Designed by Elizabeth Fuller for the NYU's ITP Winter Show, the Life Dress is fully programmable, meaning that you can step out to your fancy parties with the pattern or message of your choice writ large by the LEDs embedded in your clothing. The unlit squares are also a bit translucent, which in the right (or wrong) places could send the strongest message of all. [ITP Winter Show]

Ok, maybe the part about this commercial being catchy isn't such a great thing. Excuse me while I crawl back under a rock where I'm safe from things like this seasonal torture. [Thanks, OMG! Ponies!]

At least that's what I understand from this commercial. Truth be told, my attention span is no longer very good, so I'm not sure if my comprehension is really all that. This commercial goes on and on. Forever. It's like a minute. Couldn't they have said all that with a more Tweet-able word count? I don't have the time for this. My time is valuable and I have important stuff to... I wonder whatever happened to Vanessa from The Cosby Show.

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Now, if we're to accept that the head massage functionality as the goal, here's what Brookstone says this $200 piece of kit will deliver:

Air pressure masage
Vibration massage
Magnetic therapy
"Gentle" heat
Built-in speakers

The NES gray color scheme was surely included to give your noggin a healthy "nostalgia massage." Surely. [Brookstone via Coolest Gadgets via DVICE]

The Dark Pasts of Our Geekiest Treasures

There's that old expression about those who forget their history being doomed to repeat it. So it's good that there are so many chroniclers of the great achievements in tech, and in geek culture. [History Books]

Back to the Drawing Board

Why are we so enamored with certain images or objects? Though an explanation on the inner workings of the soul is always just out of reach, there are books that help us understand our art and design fetishes, what informs our gear lust as well as our definition of beauty. [Art & Design Books]

Tales of Science and Technology, Told With Feeling

Science is about a passionate, single-minded pursuit of an uncertain goal, but you wouldn't know it from reading most news coverage of great discoveries. Each year, though, a few brilliant writers dip into the details, and string together a story that is as beautiful as it is mind-blowing. [Science & Tech Lit Books]

What's Cookin', Good Lookin'?

We certainly try to hone our culinary skills on occasion, so it's a given that we've been reading up on tasty treats and crazy concoctions. Naturally we've got some cookbooks that we can't stop raving about, but since we're dedicated nerds about food, there's a lot more going on here, too. [Food & Cooking Books]

Doing It For Ourselves

Maybe we're not quite as prone to making nearly everything ourselves like our counterparts at Lifehacker, but we certainly love to tinker and enjoy DIY projects. Albeit it's the ones that could cause major damage which we seem to go particularly crazy for, but I promise that there are innocent projects lurking in these books, too. [DIY Books]

The Art of Escape: Our Favorite Fiction

Even the craziest DIYer, chef, historian, gadget lover or designer needs a break at some point. Here are the departures from reality that kept us sane, especially after long, busy weeks of telling the truth. [Novels and Other Fiction]

By logging in at wheredoyougo.net, users can make colorful patterns out of their social lives to share with friends either on Twitter or their own websites. The site displays the heat map over a standard Google Map, and updates automatically every time you check in somewhere new. You can choose among various color schemes, but for me the most accurate is the one that makes my activities look like a map of nuclear fallout. [Where Do You Go, ITP 2009]

Indeed, the numbers are tanking for both major games in this space, and hard, although analyst Michael Pachter says they should level off at a "healthy" $500 million/year.

Reports Reuters, the recently released and much ballyhooed The Beatles game moved 800,000 units to date, which is 200,000 short of what analysts expected it would sell. Guitar Hero 5, on the other hand, sold just 500,000 this year. The number pales in comparison to the 1.4 million pieces of plastic Guitar Hero III managed to sell during its first month on store shelves. DJ Hero, the latest in the pseudo-instrument series, also disappointed.

Come to think of it, that drum set, when viewed the right way, kind of reminds me of sad face. How apt. And how timely! Mark's latest shooting challenge is all about finding faces in strange places.

In other news, landfills report they'll be very busy in 2010. [Reuters via CrunchGear]

What You Need

• A Windows PC (Linux dudes, you already know how to do this, right?)
• A Mac
• A router to connect them

Before we get into sharing between computers directly, are you sure you don't just want a NAS?

Talk to Me, Girl

So, assuming that your PC and Mac are both sitting comfortably on your network, wirelessly or otherwise (if you haven't gotten that far, you need more help than I'll be providing right here), there are a couple of different ways for the various machines on your network to talk to each other and share files. Think of 'em sorta like languages.

• SMB (Server Message Block) aka CIFS (Common Internet File System) is Windows' preferred network file sharing protocol, and luckily, Macs speak it, so this how your computers will most likely be talking and sharing stuff. Vista and Windows 7 use SMB 2.0, which is mo' faster for file transfers.

• FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is one you know and love, if you've ever spent any time on the internet. It's one option for sharing stuff between your Mac and PC.

• NFS (Network File System) is the protocol Unix-based systems like to use for sharing files, which both Windows and Macs can understand. A lot of NASes use it.

• AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) is like a secret language for Macs, 'cause Windows sure as crap don't speak it. But from Mac-to-Mac, it's what makes sharing just work (when it does).

Things That Will Help

My goal here is to show you how to share files between your PC and Mac easily, and for the most part, without worrying about things like IP addresses or diddling with your router's settings. But! If you want to make troubleshooting easier—this kind of networking is more voodoo than science—there are a few things you could stand to know and do beforehand.

1. Know your router. Or really, know how to get into it. For most routers, punching the number soup 192.168.1.1 (Linksys, for instance) or 192.168.0.1 (D-Link, for example) into your web browser will take you to the router's settings, where you can fiddle with things (which you hopefully already did to protect your network).

2. Make everything static. If you take your computer on and off the network a lot, odds are, your router isn't going give it the same IP address every the computer jumps back on, because it hands those addresses out dynamically (you might recognize this as DHCP in action, if you're wondering what that acronym refers to). For consistency's sake, it's not a bad idea to assign your computers static IP addresses on the network, so they'll always have the same address—I at least give my desktop PC and Xbox static IP addresses—just in case something else is broken.

Look in the router settings for a reference to DHCP reservations or static DHCP, which is most likely under the general settings tab. Hit that up, like so, and you should see a list of computers on your network, along with their MAC addresses (an ID tied to the actual networking card in your computer) and currently assigned IP address (something like 192.168.1.102). If your computer's already connected to the network and listed here, it's real easy to give it an unwavering address on your network, a matter of a couple checkboxes.

If, for some reason, your computer's not on the network and you wanna give it a static address, like 192.168.0.104, you're gonna need to know its MAC address. On a Mac, just open the Network Utility app and select AirPort—it's the "hardware address." In Windows Vista and 7, go to Network & Sharing Center, and tap view status link next to your connection. Hit "details" in the pop up box and note the "physical address." On XP, bring your network connections, double click the one you want, flip to the "support" tab, and hit details. It's the physical address. Now that you have the MAC address for your computers, you can assign a set IP address to each one, that it'll have every single time it's on the network, which is a handy list to have.

Getting Ready

Okay, let's get our machines ready. We'll start with the Mac, 'cause it's a little easier.

Mac
1. Setup a user account for sharing, either under Accounts or Sharing -> File Sharing in System Preferences. (Unless you just wanna log in from Windows using your regular Mac login, then you can skip creating a sharing account.) Click the little plus sign under users, and then you pull can a name out of your address book to use for the account, or setup a whole new one.

2. Open system preferences, go to sharing if you haven't already, and check the box for file sharing. Click options, and enable AFP (if you've got other Macs you wanna share with) and SMB. Crucially, make sure the account you're gonna be logging in from Windows with has SMB enabled.

3. To pick the folders you wanna share with other users, click the little plus sign and browse to the folder you wanna give access to. Maybe it's your pictures, maybe it's your whole Home folder. You'll need to add each folder individually, especially if you wanna give different people access to different folders. (If you're logging in from Windows with your standard Mac account, you'll have access to your whole hard drive anyway.)

After you've picked the folder you wanna share, then you just pick the user you want to share with, and how much access you want them to have. Read-only, write-only or read and write.

4. Note your computer's name on the local network. It's sitting on top of the main file sharing setting page. And, if you've got AFP turned off, you'll get this dialog, noting the IP address Windows users can access your stuff.

5. Go back to the main system preferences page, then click on Network. Go to the main connection you'll be using, like AirPort, and click advanced. Go to WINS, and set your Workgroup to the same one as your Windows PCs (probably either WORKGROUP, on newer Windows machines or MSHOME on XP).

Windows 7 and Windows Vista
In Windows 7 and Vista, the Network and Sharing Center is where we'll be spending our time. (Here's Microsoft's own guide, if you wanna check it out.)

1. First, make sure in your little path to the internet up top, you've got a picture of a house sitting between your computer the internet globe at the top. That means you've got it set to private network, so stuff's a little more exposed to other computers on the network. If not, click customize to the right of the network name, and set it to private network.

2. In Vista, you'll notice the big ol' Sharing and Discovery section up front and center. In Windows 7, it's under advanced sharing settings. Go in there, and you'll want to enable network discovery, and make note of your Workgroup (so you can make sure your Mac is on the same one) which is listed here. Also, you have the option to turn off password-protected sharing, so that you don't need an account on the machine set up for sharing. Obviously, it's less secure, but if you prefer convenience, that's up to you.

3. Now for some voodoo that's not required, but it'll make life easier and might be something you need to come back to if stuff isn't working, because OS X and Windows shake hands like goons (really it's about tweaking the LAN Manager Authentication Level, so OS X has an easier time connecting to Windows). If you have Windows 7 or Vista Ultimate, go to the Control Panel, then Administration Tools, then local security policy. Hit local policies, then security options, and look for Network Security LAN Manager Authentication Level. There, you want to switch it to "send LM & NTLM, use NTLMv2 session if negotiated."

If you're in Windows 7 or Vista Home Premium, you don't have access to that, so you'll need to registry hack it up. Open up regedit, and look for this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA\

Double click on LmCompatibilityLevel, and set the value to 1.

For more on this, just Google "vista mac NTVLM2." (Sans period.)

4. Now, we'll need to set up an account to share with. (Again, you can skip this if you're just going to use your regular Windows login from your Mac, though you'll need to have a password on the account for it to work best in Vista.) Go to User Accounts in Control Panel, then to Manage Accounts. Create a new account.

5. If you're going to be logging in with your main administrator account, you can skip this step, since you'll have access to everything anyway. For all other accounts, go to the folder you want to share, right-click on it and hit properties. Click the sharing tab, hit "share," and then you can add users to the share list, along with their permissions. Windows will share it, and give you the network path where you can access it. Alternatively, go to Computer, right-click, and check out the system properties and note your computer's name on the network and its Workgroup (make sure the Workgroup is the same as your other computers, it makes life easier).

Windows XP
XP's interface feels pretty damn ancient when it comes to Networking. Anyways, it's mostly the same stuff, just with a slightly uglier interface. I found this guide helpful when I was trying to remember where everything was.

1. Like before, you'll need a user account and password setup. Go to control panel, user accounts and create a new one, if you need to.

2. Make sure you're on the same workgroup as everything else—XP Home defaults to MSHOME, so if you need to change it, right-click on My Computer, hit properties, then go to Computer Name, and go to "Change" if you need to switch up the Workgroup.

3. Go to the folder you wanna share, right-click, hit properties, and switch over to sharing. Allow it to be shared over the network, and allow users to change files.

Sharing Stuff

Okay, if you've done everything correctly, and the gods are pleased, what you should see on your Mac in your Finder Sidebar under the Shared tab is your Windows computer. (Make sure Shared is enabled in your Finder sidebar preferences, or you won't see it.) Then, you should be able to just click on it, enter your user account and password, and voila, you can get right at everything just like you hoped.

On your Windows 7 or Vista machine, you should be able to click Network, and see all of your connected computers, including your Macs. To login, as Ross McKillop points out, your username is the name of the Mac followed by the OS X username, like this, minus the quotes and period: "MATTBOOK-PRO/matt." In XP, you'll go to My Network Places or Workgroup, and it should be the same deal, though you can just stick to the actual Mac username and password. Life's good.

Update: BTW, if you have Apple's Bonjour—Apple's zero configuration networking dealio, which powers music sharing in iTunes—installed on your Windows machines (it comes with iTunes), the discovery part of the guide above—the parts pertaining to locating the other machines on your network, should just work. That is, your Windows machines should just show up in your Finder sidebar and your Mac in your PC's Networking page, though you still need the accounts setup properly to actually share stuff.

Sometimes, things don't work like that. PCs don't show up in the Finder automagically, you can't login easily from your PC. Network discovery just isn't always that reliable. In that case we go all manual mode. Remember earlier, when I had you note your computer's name on the network and setup a static IP? That's where this comes in handy. So, know either your computers names, or their IP addresses on your network.

On a Mac, it's pretty simple. Go to Finder, tap command+k and punch in:

smb://computername or smb://192.168.X.XXX

The latter is the PC's IP address, which should be something like 192.168.0.105—unless you have a weird setup—though the last two numbers of it will obviously vary. The computer name is easier and usually better, especially if you don't have a static IP address set up.

It'll ask you what volume to mount (what folder you want stuck on your Finder Sidebar under shared, essentially), and a login, and then you're good to go. If prefer the cmd+k approach, you can add computers you tap a lot as a favorite, so you don't have to type it in every time.

It's pretty simple in Windows too, actually. Either in the Windows Explorer address bar, or the Run command type:

\\MACNAME\Folder or \\192.168.X.XXX\Folder

And it should give you the option to login there, giving you access to all of your stuff. Using the full address of the folder you're trying to get to will help with making sure the authentication pop-up appears—otherwise you might just see automatically what's publicly shared and not the stuff you're trying to log into.

Shortcuts

Logging in every single time would be a pain in the dick, but luckily you can make shortcuts to this stuff. On a Mac, as Gina points out here, under Accounts, you can add a network share to login items, so it'll connect every time you start up your computer. In Windows, you can either create a shortcut by right-clicking on the share, or you can add your Mac's shared folder as a mapped network drive, so it'll connect to the folder every time you fire up your computer.

Your Tips and Tricks

There is more than one way to tackle this particular angry bear, so if you've got your own tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our weekend How To guides.

And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let us know. Happy sharing!

Other Helpful Networking How Tos:
• How to Remote Control Your Computer From Anywhere With VNC
• How to Back Up All Your Stuff for Free, No Hard Drive Needed
• How to Kick Your BitTorrent Addiction with Usenet

The update will address many of the quirks users have experienced thus far with the new e-reader. Topping the alleged list are performance improvements and a faster page refresh rate, both of which Wilson identified in his mostly positive Nook review earlier this month.

Update: Our own tipster wrote to say that this is 100% confirmed, citing an announcement that was made on B&N's internal employee network. We may have some visual proof shortly. [Engadget]

The first, above, is a collaboration between Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg and watchmaker EDOX. The hinged flaps are supposed to make one think of the gullwing doors on Koenigsegg CCR supercar. However, priced at a cool $21,000, it makes me think of how poor I am. Only 30 will be produced, which is fitting given the number of CCR's there are out on the roadways today.

The second specimen is the spawn of James Bond's go-to ride maker, Aston Martin, and prestigious Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre. Called the AMVOX3 Tourbillon GMT, this watch is limited to a run of 300 pieces. No price was given, but if you have to ask... [Classic Driver via Born Rich]

The new "i" line checks in at $349, and knocks the control-less X10 down to an even $300. They won't be here in time for Christmas, or even New Year's, with their reported sell date placed ambiguously in "early 2010."

The other nugget out of Klipsch today is that the popular S4i ear buds—which reviewed favorably here at Gizmodo in August—are about the get a color refresh (as seen in the image). The price will remain $99. [Engadget]

Says designer Burak Kaynak, the 'can was conjoured up after seeing all the Share buttons that populate the Internet these days. Why not apply it trash? And so he did:

Sharing content on social networking sites is as simple as stepping on a foot pedal to open the lid and toss your trash. Share//Trash Can is a smart step-on trash can which includes a LED - live counter that counts the amount of steps that are stepped on the foot pedal.

I guess in the end I really don't see the point. Is it to shame you into wasting less, in this particular trashcan, so that you'll just go down the hall and use the next one? [Burak Kaynak - Thanks, Camila]

Basically, what this big red thing does is slip over your Wiimote and, theoretically, makes it easier to grip and push those tiny buttons when playing a game with the Wiimote on its side. Kind of like the Classic Controller, with an accelerometer built in.

Unfortunately, Ars Technica says the additional bulk just makes things unwieldy. One needs big, beefy hands to use this thing properly, they report, and the additional heft in back—junk in the trunk, if you will—only makes things worse. And since the buttons on the case are just pressing down the original Wiimote buttons below, things got a tad unresponsive. Even at $10, the reviewer "breathed a sigh of relief" when he tore it off after an hour of play time.

It's too bad. That tiny directional pad and those tiny 1 and 2 buttons really cramp me up after an extended play session in the Mushroom Kingdom. [ars technica]

The bit came during SNL last night, and like all good jokes, was funny because it's true.

As an iPhone user, I definitely chuckled a bit, before I returned to weeping silently in a corner as my phone tried to make an outgoing call from the greater Boston area without success. Must be the storm. Must be. [YouTube via Engadget]

Saddled as I was with my beeper, I did what I could to avoid actually picking up the phone. For Christmas my mom gave me a few rolls of quarters: a reminder that when she paged me, I was supposed to call her back. Most of my paging, however, was sending numerical messages to my friend Sarah.

My pager was green! Hers was pink! We were so very cool. This number-to-word conversion we became addicted to will probably go down as only a very minor footnote in turn-of-this-century communication, but, for kids who'd never known from text messaging and hardly used email, the idea that I could send her any kind of message and she'd get it instantly—that was pretty darn huge.

Some of our codes were super private so I can't share them, but others were standard: 411 for information, 911 for emergency, 143 to symbolized the number of letters in each word of the phrase "I love you."

There was also an accepted system of sending numbers so that, when written together, looked vaguely like letters. We'd grown up getting adults to spell "BOOBLESS" on calculators by typing in the elements of a story about Dolly Parton and then holding the calculator upside down. (Her bra size was 69 and that was 2, 2, 2 big. So, she took 51 diet pills and went to see Dr. X eight times. Now she's... 55378008.) From there, it was an easy jump to many other words. Hello was 07734. That was one of the easiest one. We said "Hello" a lot. Bitch? Why that was 81764, naturally. There were so many, it became necessary to have beeper-code dictionaries, or at least, a basic decoder.

Now, Sarah and I text using actual words written using actual letters. Boring.

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Yesterday we showed you the inflight Wi-Fi cheat sheet, and according to the chart there are really only four airlines where you even have a chance of finding the internet: Delta, AirTran, American Airlines and Virgin America. The first three require a code to get free Wi-Fi, but Virgin America doesn't.

According to FlyerTalk and MyMoneyBlog.com, these are the codes you'll need to use on Delta, AirTran or AA. All expire on December 31:
• Delta: DELTATRYGOGO
• AirTran: AIRTRANTRYGOGO
• American Airlines: AATRYGOGO

Edit: Reader Fo just reminded me that these codes are for new users only, and work once per email address. The same likely applies for the codes below. (But if you have a Gmail account, you can insert random periods in the username to create "unique" addresses that all go to your account.)

Edit 2: And a friendly reminder: If you end up using inflight Wi-Fi, check out how to join our Mile High Club

If those don't work for whatever reason, FlyerTalk and MyMoneyBlog.com also reference these three codes. They should be valid until January 7:

• 2287548427snk
• 2472564126dvu
• 2285632980tlk

If you're flying Virgin America, you don't have to do anything. Google partnered up with the airline to provide free Wi-Fi throughout the holidays until January 15.

Those are your best bets. Hopefully free Wi-Fi will make your holiday travels a little more tolerable. [My Money Blog, Virgin America]

• Samsung PN50B550 50″ 1080p plasma $979.99
• Toshiba 46XV645U 46″ 1080p 120 Hz LCD Best Buy $999.98 with Free Toshiba BDX2000 Blu-ray player bundle
• Sony KDL-40XBR9 40″ 1080p 240 Hz LCD Best Buy $1244.97 with Free Sony BDPS360 Blu-ray player and HTSS360 5.1 Home Theater in a Box system
• Sony KDL-46XBR9 46″ 1080p 240 Hz LCD Best Buy $1704.97 with Free Sony BDPS360 Blu-ray player and HTSS360 5.1 Home Theater in a Box system
• Samsung PN42B450 42″ 720p Plasma $624.99 Best Buy

Not too bad. Not too bad at all. [HD Guru]

I live in the northeast. All I really need to know for the next few months is that it'll be like Hoth outside. Once it starts turning to Endor, I'll be in the clear.

See? Simple. [Star Wars Weather via Neatorama]

The author argues that when we're presented with a limited depth of field in a movie, we're trained to focus on the blurred section of the frame. That's where directors traditionally hide details.

When we're looking at a shot that has a limited depth of field in 3D, though, we expect to be able to shift our gaze and focus on that blurred area. But instead of seeing that part of the frame clearly, it remains out-of-focus.

I can see how that could be disorienting for some people. I've never had a problem with 3D, but I know people who have. Hit the link for a full rundown of how the author managed to control his headache. [Shadow Locked, Thanks Martin]

Hand silk-screened, the Condom Pillow has a small pocket to put real condoms inside. Genius? I think so. It's a great reminder, in any case. You don't really want to have to use the undo pillows one day. [Etsy]

Those pixels are really genetically engineered bacteria, modified to "express fluorescent proteins and carotenoid pigments" by Team Osaka, at the nanobiology laboratories at the University of Osaka, Japan. [Microbial Art via New Scientist]

Both of the phones feature Android 2.0 (sans Motoblur from what I can see), Cortex A8 processors and 854x480 displays. The XT800 is a hybrid EVDO-CDMA/GSM handset. Except for the lump on the Sholes (or XT701 if you're a model number kind of person), they both look pretty nice.

Here's to hoping these find their way to U.S. shores soon enough. Check out the link for full specs on both. [Mobile Review Forums via BGR]

The 180-foot three-deck ship can fit an helicopter, and would be completed in 2010 for you and I not to enjoy. [Super Yacht Design via Born Rich]

Last week one of Psystar's lawyers said that the company is shutting down for good, but now another lawyer is refuting that claim by saying "Psystar does not intend to shut down permanently."

Apple's injunction against Psystar is permanent, so whatever they do after recovering from this legal firestorm won't involve reselling Apple software. If they're smart, that is. One thing's for sure: It's looking more and more like all this legal action was nothing but an expensive attention grab. [PC World]

According to the countless tweets on the subject, what may be the second most hated font of all time (because nothing is worse than Comic Sans) spends some considerable time up on the screen. According to this post, it's been the font used in all of the promotional materials up until this point.

So, is it actually Papyrus, or a custom-built font that just happens to look exactly like Papyrus? Here's a sample:

You decide. [Twitter, Thanks Michael]

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Last time I used a mouse pad was when I was when I couldn't find my dog's frisbee. But if I had this little wonder, I'd create a little shrine to it and would bow down to its excellence. No doggy teeth marks on this one please! The MySmart, which was made by Keytronic and aimed at novice Web users, was a $20 device with buttons and input ports a go go.

This decade has seen a shift on the button issue: lots of tactile things to press used to signify that something was high tech. Now, anything with lots of buttons just looks like it is trying hard to not look like an iPhone. This thing's buttons could bring you straight to CompUSA! Online, that is. It could also store passwords and bookmarks. On the site was the explanation:

We believe that the Internet experience shouldn't be confusing. So we developed a simple and secure way to access, surf and shop the Internet.

See, I agree. But the Internet is confusing. To use the vocabulary of 2000, it's a network of a billion million interconnected tunnels to computers. A super highway, if you will. I think that if it weren't confusing, I'd be confused.

The MySmart didn't last, even though its site promised that the first 100,000 would be given away for free (shipping not included). [Archived site from 2000]

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

That (understatement)very lucrative(/understatement) contract is with Sam Raimi's studio. That's right, a $300 video on youtube and a boatload of talent can score you a job in Spidey's house. So next time anyone tells you that uploading your filmed-off-the-mirror practice videos for the next American Idol audition isn't worth the time or embarrassment, show them this story.

And congrats to Fede. Work this great deserves it. [Yahoo! Movies, Thanks jesuswhammy]

Verizon iPhone Rumor From a Non-Analyst (Whaa?)

Analysts can blah blah blah about the Verizon iPhone all they want, but we ain't buying it until we see some hard proof. Now, Verizon's CTO made a statement that looks as if it's that proof we've been wanting:

"We have put things in place already," Melone reportedly said. "We are prepared to support that traffic."

Ah. Well, it's not exactly a confirmation that Verizon's getting the iPhone. It actually seems like another dig at AT&T's network problems—he's just saying that if a huge blockbuster handset like the iPhone were to come in 2010, Verizon's network could handle that kind of traffic. So, Remaindersed. [AppleInsider]

COFEE-Beating DECAF Software Revealed as Hoax

DECAF, which supposedly disabled Microsoft's COFEE forensics tool, has been revealed as an elaborate hoax by its creators. Looks like it was created to draw attention to the fact that COFEE is actually not as effective a tool as they'd like—in fact, the hoaxers view COFEE as vastly inferior to properly trained forensics experts. So, we, like everybody else, got duped. Seems to us that software that actually could defeat COFEE would be make a stronger statement than a hoax, but we'll never know now. [Seattle P-I]

Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 Android Phone Hits FCC

This one's simple: FCC posts are boring. They rarely give us new information, and the FCC photographers are notoriously artless. But the Xperia X10 is an exciting gadget, with its flashy Android skin, and it looks like we've got confirmation that the X10 should hit either T-Mobile or be sold unlocked, due to the support of the EDGE 850/1900 spectrum. More details as we hear more about the phone's eventual release. [Engadget]

Jesus Diaz Has Odd(ly Hilarious) Taste in T-Shirts

Three Wolf Moon is cliche. But our own Jesus Diaz has moved beyond the internet sensation to its logical sequel: Three Walrus Moon. Really, this t-shirt was just delivered to our HQ today, addressed to Jesus, and he's been elusive about offering official comment. All we can say is: Watch out, ladies.

I'd be happy to just plain stop making typos and maybe type a little bit faster, but Mackenzie won't rest until she reaches a 200 WPM pace.

Geez, these overachieving kids nowadays. [Mashable via Boing Boing]

Stunning, isn't it? Apparently every single of the itty-bitty windows in the model can be lit up and there are effects to simulate day and night time. I guess that it's not surprising that the electricity costs alone are making mini-Moscow enough of an expense to get pushed onto the auction block.

Oh, if only I had the space and money to spare. I could be a Russian Godzilla. [Atlas Obscura]

Previously, Osama Bin Laden knocked out Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and President Obama defeated Steve Jobs, but the Google Duo held out until the semifinals, when President Bush liberated them. That is officially the oddest sentence I have ever written. Way to go, Washington Post. This is incredibly weird. [Washington Post via Wonkette]

Sometimes the journeys we take through this life begin and end in the most unexpected ways. My encounter with Welles in the last days of his life centered on a common interest: Sony's new one-piece camcorder, the Betacam. It had just come to market and Welles, always the genius filmmaker, had big ideas for what he could do with one. With Welles there were no limits. "You can't do that" wasn't in his vocabulary. This was a short, but very passionate story.

At the time I was running Television Matrix, a small video production facility in the Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood. I had been in California only a short time, having moved from Miami the previous summer. I had started in video production in 1975 and had been shooting mostly news for the networks throughout Latin America. Business was good because the networks were switching from film to tape in this period and they were short of video crews. In late 1982, I purchased something totally new—one of the first Sony Betacams delivered in the United States.

Beta Goes To Hollywood

One of our clients in Miami had been Entertainment Tonight. During a lull in a location shoot with Robin Leach, then an ET correspondent, I'd shown him the new Betacam. Leach had been offered a chance to do his own television show, but could find no one in the mid-1980s who could bring in a one-hour episode for his very low budget of $100,000. The Betacam, Leach thought, might be the answer.

"Could this work?" he asked me at the time. "Maybe," I responded. Only the Sony Betacam camcorder—the first one-piece camera and recorder ever made—and a standalone player existed. To edit, one would need to connect the player to another format to finish the work. That would mean integration with a one-inch Type C format system.

Leach made me an offer. If I could figure out how to make all the technology work, he would move me and my crews to LA to do the production on his new reality show. That motivated me to call Charles Felder, then the president of the tiny Sony Broadcast office in New York. My timing couldn't have been better. It turns out that Sony had the same thoughts about how to extend the Betacam and I had brought them the right project at the right moment. In a flash, we made a deal. In exchange for a small financial investment on my part, Sony would build an experimental facility in LA. They would make it a "first" that they'd advertise and show to others in Hollywood.

The Hottest Video Editing Suite in Town

The prospects were exciting for everyone. An elated Robin Leach began to plan for the new show, and I, along with several freelance crew members that I had worked with, moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1984. One of the reasons we picked the Sunset-Gower lot (the old Columbia Pictures Studios) was it housed the broadcast center for the 1984 Olympics in LA that summer. When the Olympics ended, the networks would have a huge fire sale of their used broadcast equipment on the same lot. I had targeted the pieces we needed in advance, bought the gear, and moved it to our new edit bay days after the games ended.

We were lucky enough to hire Jim Fancher, now chief science officer at Technicolor in Hollywood, to build the facility. He was far more than a brilliant engineer. As a hands-on "can do" guy, he was also a natural-born negotiator who could coordinate the different technical approaches of companies whose gear would not work together. I will always picture Jim lying on his back under a rack of gear talking with tech support at some company about why their product wouldn't work.

Somehow, thanks to Jim, it all came together on time and on budget. By fall, we were ready. The show, now called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, went on the air. To be honest, I thought it was dumb idea that would last for one season if we were lucky. All I really cared about was that we had moved to Los Angeles and that Leach had paid for everything. I was ready for whatever came next. I can honestly say it was one of the great shocks of my life when the show became a major hit. I was totally unready for it.

We had built the first interformat edit bay in the nation (Betacam to one-inch), and Lifestyles was the first major magazine show to be shot using the new format. We had made history. The cost of television production had come down—way down. At least by half. Word spread fast and we were running facility tours in no time. Sony even hired Milton Berle to do a two-page ad for the facility and the technology concept behind it.

Enter Orson

A freelance editor for our show, Paul Hunt, also did some sound work for the legendary actor/director/producer/genius Orson Welles. He told Welles about our Betacam facility, now running almost around the clock, and from that moment on the great man's insatiable curiosity about every new sound and imaging technology took over. Welles wanted to meet me, and thus came a lunch invitation many film buffs would have died for.

To be honest, I knew very little about Welles. I had majored in television and radio at the University of South Carolina in the 1960s and it was hard to escape the many contributions Welles made to the broadcast and film industries. From audio special effects to remarkable moving dolly shots, Welles was a genius of the first order. But outside of having seen Citizen Kane, I didn't know the details of his career nor did I pretend to.

Our first lunch at Welles' favorite haunt, Ma Maison, was a roaring success. For reasons I still don't fully understand, we hit it off. Welles was curious about all things video, especially the Betacam, a device he envisioned to be an Arriflex camera that didn't need film. As our first meeting continued, Welles' small dog, who was seated at the table next to me, kept nipping at my leg. It was annoying, but I didn't dare take a swat at Orson Welles' beloved dog!

That lunch led to many others throughout 1985. In the earlier days of our relationship, he tested me in strange ways. One night, after midnight, Orson (he insisted that everyone call him Orson) called to ask for help in solving a sound problem he claimed to be having. He was recording and editing some narration on his Nagra tape recorder in his bedroom in the hills above Hollywood Blvd.

"Frank, after I do a splice with a razor blade, I get a bump in the sound when I play back the tape. What should I do?" he asked. This was a very strange question from the man who had practically invented modern sound recording. He had scared the nation with War of the Worlds and was asking me such a basic question about audio editing. Though half asleep, I knew he had to know the answer and instantly recognized it as some sort of test.

"Orson, your razor blade is magnetized. Get another one," I answered. "Oh, OK," he responded, apologizing for waking me and then promptly said goodbye. I went back to sleep and never heard of the issue again.

"Call Sony. Make It Work!"

As he learned more about video camcorders and nonlinear editing, Orson became determined to do a video project of his own. We visited New England Digital for a demo of nonlinear sound editing on the Synclavier. As for video, Orson wasn't content with just renting a Montage, one of the first non-linear video editors. He wanted his own, and he wanted it to sit next to his flatbed film editor at home.

As the talk turned to money (it always did in Orson's case), I offered to contribute video facilities and help him raise money for a one-man show to be called Orson Welles Solo. The production would be a retrospective of Orson's favorite theatrical material along with a big dose of magic—both new tricks and archival footage from Orson's glory days as a working magician. Our facility was already booked around the clock, but it didn't stop me from promising Orson anything he wanted.

Through a long and convoluted series of events (and with the help of the late Paul Rothchild, producer of The Doors, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Janis Joplin), the money was raised and the production was set to begin. Now Orson focused on how he'd use the two Betacams we'd secured to shoot the show.

Just as he had accepted no conventional technical limitations when he made Citizen Kane in 1940, Orson approached video in the same unrelenting way. In 1985, Betacams had Saticon tubes—not CCD sensors—and their ability to sync to one another via time code was, to put it mildly, a bit crude. Orson didn't care. He demanded that the handheld Betacams float around the set wirelessly and always be in perfect sync. He also directed that we shoot directly into bright lights and he didn't want to hear about any problems with lag.

"Call Sony and tell them to make it work," Orson demanded, slamming his fist on a table at one point. "Don't ever tell me 'No.'" I called Sony, and Sony responded by sending two expert engineers to help Orson push the video envelope on the project.

The day before the shoot was to begin in November, 1985, the Betacams were tweaked to the max. The jury-rigs—and there were a lot of them—were tested and re-tested. Every engineer and crew member that was to be in Orson's field of view was told that the words "you can't do that" were to be stricken from their vocabulary. With this project, I demanded, we will find a way to do any and everything Orson wants to do. All the old excuses about the limits of video will be left at the front door.

On the Evening Before the Big Shoot

As technical preparations for the shoot continued, Orson taped an appearance in the late afternoon on Merv Griffin's syndicated talk show. Normally, Orson disdained conversations about his past. He'd always say he wanted to talk about the future, not "go down memory lane." But, uncharacteristically, he did go down memory lane that afternoon with his old friend, Merv. Orson charmed the audience, both with stories and card tricks.

After the show, Orson had dinner at Ma Maison and then headed home to finish writing the script for our first taping, now only hours away. Our first day of shooting was to be in auditorium on the UCLA campus. Orson would call when he was ready for us to go to the location.

The next morning, as I awaited those instructions from Orson in my office, the phone rang. It was Paul Rothchild.

"Did you hear the news," he asked gently.

"What news?" I replied.

"Orson Welles is dead."

Orson had died of a heart attack during the night. He was found slumped over his typewriter, working on our script. Minutes later, a Welles assistant called and said bluntly: "Frank, the project has been canceled."

Welles' Legacy and Love of New Technology

I drove home—numb and unable to function. After the initial days of despair, my incredible year working with Orson Welles took on a new dimension. A new journey would begin. Those same Betacams were used to record Orson's memorial service a few weeks later and that event, in turn, introduced me to the remarkable men and women who had been associated with Welles from his days with the Mercury Theater. The film critic Leonard Maltin and I did a documentary with these fascinating people, and I later produced, with Mercury Theater actor Richard Wilson, a retrospective of Orson's best radio work from his personal tape collection.

A couple of weeks after Orson's death, his cinematographer, the late Gary Graver, came by my office for a visit. Gary said something I will never forget.

"I've been driving around for two weeks with Orson's ashes in the truck of my car," he said, matter of factly.

"What?" I responded, quickly envisioning a fender bender with the Hollywood legend's ashes being scattered across an LA freeway.

"I'm not going to take them into my house," Graver said, almost fearing the prospect. "What should I do?"

I thought for a minute, looked a Graver, and said, "I don't know." Some months later, Welles' ashes were buried in Ronda, Spain, on the property of a longtime friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

The demise of our video project left me yearning to do some kind of major Welles project to fill the void. As I reviewed our time together, I recalled an extraordinary story that Welles had taken nearly two hours to tell me on a leisurely Saturday afternoon a few months earlier. It was about the events surrounding his production of Marc Blitzstein's musical, The Cradle Will Rock, in 1937. It was, Welles told me, the only time in U.S. history that the military was sent out to shut down a Broadway play. He wanted to make a movie about it, but had failed to raise the money.

That was it. I would try to get the film made. It took the support of many of Welles' original Mercury colleagues—including the late actor/producer John Houseman—and a lot of crazy investors to keep the project alive over the years. Most importantly, it took Tim Robbins, who recognized the power of the story early on and spent most of 1990s writing and directing the film that eventually came to the screen.

Houseman once said that it's rare in this life to be touched by real genius. Welles, said Houseman, was the real thing—perhaps the only real genius he'd ever known. Now, I understand what he meant. Welles, long before most filmmakers, saw the powerful potential of small format video. Yet, he was perhaps 20 years too early to enjoy the real fruits of the video revolution in his own work.

Whenever I see a tiny new camcorder introduced, or see Apple upgrade a revolutionary application like iMovie, I think of Orson. Oh, how excited he'd be. The pure magic of it all! If he were alive today, he'd be making his movies without regard to raising huge amounts of money. That, for both Orson and his audience, would be an achievement that we'll never be able to enjoy.

Frank Beacham is a New York City-based independent writer at www.beachamjournal.com. Beacham was executive producer of the 1999 Touchstone Films release of Tim Robbins film, Cradle Will Rock. He and George Demas have written Maverick, a new play based on the events described in this story.

Top CC image from Scary Cow/Flickr; shot of Orson with camera from MovieMail, which sells the brilliant latter-day Welles documentary F for Fake.

There was the immobile singing Poo-chi by Tiger Electronics, a company that also made the i-Cybie, which could lift its leg and roll over. The $99 Fisher-Price Rocket the Wonder Dog, which was operated via infrared headset, could burp and scratch itself. There was also Tekno by Manley Toy Quest, Big Scratch and Lil' Scratch by Trendmasters, Puppy Magic by Toy Biz and more.

Many people who had both real dogs and fake dogs decided to see what would happen when the two worlds collided.

If I had a fake dog... you know, the idea seems so preposterous to me that I can't even go there. My real dog is looking at me as I sit here on my shiny computer which is flanked by my shiny iPod and phone. "Aren't you glad I don't require electricity to operate?" he is saying with his eyes. "Don't you want to take me to the park and escape the backlit cyber world you are immersed in so many hours a day?" Why yes, Amos, I do. Now stop dragging your butt.

If these cyber versions were meant to appeal to real wannabe dog owners, I think they should've made them look a little more doglike. Would it have been so hard to slap some fake fur on these things? I'm thinking they could've gone with some Muppet fur—shaggy blue, maybe. Or Elmo red. Who wants a pet that looks like Robocop. Also: my real dog earns his keep by licking clean the dinner plates and jumping in the laps of cute guys at the park. The cyber curs had no such uses. If I'm going to shell out that kind of money for a non-breathing pet, I'd at least like if it could second as a vacuum.

Nevertheless, many robotic dog owners thought it'd be very original and clever and hilarious to introduce their real pet to their fake pet, as evidenced by the following videos...

German Shepherd doesn't let Aibo touch its meat

Sparky gets in some hot two-on-one action with a Doberman and a Chihuahua

Dog asks the Poo-Chi why it isn't wearing any clothes

A cat watches an impertinent iCybie take a pee

This particular school of cinema reached its nadir with robo-dog snuff films

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Those are my favorite charts in the bunch (and probably the most useful ones), but you can follow the links to check out the rest. My only request is that you give me a cozy cabin somewhere peaceful when you use this knowledge to succeed where I've failed. [Flickr via Bibliodyssey via io9]