1. Lifehacker

The ultimate tech lifestyle site. It describes itself as “self help for power users” and will help you achieve the most possible in your day, even if that is how to burn calories without doing anything.

2. Twitter

When I say ‘useful’, I obviously don’t mean useful. Twitter is good for three things: scaring egotistical celebrities, reaching your daily ‘wtf’ nirvana and exploiting those well meaning folk who are actually willing to answer all of your dumbass questions.

3. HowStuffWorks

A bit like lifehacker but a shade less geeky. Will help you find out, among many other things, how to draw an Elasmosaurus in 5 steps.

4. Google

Your portal to the three p’s of online bliss: poker, pills and porn. Also useful for knowing your life better than you, via this matrix of omniscient tools.

5. Instructables

At regular points in all of our lives, we forget why we drew up that ratio of DIY to just paying for it and, at that point, this site nearly makes everything ok. By ‘everything’, I mean the horrific apocalyptic act you’ve just committed on your kitchen, and by ‘ok’ I mean no-one’s going to die. This site is also useful if you just want to do cool stuff.

6. LocateTV

Lets you find out when tv shows, movies and celebrities are on in your area. Lots of features, including tv schedules for different genres- like all the horror movies on in the next week or two.

7. Wordsmith

Finds anagrams. The possibilities are endless.

8. Yelp

Top review site and a community that most sites would give their right arm for (listen up TS fans).

9. Kiva

For the ‘do-gooder’ techs amongst you, this is a scheme with a difference. Use your entrepreneurial skills to pick a project you feel would benefit from your investment. Lend whatever you’re comfortable with and watch your karma points rack up. Better still, you get the money back after a certain time. It’s like giving to charity but better.

10. Pipes

Lets you merge feeds and information from a massive variety of services, letting you create mashups and other data-based services. Hugely useful and makes you feel really smart and just that little bit better than everyone else in the world.

Rant

Now that the image part is out let me rant. By the way, I will be ranting quite a bit so grab a beer. You’ll need it.

Not sure why but I am in full swing to express my views on twitter. If you read my previous post on twitter you already know what I use twitter for. That’s right! I use it to sit on my ass and browse the stream of non sense messages that flows in there half the time. Sometimes I end up grabbing tweets that talk about someone taking a dump and other days tweets that ask “what would you prefer? Your spouse cheating with a human or animal?”

Twitter grew so fast that it is almost unbelievable. I don’t remember where I saw it but I guess 1 out of 20 Americans are now tweeting. Way to go folks. Mark my words guys, twitter isn’t the next big thing as people make it to be. Sure, Facebook is quite jealous of this toddler but Facebook at least knows how to walk while twitter is still crawling. Don’t even tell me the service is still in it’s infancy. It has been fed by a couple investors with a few million dollars and by now it should, at least, have had enough strength to roll in some dollars.

The service has now become a favorite among celebrities. Oprah joined twitter a while ago and everyone started praising twitter yet again. Sure, Oprah must have brought a couple thousands new users to twitter, but I seriously doubt the baby making moms that follow Oprah will have time to tweet. Ohh and Mr. Kutcher showing his wife’s ass is exactly why 75% of his million followers follow him. Got to follow @aplusk, never know when Demi might walk in a night gown. The twitter hype is completely unbelievable.

Next thing that is extremely bothersome about twitter is it seems like the twitter business model is non existent. Sure, sure they are cooking up something good.

If you are going to cook something, you need to take it off the stove after it’s cooked. What’s the point of sitting on an idea for so long that it might be too late to implement. It’s just like cooking food. You cook it for too long and it either boils and gets spilled over or gets burnt enough to be thrown away. That is twitter’s business model. It’s either boiling more than it should or getting burnt to the point where it will be useless pretty soon, that is if there is any, which I doubt.

Half the freaking world seems to be making money off of twitter, either directly or indirectly. Marketers are using it to promote their products and content, businesses are using it as a customer service tool and there are services such as hootsuite helping users make money. But twitter still lacks a concept to make money. Go figure.

And the updates that twitter rolls out. You know, making life easier by adding features is a totally different thing than moving shit around. Trending topics used to be under the search bar and now they show up on the sidebar. Although there is some ease of use I don’t really see anything that is big enough to call it a “feature.” For some reason I have grown a hatred towards twitter. I know, it’s a cool, nifty and half the time useless service and a love child of all the internet users. Well, I am different and they call me the shit for a reason.

Twitter lacks features but there are probably more than thousands of apps that float on the internet. There is even one that measures the size of your tweet and compares it to the anaconda (yeah right) hiding in your pants. And there are others that help users analyze their influence within the community. What a crock of shit!

Well that was the rant of the day. The thing about twitter is it better do something soon if it wants to carry on. We web users are known to kick a web service to the curb when the next big thing comes up. You all say twitter is great, twitter is free, twitter is awesome to connect and market and whatever the hell that you all do on there, but remember twitter is a business and for a business to survive it needs money not billions of users and mentions on magazines and usage by celebrities.

If twitter doesn’t do something to generate revenue there won’t be anymore investors lining up for them. No investors says, “Here take a couple million dollars. Go ahead and do what you got to do. I will write the return on my investment in the will for my grandkids.” Investors want to see results. Of course it takes time but don’t we all want return on our investment sooner. The way twitter seems to be going it seems like it might take years, if not decades, that is if they can pay to keep the site live.

If twitter doesn’t roll out something soon, in couple years twitter might just end up making money by selling affiliate links, viagra ads and endorsing porn stars. And with that I will end my rant. Whether it makes sense to you or not is something that I don’t really give a shit about.

I really hope twitter works their shit out and wish them all the best. It’s hard to see any business fail. But if it doesn’t, here is my prediction

Prediction

Mark my words, twitter won’t last past 2012. Now you wouldn’t really remember I said this in 2012 so subscribe to the feed and I will remind you again in the future.Yeah, I will still be around but twitter won’t.

I get it, Twitter is cool. 140 character, followers, friends and it’s a frat house. Everyone is chiming in, promoting their shit and some tweeting what is going on in their personal lives. Well, today I want to show you how cool some Twitter users really are. They don’t give a shit about anything and i mean that literally. I have been on twitter for a while but I don’t use it to tweet. I simply enjoy going through the stream and saving the ones that make me says WTF?

Anyways, enough of my rant on Twitter. Let me show you some of the tweets I found on twitter. By the way, the images are linked to the tweets. This is what I like to call TechyShit : an eclectic mix of technology and shit.

How the hell do you take a shit “twitter-style?”

hahahahaha…WTF? What is so funny?

Ummm thanks for the info.

This guy has everything figured out except twitter

Emril would be proud. Bam!!!

What a lucky guy!

Bud, I hope your wife doesn’t see this tweet.

Dang Big Dawg, thank you for the tip.

Ring Ring…..answer the damn phone

User profile says : “I am 18 yrs old and live a boring life.” Are you kidding me?

Welcome to America

Wow…the details in that tweet

One of those tweets that really makes you scream “WTF?”

Breaking : Man fired for tweeting

And this one just came in while I was getting ready to wrap up,

Seriously, WTF people??

That is all I had saved for now but am sure I will have more as more twitter users start following the herd. Until then have fun and keep tweeting .

1- Floating Magnetic Bed

“Hey baby, you don’t have any piercings do you?”
This floating slab of magnetic wizardry will set you back a tidy $1.5 million.
Via Engadget.

2 - Jet Fuselage Bed

“‘cos I’m leaving, ooon a jet plane, don’t know when i’ll b…zzzz…”
This bed’s headboard is constructed from an authentic 747 engine nacelle crowning. The inside has been covered with plexiglass so you can see the internal structure. Available on request.
Via OhGizmo!

3 - Pan-media Canopy Bed

“…*speechless*…”
A concept design from movie buff Edoardo Carlino, ‘Hi Can’ has a drop screen, surround sound and Internet and gaming capabilities. Truly the bed of champions.
Via Hi Can.

4 - Slide-in Bed Speaker Panel

“Rock - a - bye - baby”
More of an accessory than a bed, Sonic Impact’s BM101 speaker panel slides below your mattress for total body sound immersion. Turn the bass up high enough and the bed’ll even get jiggy for you.
Via BoingBoing.

5 - Air-conditioned Bed

“Is that an air pocket in your mattress or are you just pleased to see me?”
The perfect solution to those sweat inducing nightmares about Obama ripping off a face-mask to reveal he’s Kevin Rose. The bed is also “extremely ecological” because it uses less than $0.24 worth of power per month.
Via TreeHugger.

6 - Self-making Bed

“I’ll make the bed sweetheart, you get the dishes”
The bed sheet is rolled and smoothed out by two fasteners that move along metal bars both sides of the bed. The two bars are automatically lowered once the sheet is spread out.
Via USAToday.

7 - Reality

“Baby, you make my floppy disk turn into a hard drive”
*shudder*
Via HaHaStop.

Thanks to Lucy from Sofa.com for this week’s post on beds.

Anyway, we are back in full swing today and this time we are going to walk you down the video game memory lane. Below you will find some of the video games that you might have played as a kid or with your kids back in the day. We know for a fact that you will find some that you play today as we get farther down this wonderful memory lane. We thought about adding information along with images but sometimes what’s outside is much better than the inside. Sort of like looking at the girls at a bar.

You guys ready? Ready or not here we go.

Please click on the image to enlarge. All images are linked directly to the source.

1970 – 1979

Magnavox Odyssey (1972)

Atari Pong (1975)

Magnavox Odyssey 100 (1975)

Magnavox Odyssey 200 (1975)

Atari Super Pong (1976)

Wonder Wizard 7702 (1976)

Coleco Telstar (1976)

Fairchild Channel F (1976)

Atari VCS 2600 (1977)

Coleco Telstar Alpha (1977)

Coleco Telstar Arcade (1978)

Bally Professional Arcade (1978)

Coleco Telstar Gemini (1978)

Zircon Channel F System II (1979)

Atari 400 (1979)

1980 – 1989

Mattel Intellivision (1980)

Vectrex (1982)

Atari 5200 (1982)

Emerson Arcadia 2001 (1982)

Nintendo Entertain System (1985)

Atari 2600 Junior (1986)

Atari 7800 (1986)

Sega Master System (1986)

NEX Turbo Grafx 16 (1989)

Sega Genesis (1989)

1990 - 1999

Sega Master System II (1990)

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1991)

Sega CD For Genesis (1992)

Nintendo Entertainment System Model 2 (1993)

Sega Genesis 2 (1994)

Segea Genesis 32x (1994)

Sony PlayStation (1995)

Nintendo 64 (1996)

Super Nintendo Entertainment System Model 2 (1997)

Sega Genesis 3 (1998)

Sega Dreamcast (1999)

2000 – Present

Sony PlayStation PS1 (2000)

Sony PlayStation 2 SCPH-5000x (2000)

Nintendo Game Cube (2001)

Microsoft X-Box (2001)

Sony PlayStation 2 SCPH-70000 (2004)

XaviXPORT (2004)

Microsoft X-Box 360 (2005)

Sony PlayStation 3 (2006)

Nintendo Wii (2006)

Well, that was fun. I used to be quite a gamer myself a couple years ago. But you know how it goes once you get married. Every time I sit down to play a game, my son comes around and says “poopy.” Shit stinks but got to choose my kid over video games….someday, probably when I am 50 I will be back at it. If you think you are going to be around, you got plenty of time to hone your skills. They don’t call me “The Shit” for no reason . Take care guys and share some gaming stories.

I spend a lot of time dealing with servers and web hosting safety, so Techyshit has invited me to round up three of my favourite - and perhaps most preventable - data losses.

1 - Mysterious Outage in San Fran

(Do people still call it San Fran, or did we drop that in the 90s? Anyhow.)

In 2007, Valleywag published a tip-off that a data centre employee “came in shitfaced drunk, got angry, went berserk, and fucked up a lot of stuff” - resulting in sites such as Craigslist, LiveJournal and Technorati going down.

"I accidentally the whole server."

What Really Happened?

The data center, 365 Main, denied any “employee misconduct” and the blogger admitted that their tipster may have been less then reliable. The problems were blamed on a nearby power outage, but there was no explanation as to why 5 of their 10 backup generators didn’t kick in to save the day. Whatever happened, the original story is more fun.

Learning Experience

Of course, you should test your backups once in a while, but whatever happened, the least embarrassing excuse for the company to make may have been “Yeah, Dave got bladdered and tried to upgrade the server room with a wrench.”

Perhaps all data centers could try tempting drunk employees away from the sensitive areas of the building - a few strategically placed kebabs with chilli sauce in the meeting rooms ought to be irresistible enough to do the job.

2 - The Bitch Broke My Server

Two weeks into her new job as receptionist at Action Tools, Lori Stint had a day off to take her dog to the vet. She dropped by the office to pick up her first paycheck, when all hell broke loose and the company’s servers went down. A few minutes later, Lori was unemployed again.

What Happened?

The dog, left to its own devices, saw the floor standing computer rack as an opportunity to relieve itself. When the boss saw the “puff of urine smelling smoke” that had previously been his files and client contacts, he fired Lori on the spot.

Don't you dare give me those innocent eyes. I can still smell my career evaporating.

Learning Experience

Seriously, its a pretty simple list. Don’t take your pets to work. Train your pet not to piss wherever it wants to. Don’t hire employees who like dogs, ever.

3 - Third Times the Charm

TheDailyWTF reported on problems at the new data centre for the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some servers were installed whilst the interior was being finished, and after diligent monitoring, this didn’t seem to cause any trouble.

After a few days, one server (critical to the Uni’s information systems) had a massive, non-recoverable failure. The disk was identified as the issue, and it was replaced. A few days later, the same thing happened again, and the vendor sent a second replacement disk.

When the disk failed for a third time, a technician came to check the failed component. Cracking open the disk showed that the disk head had cut “deep jagged grooves right on the platter”. Unless the server had gained some level of Skynet-esque self awareness and tried to kill itself, there must have been an explanation, but inspection of the server gave no other clues.

What Happened?

It turns out that the builders fitting out the rack room were using a single saw horse to prop up the wood they were cutting to size. The other end of each plank was rested on this server’s disk enclosure, before taking to it with a saber saw.

My other saw horse is a multi-thousand-dollar server.

Learning Experience

The easy answer here would be to not move into an unfinished server room. More usefully (and more entertainingly) we suggest taking apart each and every computer component that ever fails. If a drive looks like it has stabbed itself through the chest, then you might want to wonder why.

Thanks to Zoe from web hosting company UK2 for this week’s guest post.

Techy Quotes, Shit Quotes

Sharing’s caring and I loved most of the quotes on these two pages. As always, suggestions for more graphs welcomed in the comments below.

As fortune foretold, the hamsters had a falling out and an armistice could not be negotiated. The only solution was a) build a second home or b) flush one of the hamsters down the shitter. N bomb, being the kindly and creative soul that he is, chose option a). These are the results:

The monitor that the other hamster cage is made from and this tower would have cost almost 3 grand back in 2001-02. I got this tower for just 99p! Not only am I a creative genius, I’m also a demon when it comes to bargains.

Put a 2nd floor in to make it big enough for her to live in cos obviously it’s not designed to accommodate a hamster, however tiny. She’s also moody and needs space to get rid of some of that aggression.

The side opens for easy access! This, I kid you not, is fucking beautiful to behold. And there’s plenty of ventilation.

She has this tube to get up and down which she is getting pretty good at. Again, the whole Russian angle works in her favour I think.

Happy, cosy hamster. It’s no tribal hut, or even a condom pouch, but she seems happy as a Russian hamster who’s currently warring with her life partner can be. And I’m just tickety boo with that.

Techy Weapons, Shit Weapons (and what disasters occur when you cross them)

There’s nothing worse than popping down the local arms dealer only to get confused over what’s hot-shit and what’s just shit-shit in the world of weaponry. We at TechyShit advise you print this Shit’o'meter graph off and take it with you.

(If you want some sources for the graph or wish to disagree over the techy vs shitness of any of the weapons featured here today please leave a comment. But: FACT the Claymore is MORE awesome and LESS techy than Nunchucks. Disagree with that and I will personally hunt you down and painfully destroy you with everything in the top left hand corner.)

Any suggestions for next week’s graph are also welcomed in the comments below.

Some links: Raytheon KillerBee, Dread Gun, Blast Knuckles, Wasp Knife, Greek Fire, Arbalest, Katana, Morning Star, Claymore, fusen bakudan, anti-tank dog, yoyo, FP-45 Liberator, tekko kagi, vomit flashlight.

Techy Films, Shit Films