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25 Coolest Laptop Covers

by Blake Besharian on December 19, 2008 at 11:58 PM



These days, laptops have become much like cars -- we take them everywhere, and if you have the same model as someone else, it's hard to tell them apart without looking inside. As a result, we all know that special someone whose solution is customizing their laptop with bumper stickers. Maybe it's an Obama sticker placed over the Apple logo on their MacBook, or maybe the top of their Dell looks as though their eight-year-old daughter decorated it with her sticker collection.

Well, if you or someone on your shopping list for this holiday season has a slightly more refined sense of personal decor, you might want to check out our top 25 picks for the best laptop sticker designs selected from the Web sites gelaskins and infectious. These sites offer stickers perfectly sized for the top of your Mac or PC laptop, as well as decals for your car, iPhone, iPod and wall, or anywhere else you care to stick these latex masterpieces.

25 Coolest Laptop Covers

    JP33 - This laptop design is hip like an MTV commercial. It makes us think we're looking at Manhattan from the rosy glow of a rainbow filled forest, located somewhere on a mountaintop in northern New Jersey. If anyone finds this vantage point let us know.

    Andy J. Miller - Andy's laptop design is titled "Happy Hippy Clouds", and if there's someone on your list who likes psychedelic owls perhaps this is the design for them.

    Beared Fish - Bearded fish is an anonymous art collective based in San Francisco, and they love Nacho Libre. We love their laptop sticker, by the way it translates as "Wings of Faith versus The Rainbow."

    Dalek - Dalek is well known in the world of commercial and fine art collecting, and he has emblazoned numerous toys and other products with his signature style combining Takashi Murakami's superflat(his former boss) with a graffiti sensibility. Now he's done a laptop design for infectious, and its necessary for you to add it to your Dalek collection.

    Dennis McNulty - This design is called Urban Wallpaper and we think the clean vector graphics and bizarre mix of farmers, weapons, mopeds and animals is pretty swell. Dennis also has two other designs, (a rooster and a piece entitled squarecrows) that are similar in style to his paintings on gas cans and other found objects, which gives you the chance to turn your computer into one of his sculptural paintings.

    Devin Lawson - Here's a laptop design for that Burlesque fan on your list the Dita Von Teese inspired Car-tini by Austin based Devin Lawson.

    Etsu Meusy - Etsu Meusy's wonderland is a beautiful candy colored retro dreamscape that will look great on the back of your daughter or your wife's laptop.

    Andy Harling - Most of the laptop designs being produced right now are targeted toward the kind of audience that likes to cover things with stickers. Andy Harding's cool abstractions combine wood grain and retro Eaames-esque patterns and designs that speak to those with a slightly more refined taste.

    Jeremy Evans - Jeremy only has one laptop design on Infectious but the colorful forest shapes have us mesmerized.

    Junko Mizuno - Junko is an incredibly popular and prolific graphic novelist whose work adapts western fairy tales to her twisted anime sensibility. Her "Zodiac Girls" laptop designs might be the perfect gift for your astrologically minded anime fan friend!

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iBeer Game Creator Sues Molson for Copyright Infringement

by Blake Besharian on October 20, 2008 at 10:53 AM



You might think that an application that makes it look as though you're drinking beer out of your iPhone is not a serious business. But for Steve Sheraton and his company Hottrix, it's a high stakes game. Hottrix is currently involved in a $12.5 million lawsuit with Molson Coors Brewing Company for copyright infringement regarding a beer-themed iPhone application.

Earlier this year, Steve and his company developed their iBeer iPhone app. In May 2008, they copyrighted and released the app before the iPhone was even opened up to developers. Apple opened up the iPhone to developers in July, which is when Molson Coors Brewing Group contacted Hottrix about using the app to promote its Carling beer. Steve said no. Undeterred, Molson contracted a Swedish company to make a remarkably similar app called iPint with the Carling beer logo on it, and a little game attached. Then it posted the new game as a free download from the iTunes store, right next to the $3 iBeer app.

A cease and desist order has removed iPint from the U.S. iTunes store, but it's still available in Europe. Meanwhile, if you're in the mood for a novelty iPhone app that you'll almost certainly never use after a week, then you can help Steve with his lawyers fees and download iBeer (or the kid-friendly iMilk app) today. [From: The Register]
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10 Funny Pet Web Sites

by Blake Besharian on October 19, 2008 at 12:01 AM

Perhaps one of the most popular things to do on the Internet is upload and broadcast pictures of your beloved animals. Everything from pictures and videos to podcasts of pet shenanigans have found ample homes online. Unfortunately, the vast majority of pet sites are of the nausea-inducing "cute" variety. Since pets can induce hours of laughter (regardless of whether they're wearing Groucho glasses or ladies' hats or not), we here at Switched decided to scour the Web for funny pet sites, and we found quite a few. What follows is a sampling of our favorite funny pet sites, some old, some new. Funny, of course, depends on the mind of the beholder, but we'd be lying if we didn't admit that we pretty much guffawed at every last site on this list. Check them out....




1. Lolcats
Lolcats are funny pictures of cats doing dumb things with broken, misspelled English captions placed over them. The result is often hilarious, such as a cat jumping out of a toilet with the following caption: "I'M IN UR TOILET USIN' UR FACILITIES." The central hub for all things lolcat, icanhascheezburger.com, is currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity after a few months of hype-trend-overload. The site has been online for two years and now includes a constellation of sites for lolcats, loldogs and political lolz -- the same thing, but for dogs and politicians.
If you're wondering how to make your own Lolcat, which is as simple as taking a goofy picture of your cat, adding a caption, and uploading it here, then check out the site's "wiki" tutorial designed to help people learn lolspeak, the broken English used on the site. The site also has a "lolz builder," which allows you to create your own lol-based-image with minimal effort and no software (they even supply pictures for you to caption). This means that there are new lolz posted all the time, which makes Lolcats the ultimate place to go for hilarious cat humor.
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Sega Releases Plant That Nods to Your Voice

by Blake Besharian on October 9, 2008 at 09:30 AM



Move over Aibo, take a seat, creepy humanoid robot doll, Pekoppa has arrived! Sega's eagerly anticipated nodding robotic plant is finally here, at least in Japan, though we expect that it will soon be turning up in children's bedrooms and on the window sills of retirement homes stateside, delighting the immature and the elderly with its fantastic capacity to acknowledge that it is listening/ Garden-variety sound sensors, presumably, enable the doodad to move its leaves as you sing or speak to it.

Only in the high pressure society of Japan, where 1 in 5 people have considered suicide, would a robotic plant that nods be billed as a good listener (we're basing this claim on a translation of the promo song in this video). In fact, we'd like to say that if you're talking to a robotic plant because that's the only thing that will listen to your problems, you might need to seek more professional help. [From OhGizmo!]
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Project Runway's Christian Siriano Designs Scarf for LG Lotus Phone

by Blake Besharian on October 1, 2008 at 01:45 PM


Christian Siriano is best known for winning the fourth season of pravo TV hit 'Project Runway' and teaching fans everywhere how to discern between those that are "fierce" and a "hot tranny mess" (his catch phrases on the show). Now, Christian has designed a new scarf for the new LG Lotus mobile phone.

The Lotus is a small square phone explicitly marketed to a fashion forward crowd, and Mr Siriano's wool knit scarf follows suit. Featuring an "understated plaid" pattern (apparently the latest trend for winter), the scarf has a subtle and seamless pocket designed to snugly fit the phone, and hold onto it, while you wear the scarf casually draped across one shoulder.

We love the blend of tech and fashion. Who knows, maybe the scarf pocket is going to replace the pants pocket as the way to carry around your phone this winter.

We just hope Christian designed a button for that pocket, because it's hard to look "fierce" when your phone keeps falling out of your scarf. [From LG]

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Starbucks Installing $11,000 'Clover' Coffee Machine in Select Shops

by Blake Besharian on July 26, 2008 at 09:20 AM


In an effort to ruin everything good about coffee, Starbucks has bought out what many consider to be the greatest evolution in coffee since espresso, The Clover. "What's a Clover?" you might ask. Well, it's an $11,000 coffee brewing machine that controls the precise time, temperature, and amount of beans that go into an individually brewed cup of Joe. This machine's unique ability to replicate the exact same conditions that produced that last perfect cup of coffee mean that coffee aficionados can finally unlock the true potential of a bean, bringing out its fruit-like flavors and other subtle characteristics.

This machine has elevated coffee drinking (and price, which usually starts around $3 a cup) to the level of a wine tasting, and, until recently, it was only available in independent coffee shops. Now, Starbucks has bought The Coffee Equipment Company, and begun installing The Clover in select stores while refusing to sell any more machines to independent shops. It has also shutdown CloverNet, which is an online service setup by the company that allowed fans to track their favorite brews and find shops with a Clover machine.

Sadly, not even an $11,000 machine can make bad coffee taste better, but clearly Starbucks is desperate. This summer, it is closing 5-percent of its stores (just over 600) and is making an effort to focus less on music and high calorie milkshakes and more on coffee. You can bet that the original fans of The Clover won't be lining up at Starbucks anytime soon. But Starbucks is betting that the same people that order a white chocolate mocha with half skim and half soy will soon be ordering 35 grams of ethiopian sidamo at 210 degrees for 45 seconds, and paying a dollar more for it. [Source: Wired]
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UK Cell Carrier Suspends Web Based Picture Message Service

by Blake Besharian on July 23, 2008 at 07:03 PM


Some British cell phone users were surprised earlier this week to find that their personal picture messages were made available to all of 02's users through an easily exploited loophole. The blog Mail Channels was the first to uncover this, and the carrier O2 has suspended this service as a result.

The service allows O2 users to receive their picture messages online without a login or password, so anyone who received an invitation to view a picture message could potentially look at anyone else's, a big problem if you're sending raunchy picture messages to your significant other. The service is mostly used by those with low end cell phone models and uh, iPhone users.

In the grand scheme of privacy invasions, this isn't too bad, but you have to ask why you would set up a service like this (without so much as a login or password) in the first place. Now we're curious how many other services are susceptible to this kind of snooping here in the U.S., which might make us think twice the next time we send a lewd picture message to that friend with the budget cellphone. [Source: Textually.org]
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Artists Attempt At 'Zero Gravity Art' Ends in Nausea

by Blake Besharian on July 20, 2008 at 03:06 PM



Three British artists, a black cat, and a mouse spent Tuesday aboard a Russian aircraft nicknamed the "vomit Comet" in pursuit of Dalí-esque "zero gravity" art. The plane is usually used to train astronauts, and simulates weightlessness by doing steep ascents and dives, something akin to a giant roller coaster ride.

Apparently only one artist, Nasser Azam, escaped debilitating nausea, and he finished Francis Bacon-inspired paintings with oil pastels. The cat and mouse were supposed to chase each other in zero gravity while one of the artists filmed them. However, both the cat and the artist became ill after about 3 'loops' and had to be secured to the plane for the remainder of the flight. In summary, Nasser Azam, the only artist not to become ill said, "Quite frankly it was euphoric, there were instances when I was painting upside down. We'll go and have a few vodkas - a few stiff ones..."

The flight, which was provided to the artists free of charge, was a unique cultural exchange between the two countries, which have had strained relations since the 2006 poisoning of a prominent Kremlin critic on British soil, and the forced closing of two British council offices in Russia earlier this year. [Source: USA Today]
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12,000 Laptops Lost Each Week at US Airports

by Blake Besharian on July 1, 2008 at 03:05 PM


travelers carry laptops with secret information

In these digital times, it seems as though everything about us these days is reduced to bits and bytes and stored on computers -- so it's only fair to ask that those computers be secure. Well, according to a new study by the Ponemon Institute, half of all the business travelers surveyed said they fly regularly with important information on their laptops. Most of them -- more than two thirds -- don't use any type of security system in the event that laptops are lost or stolen.

Clearly, this is bad news, especially since the study also estimates that about 12,000 laptops are lost every week (based on interviews with officials at 106 American airports). This means business travelers are losing several laptops a week. Eventually, one of those laptops is going to be loaded with our Social Security numbers and names.

So for all you mobile workers out there, read this: We know you're not going to stop traveling with this kind of information on your computers, but please use any encryption software that came with your computer to lock that stuff up. Even just setting your computer to require a password to get on will keep your information secure from garden variety thieves.

If you're willing to spend some cash, may we recommend PGP's encryption software for company's or SecuriKey's combination of hardware and software authentication. And, for the the cash strapped but wary, TrueCrypt offers free encryption software for all operating systems. [Source: The Statesman]


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Prince Sues Devoted Norwegian Fans Who Made Cover Album

by Blake Besharian on June 26, 2008 at 07:05 PM


On June 7th, the artist and sex symbol formerly known as Prince officially turned 50 and apparently someone brought hime the wrong gift. It was a copy of a new five-disc Prince tribute album, which consists of 81 cover songs by Norwegian musicians of every genre including that country's National Symphony Orchestra.

Soon after receiving "Shockadelica-50th Anniversary Tribute to The Artist Known As Prince," the Artist sued C+C Records, the Norwegian music label that put the tribute together. The suit demanded that all copies of the album -- which has been critically acclaimed and peaked at no. 8 on the Norwegian charts -- be destroyed. The label's owner, Christer Falck, is also a well known television actor and a huge Prince fan. Since no one was paid for their participation, Falck didn't think he owed Prince anything more than a free copy of the disc. Especially since the description on the label's Web site features this loving statement:

"This is more than just a Prince-tribute album. This is actually EVERYTHING the Norwegian musical scene has to offer 2008. All is made with love to the world's greatest artist ever, Prince."

Actually, Falck shouldn't be surprised that he was sued, as this isn't the first time Prince has censured his fans. In 2007, he gave legal notice to YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay to take down all of his copyrighted content. Then, last October, Prince's record company, Universal, demanded that YouTube remove this home video of a toddler dancing to a barely audible clip of "Lets Go Crazy." Even this past spring, Prince demanded that YouTube remove a fan-recorded video of his cover of Radiohead's "Creep" at Coachella.

The C+C Records page and the "Shockadelica" MySpace page have free samples of the limited edition album. It's sure to be a collectors item. [Source: Wired]

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Charter Drops Plans to Monitor And Sell Records of User's Surfing

by Blake Besharian on June 25, 2008 at 08:44 PM

If you thought the government's secret domestic surveillance program was creepy, you're gonna love this news! In mid May, Charter, the fourth largest cable distributor in the United States, announced that it would start tracking every Web site that its users visited and sell the information to NebuAd in order to provide individually targeted advertising. Understandably, this freaked a lot of ... Read more »
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Artist Exhibits Photos of All 189 Secret U.S. Spy Satellites

by Blake Besharian on June 23, 2008 at 04:42 PM

We all know the government is hiding things from us. Whether it's aliens in the Nevada desert or prisoners detained at FBI black sites around the world, the complexity of the plot depends on how steeped in conspiracy theory, and reality, you are. For Trevor Paglen, the government's secrets are good art subjects and his latest project is on display at the UC Berkeley Museum. This selection of ... Read more »
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Microsoft Reunion Photos, Still Geeky After All These Years

by Blake Besharian on June 23, 2008 at 03:34 PM

You've probably seen the original photo of the founders of Microsoft (above right), nine geeky looking guys and two girls, awkwardly arranged for a mall photo portrait. But have you seen the reunion photo? Thirty years after the original was taken, the old crew has gotten back together again, this time minus the '70s apparel and facial hair. With Steve Jobs retiring at the end of this week, it ... Read more »
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This Computer Keyboard Tells You When It Needs to be Cleaned

by Blake Besharian on June 18, 2008 at 04:01 PM

We've written about the microscopic horrors infesting your keyboard before -- bacteria can grow at levels five times worst than found on a toilet seat -- and researchers in the UK have developed a new keyboard that they hope will cut down on deadly drug-resistant staph infections among patients. On average, more than 8,000 people die each year from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ... Read more »
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British LG Ad May Have Broken Laws

by Blake Besharian on June 4, 2008 at 07:54 PM

UK advertising watchdogs are complaining that an LG mobile phone commercial for the KF600 mobile phone may have broken advertising rules that forbid representations of people using their cellphones while driving. The commercial received 31 complaints because it shows a woman touching her cell phone while stuck in a traffic jam. The ad in question shows a woman stuck in traffic, then zooms in to a ... Read more »
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