bookofjoe

Wired UK prints subscribers' personal information on cover

From Coverjunkie: "A few selected readers have received an ultra-personalized cover [above and below] of this month's Wired magazine (UK edition). Wired dug up some personal information on the web of each recipient and then printed it on their own personalized cover."

"Wired's statement: '...many of us are unaware how data we post only for social reasons can later be used for other purposes.'"

Below, the newstand version.

[via Andrew Losowsky's Magtastic Blogsplosion]

NO YOU CANNOT HAVE MY NUMBER

So great.

"Laser-cut and hand-made in Los Angeles from Plexiglas, arcrylic paint and wood."

2"W charm on a 16" sterling silver chain.

$39.

Top 10 Targets of Phishing Websites in 2010

From "OpenDNS 2010 Report: Web Content Filtering and Publishing": "The most frequently spoofed website in every month of 2010 was PayPal. PayPal was targeted nine times more frequently than the next most frequent target, Facebook. Five of the most targeted brands — Facebook, World of Warcraft, Sulake Corporation, Steam and Tibia — are associated with online and social games. Percentages indicate the proportion of phishing sites verified in 2010 and associated with a given target."

CardSharp — Special Forces Credit Card

"Super-sharp super-light utility knife starts off life as a credit card-sized object that with three folds transforms into a knife with a stainless surgical steel-grade blade."

Want.

£15.

[via CSYCB]

Apple TV is a FAIL — and it pains this fanboy to say so

This past Saturday night I attempted to watch "Catfish" via Apple TV on my plasma TV.

It was — by far — the worst experience yet in my three months of downloading movies from Apple TV and Netflix via Apple TV on my flatscreen plasma.

Not once in perhaps a dozen movies has a movie played without at least one freeze.

"Catfish" stopped so often during the first 20 minutes — six to eight times, as best as I can remember — that it took about 40 minutes to watch that much of it.

Each freeze — the first was about two minutes in — required my active intervention.

In other words, waiting for the movie to start playing again on its own never happened, even after one time I decided to wait it out.

After 10 minutes I couldn't take it any more and started diddling with the little Apple remote.

You can see how the constant stoppages and need to fool around with the remote, pressing this button and that without rhyme or reason until for no apparent reason the film starts up again, could ruin any semblance of an enjoyable viewing experience.

Even Gray Cat finally got disgusted with my repeatedly sitting up from my mummy viewing position and left her favorite snuggling spot — between my knees on a soft old cotton blanket — to find a more restful location elsewhere in the house.

Sometimes I had to fiddle with the remote for five minutes and scores of button presses to get the film going again.

For this I paid $4.99 (and to watch it in 720p vs. DirecTV's 1080p HD transmission)?

The movie was really good in spite of the technical disaster.

And don't tell me it's because of my crummy internet connection: I checked my download speed with a laptop alongside the little black Apple TV box while the movie was frozen onscreen and had 10Mbps down (on a 2004 PowerBook G4), way fast enough to allow the pixels to stream properly given a suitable decompression algorithm.

Back to the coding drawing board, Cupertino: you've got to do a lot better.

Hurts Netflix too that their movies suffer as a result of Apple FAIL.

Here is my list of available pay-per-view movie experiences on TV, best first:

1. DirecTV HD Theater: $5.99/movie, 1080p, never a technical problem. The one negative: you watch at their scheduled times (movie starts every 30 minutes on the half-hour on one of several adjacent channels showing it) rather than when you feel like it.

2. Netflix on Apple TV: "free" (with $7.99/month unlimited download-only subscription). Netflix movies via Apple TV freeze less often than those rented from the Apple store, probably related to the fact most Netflix movies are standard definition vs. Apple's 720p. And when freezes occur, they usually resolve themselves without any personal intervention/remote-enabled misery.

3. Apple store movies on Apple TV (see above).

4. Comcast-on-Demand. Though movies are often available in 1080i or 720p and cost $3.99, the dreadful, soul-destroying Comcast remote interface that must be negotiated to first find a movie you want to watch and then rent it is such a formidable obstacle that by the time you succeed, I for one have little or no interest any more in actually watching the film. How bad is it, you ask? Reread my description above of the "Catfish" viewing experience and consider that even now I'd still rent a film from Apple rather than enduring the Comcast experience. nuf sed.

Wall-mountable folding chair

Created by French designer Christian Desile.

Made from a 0.8"-thick piece of bamboo laminate.

Folded size: 34.2"H x 21.2"W.

$335.

[via CSYCB]

Octopus emerging from a beer bottle

Their fantastic camouflage/mimicry capability never fails to astound me with its speed and precision.

You can bet many millions — if not tens or hundreds of millions — of military dollars are focused on learning how to replicate this property in inanimate — and even better, animate — objects.

[via Peggy Wang on BuzzFeed]

Red Rose Washcloth

A rose by any other name would still be... a washcloth?

Guess so.

$4.95.