Massa-Bidal sells some of his designs on his online store, but these terrific book covers aren't available just yet. Perhaps if we all pester him enough he'll put them up? The Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr ones would look great on my wall. [Retrofuturs via Flickr via SuperPunch via Gearfuse]

Time Names Droid as Gadget of the Year, iPhone Last Seen Crying in Corner

Time made their list of Gadgets of the Year and it looks like the Droid came out on top, followed by the Nook. The iPhone doesn't even get bronze and instead sits at fourth place this year. Youch. Do we even care about these lists anymore though? [Electronista]

What if Women Were as Horny and Pervy as Men?

This one made a few of us laugh like crazy, but heads up: There's definitely some man-crack visible sometime during the pole dancing sequence. Yes, that means this video is definitely NSFW unless your boss is Jason Chen and giggles right along with you.

2010's Color of the Year is Seriously Ugly

Apparently Pantone picked a color of the year already and, frankly, the description is almost as bad as the color:

Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing

I have to be honest though, I probably only dislike #15-5519 Turquoise because I prefered 2009's #14-0848 Mimosa. [Crunchgear]

(Super Gay) Ron Livingston Does Not Understand the Internet

Alright, so I'm just baiting Office Space actor Ron Livingston a bit in that headline. I don't really know or care what his sexual orientation is or whether it's super or not. I just know that he's attempting to sue an anonymous Wikipedia editor for constantly changing his entry to state that "he is gay and officially confermed (sic) it in TMZ he is gay and darn proud."

Dear Ron, I've had far stranger things written about me, ranging from implications of vampirism to suggestions that I've got an obsession with space travel. I'm not suing. You shouldn't be either. [Wired]

Windows Server and Azure Get Blended Into Server & Cloud

Microsoft has created a new Server & Cloud Division which will include Windows Server and Azure. Like the name gives away, it'll focus on both on-premise and cloud solutions. Looks like it's mainly some reorganization for now and won't affect Microsoft's roadmaps. [ZDNET]

Dell's Twitter Account Generates $6.5 million in Revenue Over Two Years

I'd laugh at Dell for employing 100 people whose job is to man the company's Twitter accounts, but apparently it's paying off in the form of $6.5 million made from Twitter promoted offers. Not too shabby, Dell! [BGR]

Canada Has Its Very Own Version of the AT&T vs. Verizon Ad Lawsuit

Telus and Rogers are sworn enemies in the Canadian wireless carrier arena, sort of like AT&T and Verizon but on a much more quaint, socialist and cold scale. And like our own two big dogs, Telus and Rogers have been at each others' throats recently about advertisements—Rogers has ads claiming it's "Canada's most reliable network" and that its speeds are twice as fast as any other network. Telus hit back, claiming it's not true (Telus did after all just launch a 21Mbps HSPA network) and Canadian courts actually forced Rogers to pull the offending ads, an interesting twist on the lawsuit pattern we Americans pioneered. Anyway, I know we're going to be crushed in the comments with high-larious anti-Canadian jabs, so let me pre-empt:

Igloo, cold, eh, hockey, The Arcade Fire, Bob and Dave MacKenzie, Pamela Anderson, who cares. [Boy Genius Report]

CollegeHumor Tackles Modern Warfare 2 (With Bonus Giz Appearance)

CollegeHumor just posted a video in which comedy nerds play (and are subsequently killed during) Modern Warfare 2, with a bonus appearance by our own Adam Frucci. I can exclusively report that Adam Frucci is a very old man who is several years removed from college, but the video's pretty funny despite this factual error. Discussed within: MW2's similarity to Crash Bandicoot, Dick Cheney quotes, a tax-funded sequel to Psychonauts, and why the glamorization of war is awesome. [CollegeHumor]

LG BL4 Gets Christmas Edition

You know, in America, Christmas editions are usually red and green, but in South Korea, it looks like they hang black tinsel on gold trees, because the LG BL40 Christmas edition is decked out in those colors. It's a small upgrade from the original BL40, with an 8MP camera (up from 5MP, though who knows if it's any better), a fancy case and entry into a contest with lots of prizes. It's in Remainders because only those black-and-gold-loving South Koreans can get their hands on it so far. [Engadget]

VUDU Adds Wikipedia, Possibly the World's Most Boring Update

VUDU is a pretty nice media service, built into set-top boxes and TVs and offering nice 1080p streaming, and adds to its repertoire Wikipedia integration. It's previously added Rotten Tomatoes, which is a little more obvious (and dare we say useful), and I personally might prefer IMDB rather than scrolling through prose paragraphs on my TV in Wikipedia, but it's good that Vudu is constantly updating its product. If you have to ask why it's in remainders, you probably haven't read this far: Vudu, Wikipedia, snore. [Engadget]

The WikiReader isn't a connected device. Instead, Wikipedia comes on an SD card. You can pay $30 to have two updates sent out per year, or freely download a 4GB archive that's specially tailored to the WikiReader's screen. Speaking of which, the monochrome screen is touch-enabled and has a virtual keyboard for typed searches. It's not-backlit, but 2xAAA batteries can power the device for several months.

The WikiReader also seems pretty well constructed. It has a scratch-resistant tempered glass screen, and a plastic case geared for durability. Fun fact: it was designed by Thomas Meyerhoffer, who used to work at Apple, helped design the Chumby, and makes surf boards that look like snowboards.

But here's the weirdest thing about the WikiReader: it can't display images, monochrome or otherwise. I get that they want to maximize battery life and keep the SD card updates manageable, but really? That screams fail. [Wikireader via DVICE]

If this sounds an awful lot like Wikitude, the AR Android app that just can't seem to eek its way into the App Store, that's because it is an awful lot like Wikitude—except with a more polished interface, and, well, iPhone support. (Sort of: non-3GSers need not apply). As with Wikitude, firing this thing up around a familiar location won't really blow your mind, since Wikipedia's geographic article density is still pretty low.

But if you're visiting a new place—that is, a place Wikipedia editors care to write about—Cyclopedia ceases to be an AR tech demo, and with adjustable search radii, a top-down map mode and non-geocaches Wikipedia searching, actually starts to be useful. Available now in the App Store for $2; video demo at the source link. [Chemical Wedding]

NPR News: The unaffiliated Public Radio Player was great great great, but this is somehow better. It brings twice as many stations, adds written news content along with offline reading, on-demand NPR shows and a surprisingly navigable interface. Guiltily free, since you don't even have to sit through pledge drives.

Wikipedia: I just assumed this app already existed, but Wikipedia somehow didn't have an app until this week. Weird! It's sort of a website-wrapped-in-an-app snooze for now, though it's open source and Wikipedia would very much like you to help make it into something decent, that people might actually want. Free, and quite.

Fluent News (Update): A personal favorite news aggregator of mine, Fluent now supports Google News-style searches across sources and emailing from within the app. The search feature is more useful than it might sound, especially if you want to dig right into a news story right after hearing about it. Free.

WHOA: You know Telephone, the group game where you pass a complicated, whispered message around a circle of people until it turns into something about penises, usually? This is that, with writing and drawing, on the iPhone. Here's what you do: You write a word, the next person draws it, the next person writes what he thinks the drawing is, and so on. A dollar.

Aha: Crowd-sourced traffic, with a big-buttoned, simple interface intent on not causing you crash into other people. It'll let you see how traffic is on your preferred driving routes based on input from its users, who can literally yell at their iPhones to record short voice messages about how bad (or awesome, I guess) the roads are. It's only available in a few cities for the time being, but the concept is promising, as are the early reviews.

Discovery Channel: Better than your average dedicated station or publication app, though it follows the same concept: This is video, audio, photo and text content from the Discovery Channel, home of Mythbusters and LOTS OF SHARKS, in a nice little packaged news-style app. No full show episodes—gotta buy those in iTunes—but lots of decent clips and plenty of meat for DC nerds, if there is such a thing.

Simplify Photo: Simplify's other app lets you listen to your home music library from anywhere with a sort of zero-setup server app, and it's absolutely indispensable. This one does the same thing for photos, letting you access your entire home photo library wherever you are, without taking up much space on your iPhone's dinky drive. The experience is surprisingly seamless considering how much it depends on the iPhone's data connection, and the app is only a dollar.

This Week's App News On Giz

• You Can't Read the Good Part of Google's FCC Response

• Apple and AT&T Answer FCC About Google Voice Rejection: It's All Apple

• App Store Approval Process Slowly Getting Less Horrendous?

• iPhone's Sonar Ruler App Measures Distance Using Sound

• Native Twitter Location Data Means More Stalker Power With Every Tweet

• Blow Virtual Kisses with Happy Dangy Diggy

• i.TV iPhone App Grows a Remote Control Framework, TiVo Gives It a Whirl

• Apple Exec Phil Schiller Reaching Out to Rejected App Developers

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.

The book Obama's BlackBerry is on sale now, $11 at Amazon, and is consistently hilarious, as you can see from the (authorized) excerpts below. [Kasper Hauser]

Yes, please join with me in admitting that you spent a fair share of time reading the Human Reproduction article on your beige IBM Aptiva back in the day. Or produced/plagiarized many a fine middle school research papers, culling facts from its bounty. Encarta, you will be missed.

If anyone hasn't figured it out already, paid encyclopedias have been straight murdered by something called Wikipedia. In fact, I went to the Wikipedia page for Encarta to research this post. Oh, the irony; sorry to rub in the pain in your final hour, Encarta. The plug will be officially pulled in October of this year. [Reuters]

Among the many online weather and emergency alert services, job listings, and the like, the Bush years also found a few more interesting new tools. The Library of Congress began posting photos of their incredible catalog on Flickr, for example, and the FBI created widgets for locating sexual predators and most wanted criminals. New tools for college students helped them find loans and compare schools, and finally we were able to pay taxes online. Diplomatic and Intelligence agencies jumped on the Wikipedia bandwagon with Diplopedia and Intellipedia, respectively.

Sure, it's not free broadband internet for all, but let's give credit where credit's due. That Flickr page is amazing! [Nick Thompson via Wired]

The lower court had claimed that Jacobsen's "Artistic License" (CC, dude!) was too broad to claim a copyright violation, which is more powerful than the breach of contract compliant the lower court judge did allow. But the feds have stepped in to call shenanigans, allowing for a dinky little license like the "Artistic" used for model train software to hold up in court as a copyright case, which bodes well for beefier GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The open source world has been starving for notable test cases, and it just may have found one here. [WSJ - photo by Brent and Marilyn]

[Kottke]

MacWorld January 2008 Keynote Rough Outline; draft 5

Greetings! Welcome to Moscone Center

Quick Overview: iPod/iTunes

- Today: 30 indie labels releasing their entire catalogs in iTunes Plus

- iTunes doing extremely well (sales figures/market share)

- Another new game today: Chess

- 3 iPod games released last month accidentally (supposed to be for today)

- Our new models are doing better than ever

- Sales figures, market share

- iPod has been extremely profitable for us this holiday season

- Many more to follow in the next few months

iPhone

- SDK is unveiled!

- iPhone is coming to Japan in March with NTT DoCoMo

- Four times the memory as original iPhone for the same price

- Starting today: 8GB $399, 16GB $499

- Much more than the 1% market share we asked for in January

- Sales beyond our wildest dreams

- Sales figures, market share

- Best iPod ever

iPhone/iPod Touch SDK

- Automatic updating wirelessly or docked

- Users buy/download in iTunes Wi-Fi Store / iTunes Store (Mac/PC)

- Set your own price: Apps $0-$6.99, Widgets $0-$2.99

- Specify iPhone or both iPhone/Touch (certain features iPhone only)

- Developers submit programs as source code, not executable

- Using Cocoa with Objective-C

- Apps and Widgets

- If using microphone or GSM, iPhone only; otherwise, available for both iPhone and iPod Touch

- Submits source code to Apple for validation (make sure that people aren't abusing the system, prevent malware and viruses)

- Demonstration of exporting from XCode 3 to iTunes Store

- Apps can be free or up to $6.99; Widgets free or up to $2.99

- Developers recieve 70% of revenue for their products

- Licensed under Apple Mobile Software License

- Can download wirelessly from iTunes Wi-Fi Store or docked to computer from iTunes Store

- Demonstration of wirelessly downloading (and running) the app submitted earlier

- Apps and widgets can be rearranged on front screen; front screen scrolls to show all apps/widgets

- Resubmit updated versions of apps; when added to store, iPhone/Touch will ask you to update it next time you use it (or next time you dock the iPhone/Touch)

- Developers can get their hands on a beta version of the SDK tomorrow on ADC and start developing; final version due early February

- iTunes 7.6 and iPhone/iPod Touch Software update 1.3 allowing for Apps mid-February

Example apps/widgets

Apps:

- One of our partners made something cool: Last.fm (scrobble tracks played on iPhone/touch wirelessly without syncing w/ computer)

- RSS Feed Reader (coming with 1.3 update) (read feeds online or off)

- iChat (coming with 1.3 update) (AIM, Jabber/Google Talk)

- Quick demonstration

Widgets:

- Another partner: Twitter (update your Twitter on the fly, see your friends tweets)

- Sports Ticker (coming with 1.3 update) (choose your sports and teams, get updates on their progress)

- Yellow/White Book (coming with 1.3 update) (search for contacts, add them to your address book directly from the app, will sync back with address book on your Mac/PC)

- Dictionary (coming with 1.3 update) (quickly look up words, translate, use wikipedia)

- Quick demonstration

- Try these out on the show floor today

Mac

- Selling extremely well; estimated to overtake Tiger in terms of marketshare by June if you only count the new Macs that come with it preinstalled; even quicker if you include boxed copies

- Sales figures/market share

- Hardware sales figures/market share

- Sales are getting better and better every day

- Leopard released October; doing spectacularly

- 10.5.2 out today - many bug fixes, also addressing a lot of issues and complaints users had such as list view with stacks and certain HIG non-compliance issues

New MacBooks!

- What would MacWorld be without a new Mac? (sorry about last year)

- Completely redesigned MacBook

- Completely aluminum body like MacBook Pro

- 13″ screen at 1440×900

- Two colors: Black and Silver

- Looks gorgeous at 0.8″ thin

- A major feat of engineering - patents abound

- DVD drive pops open on side when eject button is pressed

- New on all notebooks and iMac: iSight HD (720p)

- New backlit keyboard based on recent Apple Keyboard revisions (keys slightly lighter than that of laptop casing, colorwise)

- New matching MagSafe cable (Aluminum ends, cord color matches that of keyboard)

- New matching Apple Remote (slightly smaller with larger overall buttons)

- Intel GMA X3100 graphics

- 3 models

- Completely phasing out the combo drive on all product lines today

- BTO models can upgrade all the way to 2.6GHz/4GB Memory/320GB hard drive

- 4.5 hours of battery life

- Starting at $1199

Product Refreshes

- Refreshing Mac Pro and Mac mini today

- Mac Pro now with Penryn!

- Base model 2×2.8GHz dual-core/1GB/NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB/250GB(1×250GB)/1×16x double-layer SuperDrive

- Upgradeable to 2×3.2GHz quad-core/16GB/NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB/4TB(4×1TB)/2×16x double-layer SuperDrives

- Starting at $2,499

- Mac mini gets slight speed bumps and double-layer SuperDrive in all models

- Base model 2.0GHz IC2D/1GB/100GB

- BTO Upgradeable to 2.4GHz IC2D/4GB/320GB

- Starting at $599

One More Thing

- Been brewing for a while

- YouTube's been in Apple TV and iPhone/iPod touch: now it's in iTunes

- Download YouTube videos straight to iTunes or from iPhone/iPod Touch for later offline viewing (sync back to computer)

- Coming in iTunes 7.6 and iPhone/iPod Touch 1.3 updates