My friend bought me a t-shirt the other day… a really cool design that was perfect for a geek like me. I had never seen one like it and, it turns out, am unlikely to see another one. Why? Because that particular t-shirt was available for one day only, and never will be again.

If you like your clothing exclusive yet fun then you need to check out Tee Fury. The idea is simple – there’s a new t-shirt design every day, and each design is available for 24 hours. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. There is a wide range of styles and subjects, which means some days you’ll log on and think, “I don’t like that” but other days you’ll think, “that’s brilliant!”.

The 24 hour sale window is a clever idea – it means there’s always fresh inventory but it also means you have to think fast if you do want a particular design. There’s no denying that there’s an element of getting people to buy on impulse because, if they don’t, they might regret it tomorrow.

It would be easy to be cynical, then, but with a bit of sense you’ll end up getting some great designs pretty cheaply. Just make a deal with yourself that you’ll only buy something if it jumps off the screen at you… and not if you just think it’s pretty cool. The t-shirts themselves feel like they’re of good quality and cost $9, with shipping to the UK also starting at $9. At today’s exchange rate that means you can have a quality tee for around £12.

Rather than keep visiting Tee Fury, I’ve added it to my feed reader and, since there’s something new every day, I’d recommend you do the same. Who knows, maybe you’ll come across that killer design tomorrow!

Having already drooled over the visual effects concept video for Tron: Legacy, there’s now a proper trailer that gives us a bit more info on the storyline. Check it out below and, if you’re a geek of a certain age, prepare to revisit your childhood.

I remember seeing Tron as a child and being amazed by the visual style. It’s certainly the first film I remember that made serious use of computer-generated imagery. All that has become the norm now, but I’m loving the updated looks of Tron: Legacy.

What do you think of it though? Do you like the look? Will it achieve the same “cult” status the original Tron did? Or is it doomed to fail? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

[via Mashable]

First impressions count, and when I visit a site the first thing that hits me is the general design. A site may have the best content there is on the Net, but if it looks like a dog’s dinner I’ll often move on before getting round to reading what it actually says.

If you’re a Wordpress user there are loads of places where you can find themes. You can find a theme to fit pretty much and design you want… dark, light, magazine layout, or even themed to look like an iPhone. I’ve been blogging since 2003 and have done the tour of themes more than once but I can honestly say there’s only one I would use now: Thesis from DIY Themes.

What makes Thesis different?

Thesis‘ customisability is its strength. It’s fairly plain out of the box, and if you take a look at http://www.dslrnewb.com you’ll see the basic setup. Geek-Speak itself also runs on Thesis and hasn’t been customised too heavily other than adding a logo, advertising banner, and changing the background colour to blue. Adding the logo and ad required a little coding (I got loads of help from the DIYThemes.com community) but changing colours, fonts, adding columns, and constructing custom navigation is all done with the Thesis options pane… no coding required!

If you’re feeling particularly brave you can access several “hooks” that allow you to add custom code to various parts of the page. Basically, Thesis lets you customise your site and accommodates both people who are willing to delve into the techie code and those who just want to select options from a menu.

Is it good for SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation is key if you want to gain traffic from the search engines, and Thesis gives you powerful options to help with this: a custom title tag, meta description and tags, and the option to add a noindex instruction to a page if, for some reason, you don’t want that page included in the search engines’ indexes.

OK, how much?

Here’s the point where you have to decide whether you really want to go with Thesis or not. It costs $87 for a personal license and $164 for a developer’s license. The difference is that with the developer’s option you can deploy Thesis to any of your clients’ sites and remove the Thesis credit from your site’s footer, whereas the personal option can only be deployed to one site and keeps the credit in the footer. If you’re looking for a theme for your own blog I’d recommend going for the cheaper personal option, as you can upgrade to the developer one later if you want to.

Thesis is by no means cheap, but I believe you get what you pay for. I genuinely think it’s worth the money and would recommend that you at least consider it as your Wordpress theme. The guys at DIY Themes say you’ll never change your theme again… and I believe them.

Visit DIY Themes to check Thesis out and buy if you think it’s right for you.

I am an affiliate for Thesis – if you purchase the theme via any links in this article I will earn a commission on your purchase.

If you’ve been reading Geek-Speak for a while you’ll remember me reviewing the Beyond Blogging book by Mike Cliffe Jones and Nathan Hangen. Do check the review out, because I thought this was an amazing book!

Mike and Nathan have been working hard on a new project that offers fifty bloggers the opportunity to receive intensive coaching and mentoring. The aim is to enable motivated bloggers to up their game and move to the next level.

Numbers are limited (fifty isn’t a huge amount) and many of the spaces have already been taken, but if you’re thinking about how you can move your blog on check out the details and put in an application.

The project costs $97 per month and last six months. That might seem like a lot, but one of the project aims is that you’ll build an income that more than offsets your investment. And this isn’t an affiliate thing for me, either, if you sign up I get nothing!

So, if you’re ready to move on to the next level, visit www.beyondbloggingproject.com, check it out, and make your decision.

I’ve never been particularly good at journalling. I usually start out with good intentions and then end up dropping out pretty quickly. The other day I read an article called “750 words clears your mind, gets ideas flowing” on Lifehacker that introduced an online journalling site with a difference, so I decided to check it out.

750 Words is that online journal, and the premise is simple: just write whatever you want, at least 750 words of it. It’s unfiltered, unguided, just a blank space waiting for you to write something. The benefit of that is that what you write doesn’t have to make sense to anyone except you. If you want to slap down a bunch of random thoughts you can go for it without having to think about flow or structure.

What am I thinking?

Once you’ve written your 750 words (or more) some clever anasis is done to determine your mood, what you’re most interested in, what mindset you’re in and a few perception statistics. I think it’s this part of the site that really sets it apart from anything I’ve used for journalling before, not least because it actually seems to be quite accurate.

This week I wrote my 750 words after a heated discussion with a friend. I wasn’t particularly writing about that incident, but the analysis came out that I was upset. Hmm, scary. I’ve been away this week at a conference related to my role as a pastor, and on the days I was there I was, apparently, most concerned with religion. When I got home again, that switched to family. I’ve done some training on how to determine the underlying concerns of a person based on what they’re saying but it’s just incredible to see this happening online right before my eyes.

The more you write the more accurate 750 Words’ picture of you as a person becomes, and you can see your overall mindset in the “Eternity” tab of the site. This tells you how much importance you give to various topics, alongside the average importance the site’s users gives to the same topics. It also tells you your average mindset, and I’m pleased to see that I’m generally a positive person!

Now, I can’t promise that I’m going to write something on 750 Words every day, but the addition of statistics and simple mindset analysis certainly piques my geeky interest and means I’m much more likely to do so than if I were just writing in a notebook. It’s scary how accurate the analysis is sometimes, and it’s always interesting to see what it’s going to come up with.

I’ve found 750 Words useful to just brain dump everything at the end of the day, and on a couple of occasions have found post ideas popping up, or even solutions to problems presenting themselves as I let my thoughts out in whatever order they arrive. Why not try 750 Words out and see what you think? It’s free and private, so it’s at least worth a look.

If you’ve been using 750 Words why not tell us how you’ve got on in the comments? Has anything about the analysis of your writing surprised you? We’d love to know what you think.

Time for Friday Fun again – and this Flash game should exercise your brain a bit. WereBoxes can turn from box to ball at the click of a mouse. The idea is to clear the screen of red boxes while retaining all the blue ones. Sounds simple enough, but once you get into it you’ll realise there’s a bit of logic to be used, and a lot of timing!

WereBox uses Flash and has sound, but sound is not vital to the gameplay.

–> Click to play <–

More often than not I’m sitting right in front of my computer when I want to control it, so the normal keyboard and mouse are just fine for my needs. I’ll occasionally use LogMeIn to control my home computer from work over the Internet, but there again I’m using a standard mouse and keyboard.

My friend showed me a nifty app for the iPhone and iPod Touch the other day, though, that allows him to control his computer from the other end of the room: Touch Mouse (iTunes link).

Touch Mouse is built by well-known tech company Logitech who, now that I check, actually make most of the peripherals I use on my desktop machine. It works by connecting to a helper application on your computer via the WiFi network. That means that both your computer and iPhone or iPod Touch have to be on the same network, so no long-distance controls here! Once you’re connected, though, it’s like having a wireless laptop trackpad in the palm of your hand!

What would you use this for then? Other than showing people and saying, “Isn’t that cool?” the main reason I would use this is to control a multimedia presentation like PowerPoint or MediaShout. It’s especially nice that the application is a free download, so I don’t have to buy any extra equipment like a USB clicker… I just have to make sure that I’m in an area with a decent WiFi signal that both my computer and iPhone can connect to.

As well as working as a mouse, Touch Mouse features a remote keyboard. I’m never going to use this for typing significant amounts of text, as the iPhone’s virtual keyboard just isn’t up to that, but perhaps when the iPad comes out this function will become more useful. As it is I’ve used it to enter website addresses, but that’s pretty much it.

Touch Mouse is a great little application, connects to Windows and Mac OS X and, if you’re presenting, could very well turn out to be just what you’re looking for. Download it for free and give it a whirl.

Supernatural season 5 is still steaming ahead on LIVING (UK) and tonight’s episode features a special guest… Paris Hilton. She’s going to show us her top-notch acting ability as she gets into the role of… Paris Hilton ;)

Actually, it looks like she’s having a great time poking fun at herself as “Satan’s greatest creation”! It’s always nice to see a celebrity who’s not uptight about having a bit of fun at their own expense.

The preview trailer below is limited to UK visitors only, I’m afraid. Sorry, but that restriction is in place at LIVING’s request… if you are in the UK though, here you go:

If you’re a Supernatural fan (and I have many friends who are while I’m a bit of a latecomer to the whole thing) it looks like this is going to be another cracking episode. Tune in tonight, 9pm on LIVING and enjoy!

The Honda 3R-C, a new one-person battery electric vehicle concept, will make its world debut in Geneva alongside the EV-N concept, to be displayed for the first time in Europe.

Both the three-wheeled 3R-C concept, which envisions a single occupant vehicle for zero emission commuting, and the EV-N urban concept, draw on Honda’s working knowledge of vehicles utilising electric motors.

3R-C

This revolutionary three wheeled battery electric vehicle concept shows what a future urban transport vehicle for one person might look like. The battery electric drivetrain is mounted low in the three wheeled chassis, keeping the centre of gravity low and improving stability.

The 3R-C has a clear canopy that covers the driver’s seat while it is parked and not in use but converts to become the windshield when the vehicle is in motion. I have always found it very rare to want to travel somewhere without any luggage, even if just a briefcase, and the 3R-C features a lockable boot area in front of the driver.

The concept looks very interesting, and it will be fascinating to see if this kind of thing ever moves beyond “concept” and into mainstream transportation.

EV-N

The EV-N concept, previous shown at the Tokyo Motor Show, will make its European debut in Geneva. The EV-N is designed to show the potential application of battery technology in a small city car.

The EV-N looks very much like Honda’s 1967 N360 city car but also features solar panels to recharge it while parked, and two U3-X electric “unicycles” attached to the inside of the doors.

The two concept vehicles will be displayed alongside Honda’s production fuel cell electric vehicle, the FCX Clarity.

I’m still a sucker for traditional cars, and especial those that can be refuelled quick rather than charged up over a long period of time. Of the three vehicles, I’d say the 3R-C looks by far the most interesting, but it’s the FCX Clarity that I’d buy given the chance. All we need are Hydrogen stations!

I’m a bit of an internet statistics junkie – I actually enjoy checking the visitor stats for this site. When I send out an e-mail newsletter it interests me to see how many where opened and what content people found the most useful.

Mashable posted a great video on Friday that outlines some statistics on Internet use, and I wanted to share that with you here:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

There are some amazing numbers there: 81% of all e-mail is spam!? Thank goodness for spam filters. I was (for some reason) surprised to see that there are more Internet users in Europe than the US. I don’t know why, but I often think of the US as being the market to crack… but perhaps I’ve been ignoring European users. Of course, then there are the massive numbers in Asia to be considered too!

The huge amount of traffic Facebook receives is just mind blowing, although I can see why that would be the case given the social networking, applications and games offered there. That massive user base is one of the reasons Geek-Speak has a Facebook page too – you have to go where the people are if you want them to hear about you!

I’m also a bit surprised that just over half of all web pages are blogs, according to the video! If ever there was an indication of the massive take-up of blogging, that’s it. Sure, I guess a lot of those are failed or failing blogs (ones that the owner hasn’t written on for a long period of time) but it certainly shows there’s an interest in people setting up their own piece of blogging real-estate.

What went through your mind when you watched the video? Did anything surprise you? Is there anything you’d dispute? I’ve love to know what you think, so please leave a comment!