All the hallmarks of the newly deposed corporate dining king—Google—are present in Frances Dinkelspiels' tour of Facebook HQ's cafeteria. (And not just Josef Desimone, the chef Facebook poached from Google last year.) Whereas pre-Recession America went gaga over the "Google 15", today we're supposed to pity/hate Facebook employees who pack on the "Facebook 15" due to all that "glistening pink lox":

Fred Labbe, a credit analyst who arrives at work at 5:45 a.m. to reach the European markets, said he ate at least two meals a day at Facebook. "The food is fantastic," Mr. Labbe said one recent morning as he savored a plate of scrambled eggs and a bagel smothered in glistening pink lox.

In the six months since he started at Facebook, Mr. Labbe said, he has put on at least four pounds - a problem so common that employees joke about gaining the "Facebook 15" after they begin work at the company.

In Google's considerable perks portfolio, free food always held a special place. More than a simple convenience, the gourmet cafeterias piled high with lobster or whatever were a potent symbol of both the dedication of the young Google employees—they don't even have time to pack a lunch!—and the all-encompassing, slightly sinister embrace of the big G. Now it's Facebook playing surrogate mother figure to its fresh-faced employees while gently pushing them to take over the world:

Offering free food, and copious amounts of it, is part of Facebook's strategy to encourage employees to work long hours. A significant number of the 800 employees at the company's main campus are in their early 20s, fresh off their college years where they pulled all-nighters and hung out talking in their dorm rooms. Facebook is famous for its regular "hackathons," where employees are invited to stay up all night and work on programs and platforms that are not part of their normal assignments; the kitchen staff participates by creating new dishes that are served at midnight, 3 a.m. and at breakfast time.

In short, food is a lubricant that helps keep the innovation machine running.

In fact, Facebook is taking the food obsession a step further, allowing employees to actually cook it via highly-coveted "Internships" with the head chef. When employees are begging to cook food for other employees you know you've tapped into a self-perpetuating anthill force that's begging to be bent towards global domination.

And, of course the requisite note about how bougie all the food is:

[Chef Josef Desimone] said he tried to use meat from animals that had not been exposed to antibiotics or genetically modified feed; organic produce; milk and butter from local purveyors like Strauss Dairy and Clover Farms; and live-caught or sustainable fish.

The Facebook vs. Google rivalry might swivel on a pivot made of Thai-spiced cilantro chicken with red curry sauce.

Last time the Obamas tried to get away from it all for a little while was in summer — but then Ted Kennedy went and died and Ben Bernanke was renominated as Fed chairman. He already had to delay the start of this vacation to helicopter over the healthcare bill. Now he and the family — and his aides and military advisors — have taken off he really, really wants to do nothing. From the AP:

White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that the president wants to spend his holiday in his birthplace away from the news-of-the-moment distractions that have dominated his first year in office. No public events were scheduled and the best any of the president's aides could promise would be bets whether lefty Obama would out-drive his good friends - joining him from Chicago - on the golf course.

Which raises the question, if he's really determined not to do much, as to what are Presidential round-the-house clothes are like. Are there some stained sweatpants with the presidential seal on? Do the Secret Service have to sniffer-dog a 'Vegas or Bust' hoody that someone gave the president as part of an in-joke in 1993? Are there — and this is a question of vital national importance — official Snuggies?

To use the Gawker Internet Yule Log™:
1)On Christmas morning, press "Play".
2)Bask in its glory.

Merry Christmas, you ungrateful wretches.

Called Confluence, the new look blends some of the best features of XBMC's previous default skin (PM3.HD) with several other popular skins for pretty impressive results. It's definitely a different look from what we've seen in the Boxee beta, but the two media centers continue to deliver really impressive (and most importantly free) offerings.

(See all the images on one page here.)

You can read the condensed changelog on their blog, but some highlights include:

• Better support for multi-monitor setups
• High Definition, Surround Sound, and Subtitle Flagging and Filtering in Video Library
• Speed up RAW image loading and handle more file extensions
• Performance improvements to SQLite (database) queries (help is always wanted here)
• Ability to scrape and scan TV Shows into the video library by air-date via TheTVDB.com

If you're an XBMC user, it's an update well worth grabbing. XBMC is a free download for Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple TV, and pretty much anywhere else you want to put it. Also, good news for people who followed our guide to building a silent, standalone XBMC media center on the cheap: The latest release of the Live version looks like it supports our machines out-of-the-box without custom third-party builds.

People have been dreaming about loving giant women (or becoming giant women, for that matter) forever. But the Internet has fostered a really vibrant, creative community of people who've created artwork and lore. This fetish it has a fancy name: macrophilia, according to this 1999 Salon article. There are actually two different types of macrophilia porn: There are women who've been hit with growth rays (or growth viruses) turning them into giants. And then there are men who've been hit with shrink rays or whatnot. The science-fiction origins of this fetish rest with movies like Attack OF The 50 Foot Woman and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Adherents to this fetish post tons and tons of homemade Photoshop collages, showing scantily dressed or naked women stomping across cities and trampling little men, including the one above, and these masterpieces:

There's even a giantess and shrunken men Flickr pool, where people post their own creations.

But really, if you want to get the total awesomeness of giantess fetish, you have to go with artwork, which doesn't suffer from the same obvious restrictions as photographs. There are tons and tons of message boards and groups where people post their favorite art showing massive women and the doll-like men who love them. A lot.

On the other hand, if you want actual professionally shot giantess porn, that exists as well. There are tons of pay porn sites that feature staged photos of women in their underwear, smashing model cities and stepping on toy soldiers. There's even HebrewGiantess.com, for those of you who just desperately needed "point of view" shots of a man looking up at a skyscraper-sized Jewish woman. Here are some of our favorite pay-site images:

But like many other niche fetishes, the love of giant women is (wait for it) big in Japan. Just check out this scene from a live-action video, featuring a man who's been shrunk to the size of a doll. The movie also includes scenes where the woman stimulates the helpless little man's tiny penis with a giant Q-tip. And the man climbs inside her vagina. But here's a nice scene where she licks his face and then he climbs onto her breast:

And then there's some amazing manga and hentai art from Japan, showing — among other things, a giant woman having sex with a giant robot.

Fans have also collected these amazing Kookai ads, featuring giant women and tiny men (via the defunct GTSFeet site):

So obviously, giantess porn, to some extent, is a fantasy about female power — women who grow to the size of a mountain are stand-ins for powerful women everywhere. But at the same time, you have to love the playfulness and sheer weirdness of the huge females crushing cities with the sheer force of their voluptuousness.

Children's author and blogger Andrew McDonald never deletes 25 photos on his camera's memory card—presumably kept in a separate folder from the standard image outputs. Flipped through on a camera viewfinder, they offer a pretty amazing personal story about the importance of that camera, the unique humanness of the owner, and, most importantly, an email address for coordinating a camera return.

Andrew's posted all the pics at his blog, but you can get the viewfinder-flip effect by checking out the animated GIF version, courtesy of Your Daily GIF Blog. Oh, and while you're adding permanent camera card fixtures, tossing in a helpful TXT file couldn't hurt, either.

Thanks to Zombie Ms. Skittles for leaving us that #tip, which anyone can do.

These types of photos are very much a Japanese internet meme — people showing their Christmas meal and female characters with whom they are eating. They're more a gag than anything else with each photo trying to outdo the others. Not entirely serious! Though, still, slightly bitter sweet.

One of the pictures might be NSFW. Guess which one.

ゲーマー達のクリスマスお祝い画像集 [オレ的ゲーム速報＠刃]

This list is culled from a straight listing of the most popular posts that offered a Firefox extension for download in 2009. We're not including posts about configuring Firefox, or even our own hand-rolled Firefox add-on packs—even if they were pretty popular, too. Let's get to the good stuff.

Firefox 3.7 Theme Makes Your Browser Look Awesome

One of the greatest things about Firefox is that its development happens way out wide in the open. When the design workers start coming up with preliminary sketches of a new release, anyone can peek at them and even compile them into a theme, which does just what the headline suggests.

All-Glass Firefox Enables Slick Transparency Effects

Windows Vista and 7 feature some fairly nice looking transparency effects, but if your primary browser doesn't use them, it can feel a bit disconnected. All-Glass Firefox v2 tweaks your browser to look just, well, proper in its fancy-pants surroundings.

"Vacuum Places Improved" Speeds Up Firefox with a Click of Your Mouse

You can speed up Firefox by cleaning up its fragmented database, and the Vacuum Places Improved 0.3 extension automates that admittedly pain-in-the-butt process.

Gmail Redesigned 3.0 Focuses on Speed and Message Space

Google Redesigned, a multi-site suite that trades Google's blue/white/minimal look for a darker, sleeker feel, kept improving its transformative powers this year, adding a host of improvements in its 3.0 release, and later releasing a new version with GReader Redesigned for the RSS hounds.

Dislike 0.2 Adds a Disapproving Dislike Button to Facebook

"I'm having SUCH a bad day—the cleaning lady TOTALLY left her Pine Sol smell all over my bed linens!" That, my friends, is why clever JavaScript tweakers created the Dislike extension.

TinEye Adds Reverse Image Lookup to Firefox

Many of the pictures and illustrations you find across the web aren't in their original form—and many can be had at better, perhaps more wallpaper-worthy sizes. The TinEye extension makes it a simple right-click maneuver to search out similar copies of any image you come across.

SkipScreen Lets You Pass Go and Collect Your Download

Sometimes, great stuff has to be hosted on public download services, because the file—or the attention it's getting—is just too much for our meek little personal sites. And the download sites often make it as painful as possible to grab those files. SkipScreen acts as an automated intermediary, jumping through the necessary hoops and entering the key presses required.

FireFound Tracks Your Stolen Computer, Nukes Your Personal Data

This neat little extension, winner of the Extend Firefox 3.5 contest, utilizes lots of Firefox's built-in features, like geo-location and the extension framework, to offer wary laptop users a way to nuke their personal data, passwords, and history if necessary, track where their machine is logging on after a theft, and cull all kinds of data from the thief. FireFound is, in other words, a smart thing to install if your laptop ever leaves the home.

Gui:config Gives Easy Access to Hidden Firefox Settings

A lot of helpful stuff is tucked away in Firefox's about:config menus. Gui:config brings them into focus and offers a graphical way to manage them. As the How-To Geek puts it, it's amazing that this isn't something being considered for mainstream distribution in the browser.

Memory Fox Manages Firefox's Memory Use, Aims to Keep It Low

(Windows only): Firefox is decently light with memory on startup, but extensions and plug-ins drag it down as you actually use it. Memory Fox monitors Firefox's memory use and, once it reaches your pre-set limit, whips it back into shape.

Daum Blue Firefox Theme is Clean, Simple, and Elegant

(Windows only): Well, the headline and picture kind of say it all about Daum Blue, but it's worth noting that beyond looks, it's also fairly customizable, and looks even better on Vista and Windows 7 systems.

Decreased Productivity Helps You Browse at Work Without Getting Busted

Sure, kind of anathema for this site's stated mission, but giving your mind a break at work has real mental benefits, even if your boss doesn't think so.

UrlbarExt Adds Super Powers to the Awesome Bar

If you're likely to do more at a web site than just simply bookmark it, UrlbarExt is like a Leatherman for your AwesomeBar. Head to a site's root, search the site on Google, and do much more from a small array of address bar buttons.

Foxmarks Becomes Xmarks, Adds Search and Suggestion Features

Another headline that pretty much says it all. We weren't a big fan of Xmarks' new "discovery" features, but its growing reach into Chrome and other browsers make the former Foxmarks' expansion a good thing.

Magnetiser Downloads Torrents When No Torrent File Is Available

Given the recent legal crackdown on BitTorrent-centered sites, magnet links (explained here) are increasingly popular. Magnetiser makes it easy to track down a working torrent link to grab the file you're looking for.

Integrated Gmail Updates with Improved Looks and Handy Features

It must be mentioned that, beyond smooshing together Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader into one neatly-arranged Gmail page, Integrated Gmail also customizes every niggling detail of those combined apps, making it worth the try-out, even if you think you like your Google spaces separated into different tabs.

Omnibar Extension Collapses Firefox's Address and Search Boxes into One

Omnibar is one of the clever ways Firefox can make itself into a Google Chrome clone, and we love that kind of openness 'round here.

Invisible Hand Subtly Shows Best Web Prices

If you're always looking at online purchases and wondering if you could save more before pulling the trigger, Invisible Hand affirms your hunches for you, dropping down and showing lower prices wherever it can find them.

Ubiquity Sees Major Update, New Look, Better Performance

Mozilla's future-facing automation and shortcut engine, Ubiquity, continued to get awesome-r in 2009.

App Tabs Creates Permanent, Icon-Only Tabs, Firefox 4.0-Style

We dug the idea of permanent, favicon-only tabs when a helpful reader explained it to us, but the App Tabs extension took a multi-step process and made it far more simple.

Don't worry, we never spam our Facebook or Twitter pages with a crazy amount of updates. We reserve these pages for our most interesting stories or breaking news. Becoming a fan of the Gizmodo Facebook Page or following the Gizmodo Twitter is super easy and all you have to do is follow the links below.

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AV-Comparatives.org ran a series of real-world tests running through common scenarios like downloading, extracting, copying, and encoding files, installing and launching applications, and they also ran through an automated testing suite as well. Once the dust had settled, it became clear that not only is MSE one of only three products that both blocks and removes malware well, but it's also very light on system resources.

Out of all the products tested, Microsoft Security Essentials was the best-performing free antivirus solution, and one of only two that received "very fast" on each of the real-world tests, earning it their top award: an "advanced+" ranking. We've been telling you for a while that you don't need to pay for Windows security, and now with MSE ranked alongside the top paid apps in both malware removal and performance, you might want to consider making the switch.

Hit the AV-Comparatives link for the full report in PDF form, or check out the PC Mag story for the overview—if you can deal with some irritating in-text ads.

Those two updates were coded in response to user requests for actually using RunPee's break moments during, you know, the actual movie. Pick a movie, set an alert and time buffer (1-5 minutes before the break), and RunPee will buzz you with a notification that, say, the scientist is explaining, so now's your chance for relief. With the offline storage, RunPee also becomes a much more useful iPod touch app. Of course, there's a joke in there somewhere about an app that vibrates when you really need a bathroom break, but we're far too mature to make it.

The RunPee.com web site has also added support for more languages, and a non-Flash mobile site for scoping out key non-action points right before a flick. Finally, there's a $1 Android app in the market, and other mobile apps are expected to come along soon. RunPee's iPhone app costs 99 cents, requires an iPhone or iPod touch.

As with our most popular Windows downloads and Mac downloads of 2009, this collection of applications is based solely on the popularity of the associated post here on Lifehacker. We always prefer free applications that offer a little productivity boosting, so this is by no means a complete look at the most popular apps of the 80 billion in the App Store.

First, the downloads...

GV Mobile Makes Google Voice the Default for Your iPhone

In April, an industrious iPhone developer released GV Mobile to the iTunes App Store. It was followed by other Google Voice apps, and then Apple went brain dead and removed every Google Voice application from the App Store (along with rejecting Google's official Voice app). Annoying, to be sure, but users still willing to jailbreak can still get GV Mobile for free on Cydia.

Stanza Turns Your iPhone into a Kindle, Kindle App Counters

At the beginning of the year, the beautiful Stanza (iTunes link) iPhone app came along and wowed us with how good ebook reading on the iPhone could be. Then, when Kindle for iPhone (iTunes link) was released a few months later, it gave iPhone users a pretty good reason not to buy a Kindle. In the end, Amazon liked Stanza so much they ended up buying it, so that's probably the app we'd choose.

RunKeeper is Like Nike+ for Your iPhone—Only Better

RunKeeper (available in free and pro versions) uses your iPhone's GPS to do some seriously cool tracking for your running, walking, or biking routine. Apple was extremely slow in bringing Nike+ to the iPhone (once they did, it only supported 3GS), and even then it doesn't take advantage of the fact that the iPhone has a built in GPS and excellent mapping capabilities. RunKeeper is an excellent alternative to people who don't want to pay for the Nike+ dongle, want advanced GPS and mapping capabilities, or don't have an iPhone 3GS. Still, if we could marry these two apps, we happily would.

Email 'n Walk Lets You Multitask Without Getting Hit By a Car

We get it. You are seriously busy, and you don't have time to make sure you don't walk into traffic while you're composing that email. Email n' Walk overlays an email composition window on top of the view from your iPhone's camera, so you can type out an email and watch where you're going. It was free when we first covered it; now it'll set you back a buck.

Dropbox Comes to the iPhone and iPod touch

Dropbox is far and away our favorite file syncing tool, so we were thrilled this September when Dropbox for iPhone (iTunes link) finally made its way to the iPhone. Users can access any of their synced files, view files supported by the iPhone (including documents, photos, music, and video), upload photos and video to Dropbox, and save files for offline viewing. Handy.

CardStar Creates Scanner-Friendly Bonus Cards on iPhones

Lifehacker readers hate a bulging wallet, which is presumably why CardStar (iTunes link) resonated. The free app replaces keychain tags and wallet-cluttering bonus/discount/rewards/"shopper's club" cards with scanner-friendly barcodes that live on your iPhone. Users report mixed results in the App Store, but if it does the trick in place of your rewards card, it could be worth the download.

Skype for iPhone Brings Reliable VoIP to Your Pocket

Skype is far and away the most popular VoIP service, so it's understandable that people were pretty excited when it finally made its official plunge onto the iPhone with Skype for iPhone (iTunes link).

Dragon Dictation Does Voice-to-Text Transcription on Your iPhone

You spend plenty of time typing at the computer all day, so we forgive you if you're not eager to continue pecking away at the software keyboard on your iPhone. Dragon Dictation (iTunes link) does voice-to-text transcription you can copy to your clipboard and use anywhere.

Epicurious App Puts an Entire Cookbook in the Palm of Your Hand

Epicurious for iPhone (iTunes link) puts access to over 25,000 recipes from the likes of Gourmet and Bon Appetit at your fingertips. When you find something you like (I seriously love this app and would strongly recommend the simple-yet-delicious Mario Batali Basic Tomato Sauce), you can add it to your favorites, generate a shopping list, and get cooking. The entirety of The Gourmet Cookbook is inside this killer kitchen supplement.

Put Google Calendar and Notes on Your iPhone Wallpaper

By default, the iPhone lock screen shows you the time, date, and possibly a pretty picture. With gCalWall Lite, your home screen also displays your upcoming Google calendar appointments. Handy.

And now, the popular iPhone-specific posts/how-tos:

Set Up "Push" Alerts for Anything from Your Computer to Your Phone

When push notifications finally rolled out to iPhone 3.0 this year, lots of applications started using them—but not everything we wanted. In this guide, we demonstrate how to use Growl (for Mac and Windows) in conjunction with Prowl (iTunes link), a $3 iPhone app, to set up push notifications for virtually anything. Our guide focused on Gmail push (which wasn't available at the time, and still isn't available with message previews), but anything that sends an alert with Growl can also work with Prowl, so your options are only limited by your creativity.

Enable Tethering on Your iPhone 3G or 3GS Running 3.1.2

It's been a feature of the iPhone forever now, but AT&T is still dragging its feet on iPhone tethering—that is, allowing users to enjoy their iPhone's data connection on their laptops. We've shown you how to enable tethering on your iPhone 3G or 3GS running 3.1.2 (the latest iPhone OS), and before that we helped you pull it off with the 3.0 OS. You may not want to tempt the AT&T billing gods with flagrant use of this one (wild fees may apply if AT&T decides they do), but it's a godsend in a pinch.

Based on Opera's reports of their new JavaScript engine, Caraken, being "7x faster" than the standard Futhark engine built into Opera 10.10, we ran it through Mozilla's Dromaeo JavaScript tests, which combine Apple's SunSpider and Google's V8 JavaScript benchmarks. Pure runs-per-second speed isn't everything, of course, and engines can be built specifically to max out in these kinds of tests. That said, the results of Opera 10.5, rolled into our last round of browser speed tests, were more than a little impressive, using Dromaeo as a measuring stick:

The chart up top is pulled from our most recent speed tests, with Opera 10.5 pre-alpha results rolled in. It shows some, shall we say, notable improvement. The gHacks blog put 10.5 against Firefox 3.6 beta and Chrome's development build in the SunSpider and V8 tests and found that Opera either beat, or came very close to, Chrome, in those separate runs, and usually left Firefox in the dust. We'll have to put Opera 10.5 through its full paces when it's out of its very unstable build.

If you're the adventurous type and do want to give the pre-alpha a try, you'll also find improvements to the page rendering engine, new Private Browsing tabs and windows that don't track any history, and some interface and visual design tweaks, detailed in the post below. The big JavaScript improvements aren't as pronounced on the Mac build as on Windows, according to the development team, but are still there.

Opera 10.5 pre-alpha is a free download for Windows and Mac systems. Tell us if you think there's some real speed-ups in this build, and what else you like, in the comments.

Extraordinary Animals In The Womb aired last year, using advances in scanning and imaging technology to trace the gestational paths of animals outside the human family. The documentary footage is actually a combination of digital photography, scans, and computer-generated models. The filmmakers took detailed scans of the animal's wombs, then had the model makers recreate every blood vessel and whisker. The resulting images, while not direct photographs, are, according to the researchers, accurate representations of what goes on inside these creatures' wombs.

You can read more about the documentary at the Daily Mail.

Stunning photographs of animals inside womb [This Blog Rules via Maurissa Tancharoen]

Torrentfreak has named Star Trek as the most torrented movie of the year with nearly 11 million downloads - four million more than last year's "winner," The Dark Knight. Of those 11 million, Paramount claims to have the IP addresses of just over 5 million of them, and they want the FCC to do something about it... Namely, crack down on torrent sites and those who support them, including search engines leading people to them and companies whose advertisements may appear on tracking sites, such as TiVo and Ann Taylor.

With the source of this summer's X-Men Origins: Wolverine bootleg arrested last week and Fox preparing to press charges, it'll be interesting to see whether 2010 sees the studios declare outright war on torrenting and bootlegs, and if so, what form that war will take: Legal action or, in the case of Avatar, movies that demand to be seen in theaters.

[Via TrekMovie]

Rain Gutters as Cable Management Tools

We're all about creative cable management here at Lifehacker, so we were instantly drawn to reader Seandavid010's rain-gutter cable management setup. Granted, you can find other cord-wrangling solutions, like the one Adam used when he made his cordless workspace, but the rain gutter approach yields impressive results. Sean was nice enough to send in his entire step-by-step, check out the full post to see it.

$5 IKEA Coat Hanger Offers Solid Cable Management

Weblog BitsOfMyMind shares a very simple idea that turns an inexpensive coat-hanger rack into a simple and streamlined cord management solution.

Back when Adam detailed how to go cordless in your workspace, he championed a $10 cable management add-on from IKEA. Many readers wrote in and said they couldn't find the IKEA wire-manager he used, so this clever hack is a welcome addition to our cable-wrangling bag of tricks.

Open a Bottle of Wine with Your Shoe

Got a bottle of wine on hand but no corkscrew to get it open? You can argue all you want about whether or not the guy in this video really needs more wine, but you can't argue with the results.

Make Cookies in 90 Seconds with Your Waffle Iron

Baking cookies in your oven is fine and all, but if you want to turn out some tasty cookies in a very short time, consider turning to your trusty waffle iron. Turns out you're only 90 seconds away from crispy, chewy, cookie-goodness.

Create a Cat Haven from Ikea Shelves

The climbing trees at pet stores are ridiculously expensive and take up tons of floor space. Help your kitty jump to a royal view, Super-Mario-style, without cluttering your floor or wasting money.

Remove Splinters Using a Banana Peel

Bananas are a good source of potassium, but turns out the peels can do more than just store the fruit. Apartment Therapy outlines seven ways to put used peels to work, including removal of those inconvenient splinters. Photo by keepon.

Get More From Cheap Vodka Than a Hangover

Sooth headaches? Clean razors? Kill bees? Vodka is handy for all sorts of uses besides the traditional one. The clear and high-proof alcohol can be used for all manner of tricks. Photo by Carsten Lorentzen.

Coke Can Clean Your Toilet in a Pinch

When your toilet's got rings and lime scale stains and you've got no cleaning gear on hand, grab a can of Coke out of the fridge.

Turn IKEA Cabinets Into a Cordless Desktop Stand

The new iMacs, and similar all-in-one LCD desktop systems, make for a mostly cordless computing experience. Using two pieces of IKEA furniture meant for laptops and modems, you can hide the remaining wires and up the elegance.

Disposable Mugger's Wallet Gets You Off Scott Free or Gets You Beat Up

A mugger's wallet is a disposable second wallet that you're more than happy to give away to a mugger. It contains a few bucks, a non-essential ID, but not much else that would endanger your identity.

DIY Car Dash Camera Mount

Ever wished you had some high-speed chase footage after you finished tearing down the freeway after crooks? Of course you have! You need a quick, cheap DIY camera mount.

Remove Stubborn Batteries and Other Cool Magnet Tricks

As if the sheer magnetism aspect of magnets wasn't magical enough, weblog Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories points out 17 very cool tricks that put your magnets to great use. For starters, a strong magnet can be the perfect tool to remove batteries from the grips of a stubborn spring.

Use Vicks VapoRub To Cure Toenail Fungus

We've heard that Vicks VapoRub can cure toenail fungus before (it's also helpful when you've got a cold!), but the New York Times recently put it to the test. The results: The thyme in VapoRub can in fact do the job.

Repair a Broken Ethernet Plug with Zip Ties

We've all been there at some point: You've got a perfectly functional Ethernet cord that somewhere along the line had its tab broken off. Don't buy a new one or re-terminate the cord. Fix it with zip ties.

Open Beer Bottles with Bic Lighters

If you lack for a piece of paper, a ring, or just don't want to risk bursting another bottle, Wired explains the time-honored tradition of popping the top with a Bic-type lighter.

Outlet-Hanging Charge Station For Your Small Gadgets

If a full-sized charging station is overkill for your single cellphone or iPod, try this smaller gadget cradle that mounts neatly on a wall outlet. Craft blog Zakka Life put together a simple tutorial for making a cradle that's perfect for single, regularly-charged items—the kinds of things you dump out of your pockets upon returning home.

Have a favorite post from 2009 that highlights a clever use or novel way to repurpose an everyday object? Let's hear about it in the comments.

The West Mata undersea volcano, located 200 kilometers from Samoa, erupted in May. Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent the remotely operated underwater vehicle Jason to record the explosive action. In addition to tossing up lava and chunks of rock, West Mata also released a significant amount of sulfuric acid into the water, rendering its acidity somewhere between battery acid and stomach acid. The research team collected various samples and is analyzing them and the footage to better understand these deep sea eruptions and the life that exists around these deep underwater volcanoes. Meanwhile, we get a spectacular view of the eruption itself.

Cameras catch underwater volcano in the act [Science News]

What? Woody over Buzz? But — Buzz has wings and a voice box! Bad choice, Andy. But no doubt this isn't the final word on everyone's favorite playthings. Toy Story 3 comes out June 18 2010.

[via Coming Soon]