Some friends and I were talking about how horrible the art has always been from hardware companies, specifically the Asian firms who, despite having millions of dollars in sales, still seem to hire artists from middle schools obsessed with warrior women, fantasy animals, and monster trucks.

So I want to build a gallery of the truly horrible examples of the form. Two things, specifically: the really wretched box art above; the hilariously ugly software utilities that ship with the hardware, like the infamous overclocking widgets with no antialiasing shaped like spaceships and shuriken. If we can get enough stuff put together over the weekend I'll put up the whole gallery on Monday.

To add your contribution, either drop a link in the comments or add it directly to our general Flickr pool. I'd appreciate the help. Also, there's no era too old. Bad designs from the '70s and '80s are fair game, too.

There's no reason whatsoever to recommend this "Morphy Richards 2 Perfection Toaster"—it's upwards of $60, for one—but the space-age bread insertion mechanism, as seen in the video, is quite futuristic. Pretend you're loading the photon torpedo tubes.

Catalog Page [ElectricShopping.com via Serious Eats via Oh Gizmo]

The description on this clip calls it an "actual leaked phone conversation" to Dell. It's just lame enough to be believable, but who knows? [via Digg]

Laptop mag got their hands on a Everex CloudBook sub-notebook this morning, the $400 Asus Eee fighter that has a built-in 30GB hard drive instead of the Eee's all-solid-state rig up. I have (had?) high hopes for the CloudBook, but the first impressions don't sound that good:

The pointing device: The touchpad is a tiny stretch of plastic in the most awkward place you can possibly imagine, on the right above the keyboard. The left and right mouse buttons are on the left side above the keyboard, forcing you to use two hands to navigate and click.

That's a really, really bizarre decision. I don't know why I hadn't noticed that from the press images before. Also, Laptop is having issues even getting the thing setup, software-wise.

CloudBook Unboxing and Very First Impressions [Blog.LaptopMag.com]

From a Business Week cover story about the X300's development:

Hill's other idea was to make the PC very small, less than 10 inches across and less than one inch thick. Yet he wanted it to have a full-size keyboard, so he dusted off a design from the mid-1990s: a keyboard that folded up when the laptop was closed and opened out to full size when the machine was opened. The "butterfly" keyboard had caused a sensation when it was first introduced on a ThinkPad in 1995. ... During a meeting at Sapper's modernistic, V-shaped home on Italy's Lake Como, the 75-year-old design legend urged Hill to make the fold-out keyboard deploy automatically, rather than requiring the owner to snap it into place. By midsummer, Hill handed his ideas over to the Yamato engineers to see what would really work.

A 10-inch sub-notebook with an automatically expanding fold-out keyboard? I don't know if it would have seen better sales, but it sounds awfully neat. Perhaps a bit too anachronistic.

Building the Perfect Laptop [BusinessWeek]

Trends in Japan says that rice cooker manufacturer Zojirushi's latest model, the "Rizo," was designed with "the western kitchen in mind." I'm not quite sure what that means—many rice cookers, including some from Zojirushi, have been available here for a while. I don't think it's the design that's holding them back from mass market penetration, but simply that rice isn't the everyday staple for most Americans as it is for many Asian cultures. I am curious about the special "risotto mode," however; how would it do all that stirring?

Another model from Zojirushi, called the "i-pot," will send a text message to your phone if it hasn't been used in a while, the better to keep track of the elderly's behavior. I know that when my parents die I want the first person to tell me to be the rice cooker.

Zojirushi Rizo rice cooker plans western invasion [Trends in Japan]

• Playstation 2 – Playstation 2 Console with SingStar Bundle for $100 with Free Shipping. The PS2 still has a ridiculously good game library if you missed it over the last seven years or so. [Slickdeals]

• Amazon Sale – Friday Sale, including this Fender Stratocaster for $180. [Dealhack]

• Home Theater Speakers – Panasonic SC-PT750 1,000W 5.1 Home Theater System with HDMI for $200, shipped. About $150 off everyone else. [Dealnews]

• Today's Woot! is a Woot-Off!

Consumerist has this cockles-warming tale of a vacation saved by good customer service by GPS maker DeLorme:

I posted to the DeLorme company forums, explaining the situation, and asking if there was any way to spoof Topo 7 into thinking it had already synchronized, since I knew the firmware version for my PN-20. I got a PM back from one of the customer service reps, saying that no, this was probably not possible. So instead, they offered to overnight a replacement USB cable to where I was on the trip!

DeLorme's Awesome Customer Service Vastly Improves Road Trip [Consumerist]

The Tefal QuickCup heats up hot water in three seconds, perfect for popping out a quick cup of tea, instant coffee or soups, or cocoa. A built-in replaceable filter, uh, filters* while a special heating coil dispenses about 8 ounces of piping hot water. And because it only heats the water that you're about to consume, it saves energy. (I hope they have a smart stand-by mode so you can leave it plugged in all the time.)

I've been keeping an electric kettle at my desk, drinking down a box of loose leaf green Earl Grey. My little $10 kettle is perfectly decent (and heats up water in about a minute), but if you were a die-hard tea drinker I could see this being very nice. It's $130 AU, and is available only in Australia or the UK. (I doubt there's enough of a tea drinking contingent here in the States to warrant a version for us.)

Product Page [QuickCup.com.au via Gizmag]

* I kept trying to think of a way to say "makes cleaner" but most tap water is perfectly clean.

Previously • Electric Kettle Acid Test: Sunbeam Tea Drop, Kenwood Response Kettle [BBG]

Tim Barker's piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about AT&T's plans to filter the internet may not break a lot of new ground for you folks, savvy internet denizens that you are, but he's done a good job getting quotes and perspective from a variety of people, including musicians, to explain the issue to the average Joe.

Barker also does not fail to recognize the real nut of the AT&T plans—using copyright scaremongering as a end-run around Network Neutrality—and the legal issue that may hold them back from implementing filtering in the end:

There is one aspect of this, however, that has left Sloane and other legal observers scratching their heads.

Consider this: In the 1990s, telecommunications companies spent millions of dollars persuading Congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which eliminated any responsibility they had for content carried over their networks. In other words, if two friends plotted murder through e-mail, nobody can sue Charter Communications for not reporting it to authorities.

Now, AT&T seems to be considering surrendering that immunity. The argument is that if the company makes any attempt to police its network, then it becomes responsible for all the content.

"All the lawyers have been pulling their hair out, wondering what's gotten into them," said Scott with Free Press.

AT&T's idea to monitor Net creates a web of suspicion [STLToday.com]

Previously • AT&T to Filter Internet Traffic; Comcast Investigated by FCC for Filtering Internet Traffic [BBG]
• Interview with AT&T's "Filter the Internet" Exec [BBG]
• Talking About AT&T's Internet Filtering on AT&T's The Hugh Thompson Show [BBG]

Today on Modern Mechanix: this giant megaphone that was used to call reveille at Fort Jackson, S.C. I'm not sure why they didn't invest in an amplifier but it sure looks neat. In 1941 a million people paid 10 cents just to sit on a concrete apron and watch all of the planes take off and land at La Guardia airport, dubbed "The Grand Central of the Airways" in this beautifully illustrated Popular Mechanics article.  We also have an automatic egg breaker that can break 3,600 eggs an hour, a mobile grocery store packed into a bus and a robot rat from 1935 that can (sort of) navigate a maze.  Lastly, for all the women out there who want to make a bold fashion statement, be sure to check out this 1941 monocle veil.

iLounge takes a look at Apple TV HD downloads, Blu-ray, DVD, and HD cable on-demand movies. In short, the Blu-ray looks best (duh), but Apple TV's HD beats out HD cable by a slim but noticeable margin. I still have no desire for an Apple TV until it can play streamed Divx over my network. Then again my big LCD is hooked up to a PC, so it's not like I do much streaming into the projector these days anyway. (My projector and Time Warner DVR have become mostly "The American Idol Experience" since I got the Westinghouse LCD.)

(And no, you can't tell any difference in my resized image above.)

Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison [iLounge.com]

Previously • My Wildly Inaccurate Look at Movie Distribution in 2007 [BBG]

Jason "ToyOtter" Geyer was a toy designer who got a chance to pitch Lucasfilm right before Star Wars: Episode I came out. Most of their ideas didn't make it to market, but the concepts they've scanned in and put online are hilarious. I can't believe Lucasfilm hasn't done a Jabba the Hutt beanbag.

To say we were excited is an understatement. However, there were a few problems. One, since we were not yet an approved vendor to Lucasfilm, we had to use the Original Trilogy to concept with as we couldn’t be shown anything from Episode One. Lucasfilm would review our concepts and let us know if anything could apply to the new movie (this was a painful process that involved discarding far more ideas than the ones that were kept). Two, it was only a year away from the release of Episode One, and most manufacturing lead times were anywhere from 18-12 months to get the product made and to stores. But beggars can’t be choosers, and we hit the ground running.

Rejected! A long, long time ago… [ActionFigureInsider.com] (Thanks, Matt & Michael!)

This "Space Shuttle Bed" looks vaguely like our aging reusable launch vehicle, likely complete with suspicious creaking noises. It's $2,600 for the bed, but can also be upgraded with a full "Launch Tower" playset on the side for an additional $5k. Call me cynical, but do kids even really know what NASA is anymore? It's not like it's ever in the news unless something blows up.

Also, parents: When I was a youngster my mom got me a "bed tent" similar to these $50 ones on Amazon. I think mine was in the shape of a apatosaurus, but it served as a secret fortress, a space ship, and a wandering barbarian's cave just fine.

Product Page [MyMoonDrops.com via Oh Gizmo via Nerd Approved]

A fishing cellphone game in Japan rewards some winners with real, raw fish delivered fresh to their door.

When a fish takes the bait, the player is sent to a slot machine screen where, if luck prevails and 3 numbers line up appropriately, the virtual fish is hooked and reeled in. A message is then relayed to the wholesaler, who picks up the real-world equivalent from the local seafood market and delivers it, whole and raw, to the player’s doorstep.

If videogames start rewarding you with actual food I am doomed. Going to get grub is about the only thing that gets me out of the house already!

Ippon Zuri: Catch-and-eat fishing by phone [Pink Tentacle via Gizmodo]

Here's a simple question I present for your consideration and input: I need to get another EVDO subscription. Verizon or Sprint? I've used both, both have the Novetel USB stick I want, and they both seem to have roughly similar coverage areas.

Even though I am planning on packing up most of my stuff and leaving New York next year, I still keep thinking I'd like a new easy chair for the living room. Something nice enough to keep with in storage even as I move around. (More on that in a few months!)

Two have caught my eye over the last couple of weeks. Sadly, neither have had prices listed, which means they will be far out of my reach. Come on IKEA knock-offs!

The DS-166, designed by Hugo de Ruiter, is said to make those who sit in it "feel most profoundly." I just like its space lounge good looks.

The Lobster Chair [right], designed by Lund & Paarmann, is less plush, but the segmented walnut veneer over the back is striking. Eames by way of Giger.

If anyone lives in Europe has a few thousand dollars with which to buy a random blogger some furniture, I'll be happy to provide a shipping address. (Please do not touch or even look at any of the chairs before shipping, as I have a debilitating fear of psychic dustballs being caught in between the folds of cushions. This is why all visitors to my apartment must stay in the fraternization chamber.)

My friend Kat came back from Buenos Aires with this vintage "Ombredanne Inhaler," used around the turn of the century to administer ether or chloroform as surgical anesthesia. From Phisick.com:

Professor Louis Ombredanne (1871-1956), the inventor of the apparatus, was a French Surgeon who introduced his ether breathing apparatus in 1908 and it was subsequently widely used throughout Europe. They were made by various makers in the early 1900s.

You used to be able to buy chloroform off the shelf at my hometown pharmacy. My step-father once got the bright idea to toss a couple of chloroform-soaked cotton balls into my gerbil cage. "It'll knock them right out!" (This is the same man who thought it would be a good idea to microwave my R/C dinosaur a few years before. "It'll totally freak out!" And it did—if you count twitching then catching on fire freaking out.)

He daubed some chloroform from the brown glass bottle onto the cotton and tossed it down into the wood chips. The gerbils made no move for a moment, then began to gnaw off their own limbs.

Don't give your pets drugs, kids!

The best drug geek gift I've ever purchased [Dosenation.com]

• GPS Unit – Garmin Nuvi 750 4.3" Widescreen Display GPS for $295, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Xbox Controller – Xbox 360 Play & Charge Kit w/Black Controller for $46, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Lenovo Laptops – 20% off coupon on many Lenovo laptops that use the Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M chipset. [Dealnews]

• Camcorder – Today's Woot! is a refurbished Canon ZR830 MiniDV Camcorder with 35x Optical Zoom for $135, shipped.

I'm slogging through a backlog of work I've been putting off here on this cold, wet Brooklyn afternoon, but here are several great links readers have sent in over the last couple of days. Plenty of stuff to chew on in here. Thanks, everyone, who took the time to pass these stories on.

• Dan writes:

Vladimir is a Northwest filmmaker who makes her own hand-crafted Viewmaster reels from stereoscopic pairs shot on 16mm film.  She gives out viewers and reels to an audience, plays a soundtrack, and everyone pushes their levers at the same time when they hear the "ding!"

[Vladmaster]

• Josh writes:

BBC has a short photoset of electronic repairmen in Nigeria who fix anything from LCD TVs and stereos to mobile phones.  Some are self taught while others have studied under a master previously.  When they come across a phone they need to fix they have sent off to the manufacturer and received the diagrams, something I don't see happening in the US.

[BBC]

• Scuba Steve writes:

We're now one step closer to the personal jetpack - the personal helicopter!

[SparkingTech.com]

• MKUltra writes:

This is a [harmonica-playing] kinetic sculpture by the artist Joseph Kohnke, that I thought you would enjoy. There's a great video of it in action. ... I have had the pleasure of seeing his work in person, and it's deeply moving stuff.

[Artist's Page]

• Mike Mc. writes:

do it yourself "steam punk" portable solar PV electric power generator. Various photos of cart with general how to's. Includes opinionated commentary.

[VagabondSalvage.com]

• Richard sends this link to a one-of-a-kind slot machine wristwatch with real working lever. [TheRawFeed.com]

Waxy has curated a nice collection of oscilloscope hacks in video form, including the above demo from Assembly 2007.

Oscilloscope Fun and Games [Waxy]

Nokia's "remade" concept phone doesn't actually work, but the techniques and materials used in its construction are laudable. The casing is made from recycled aluminum cans, the chassis from plastic drink bottles, and the keys from old tires. The circuit board is printed instead of etched (or would be if it worked).

Great first step, Nokia. Now when are you going to roll these techniques into production?

Nokia ‘remade’ concept explores recycled materials in cellphones [Phonemag.com]

• Blu-ray Discs – Amazon has a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale on several Blu-ray discs, as well as some deals on box sets. [Slickdeals]

• Bar Stool – Not very tech, I know, but sort of futuristic looking! (It's $111, shipped.) [Dealnews]

• Projector – Today's Woot! is a Infocus 7210 HD DLP Projector w/ Free 76" Projection Screen (720p native) for $1,005, shipped.

The telecom industry, including AT&T, will be given retroactive immunity for their collusion with the U.S. government to spy on American citizens. [TPM Muckraker]

Blogoscoped reviews a set of colored pencils:

You will notice several obvious features missing from the list. For instance, color pencil devices do not come with a clip arts library of any sorts. On the upside, the color pens do have a full support for advanced international character sets; this allowed me to enter Chinese characters as well. It is rare for devices today – including your average keyboard – to handle these characters with such ease.

The different fonts however, like Arial or Times New Roman, came out rather quirky, as the photo illustrates. Vector graphic quality was leaving a lot to be desired as well; lines were often not straight, aligned, or perfectly round as known from other utilities.

Color Pencils Reviewed [Blogoscoped.com] (Thanks, eriktown!)

Esquire has an great feature about Bryan Anderson, an Iraq War vet who lost both legs and an arm to an IED. His struggles with his prosthetic limbs are both heart-wrenching and inspiring. He's not letting his lack of limbs hold him back, like when he visits a go-kart track during a trip to be fitted with upgraded prosthetics.

The girl at the cash register runs us through the basic requirements, which add up to one rule: If we hurt ourselves, we won't sue. "Do you all have close-toed shoes?" she asks. Anderson is wearing sneakers, but he says it anyway: "Do I need them?" "Everyone does," she says, not looking up. "Even if I don't have feet?"

Development of increasingly capable prosthetics continues, toward the goal of synthetic limbs that exceed the potential of our stock meat limbs. A recent ruling of the International Association of Athletics Federations to forbid paraplegic runner Oscar Pistorius from the 2008 Olympics due to unfair advantage granted by his "Cheetah" prosthetics was perhaps a more noteworthy landmark than it first appeared, denoting the beginning of an age when bolt-on parts make us more—not less—than human.

One of the most impressive projects in the labs now is DEKA's "Luke" arm, an eight-pound cybernetic arm that, while not a dextrous as a human arm, is nevertheless stunning. IEEE Spectrum has produced a short video of the Luke in action, including showing how it's worn and tested by a man who lost both arms 26 years ago to electrical burns. The smile on his face when he talks about the simple joy of being able to peel a banana brightened my day.

What do you think this woman is holding? A flare gun? Air Horn? Find out on Modern Mechanix. Last month Scientific American printed an excellent feature about particle accelerators past, present and future. Today we look at a 1953 Popular Mechanics article that covers the same ground, 1950's style. Unhappy with your appearance? The Plastic Appliance Institute can help you shape your ugly nose, the scientific way! If you're walking down an isle in a store and you should happen to come across a talking mirror that's trying to sell you toothpaste, you have this man to thank. While I think propeller driven cars always look neat, the guy who built this one really should have invested in a safety cage. Also, check out these plans for building a subterranean road system in NYC.

Being gifted with a prodigious talent at playing one note on piano so repetitiously that I often lull myself to sleep (no joke), I've often thought that I would have been better served by the accordion. All that bellows-pumping would keep the blood flowing. Alas, my younger self thought accordion a dying instrument.

How shocked I would have been to stick my head through the slippery folds of time to gaze on the Roland FR-2 V-Accordion, with built-in drum loops, MIDI, and virtual bellows. (Well, the bellows are physical with "high-resolution pressure sensors," but you don't need to actually push air to make this squeezebox squawk. It's a synthesizer.) And of course the thing can be battery powered for hours of boardwalk busking. It does not appear to have a built-in speaker, though, which is baffling.

I will buy this as soon as I have three thousand dollars free of previous commitment or I become an accordion virtuoso, whichever comes first.

Product Page [RolandUS.com via Crave.CNET.com]

Previously • Suzuki Omnicord (1981) [Gadgets.BoingBoing.net]

My self-diagnosed mild autistic tendencies cause me to find great delight in things that express order and uniformity. I suspect that's part of what makes me love LEGO as much as I do—clicking the elements together actually calms me down. As does making pixel art, sliding elements into a zoomed-in grid. I love things that stack or that have compartments. I love airline meals, not because of the taste, but because of the way each little slab of food fits into its tray, which in turn slides into a wheeled steam compartment, which in turn snaps into a locker. (It makes me wish my belly were filled with stacks of rectangular stomachs.) If I could, I would live in a sterile white room with no corners and compartments in which to stow every item.

(Or course I'd grow tired of that bubble room in short order. I also like dirty log cabins and Marshall stacks and human genitalia. But I can feel a part of my brain that finds a sense of order soothing.)

Point is, I squealed a little when I saw "Casulo"—a small crate filled with all the furniture one needs to live a modest life—unfolded by its designers in the video below. While it's an admirable bit of prototype engineering, like a thesis project for a Doctorate of Ikea, it's the clear tone its connotive portent sends ringing in my head that makes it most laudable. To be able to cast out all one's things, step into a pregnant room, and unfold a new home in a few minutes? That's a seductive fantasy.

Project Page [Mein-Casulo.de via Treehugger via Design Spotter]

Energizer's "Light On Demand" products are LED lamps with battery backup, able to operate for up to 20 hours when the lights go out. And because they're from a battery company, each of the light sticks' batteries can be swapped with regular alkalines. Three products are designed to be plugged into an outlet: a desk lamp, a tabletop nightlight, and a wallplate nightlight. A motion-activated light and a wall sconce have to be recharged at a docking station.

I initially thought all the products in this series used a single type of lamp, but since different models have different listed running times when they're switched to battery power, I guess the only real innovation is that these are always-charged LED lights.

If your lights go out often I could see these being really nice. It is irritating to discover you're in a blackout but have forgotten to keep a flashlight around. That said, I can imagine that the majority of these lights will never be used as flashlights making the built-in battery superfluous and wasteful.

Target will have the retail exclusive on these until late summer. Prices have not been announced and the official website is down. (Would it be rude to suggest a battery backup for their webserver?) Update: Energizer tells me the prices will be "$24.99 - $69.99."

Press Release [PRNewswire.com via OhGizmo]

• PC Games – Amazon is selling The Orange Box (Half-Life 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2) for $30. Incredible value. If you don't own this we need to have a talk about your commitment to fun. [Slickdeals]

• LCD HDTV/Monitor – Westinghouse LVM-37W3SE 37-inch LCD monitor for $800, shipped. No tuner, but these are nice, cheap LCD panels. [Dealhack]

• Giant Remote – Today's Woot! is a Innovage Jumbo Universal Remote 2 Pack for $12, shipped.

The "Plagiarius Awards" are given to the companies who make the most faithful unauthorized reproductions of gear they did not design. And while China has its fair share of knock-offs represented, many of the thieving companies operate in the same country as the original. The whole awards page is like a tasting menu for IP lawyers.

Plagiarius Award winners are not given an actual trophy, but simply given general specifications and relative heft.

Awards Page [Plagiarius.com via Core77]