This is a wonderful tribute to webcomic xkcd and the Internet in general, featuring most of the Internet’s notable celebrities and/or writers and thinkers.  There’s literally hundreds of millions of hits between these collected folks.  Just take a look at the list:  Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Google Zurich, Hank Green, MC Frontalot, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Mr. Toast, Miss Cellania, Team Genius, Phil Plait, Allan Amato, Maddy Gaiman, Charissa Gilreath, Belinda Casas, Chuck Martinez, Jeremy James, Joanna Gaunder, Lee Israel & Octavio Coleman Esq. of The Jejune Institute.

It’s based off this strip, which is further based off those Discovery Channel commercials.  It’s so sweet and wonderfully cheerful that I can’t help but smile.

When I was working out seriously, I spent a good hour on the exercise bike every night.  That’s a lot of time to sit on your rear end, staring at the walls in the basement.  So, to kill the time and just get my mind off of how much I was sweating and how much time I had left on my ride, I’d pick up a book.  Actually, it was like five books at the same time, just switching randomly from night to night or in the middle of a ride, but either way I did a whole lot of reading, and I had nothing to put my book on.

That’s where Performance Bike’s Book Caddy would’ve been a great pick-up.  I’d ride with one hand on the yolk, and one hand on my book, and it was always awkward, especially with larger books.  If I tried to focus too much I’d get dizzy from the body movement, and it was generally not the easiest thing in the world to do.  Just don’t read and ride on the streets, unless you want to get tangled up underneath oncoming traffic.

Most importantly, it looks like it could hold more than books.  A CD player, a portable video game system, maybe even an iPad or netbook would settle in on that stand quite nicely, and given the adjustable clamshell of the netbook, you could angle it perfectly and get work IN while you work OUT, all without dropping anything too expensive while dropping pounds.

In what is one of the worst-kept secrets in gaming, Sega has finally revealed what their long-talked-about “Project Needlemouse” is.  In case the combination of “needle” and “mouse” didn’t give it away, Sega revealed plans for a new Sonic The Hedgehog game, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 to be released on the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation3.  The catch?  It’s going to be an episodic game (initially), released in bits and pieces via the WiiWare, Xbox Live, and PSN networks.  Episode 1 is expected to be released this summer.

The game is going to skip all the various shovelware Sonic titles that have leaked out in recent years, and is going to be a direct sequel to Sonic The Hedgehog 3.  Thank goodness; maybe we can finally get another good Sonic game!  While I’m not sold on episodic games in general, this one might actually be worth buying, assuming Sony keeps it entertaining and avoids the Pokemon-style trap of Sonic Adventure 2’s Chao-raising minigame.

If you work from home, have a home office, or just get a lot of junk mail and credit card offers that you want to make sure don’t fall into the wrong hands, odds are you have a paper shredder at home.  I have one, and it’s one of the most fabulous inventions that’s ever been introduced into the modern home.  No more tearing unwanted junk mail in half and tossing it away; just feed it into the machine and condense a month’s worth of mail into a sandwich baggie-sized pile of confetti!  However, what if there was a way to turn that refuse into something useful?

Well, the Japanese company Oriental Co. Ltd. has introduced a machine they call the White Goat.  Basically, it takes your scraps of old paper and turns them into fresh, usable toilet paper.  It only takes 40 sheets of standard A4 paper to make one roll of TP, which is about what I get in junk mail, bank statements, and miscellanea every week.  Just think about it; you’re recycling and making a social statement about where credit card companies can stick their unwanted applications at the same time!

Granted, the machine costs about $100,000, which is a little steep for the average home office’s budget.  Plus at 6 feet tall and 1300 pounds, it’s not exactly something you can wheel into the spare bedroom.  Still, if you choose to make the investment, it’ll pay for itself after about 200,000 rolls of toilet paper, or 16,000 recycled reams of paper, not counting the water needed for the paper pulping process.

See it in full at io9.

In the old days, computer hijackers would simply steal your bank account information, credit card numbers, and other personal information and bleed your accounts dry, set up a bunch of fake credit cards, and that sort of thing.  If they weren’t those sort of hackers, they’d hijack your computer directly via trojan horses, install your machine as part of a bot net, and do nefarious feats with your computer as an unwitting host animal.  Both of those can be very profitable, but they’re also incredibly hard work.

Leave it to hackers to think up an easy way to separate you from your credit card information and/or hard-earned money directly.  It’s the latest trend in computer scamware.  Known as hijackware or ransomware, it’s basically a computer virus or piece of malware that is designed to block you from using your computer until you fork over a fee.  MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles has the full story on these evil programs.

In some cases, ransomware works off scare tactics, telling you that your computer has a virus (which it does) and that you need to buy an upgrade to some generic antivirus software program to get rid of it.  Those are the more harmless scamware programs.  The other, more destructive program actually encrypts your entire computer and forces you to pay a subscription fee to decrypt your hard drive.

The way to be wise of these programs is to know your computer.  Know your antivirus software’s name and what its warnings look like, and always keep it up to date.  If you have Norton or McAfee or something else you pay a fee for, I recommend dropping it in favor of AVG, which works better than either of those programs could dream of and is completely free for personal users (I’d even recommend buying the upgraded version of AVG to support the great job the company does).  Add in a secondary ad blocker like AdBlock Plus, just to be at max safety level.  Run a firewall, run adware removers (like AdAware or Spybod Search and Destroy) and for the love of all things electronic, be careful about what you’re clicking on!

There is no computer OS, program, or browser that can protect the user from the person behind the keyboard.  You are the cause of most of your security problems.  Browse smart, people!

One of the best things about the rise of crafters on the Internet is that you can get pretty much any kind of geek-centric craft you can imagine, all thanks to your fellow oddities. Take, for example, these great video-game-themed home furnishings from Mental Floss.  There are a lot of Pac-man themed shelving units, which would go great next to those Pac-man ghost lights!

My favorite is definitely Soner Ozenc’s Tetris Mirror, but I have to admit they’re all really cool.  As for the Tetris mirror, it’s awesome because it’s in 13 separate pieces, which you can put together to form any Tetris shape you like!  It’s the perfect decoration for, say, a game room or a video gamer’s lair.  Or even a bedroom, since they’re gorgeous and not overtly nerdy!

That Donkey Kong shelf is a close second, if only because of how cool it looks with all those great Nintendo video games of the past arrayed on top of it.  The use of barrels as dividers adds a functional and aesthetic appeal, making it a great bookshelf for old video game manuals.

Now that Apple has jumped into the tablet computing game, expect to see this device everywhere.  But what good is it?  Well, basically, it’s great if you wanted a giant iPod Touch or a less portable netbook.  I keep flashing back to the Macbook Wheel.  It’s not even as useful as the other tablet computers on the market (due to its lack of multitasking ability).

While it is very light (1.5 pounds) and has good battery life (10 hours), it’s also very expensive at $499 for a 16GB model, $599 for a 32GB edition, and $699 for a 64GB edition (not counting the optional 3G data plan from AT&T).  It has built-in 802.11n WiFi and 2.1 Bluetooth support, and it syncs wirelessly.  Unlike most netbooks, it only has a 1GB processor (rather than 1.66GB as is the netbook standard), but its 9.7 inch screen makes it definitely easier to read than an iPod Touch for text purposes and playing Apple’s app store games.  There’s still no Flash support, which means you’re stuck buying those mediocre games from Apple rather than playing the equivalent mediocre game free online.

So what’s the iPad good for?  Well… if you wanted something harder to carry around than a Kindle, then you’ve got your device.  If you wanted a giant iPod Touch, you’ve got your device.  If you wanted a slightly slower netbook that has a very long profile that makes it more prone to smudges, scratches, and breaking, you’ve got your device.  If you like pretending to finger paint, you’ve got your device.

A closer view:

Images: Bitmob

Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.  A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  A rolling stone gathers no moss.  What do those things even mean?  Well, if you’re like most people and you have a bit of trouble learning the virtue of patience, not jumping to conclusions, or being grateful for what you’ve got through those old expressions, then not to worry.  Geek Dad has updated those old sayings for the modern age.

Of the ten listed, my favorite is, “A fool and his password are soon parted.”  Truer words have never been spoken, as the research shows!  “Hindsight is always 1080p” is also amusing, but I’d settle for hindsight being in 480p myself.  As for the one that reads, “E-mail, Twitter, and Facebook are three best friends and three worst enemies.”  There has never been anything said so wise.

Do you have any updated axioms for the modern era?  Perhaps, “That as dead as VHS,” rather than “as dead as a doornail” or “as dead as HD DVD?”  “It’s always darkest before the LED light kicks in?”