If you’re going to get an iPhone for this holiday season, or if you’ve already gotten one for some lucky AT&T user in your life, then you’ve only done half your work.  After all, what good is an iPhone without some crucial accessories?  Well, if it’s the required AC adapters for home, car, and office, and the battery life extenders, then it’s not good.  After all, the iPhone destroys battery power like nobody’s business, and without that, it’s a very expensive plastic brick.  Newsweek has put together their 8 must-have iPhone accessories.

I can’t speak for the veracity of some of these, but as we’ve seen the iPhone isn’t much of a phone, and any gadget that complex will just wreck batteries (which is why I’m shopping for a netbook to phase out my laptop for trips to the coffee shop or whatnot).  However, the kicker of the list, and the one that had me laughing, was the last one.  I won’t spoil it, but it’s pretty amusing.

Image: gillyberlin

The stringer at the end of this video is hilarious and true.  Pretty much every one of the web or phone-based meetings I’ve ever had have been a huge waste of my time (and, presumably, everyone else’s time).  I’ve never had a conference break down into a Queen singalong, though.

A couple of weeks ago, I got to go to a double feature of The Muppet Movie and Labyrinth.  I have to say, The Muppet Movie holds up REALLY well.  It was metatext before metatext was cool.  Great, classic, still very funny movie that hasn’t aged a bit.  As for Labyrinth, well… it’s still very weird.

While I plan on being back later with lots of Black Friday ad links and some highlights for the gadget-minded, I just wanted to stop in and wish all the Shaktronics readership a happy Thanksgiving.  For those that don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, then I hope you have a happy Thursday.  Without you guys, this site wouldn’t be here.  You’re appreciated all year, but we make you wait until November before we tell you that we care.

Now get out of here and go eat some turkey!

Image:  Go Nintendo

While the Amazon review page is home to a lot of goofy comments from people claiming to be pathologists using it to catch up on work during the commute or people using it as a portable bar, there’s no denying that the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk is actually a useful product for people who A) have to work out of their car a lot, B) people who have to eat out of their car a lot, and C) people who drive around with their laptops open, looking for a place to steal wireless internet.  This is definitely a useful product, despite the fun people are having with it.

If I was, say, a real estate agent like our very own Kathy T., I’d want one of these in my car for catching up.  Some days, I’d love to just park somewhere, pop open my notebook, and get some writing done without having to go inside and chain myself to the desk in the basement.  This would be a great way to be able to do that.  A lot of times I find myself grabbing food on the way to/from places and trying to eat while riving.  It’d probably be a lot safer if I just ate off one of those trays, and I’d get a lot less food on myself that way, too.

But enough about my bad habits and love of stolen wifi.

It’s that time of year again.  It’s time to buy that person in your life some sort of electronic device that you don’t really understand.  Don’t you love staring blankly at rack after rack of expensive electronic geegaw, having no idea what might work, what might be useful, and what the cool gift of the year is?  I know I do!

However, if you want to know what you’re buying before buying it, I’d like to recommend Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide.  So far all they’ve covered are cell phones and e-book readers, but I can tell you right now that the e-book reader is going to be a hot item this year, so that’s a great place to start shopping for the nerd in your life.  It’s new technology, but it’s been around just long enough and has enough corporate muscle behind it for you to be sure you’ll get a few years out of your Kindle or Nook.

Google’s operating system, Google Chrome OS, has been announced.  In case you can’t tell by the name, Google Chrome OS is entirely dependent on Google Chrome the brower, meaning that Google’s new operating system is going to be a Linux-based OS that basically runs like a web browser.  While there’s not a lot of information on just what Chrome is going to be, here’s a great list of what we know so far.

The important questions, so far, have not been answered.  Namely, what kind of third party support will Chrome’s netbooks have for printers, keyboards, etc. and if it will be able to function in an offline state, or if the cloud computing model means you’re stuck with a paperweight when you’re not connected to the Web.  What is clear is that Chrome OS is going to be designed for netbooks, not desktops or laptops, and it’s going to be meant for solid-state drives that can boot it up and be online in seconds, rather than minutes.

I have to say, just watching that video gets me excited for the possibilities of Chrome.  While I’m generally anti-cloud computing, since one data outage can lose you hundreds of hours of work, so long as I can back up my cloud information on my desktop, I’ll be okay with it.  It’s not like I want to do serious work on a netbook anyway; just fun, on-the-go stuff only for my little brightly colored baby computer.

Source: Make

The old saying is, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”  Or maybe that’s more an 80’s song than a saying.  I don’t know; that’s not really the point.  The point is, with the rate that technology is changing, the hot new invention from four years ago is fast on its way to becoming the next mini-disc player.  Here are 10 technologies that are on their way out that PC World is going to miss.

I don’t agree with all of them, but some of them definitely will be missed.  Like pay phones, for instance.  Have you ever misplaced your cell phone, or left it behind?  That’s the one time all week you’re going to actually need to call someone on the phone while out of the house.  It never fails.

The idea of the iPod or optical media drives dying out seems kind of laughable, considering they just launched Blu-ray, but think about it.  When’s the last time you saw a floppy disk drive or CD player not in your car dashboard?  Exactly.  Since people are just downloading their movies and music nowadays and sticking the files on their iPhone or whatever, why wouldn’t the iPod with its declining sales be in danger?

If you’re one of the few people in the world who doesn’t have a Wii, and you’re looking to get your hands on the Wii Fit bundle, then you’re in luck.  Gaming Bits passed along this bit of information.  Between now and November 22, if you buy the Wii Fit Gaming Bundle from Amazon,  you’ll also get a nice $50 Amazon gift card that you can use at a later date.

I have to say, I’m a huge fan of gift cards and gift certificates and that sort of thing.  I like having the ability to buy whatever I want.  As much as I like random gifts, and I do love them, I just find it’s a lot easier to shop for others when you just fork over cash and get a little credit card they can use themselves on whatever.  Maybe they’d rather have gasoline or food than a sweater, you know?  I know it’s not as personal, but it’s infinitely more useful.

According to some recent reports, Firefox isn’t quite the stury, safe browser that we’ve all come to expect.  Of course, like ALL browsers, it’s only as good as the user who is browsing.  That’s the premise behind the report of Firefox’s massive vulnerability list, which basically says that most of FF’s problems are due to add-ons.

I use Firefox on a regular basis, and since I made the switch, I haven’t had many virus problems.  When I used IE, I didn’t have many virus problems either.  That’s probably because I use the bare minimum of Firefox add-ons, but that’s because I like a clean browsing experience and Firefox’s memory leak problems are still pretty bad.

That said, I’m always on the lookout for some add-ons that are useful; what kind of things are you guys adding on when it’s time to browse?