In honor of Microsoft's latest update to Windows Genuine Validation, which removes the desktop wallpaper of hacked or illegal copies of Windows and replaces it with an ever-fashionable black background and a warning, BBG presents its official desktop wallpaper for Friday, August 29. Use in close proximity to the Large Hadron Collider at one's own risk — and that of the known universe. This 1600x1200 image is also available at 1024x768 and 1920x1200

The dog eats like it will never eat again, chomping on the gelatinous emulsion we feed it as it if were made of chocolate rabbits. The DogPauseBowl slows it down, however, forcing Rover to eat his food they way we do, at our genteel, Victorian-themed emotional suppression dinner parties. Dog Pause bowls are $17.95 and offered in red or blue dishwasher-safe polyethylene. Product Page [DogPauseBowl via Red Ferret Journal]

This brought back old meme-ories this morning. From Toothpaste for dinner.

A 20-gig 1.8" hard drive, with the absolute minimum of enclosure, is on sale for $45 in China. Sourced from Samsung, the unit has a tiny USB plug and a picture of a platter assembly on the side. Crush hard drive! Crush! [Beto via Everything USB and Gadget Lab]

Nova Design's Tatung VOIP phone has bluetooth, "wireless," a neat flat keypad and nothing else whatsoever. Moreover, it is a real thing, allegedly, albeit just a prototype. Isn't it about time we had some sexy wireless Skypephones? Of course, Nova is another industrial designer with a terrible, inaccessible, unlinkable flash site! To read more, just hit Yanko. Design Page [Nova via Yanko]

An anonymous commenter draws our attention to this beautiful television cosy, yours for $25 at Sally England Design. This is a really fun way to cover up your television when you are not watching it. Sometimes they say that the t.v puts off energy when it is not on that can effect otherwise good feng-shui. This design mimics those 'test of the emergency broadcast system' colorful bars that I was always amazed with growing up. ...

Andrew Liszewski looks back on the classic game Hang-On — the portable version, that is — and its place at the end of the pre-Gameboy era of handheld gaming. What I like about his piece is that he comes to praise Ceasar, not to bury him. You see, it's easy to mock Tiger Electronics' old LCD games. The gameplay was bad, limited to the possibilities afforded by the "popsicle-stick shadow play" elements used instead of ...

Zazzle, which is Cafepress for cool people, now prints custom skateboards. From CrunchGear: As a canvas, you’ve got your choice of standard decks, mini decks, and the oldschool fishboard decks. All of the boards are offered in a variety of widths, so the boat-feeted amongst us are good to go. As far as we can tell from the press release, these aren’t trashy little K-Mart boards - nothin’ but good ol’ seven-ply maple, just as ...

Apple has again run afoul of false advertising rules across the pond. The latest rap from Britain's Advertising Standards Authority regards its claim that "all of the web" is accessible from the iPhone. "They made a very general claim that you can see the internet in its entirety, and actually that's not quite true - so we've upheld [a complaint]," the ASA told the BBC, after ordering Apple to not run the ad again. Its ...

Trade-in shop NextWorth says that it will offer so much cash back on a first-gen iPhone that you can "completely cover" an upgrade to a 3G model. “As the demand for the first generation iPhone in secondary markets remains strong, we are able to offer higher dollar exchanges and remove the price issue from the decision to upgrade to a 3G iPhone,” said Dave Chen, CEO of NextWorth, in a press release. The accompanying PR ...

Remember those bleepy LED football games from thirty years ago? If so, you'll be delighted to hear that old school is coming to the iPhone. Maker Mark Helmuth writes in: I have developed a new application based on the 1970s electronic handheld football game. We have a working beta version ready for the iphone. ... We plan to launch next week The game will be just a buck, according to the homepage, and it's currently ...

You may stop emailing now to report that the Acer Aspire One with WIndows XP is now only $350, and on offer in real-life Best Buy stores. Thank you. Product Page [Best Buy]

With just a little work, World of Warcraft addicts can endlessly repeat a numbing series of exercises instead of leading a genuinely active life. And now they can also use a treadmill while doing so. (Rimshot) We've always wondered what it would be like to run the same distance in the real world that we run every day in Warcraft. Finding out required duct tape, computers, custom scripts, sore legs, and elf ears. We had ...

DivX has released the first edition of its software that encodes h.264, but you'll need to sign up for beta testing if you want to get it now. Remember what a CLI is? You'll be using it a lot here. We'll cover everything from encoder installation to the third-party software nedeed to create and play MKV files, tools for video processing, some of the constraints in the draft DivX 7 H.264 HD video profile and ...

Sometimes, something needs not so much a unicorn chaser as it needs to be chased down and killed by a unicorn. The $12 set comes with four interchangeable horns and three victims. There is video: Product Page [Stupid]

Blip Festival, a four-day nostalgia bath in yesteryear's game consoles and consoles, runs Dec. 4-7 2008 at Studio B in NYC. Here's a list of the musicians and artists confirmed to attend: MUSIC • PARTIAL & CONFIRMED: [us] Animal Style [us] Bit Shifter [sg] Ikuma [uk] Jellica [us] Lissajou [be] M-.-n [es] Meneo [us] minusbaby [us] Mr. Spastic [us] noteNdo [us] Nullsleep [fr] Sidabitball [us] Starscream [uk] Syphus [it] Tonylight [us] Trash80 VISUALS • PARTIAL ...

Would you like to take a simple, reliable gadget and recreate it in software, where it becomes entirely reliant on the stability and continued operation of a more complicated piece of technology? Tom Churm has created an online alarm clock. OnlineClock.net has been online since early 2006 and we strive to be the world's most useful alarm clock you can use on the internet. We offer a wide range of different kinds of online alarm ...

The computer history section in Warsaw's Muzeum Techniki has everything you ever wanted, except the big fresnel lens. From Retro Thing: the first transistor-based differential equation analyzer ... AKAT-1 is an analog computer. Back in the 1960s, this approach offered speed and acceptable accuracy without the complexity of digital logic.The result was a device that could solve relatively complex differential equations in real time, as long as you weren't after precise values. Alas, time has ...

"Un cellulare incastonato nell'asfalto," spotted in Italy by Michele Aquila. Bruce Sterling describes it as "Pompeiian, yet utterly abject." Source [ibcbulk's photostream via Beyond the Beyond]

"The art he practiced was a performing art rather than a creative one: Doctor Jest was the Chief Interrogator of Melniboné. Reaching out with his free hand, he expertly seized the genitals of one of the male Furbies™. The scalpel flashed and the resulting music grew louder and more complex as the Furbies™, their vocal cords surgically operated upon to sing but one note each, screamed in perfect harmony. Even the young emperor was moved ...