Activity Corner

It's New Year's Eve, and that means one thing: lists of 2010.

• 9 major stories everyone got wrong this year. Enlightening.


• The year's weirdest Florida-related news.


• Twitter's year in review. A top-ten list of tweets, retweets, and trends.


• Longform.org's best reads of 2010. Don't miss the "10 most entertaining" section.


• Cover Me's best cover songs of 2010.


• Cocaine Blunts' best rap of 2010.


• Mark Lisanti's (alternatively-titled) 10 best films of 2010 (in no particular order).


• Videogum's best viral videos of 2010.


• The 57 lamest tech moments of 2010. Really, 57?


• Huffington Post's top 10 non-Antoine Dodson videos of 2010.


• The Village Voice's top 20 worst songs of 2010.


• TechCrunch's top 40 iPhone apps of 2010.


• Which leads into the 10 best social mobile apps of 2010.


• Mashable's 19 of the best infographics from 2010.


• 10 new shows from 2010 that should have never been on TV.


• Space.com's top 7 space stories from 2010.


• Best Maru moments of 2010.

And if that doesn't keep you busy enough, here are some links of a more typical Activity Corner nature.

• Polar bears "playing" with spy video cameras.


• We are not alone. You might be surprised (and disgusted) what lives on you.


• Geek fashion from the late 60s.


• The beauty of Pixar. Yes, 7 minutes long, but worth every one of them.


• Camera on the tip of a sword. Awesome cutting-edge video!


• Recycle or make new combo crayons with Crayola's new Crayon Maker.


• 15 incredible shots of natural disasters.


• Pictures from the last roll of Kodachrome film made and developed.


• Make your own Rorshach mask.


• Penguin loves snow.


• Idiot with a tripod (and awesome videography/editing skills) chronicles the blizzard in New York City


• 20 license plates to die for.


• 16 offbeat non-Star Trek performances by Trek actors.


• Bad movie physics: a report card.


• Cat on a trampoline.


• My week of eating nothing but candy.


• AT&T documentary: Don't text while driving.

Friday Game

The hard thing about this game is how easy it is. You only have two controls: Up and Down. What makes it challenging is the game changes at every level, also changing what Up and Down do. You'll play again and again, trying for a higher level (just to see what they are) in Up Down Ready.

Motes to the Eye

In today's megapixel world, and with 8-bit retro appeal, one artist asks the question, How few pixels does it take to render an image (specifically, people) recognizable? See how he does it at iotacons.

Caption Contest

"Taste the happy, Michael! Taste it!" -Gob

Small Keypad, Old Hands

It was bound to happen. Your folks haved started texting you from their cellphone. Sometimes you just gotta laugh. And then, send it to When Parents Text.

Caption Contest Winner

This week's winner is Amanda!

See the original image here.

Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah

Activity Corner

• The economics of Seinfeld.


• The combat codpiece.


• What scientists are learning from the woman who feels no fear.


• The 15 most impentrable bank vaults (although they should take the one off this list).


• Waiting in line? Why the other line is likely moving faster.


• Last-minute geeky Christmas gifts.


• Bethany makes superhero aprons.


• You know, with so many people playing FarmVille on Facebook, somebody should make a FarmVille for Dummies book.


• Taking the concept of the Vibram Five Fingers shoe even further are Footstickers.


• The refrigerator upgrade magnet.


• The LCD monitor hub station is the anti-minimalist's answer to desktop efficiency.


• If bustin' makes you feel good, then you need this replica PKE Meter.


• The credit-card-sized knife, the CardSharp.


• The 10 worst Photoshop disasters of 2010.


• How Google fueled the ugly Christmas sweater renaissance.


• Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater gingerbread house.


• Packaging minimalism.


• The 1982 Tron Holiday Special.


• The truth about holiday weight gain.


• The amazing Chinese hurdler.


• How to make a Cthulhu pot pie.


• Awesome Star Trek Christmas dioramas.


• Here's the meme: trollquotes.


• My Blackberry is not working.


• The Eton Raptor is a solar-powered outdoor device, and can even charge your smartphone.


• A very zombie holiday (an instructional video).


• 10 fun facts about Krampus the Christmas demon.


• The 50 worst Christmas albums of all time.

A Star Wars Christmas

The Star Wars Christmas special that everyone really wants.

Friday Game

There's no scoring, and you can cheat if you want, but then the desire to beat the physics engine takes over, and you see how far you can go with Online Jenga.

Warnings Are Not Enough

Sometimes, even when someone tells you not to look, you can't help but do it. I mean, they told you not to, right? Although there's an internet aphorism that says, "What has been seen, cannot be unseen." While it usually refers to something horrifying or disgusting, this site combines that idea with "looks like" to give you things you Cannot Unsee.

Meme to the Meme Power

You don't have to spend as much time on the internet as I do to get all the memes and movie references in this totally awesome and over-the-top video, but it helps. Bonus: If you can list the most of the memes, you could win an iPad.

Klick! Holiday Video

Caption Contest

Allow me to shed some light on the situation.

Vacation Shadenfreude

While everyone looks forward to vacations, they can often be less than perfect. And, luckily for us, someone is taking pictures of them. Revel in others' despair, and enjoy the captions, at HateCation.

Caption Contest Winner

This week's winner is Hurley!

See the original image here.

Activity Corner

• My favorite Star Trek quote ever. Or maybe it's this one.


• Want to use your smartphone this winter? Try the North Face Etip gloves.


• The best of wookieleaks.


• Honest grad school ad.


• The 10 best data visualization projects of 2010.


• A mashup of 270 moview released this year, Filmography 2010.


• The top 100 movies of all time graphed by location.


• Star Wars meets The Princess Bride in The Chatty Duelists.


• Dinosaurs plus superheroes equals Marvel dinosaurs.


• Angels we have heard on high.


• Rudolph the regular reindeer.


• The 14 top astronomy pictures of 2010.


• Ducked and Covered: a survival guide to the post apocalypse.


• If you're into green computing, you might want this bamboo keyboard and mouse.


• Victorian Star Trek.


• It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.


• Christmas in Portland. Yep, it's the Unipiper.


• The complete map of optimal tic-tac-toe moves.


• Simon's cat is back in Santa Claws.


• Five sci-fi children's books.


• 10 huge prehistoric cats.


• Hamster dance.


• Great mashup: You Got Served... On The Roof!


• Sci-Fried's Star Wars Christmas.


• A ladybug plays with sprinkles.


• "We're not in Kansas anymore."


• Wow. Word Lens, the iPhone's real-time translating app.


• Make it snow.


• 19 Pakistani girls cram into a SmartCar. While I've seen this all over the internet, no one thinks it's funny that they're PACKistani girls? Is it just me?


• Hats off to the awesome choir director for this Christmas Trololo.


• Ben Franklin's 200+ synonyms for "drunk".


• For an industrial designer, injury is the mother of invention.


• I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. Parrot sings "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor".

Friday Game

An interesting game with simple controls (arrows to move, spacebar to interact) that asks you to make choices about saving the world. The real kicker? You can't replay the game. You have only One Chance

He Doesn't Seem So Rone-ry

When you're the leader of a country, even a small communist backwater, you get to tour a lot of places, seeing innovations and machines that your lowly citizens don't. And these photo-ops un-ironically capture your interest. See the Great Leader Kim Jong-il Looking At Things.

Caption Contest

No one guessed that Bill and Shirley were
trying to act out the Happy Hooker in charades.

Musical Voicemail

This one is a very cool and unique site. People call and leave messages, and the dude selects good ones and then writes background music for them. The messages and the music vary, but the constant is strangers sharing stories to a beautiful accompanyment. Some are uplifting, but many are tearjerkers (you've been warned). They're all at One Hello World.

Caption Contest Winner

There's no winner for this week's contest. I guess the picture was too scary. Better luck next week!

Activity Corner

• Turning nails into leather tooling punches (or really cool nails).


• The world's smallest walkie-talkies.


• It contains a touchscreen, a cellphone, an MP3 player, voice recognition, an FM radio, audio/video recording, micro SD card, USB connector, an e-reader... what =can't= the sWaP Rebel "watch" do?


• Snow + train + sled = awesome commute.


• For the guy that has everything: bulletproof clipboard.


• The pneumatic cannon prank. Related: the airbag-in-a-birthday-cake prank.


• The wall-mounted toothpaste squeezer.


• Who needs candles when you can take a bath with this floating planetarium?


• iPad troubleshooting guide.


• How to tie your shoes really fast.


• Inception in real time. Pretty clever.


• All of Billy Joel's greatest hits played at once. Read the comments while you're listening.


• The Twitter Hulks. Yes, various "Hulks" that Tweet.

Icy street corner of doom.

• 16 ridiculous lost animal posters.


• DIY avalanche.


• Time again for the sledding dogs.


• Best printer cartridge description EVER.


• Riverboat zombie survival compound.


• The United States of Autocomplete.


• The completely subjective timeline of the best gifts ever


• Adult chocolate milk. If it didn't cost so much to ship, I'd already have some.


• 15 "alien" vegetables found on Earth.


• 10 weirdest new animals of 2010.


• Rudolph/Roxanne mashup.


• The comeback story of the octothorpe (or, why the "capital 3" now towers over other punctuation marks).


• The 25 greatest internet memes of 2010.


• 7 awe-inspiring aircraft hangars.


• Ducks in the wind.


• Recipe/how-to for glass block holiday jello.


• Trailer for Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. The first one was so bad that I can't wait for this sequel!


• Oh, man, The Beatles gave us ten great years.

Friday Game

Here's an interesting game that is basically an old west gunfight. It's you against an AI opponent. You have to "draw" based on a timer (it resets if you draw too soon), then use your mouse to aim and blast away. But be careful, you're limited to the rounds in your sixgun. See if you have what it takes to walk away from GunBlood.

The Know-It-All of the Party

Don't you hate the person at a party who seems to have an interesting and yet somehow different opinion on a wide variety of topics? Well, now =you= can be that person! All it takes is a little knowledge, the kind you can find at Smugopedia.

Caption Contest

Mini Movie Maker

Movies are cool, but sometimes they can take forever to load. This is especially frustrating when there is only a small bit of the movie that's really interesting. Well, now there's a solution. Turn a section of any YouTube movie into a small animated GIF file using GIFsoup.

Caption Contest Winner

This week's winner is Hurley!

See the original image here.

Activity Corner

• 8-bit Zombies in Retroland.


• iPhone (can record movies) taped to an RC car.


• If you love the old arcade game Battlezone, you'll want Tanks for your smartphone.


• Joining Seattle's Spaceship Supply and New York's Superhero Supply comes London's Monster Supply.


• Science meets Dante's Inferno in the 9 circles of scientific hell.


• Defenstration, The Movie.


• How to wrap a cat for Christmas.


• How to verify if an email address is real or fake.


• List of fake Walt Disneys.


• Disguised to look like cigarettes and fit in a cigarette pack, it's the hidden cellphone jammer.


• A compact travel keyboard with only four buttons? Yes, it's the Kee4 Keyboard.


• Perfect for your smartphone in winter, it's the SubZero headphones/earmuffs.


• The A to Z of gaming.


• Teva stiletto sandals. Yes, really.


• For the geekette in your life, the sterling silver circuit board heart necklace.


• If your mouse hand is cold, warm it up with this heated USB mouse.


• Turn your iPhone into a phone phone. I'll take one in black!


• Jonathon Coulton's Shop-Vac song animated with familiar (and clever) typography.


• Tour of the New York City waterfront by RC helicopter.


• You may be surprised why my cat is afraid of the vacuum cleaner.


• Star Wars snowflakes, now with instructions!


• It's an ad for Google TV, but it's still funny to see Kevin Bacon as Kevin Bacon's biggest fan.


• Dr. Suess does Star Wars.


• Top 20 worst Nativity sets, although it doesn't include this meat Nativity.


• The world's greatest wonders of salt.


• Natural disaster hot zones.


• 15 sandwiches from around the world.


• 15 strange and bizarre gift ideas.


• Classic movie posters done in Star Wars style.


• Who is the fastest classic videogame character? Ultimate retro running race.


• With apologies to Creationists, the top 10 consequences of having evolved.

Friday Game

The very simplest type of physics game you can play, since there's only one control: pressing the spacebar (at the right time, of course). You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll curse at the screen trying to solve the puzzles of Flabby Physics.

Searching for Thylacines

The last know thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, died in 1936. Or did it? One dogged researcher is following up on tantalizing leads, including some blurry Sasquatch-like footage, to find a living specimen of the Australian creature. It's all documented at The Hunt for the Tasmanian Tiger.