdaily.com. Most of the companies aren't around anymore, but some big names like Apple, GE, Cisco and Adobe round out the top 100.

Labels: internet

Computer scientist, Stephen Wolfram, feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek’s fictional smart computers. And you don't have to go to outer space to use it... just cyberspace. Wolfram's version is a Web-based application called Wolfram Alpha.




What does this mean exactly? Well instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Just imagine typing in ‘how many bones are in the human body?’ and getting the answer directly from this computer.


If this works well, this is going to revolutionize computing and in particular, the search engine market.


methodshop

Labels: internet, tech news

The streaming video site Hulu and the streaming-video-on-your-TV service Boxee spent all of last weekend fighting. Again. In late February, Hulu asked Boxee to remove the special Hulu browser from the Boxee software. Boxee complied with Hulu's request, but Boxee users were very upset.

Then last weekend, Boxee figured out a way around the Hulu issue. Boxee was able to reintegrate Hulu videos back into Boxee's software by creating a video RSS reader. Basically Boxee was just browsing Hulu's public RSS feeds which any web browser or RSS reader can do. This solution wasn't as flashy as the special Hulu application that Boxee had made, but it was a good work around until a formal deal could be worked out with Hulu.



Over the weekend, news quickly spread on Twitter that Boxee had reintegrated Hulu back into the Boxee software. Boxee users rejoiced but their celebration was short lived. Even though Boxee was only importing Hulu's public video RSS feeds, Hulu promptly blocked the Boxee RSS browser and displayed the following message: "This video is not currently available at this site, but you can view this and other Hulu videos at Hulu.com."




In response, Boxee released a statement on the company's blog:

"To our users: if you choose to use Boxee as your media browser to view legal and publicly available content on the Internet, we will do everything we can to ensure that you can access it, no matter what the source... while some of the best things in life are free, sometimes you have to work hard to get them."

Why is Hulu is putting so much effort into blocking Boxee? The only difference between Boxee and your web browser is that Boxee's browser is on your TV screen, rather than your computer screen.

However, there is a silver lining to this story for Boxee users. The new video RSS reader functionality that Boxee developed to reintegrate Hulu can be used to access other public RSS feeds. The next version of Boxee will most likely include the new RSS reader and a feature called "App Box" that will help simplify the addition of new in-house and third party applications.

Boxee hopes to have a new release ready before their New York City Boxee meetup on March 24.




Not sure what all this Boxee talk is all about? Boxee is a free open source cross-platform media center and entertainment hub that can play movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Hulu, Netflix, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, and flickr. Hell, the damn thing can even download free public torrents (Refer Madness anyone?!).



All you need to install Boxee on your Apple TV is a USB stick. If you own an Apple TV, then you need Boxee. Install Boxee and set your Apple TV free.


methodshop

Labels: apple tv, gadgets, tech news, tutorial, video

Here's an interesting video we found on YouTube. The clip is titled "World's Fastest Undresser" and looks like it's from a Japanese game show.







So how did he do it? YouTube user EclipseMoonXIV thinks they have it all figured out:

"he hooked his shirt over his foot, and then grabbed his pants. then, in pulling down his pants, his head went up. shirt was hooked on his foot, and went over his head and off his body."

Regardless of his method, this guy definitely has talent. Just not sure how often he'll get to use it. Anyone want to bet he's still single?


methodshop

Labels: internet, video

iTunes is much more than a digital music jukebox. It's capable of handling many different tasks involving digital media and your iPod. Some of iTunes' most popular features include buying music online, burning CDs, and syncing files with your iPod or iPhone. But one of the lesser known functions hidden within iTunes is the ability to convert audio files.

Why would you need to convert an audio file? Converting audio file types can be useful in many different situations. Here are a few examples:

• You have an AAC file in iTunes that's not compatible with your Zune that can play MP3 and not AAC files.


• A WAV file needs to be emailed to a client for approval but it's too big. You need to convert the file to an AAC so it's small enough to easily send via email.


• You are making a music video and want to use a song you purchased from the iTunes Store as the soundtrack. However, the editing program won't import the song because of Apple's protective DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Many programs that convert audio files into different formats are pretty complicated and usually cost money. But not iTunes. iTunes is simple, fast and best of all... free.



methodshop

Labels: itunes, tutorial

The average person may just think today is March 3rd. But to numbers nerds and math teachers, it's much more than that. Today's date, 3/3/09, is a square root. √9 = 3, or 3² = 3 × 3 = 9. For the math impaired, 3 is the square root of 9.

Square Root Days, as they are commonly called, only occur 9 times each century. If you weren't paying attention, then you might have missed the last Square Root Day on Feb. 2, 2004 (Groundhog Day). So enjoy today while you can. Go take an extra quiz or study for the SAT or GRE. The next Square Root Day isn't until April 4, 2016.




Photo by Skymother

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Labels: holiday

Here’s a very intense round up of the gadgets featured by Gizmos For Geeks this past week.

At the beginning of the week we looked at the new Samsung SGH-T719 which is Samsung’s equivalent of the BlackBerry – good for checking emails on, but perhaps not as easy to reply to them. Ironically, that was followed the next day by accessories for the BlackBerry Bold, which probably is a bit better for replying to emails.

This week’s articles seem to be mainly centered on phones, so to continue the trend we announced the release of the Helio Hero – a phone designed for rich multimedia content, without much regard for size! And, finishing the mobile theme, saw the biggest article of the week: Google Mobile Sync. This application from Google Mobile allows you to sync your phone, via the cloud, with your Google account, copying over your contacts and calendar entries.

And, just to show that phones aren’t the only things we talk about, we threw in the USB SATA Drive Dock and Multi-Color Lightbulb. The SATA Drive Dock being a very useful kit for hot-swapping between your SATA drives, and the Multi-Color Lightbulb was, well, absolutely just another ridiculous, unnecessary thing that we feel we had to have!

Gizmos for Geeks

Labels: gadgets, internet, mobile

Everyone and their grandmother is starting to jump on the social media bandwagon, but few companies really "get it" let alone take social media to a whole new level. It might be hard to believe, but as of this week, Skittles is now one of the most innovative brands involved in social media marketing.

If you go to Skittles.com, you might be surprised to see they're replaced their home page with a widget that links to Skittles social media pages on Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia and YouTube. That's right Skittles has gotten a complete social media makeover. No press releases, canned marketing copy or boring "about page" text. Skittles has basically given control of their brand and product image to social media communities. Very risky! Needless to say, someone in Skittles marketing department has giant balls.




Many companies are beginning to realize how important social media communities can be for their brand, but who would have thought Skittles would have been a trailblazer??


methodshop

Labels: internet, social networking

Does E=MC Sexy? Only when Albert Einstein, one of the smartest men of all time, chills out by the beach wearing a collared shirt tucked into gym shorts and a pair of ladies sandals. Does Albert's sexy confidence make you think of anyone else?


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Labels: pics