Crave

Today's dose of humor only a Web monkey could love is brought to you by Bob McCarty. The online entrepreneur--also of BugsGoneWild.com fame--has come up with a "My Name Is URL" line of shirts and other assorted items (a play on My Name Is Earl, the popular comedy about ordinary people and karma.)

The logo comes emblazoned on long sleeve and cap-sleeve shirts, plus tank tops, hoodies, boxer shorts, bumper stickers--and yes, even doggie garb. Let's hope Fido appreciates Interweb humor.

In a conference call this year with an exec at HDMI, we heard someone at the other end of the line describe HDMI 1.3, the new standard for the highest-quality digital A/V connection, as "the 1080p of 2007." In other words, he's hoping that HDMI 1.3 becomes the new buzzword in HDTV that everybody wants to know about, that high-end buyers will plunk down lots of cash to get, and that makes everything that came before it seem obsolete.

On Monday, I attended a 3-hour press event where HDMI Licensing LLC, the company behind … Read more

A few weeks ago, I noticed my local (Brooklyn, N.Y.) Blockbuster Video store was closing up shop. No big deal. These things happen all the time, especially with the sky-high rents charged for commercial real estate here in New York City. But when I saw that two other nearby Blockbusters were also shutting down, my interest was piqued. Some quick googling revealed that the closures weren't limited to Manhattan and Brooklyn: at least 16 stores in northern Michigan were also shuttered in recent months. And who knows how many were closing without the news hitting the local papers. … Read more

Sure, the Internet is great for Holiday shopping in your bathrobe at 3 a.m., but sometimes you just feel like throwing on some shoes and doing a little real-life late-night shopping. Even in the Big Apple, 24-hour outlets are hard to find, and there are times you want something a little more upscale than the wares at your corner bodega--like maybe a new MacBook Pro.

Starting today, December 13, Apple's flagship SoHo store in New York will remain open 24 hours a day, until 11:59 p.m. on December 24 (the glass-box Fifth Avenue store is always … Read more

We dredged the series of tubes for you: here's today's roundup of link love.

--GAMING: Fake wiinjuries: they're all the rage (Joystiq)

--JUICY GOSSIP: MacBook "Thin" Coming Soon? (CrunchGear)

--GADGETRY: New Nabaztag Tag (Information Aesthetics)

--GAMING: China cracks down on online games (Kotaku)

--ARTS & CRAFTS: Casting metal Legos (MAKE)

--ONLY IN JAPAN: Shark USB Mousepad Warmer (Tokyomango)

--POLICE BLOTTER: Guy wants PS3, gets box of floor tiles (Game|Life)

Skype announced today a new all-you-can-eat SkypeOut plan for U.S. and Canadian customers. For $29.95 per year, you can make unlimited SkypeOut calls to mobile phones and landlines within the U.S. and Canada. Even better, if you sign up for the plan before Jan. 31, 2007, you get a 50 percent discount so you only pay $14.95 for a year of unlimited SkypeOut calls, plus 100 minutes of SkypeOut credit for international calls. If you're like me and don't make even $14.95 worth of SkypeOut calls each year, you can still opt to … Read more

Once again, simplicity wins above all else--in this case, of all things, manifested in the form of a miniature flashlight.

It seems as though a new LED keychain flashlight comes out almost every day, but who's buying them all? We've had them at various times, but they always end up being too bulky or impractical. Then we saw the "LockLite," which addresses both issues.

Red Ferret says the device, made by True Utility, turns the key itself into a flashlight by embedding it in a case that also houses a bulb and battery for less than $… Read more

Just when you thought that SD memory cards, with their fancy new SDHC spec, were pulling ahead of Sony's Memory Stick Pro format in terms of capacity and data transfer rates, here come Sony and SanDisk with an upgrade. The two companies have teamed up to keep Sony's proprietary memory card format up-to-date by increasing the maximum capacity to 32GB and bumping the top theoretical data transfer rate to 60 megabytes per second. That makes this new format three times as fast as current Memory Stick Pro media, according to the companies, though the new cards will be … Read more

This is simply sad. Alliwantforxmasisapsp.com is one of the most transparent and pathetic examples of viral marketing the Internet has seen, and that's being nice about it. This thinly veiled commercial in the form of a blog chronicles two target-demographic hipster tweens named "Charlie" and "Jeremy" in their quest to get a PSP for Christmas. In reality, the site is a blatant and cringe-worthy ploy developed by Zipatoni, a marketing company that seems to be experiencing a dearth of actual talent.

With all the style of a sitcom dad trying to seem cool to … Read more