guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

The clever folks at The Girl and Rhino, creators of the fabulous Oakland container crane dreaming of a Star Wars AT-AT graphic, have introduced a new t-shirt to welcome in the Obama administration.

When my wife saw this photo, she IM’d me to say “I want one! Sorry, honey.”

I try to keep an open mind about these sorts of things. *sigh*

<small <photo by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

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A T-Shirt to Show Your Special Love for Obama

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A few last holiday notes: we finally have a selection of signed comic prints available in the xkcd store (we didn't think we'd get the prints up by the holidays but they just came in and look great). We also added Amazon Universal Wish List support, and the US order deadline for guaranteed by-Christmas delivery is this Friday.

Thanks!

Simon Tofield, the animator behind the wonderful “Simon’s Cat” series, is back with Simon’s Sister’s Dog ‘Fed Up’”, to help spread awareness of RSPCA’s “give animals a voice campaign” which tackles the serious issue of pet obesity.

According to leading vets, pet obesity is one of the biggest issues affecting pets’ health and one in three of the UK’s dogs and cats are now overweight. Fat pets can develop serious health problems – including diabetes, arthritis and even organ failure.

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Simon’s Sister’s Dog ‘Fed Up’, RSPCA Campaign Against Pet Obesity

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but here is a collection of videos dedicated to google earth "tours" organized around words like "horses" or "strange" :: mkbarth's Channel

For years now, the gaping hole in Google's online suite of applications has been a to-do list manager, but not anymore: today Gmail Labs adds a lightweight Tasks module to your email account. The killer feature? You can add a Gmail message to your task list in one click or keystroke. To get started, enable Tasks in the Gmail Labs section of your Settings area, and a Tasks link will appear below your Contacts link. Click on that to make a Task list appear on the bottom right of your screen (like chat), and there you can create multiple lists and switch between them, indent items, mark them as complete, drag and drop to reorder items, and view or clear completed items. To turn an email into a task, from the More Actions drop-down, choose "Add to Tasks." There are also copious keyboard shortcuts.

The Googlers explain:

1. Manage your email workflow better by converting emails into tasks: "More Actions > Add to Tasks"

2. ENTER creates a new task, TAB and SHIFT-TAB indent and un-indent, CTRL-UP and CTRL-DOWN let you reorder from the keyboard, and SHIFT-ENTER toggles back and forth between the detailed view for a task and the main view

3. After turning Tasks on, turn on Keyboard shortcuts in "Settings > General" and then use "SHIFT-T" to create tasks from your emails - even faster than using the More Actions menu

You can also pop out the Tasks module into its own window, like you can with chat. If you select a particular item, click on the gray arrow pointing to the right to edit the task's details, add a note and/or a due date, or remove the related email message, as shown.

The new Tasks module is huge news for GTD'ers who love Gmail, and while it's an experimental feature that's pretty lightweight, at first blush Tasks is looking very nicely done. Is Labs' Tasks feature looking good enough to lure you away from your current online to-do manager? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Our friends at the New York based underground exploration group Ars Subterranea have created a really cool large-format jigsaw puzzle based on photo by Bryan Papciak of an abandoned anatomical theater.

The puzzle is available for $28 through Furnace Press.

photo by Bryan Papciak

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Anatomy Theater Jigsaw Puzzle by Ars Subterranea

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the box doodle project

Over the past year, we've featured gobs of great desktops submitted by our readers to the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell group on Flickr. In the process, we've seen beautiful desktop transformations that have ranged in difficulty from a few simple tweaks to extreme desktop makeovers that transcend operating systems. Let's take a look back at the most popular reader-submitted desktops of 2008 and bask in the glow of their customizing prowess.

NOTE: Click the image for larger pictures of each desktop and the original description, complete with more details on how each desktop was accomplished.

The Enigma Desktop

This killer desktop setup includes a detailed how-to guide for creating your own Enigma desktop, complete with a download full of customization goodies. It features an embedded to-do list, system stats, a few attractive clocks, a now-playing section, and oh-so-much more. It even inspired a handful of incredible spin-off desktops.

The Mac Meets Windows Dual-Desktop

The Mac Meets Windows Dual-Desktop seamlessly fuses desktops from Mac OS X and Windows (running in a virtual machine). It even won our battle of the tricked out desktops.

Lightning at Sunset

The Lightning at Sunset desktop—brought to us by the same reader who created the Enigma desktop above—features a saucy HUD and several nice little Windows tweak. Like with the Enigma desktop, Kaelri was kind enough to detail how to roll your own Lightning at Sunset desktop.

Two-Faced Mac-like Windows Desktop

The Two-Faced Mac-like Windows desktop may look very much like a Mac, but looks can be deceiving. What you're actually looking at is an artfully tweaked installation of Windows XP.

All About the Icons

This All About the Icons desktop demonstrates that you don't need to run a fancy launcher and eat up system resources to create an attractive, dock-like set of launchable icons.

Vista Transblack Head Up Display

The Vista Transblack Head Up Display desktop's dark look is easy on the eyes but chock full of information.

Who Needs Icons?

Who Needs Icons serves as a counterpoint to the All About the Icons desktop above, illustrating that a minimal desktop clear of cluttering desktop icons can be a beautiful thing.

Windows Desktop in Monochrome

The Windows Desktop in Monochrome posits that you don't need color in your killer desktop.

A Transparent Vista

Don't adjust your monitors! This Transparent Vista Desktop is full of chrome you can see right through.

The Icon Tray Wallpaper

The Icon Tray Wallpaper desktop creates the illusion of a dock/application tray with a well chosen wallpaper and some custom icons.

A More Productive Vista Desktop

The More Productive Vista Desktop features a few great productivity enhancers for your Vista desktop, including the very cool to-do list app, Doomi.

Music, Stats, and Docks

Music, Stats, and Docks puts music and system stats at the forefront, with huge desktop-embedded album art, metadata, and lyrics.

Windows Vista with a Live Thumbnail Slider

Windows Vista with a Live Thumbnail Slider offers live previews of minimized applications in an attractive sidebar along with an embedded to-do list pinned to another sidebar.

Which of these featured desktops is your favorite?
( polls)
Since this is all about popularity, let's hear more about the desktop you like best in the comments.

guest post by Violet Blue

Many of us think of Christopher Walken as “The King of New York” — but how many remember Walken as the king of all those stop-action animated holiday TV specials that shaped the very foundation of our ability to see right from wrong, Santa from Satan, and when how sometimes in life an elf or two maybe occasionally needed to get whacked so little Timmy could get his toy boat?

Well, local theater company MacGyver Productions remember Walken’s formative voice-acting jobs from children’s television specials such as “The Year Without a Santa Claus” (1974), where demonic Heat Miser (voiced by George S. Irving) battles his arch-nemesis Snow Miser over the fate of Santa Claus. ‘Cause look: Snow Miser, he *owns* the North Pole. And he doesn’t like to be left out of business, unless you like your reindeer fulla bullet holes (hey, there’s “transportation costs” too). So MacGyver Productions has — this weekend only, in San Francisco, four nights — turned Walken’s ouvre as the voice of evil clay into, you guessed it: a cabaret called I Am Snowmiser: Walken In A Winter Wonderland.

There’s no business like snow business.

Christopher Walken [as played by Sean Owens] recounts his life for his official biography, reliving the greatest and most dreadful moments of his career, in such roles as Snowmiser, Frosty the Snowman’s whistle-swallowing Cop, and the nay-saying anti-dentistry Boss Elf. He broke the hearts of Mrs. Claus and the Doll from the Island of Misfit Toys, but ultimately found a holiday spirit which cannot be denied. Walk in our winter wonderland and bask in our ranks of the best local SF talent!

IAS:WIAWW is a MACGYVER PRODCUTION from Rhiannon Charisse and features the talents of Sean Owens, Sherilyn Connelly, Alexia Staniotes, Mikl-Em, Jim Jeske, Erin Lucas, Dan Foley, and Kelly McCarron.

Performances are at The Dark Room Theater on December 12, 13, 19, and 20. Tickets are $20 at the door, or $15 online via Brown Paper Tickets.

illustration by Rhiannon Charisse

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I Am Snowmiser: (Christopher) Walken in a Winter Wonderland

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80’s Rockers, the latest t-shirt by Chop Shop. Can you name them all?

31 pop, rock and alternative rockers whose careers peaked between the years 1980 and 1989. Many of are easy enough to figure, but we have also added 16 different videos featured on the sets throughout the design.

See Previously: Rock Star T-Shirt by Chop Shop

illustration by Chop Shop

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1980’s Rockers T-Shirt by Chop Shop

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Our friends at Form and Reform, who create amazing metal and fire art, are hosting The Stupendous Boiler Bar Holiday Party this Saturday, December 13th at their shop in Oakland. The event features a great line-up of performers and any Santas or his helpers that show up get a free drink.

The event is also benefit for “The Golden Mean”, their wonderful snail art car.

poster by unknown & snail car photo by Scott Beale

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

The Stupendous Boiler Bar Holiday Party & Snail Car Benefit

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All platforms: Hot off the press, the second beta of Firefox 3.1 is now available for download. In addition to Private Browsing Mode, tab tearing, and the speedy TraceMonkey Javascript engine turned on by default, the release notes list what else you get:

• This beta is now available in 54 languages.
• Added functions to make it easy to clear recent history by time as well as remove all traces of a website.
• New support for web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Removed the new tab-switching behavior based on feedback from users
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Oh and one thing the release notes don't include: an awesome welcome screen with a new robot.

Here's what pr0n mode, that is, "Private Browsing" looks like:

You can also clear all your private data:

Or just your history from today's secret browsing, or the last few hours, in case you forgot to kick into Private Browsing mode earlier:

Intrepid testers, be warned: most of your extensions will probably not work with beta 2, unless you use an about:config trick to force compatibility. The Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is a free download for all platforms; if you decide to test it, be sure to back up your Mozilla profile just in case (or maybe wait for the portable version release).

This year’s San Francisco Santacon takes place on Saturday, December 13th. Stay tuned to the SF Bay Area Sanarchy blog and subscribe to @sfsanta on Twitter for the latest news and updates on the event.

I’ve uploaded an updated version of the Santacon Carol Book to the Santarchy website, which you can download, print out and bring along with you during this weekend’s naughty Noel mayhem.

For more info the other Santacons being planned around the world this year, check out the full list of Santacon 2008 cities.

See Previously: Santacon 2008, Global Santarchy Invasion Planned For December

photo by John Curley

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San Francisco Santacon 2008

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With all the belt-tightening going on in this economy, it's no surprise that coupon codes and deal finders—especially for online shoppers—are the hottest tools on the web right now. With only a week or so left to finish your online holiday shopping in time for the packages to show up at your door before the 24th, it's time to fill those virtual carts and get to hitting "Checkout." Before you do, make sure you're getting the best price possible using this year's latest crop of deal finders, price comparators, and clever product search engines. Photo by Thomas Hawk.

Deal Finders

Most deal search engines work the same way: You enter the product you're looking for and in some cases, the price point, and they return any better deals in their index, no email address required.

BeatMyPrice.com (our full review) looks up products on sale at a better price than an existing listing that you enter. Made by the same folks who brought you coupon-finder RetailMeNot (which is integrated into BeatMyPrice.com's results), BeatMyPrice.com combines user-entered prices as well as product listings across the web.

GotoDaily (our full review) is a straightforward coupon search engine. Enter a store web site or keywords and GotoDaily will list coupon codes and deals to be had; users can remove codes that don't work or add new codes that aren't listed.

BeatThat! (our full review) is a community-driven deal search engine which indexes deals and coupons across the web and also gets entries from site users. Dedicated deal hunters can actually make money at BeatThat!, which pays its members for submitting deals that meet a certain criteria.

FreeShipping.org (our full review) rounds up free shipping coupons for over 600 stores online from the Gap to Macy's and Target and Home Depot and Land's End. Search by store or item to find free shipping coupon codes before you hit the "Purchase" button.

Price Drop Notifiers

Most price drop notification systems watch items you enter over time and email you when it goes on sale. While they'll all assure you that they'll never sell your email address or use it inappropriately, the paranoid can set up a spare free web mail account (like at Gmail) or use the Gmail + trick with your existing address to filter notification email and make sure it doesn't invite spam.

ShoppingNotes.com (our full review) is a straight-up online price watcher. You enter the URL of a product online that you want to get at a better price, and ShoppingNotes will email you a price drop notification up to a number of days you specify (like, until December 20th).

ZingSale (our full review) is another straightforward email price drop notification tool. Enter your desired product and your email address, and ZingSale will trigger a message when it goes on sale.

Savvy Circle (our full review) is a wishlist and price drop notification service. You add items from a wide range of specific stores to your Savvy Circle account's wishlist, and it watches those items in those stores and emails you when the item goes on sale.

Shop It To Me (our full review) scours the internet for sales on clothing brands and accessories you specify from Adidas to Louis Vuitton, and sends you an email digest of the latest deals on those brands online. Correction: Shop It To Me doesn't focus on sales at brick-and-mortar locations, as first stated. Apologies!

Price!pinx (our full review) tracks price drops at any site and offers a handy bookmarklet to do just that. Give Price!pinx your email address and add items to your watch list by hitting the !pinx button on your toolbar.

Lesser-known Product Search Engines, Reviews, and Recommendations

While your favorite store's search engine, or Google, or Amazon.com might turn up most product results, a few new search engines that offer clever twists on gift-finding are also available this year.

The Pogue-o-matic is a fun, interactive product guide to choosing the best tech gear for your circumstances. Made by our favorite New York Times tech columnist, David Pogue, you choose what item you're looking for—digital camera, smartphone, TV, camcorder—and answer a series of simple questions about what you need specifically in that item. Then Pogue tells you his recommendation based on your responses. Meant more for gadget newbs than anyone else, gamer nerds will still enjoy a classic Easter egg hidden in the app that Gizmodo uncovered.

Like.com (our full review) finds items that look like another based on an image. Upload a photo of those snazzy and expensive shoes and Like.com will send you an email of similar, discounted results.

Amazon Mobile for the iPhone (our full review) looks up any product on Amazon.com that you snap a picture of with your iPhone; similar to previously mentioned SnapTell.

PleaseDressMe (our full review) is a t-shirt search engine that makes finding items for your hipster internet-savvy cohort easy, aggregating snarky tee's from the likes of Threadless, Busted Tees, and other specialty vendors in one place.

GoodGuide (our full review) gets your green on this holiday season with a product database of information categorizing each item on how socially, health-conscious, and environmentally responsible it is.

ReviewGist (our full review) displays users reviews from across the web in easy to scan graphs, and can even compare products side-by-side, great especially for tech gear purchases.

---

If Amazon's your online storefront of choice, check out our Top 10 Amazon Power Shopper Tools. For more time-tested online shopping techniques, check out our guide on how to become an online power shopper.

What deal finders and product search engines have netted you the best deals this holiday season? Tell us about 'em in the comments.

guest post by Violet Blue

While kittens play in the windows at Macy’s Union Square here in San Francisco and glassy-eyed shoppers are decking the halls all around you, some of us might take more comfort retaining our gloom, wrapped tightly in out blackest clothes and hoping that no one gets any of that holiday cheer on us by accident. Not that we don’t love kittens. We do. But with everyone so seasonally happy-hyped, it’s like you gotta watch where you walk on the sidewalk so you don’t step in any and track it home. Fortunately for us, there’s Marrow (The Society for the Advancement of Despair) whose tagline is, “Own your misery.”

Do you wish you could just be left alone with your sadness? Why can’t people just let you be miserable? Don’t they understand that it feels good to feel bad?

We do.

Marrow believes that it’s everyone’s right to wallow in sadness. It’s a human need to embrace a little depression, and sometimes you just need to share that misery with the world.

Our state-of-the-art Unhappiness Enhancement(TM) facilities are the perfect place to explore the depths of your discontentment, and our mood crash coaches have been despised the world over.

We offer 10-15 night courses in a wide range of activities to amplify your pain. We can promise that when you leave us you’ll be worse than when you came, and you’ll have the tools you’ll need to bring sadness into your whole life.

Marrow is actually a local band, but morseo, an experience: for instance try taking their 13 Flavors of Fucked Up Quiz (”Which one are you? Take the quiz and find out.”). Watch their videos, where like in “Street Preacher” they literally take their “Happiness is Fiction” signs and fire-brimstone sermons to the streets — of Union Square. Also recommended are their holiday-gathering appropriate t-shirts with plain text reading “Happiness is Fiction” and “Everything will not be ok.”

images via Marrow (The Society for the Advancement of Despair)

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The Anti-Cheer: Marrow, The Society for the Advancement of Despair

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Improv Everywhere has just released their Volume 3 DVD, featuring all of their missions from 2006-2008, including Best Buy, Frozen Grand Central, No Shirts in Abercrombie and Fitch, Food Court Musical, Best Game Ever, No Pants! Subway Ride and many others. Watch this infomercial to find out more.

There’s a brand new Improv Everywhere DVD! Improv Everywhere Volume 3 features all of the missions from the last two years as well as brand new material previously unreleased! See all of our newest videos for the first time in DVD quality, along with commentary tracks, and special features. Over 2 hours of footage!

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

Improv Everywhere Volume 3 DVD (2006-2008)

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guest post by Eddie Codel

The tenth annual Roboexotica festival for robotic cocktail culture organized by monochrom and SHIFZ is in full swing here in Vienna, Austria where I’ve been for the last month. The big kick off party on Thursday night started in front of RoboVox, a 25 foot future deco style robot that speaks SMS messages sent to it.

The crowd marched into the Freiraum at the Museumsquartier where the main event was getting started. There are maybe 20 or so cocktail robot installations, some of which include Robomoji, the old standby industrial mojito maker, Bre Pettis’ Cherrytron 2000 robotic arms controlled by retro Atari 2600 joysticks and a beautiful machine of brass, glass, tubes and bubbling liquids called the BRAGOFON-STVOL-DISTILLATOR «LIQUIDATOR» by Russian artist mikhael a crest sator.

Some of the interesting interactive bots were created by students of the Joanneum Applied Media Sciences University. The Construction Wanker is a cocktail maker that works by punching holes in a card, inserting it into a slot, pulling a lever and then collecting a drink that the Construction Wanker pees into your cup. Another is a beautiful piano with a dozen or so liquors and mixers connected that randomly mix based on how one tickles the keys. Gina the cocktail cow drew quite the crowd. She’s attended by two milk maids that help the prospective drinker milk Gina’s udders to squirt out a gin & tonic. The maids then help you to retrieve ice from inside Gina by gloving up a hand and inserting it deep into Gina’s pink puckered anus. Austrian students have all the fun.

San Francisco is represented well this year with CTP’s Rim Shot Bot, Kal Spelletich’s Sloth, Jonathan Foote & Al Honig’s Chassis and Mitch Heinrich’s & David Fine’s Fairy Juicer.

Roboexotica is not complete without monochrom’s Taugshow which took place at the hackerspace Metalab on Friday night. Inventor of TV-B-Gone Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis, Krach the Robot and myself were featured guests. Here’s a quick video of Krach delivering a musical interlude.

Monochrom has also come out with their 10 year Roboexotica retrospective anthology now available at Amazon.

Here’s my photo set of the last few days festivities:

More Roboexotica photos: Bre’s Flickr set, CTP’s set and Shifzr’s set.

photos & video by guest post by Eddie Codel

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

Roboexotica 2008 Photos & Video

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