2010 Holiday Tech Gift Recommendations List

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So many of my readers, family, and friends come to me around the holidays, and throughout the year, asking for tech gift buying advice. Starting in 2009 I simply compiled a list of various tech gadgets that I could think might be interesting to people and wrote a paragraph or two about each of them.

I've now completed my 2010 Holiday Tech Gift Recommendation List and linked to it in the top navigation above. As stated on the page, I've owned or currently own all of these items with a few exceptions. In the case of the exceptions, they are items that I've used before extensively or want for myself. You can't go wrong by buying any of these items for yourself or a friend/loved one.

DON’T FORGET BLUE BEANIE DAY! - Tuesday, November 30

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Jeffrey Zeldman would like to remind everyone that tomorrow is Blue Beanie Day:

The Fourth Annual International Blue Beanie Day in support of web standards will be celebrated this Tuesday, November 30. That gives you just over 24 hours to …

  • Take a self-portrait wearing a blue beanie (toque, tuque, cap) and upload it to the Blue Beanie Day 2010 pool on Flickr.
  • Add a blue beanie to your social network avatar on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc.
  • Write a web standards haiku and post it on Twitter with the hashtag #bbd4 for your chance to win web design books from Peachpit and A Book Apart in the Blue Beanie Day Haiku Contest.

See you on the internets!

Underclothes That Display The 4th Amendment When X-Rayed by TSA

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4th Amendment Wear is a series of underclothes that have the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution printed on them with metallic ink that so that it will show up when worn through a TSA X-Ray machine.

The clothes are designed as a silent protest against the new reality of being searched to the point where we’re basically naked. We don’t intend for this to be anything more than a thought-provoking way to fuel the debate about safety vs. civil liberties. If we sell a few items, great. But the main intention is to open more dialogue. It’s more of a conceptual piece than anything else.

via Laughing Squid

Hilarious Videos of Seattle Residents Who Have Never Driven In Snow Before

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Cars sliding down a snowy Seattle hill: crashing steel Ice Capades:

From BoingBoing.net:

Here's a brief, excruciating video of cars losing traction on Seattle's Capitol Hill during this week's snowstorm and caroming downwards, out of control (the clincher is a city bus, and what appears to be the same white SUV that just keeps on trying to make it, as though the owner can't believe that his giant ride can't contend with puny black ice).

As someone who's been in a couple of high-speed, freeway ice-accidents (including a childhood trauma in which I was thrown from the car!) this was nearly too painful to watch -- though, as the closing credits remind us, no one was actually hurt on Capitol Hill that day. Which, I suppose, makes this into a kind of crashing steel Ice Capades.

Another video posted yesterday from their apartment balcony of some similar crashes from earlier in the day.