Google Monster

Google Monster by Asaf Hanuka for an article in California Lawyer about groups protesting Google's plan to scan every book.

Speaking of Google, my family took advantage of the $50 Droid deal at Amazon. We ordered it Saturday, it showed up yesterday, and activation was easy over the phone. (We're longtime Verizon customers, but the Verizon store apparently had no ability to match the price.) It's really my wife's phone, but I'll let you know how it goes. You can order your own here.

*Previously: Daycare at Google costs $29000 a year.

*Buy Asaf Hanuka books at Amazon.

Google's products explained

Two new images from Stéphane Massa-Bidal's Google meets Big Brother series. Stéphane has various goods on sale at Zazzle.

*Previously: Baby Got Back/1984 Mashup.

*Buy Google Android vinyl toys at eBay.

Google Android vinyl toys (toy roundup)

Google Android mascot toys by Andrew Bell and Dyzplastic.






Revoltech Alien.







Revoltech Daimajin. Via.




Uglydoll 3" Action Figures Series 2. More photos and information here.

*Previously: Homemade Uglydoll Costumes.

*Buy Revoltech toys at eBay.

Ninjas unbox the Nexus One (link roundup)

Patrick Boivin and his ninjas unbox the Nexus One for Google. Yes, there's more stop motion animation on his Youtube channel. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Moonkin/Owlbear from World of Warcraft sculpted by Paul Pape.

2. Poster for Aliens by Tom Whalen.

3. Send money to Doctors Without Borders and you might win a sketch card such as Frog Thor riding Lockjaw. Via.

*Previously: Origami Owlbear.

*Buy chestbursters at eBay.

The back of the Googlephone

Look at how cute the Android mascot is on the back of the Nexus One/Googlephone and case. More photos here.

*Previously: Woman next to giant Android statue.

*Buy vintage phones at eBay.

The Clever Hamsters jazz band (link roundup)

Meet The Clever Hamsters, hamsters that play jazz to promote Drench bottled water. Via these sites.

And a few more links:

1. A study indicates that pregnant women under stress are more likely to abort male babies.

2. Search page designed to help you get Google search results uncluttered by spammy affiliate link sites.

3. Gordian knot monument in Cancun, perhaps?

*Previously: Lockpicking hamster.

*Buy vintage advertising at eBay.

Fark's rejected Christmas cards (link roundup)

From Fark's Rejected Christmas Cards theme.

And a few more links:

1. The WSJ says:

[Tiger] Woods cut an unusual deal with American Media Inc., the owner of both Men's Fitness magazine and the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper. Mr. Woods agreed to the cover shot and photo spread in Men's Fitness, whose circulation of about 700,000 per issue is less than half of Golf Digest's nearly 1.7 million, in return for the National Enquirer squelching a story and photographs purportedly showing Mr. Woods in a liaison with a woman who wasn't his wife.

2. Steps to take now to make it easier to reclaim your Google account if it ever gets hacked.

3. "The Roman Catholic Church and the police in Ireland systematically colluded in covering up decades of child sex abuse by priests in Dublin, according to a scathing report released Thursday." Via.

UPDATE: Sinhead O'Connor has strong words for the Pope. Via.

*Previously: Rejected Fallout perks.

*Buy Tiger Woods toys at eBay.

Space Amoeba poster (link roundup)

Poster for Space Amoeba. Here's the trailer.

And a few more links:

1. Apparently this is what William Gibson had in mind when he created the Idoru.

2. Mike Krahulik draws his D&D players' characters.

3. Click I'm Feeling Lucky on the Google home page and a mysterious number appears. It apparently counts the seconds until the end of the year.

*Previously: Neal Stephenson recounts his battles with William Gibson.

*Buy plush amoebas at eBay.

Toronto Comics Art Festival posters (link roundup)

Gallery of Toronto Comics Art Festival posters through the years (including one by James Jean). Via.

And a few more links:

1. From Tucker Stone's weekly tv reviews:

The best part of the British version of Law & Order is the opening line, because the voice-over guy says "crown prosecutor" instead of "district attorney", and that confuses the American brain into thinking that one has fallen into a parallel universe . . . . And then the credits roll, and it gets worse, because the crown prosecutor is shown wearing those robes and those wigs that British people make their lawyers wear out of some thousand year old grudge, and it's just--nobody can watch that. Seriously, nobody can watch that. It's horrible. So turn it off, and wait for the day that Dick Wolf gets sociopathic enough to produce a Law & Order spin off set in some former Eastern Bloc country.

2. A handy resource for The Golden Rule in most of the world's major religions.

3. Google will apparently start directly selling a new Android phone called "Nexus One." Which makes this a good time to repost this: San Francisco mayoral candidates (including Gavin Newsom) being subjected to the Voight-Kampff Test.

*Previously: Blade Runner fan poster.

*Buy Blade Runner posters at eBay.

Sloth and baby wall decal (link roundup)

Sloth and baby wall decal by Meomi on sale here.

And a few more links:

1. Type in "dinosaurs we" and Google auto complete helpfully suggests "dinosaurs were made up by the CIA to discourage time travel." Via these fine sites.

2. Studies to date indicate that microlending has had modest positive impact. Via.

3. Screenshot nicely sums up the Kansas City Chiefs' ineptitude.

*Previously: Baby sloth.

*Buy sloths at eBay.

Papercraft whale (link roundup)

Download the whale paper toy here (bottom left under Free Papertoy Downloads). Via.

And a few more links:

1. Simple, yet effective Jamie Hyneman (Mythbusters) costume.

2. Particularly depressing examples of Google's suggestions for completing search queries. Via.

3. 73-year-old man arrested in Los Angeles for tagging.

*Previously: Mythbusters flu psa.

*Buy Mythbusters toys and DVDs at Amazon.

Cookie Monster Google Doodle

Today's Google Doodle featured Cookie Monster.

*Previously: Monstrous Cookie Monster.

*Buy Cookie Monster toys at eBay.

Sesame Street Google Doodle

Big Bird stars in today's Google Doodle honoring 40 years of Sesame Street.

*Previously: The Count counts...because he has to.

*Buy Sesame Street toys at eBay.

Church marquee sponsored by Microsoft Bing? (link roundup)

Church marquee says "Some questions can't be answered by Google." Via.

And a few more links:

1. Stephen King's so-bad-it-was-impossible-to-finish novel The Colorado Kid is being made into a television series.

2. Speaking of, here's a longshot. Can anyone point me to the creepy images that were used before and/or after commercial breaks on Kingdom Hospital? I'm guessing they were by Jerry Uelsmann. (They were the only thing I liked about the show.)

3. Looks like the claim that the Raiders' head coach broke another coach's jaw isn't going away.

*Previously: Church marquee says: "Jesus: Stripped and violated just for you."

*Buy NFL bobbleheads at eBay.

Monopoly City Streets desktop wallpaper

You can now play the Google Maps powered Monopoly City Streets. Here's the related blog.

*Previously: Print your own Monopoly money.

*Buy board games at eBay.

Star Wars Battlefront IV concept art (link roundup)

Go here for a gallery of concept art from the abandoned Battlefront IV. Lots of Dagobah and Geonosis. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Barbarian Penguins.

2. I previously mentioned the suspicious results of the KISS Design By Humans t-shirt contest. Apparently KISS also held a contest promising to perform at whatever city cast the most votes, and then reneged on the promise. Via.

3. Alleged screenshots of the Google Chrome OS desktop.

*Previously: Boba Fett Dunny.

*Buy KISS toys at eBay.

Shark anatomy model (link roundup)

Smart Lab Shark Anatomy Model - - $19 at Amazon. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Robert X. Cringely offers the most interesting comment I've read about Chrome OS:

What Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has to fear more than anything else is that he’ll awake one day to learn that the Google search engine suddenly doesn’t work on any Windows computers: something happened overnight and what worked yesterday doesn’t work today. It would have to be an act of deliberate sabotage on Microsoft’s part and blatantly illegal, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Microsoft would claim ignorance and innocence and take days, weeks or months to reverse the effect, during which time Google would have lost billions.

Read more.

2. 20% off at Tenacious Toys all Wednesday with the code 500FRIENDS.

3. Obama's teleprompter is jokingly called TOTUS. (The President of the United States is POTUS.)

4. Nice photos of Yuki 7 paper dolls.

*Previously: Spider/Jellyfish/Shark chimera.

*Buy Obama posters at eBay.

Rocket car (link roundup)

It hardly matters what it's advertising. I just like this rocket car. There's also a rocket house.

And a few more links:

1. If you like 826 products, check out Essentially Odd: A Catalog of Products Created For and Sold At the 826 National Stores - - on sale for $12.

2. Quick, someone write a knol about Google's new OS. Remember knol?

3. You can download the special World of Warcraft version of Peggle for free (you don't need WoW to play).

4. The giant furnace of Furnace Town.

*Previously: Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. goods available online.

*Buy Flash Gordon toys at eBay.

Mad Men Season 3 Teaser (link roundup)

I've mentioned Dyna Moe's Mad Men desktop wallpapers and paper toys many times before. She created that work as fan art, but she's been hired to create art for AMC and has posted a Mad Men season 3 teaser here as a desktop wallpaper. Her webstore is at Zazzle. (Or . . . it's the best April Fool's Joke I've seen today.)

And a few more links:

1. The Casanova comic by Matt Fraction, Gabriel Ba, and Fabio Moon continues tomorrow. Online for free. Unless this is an April Fool's Joke that's not remotely funny.

2. A guide to libel for bloggers. Via.

3. The man who writes Google's April Fool's jokes.

4. Here's some nostalgia antidote - - the original Transformers cassette toys (especially the humanoid robots) were horrendous.

*At Toycutter: Mad Men minifig concept art.

*Buy "Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT" at Amazon.

Video of an underwater vocano erupting (link roundup)

Video of an undersea volcano erupting in the Tonga islands and shooting ash into the sky. Read about it here.

And a few more links:

1. Meet Spud, the hedgehog with no spines. Scientists don't know what's caused the condition, but the poor fellow sure looks pathetic. Via.

2. Not too long ago, people didn't think Google would make any money.

3. Tinkerbell MODOK.

4. You can play a new Double Fine point and click adventure game here. But I lost interest after a few minutes. It's not remotely funny.

*Previously: Video of a hedgehog eating.

*Buy Tinkerbell toys at eBay.