WackedUSA

I’m going to have to figure out something to do about all the duplicate Raptr posts that seem to happen on the weekend.

It’s getting a little silly when I play MW2 4 times on a saturday and get 4 posts. I should figure out a way to make a counter or something so that it only makes ONE post, and then adds to it, or comments on it or something.

Hrm… I wonder if that’s even the right direction.

Nevermind CES, health care, or Qaeda cells in Yemen, this is the real story of the week. Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams has a piece out about LUKEYWES1234, a chunky, bespectacled 10 year old boy who happily cranked out YouTube videos about playing with Luigi and Mario—until 4chan discovered him. Read: The littlest YouTube sensation

- found and shared from: Boing Boing

CAPS LOCK IS LIKE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME!

- found and shared from: Chenzotumblr

10 Unbelievable Facebook Stories:

Some good ones in there… like Rodney Bradford, who was posting to his page at the exact time of a robbery he was accused of.

His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the status update had actually been typed from acomputer located at 71 West 118th Street in Harlem, as Mr. Bradford said. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.

- found and shared from: Chenzotumblr

I've always gotten a kick out of Biz Markie. He reminds me of a cartoon character. That's why he's such a great fit on Yo Gabba Gabba! where he does the "Biz's Beat Of The Day" segments! I was delighted when my pal Gabe Adiv got Biz to star in a commercial for his start-up TuneUp Media, the service I've posted about before that cleans up digital music libraries. Apparently, Biz is a big fan of TuneUp and DJ'd at their launch party, so he was game to act endearingly ridiculous in the commercial. Co-starring is Andy Milonakis who used to have a show on MTV. Gabe said he met Andy at a card table in Vegas a couple years ago and they hit it off, so Gabe called him last minute to see if he would be in the commercial too. I love the way it came out.

- found and shared from: Boing Boing

As we prepare to stuff our faces with a bountiful Thanksgiving feast, we turn our Thanksgiving spirit to the gobs of free software we love to say thank you to the developers, and to give our computers a feast of their own.

Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and after rounding up thousands of your suggestions, considering our own favorites, and performing a little spreadsheet magic, we've cooked up our own cornucopia of excellent free software and webapps we're extremely thankful for. So whether you're an American celebrating the season or not, the selection of apps below is like gravy-drenched turkey and mashed potatoes for your computer. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

61 Free Desktop Applications, Webapps, and Tools We're Most Thankful For

1. Firefox (see also: Power User's Guide to Firefox 3, Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features)
2. VLC (see also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC, VLC Hits 1.0 with Better Playback and File Support)
3. CCleaner (see also: Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools)
4. Dropbox (see also: Use Dropbox for More Than Just File Syncing, Sync Files and Folders Outside Your My Dropbox Folder)
5. 7-Zip (see also: Five Best File Compression Tools)
6. OpenOffice.org (see also: OpenOffice.org 3.1's Usability Tweaks, OpenOffice.org Screenshots Preview a Ribbon-Like Toolbar)
7. Google Chrome (see also: The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome, 2009 Edition)
8. µTorrent (see also: Tweak uTorrent's Settings for Faster Downloads, Five Best BitTorrent Applications)
9. Notepad++ (see also: Five Best Text Editors, AutoSave Adds Reassurance to Notepad++ Editing)
10. Gmail (see also: Our full Gmail coverage)
11. GIMP (see also: Gimp 2.7 Beta Improves Text Editing, Streamlines Saving)
12. Paint.NET (see also: Paint.NET Releases Big Update, Still a Killer Photoshop Alternative, Paint.NET Plugin Lets You Open Photoshop Files)
13. Microsoft Security Essentials (see also: Microsoft Security Essentials Free Antivirus App Leaves Beta, Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft's Security Tools Are Good Enough)
14. Revo Uninstaller (see also: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads)
15. Evernote (see also: Evernote 3.5 Beta Brings Tons of Tiny Fixes to Windows, Expand Your Brain with Evernote)
16. Thunderbird (see also: Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate Available for Download)
17. Audacity (see also: Geek to Live: Make a ringtone from any MP3)
18. ImgBurn (see also: Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster, Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools)
19. Picasa (see also: Picasa 3.5 Organizes Your Photos with Facial Recognition)
20. Skype (see also: Our full Skype coverage)
21. Pidgin (see also: Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin, Five Best Instant Messengers)
22. Ubuntu (see also: First Look at Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony)
23. iTunes (see also: iTunes 9 Improves Syncing, Network Sharing, More)
24. foobar2000 (see also: Screenshot Tour: The beautiful and varied world of foobar2000, Hack Attack: Roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000)
25. Foxit Reader (see also: Five Best PDF Readers, Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads)
26. FileZilla (see also: Five Best FTP Clients, Build a Home FTP Server with FileZilla)
27. VirtualBox (see also: The Beginner's Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox)
28. TrueCrypt (see also: Geek to Live: Encrypt your data, Five Best Portable Applications)
29. Avast! (see also: Five Best Antivirus Applications)
30. Defraggler (see also: Five Best Disk Defragmenters)
31. KeePass (see also: Eight Best KeePass Plug-Ins to Master Your Passwords, How to Use Dropbox as the Ultimate Password Syncer)
32. Opera (see also: Opera 10.10 with Unite Media Server Released)
33. AVG (see also: AVG 9 Free Now Available for Download)
34. Digsby (see also: Five Best Instant Messengers, Digsby Sees the Light, Removes (Some) Bundled Crapware)
35. Google Reader (see also: Our full Google Reader coverage)
36. Winamp (see also: Win7shell Adds Windows 7 Jump List Support to Winamp)
37. Google Earth (see also: Google Earth 5.1 Speeds Up Your World Browsing)
38. TeraCopy (see also: Five Best Alternative File Copiers)
39. Launchy (see also: Our full Launchy coverage)
40. Transmission (see also: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads)
41. Eclipse IDE
42. SpyBot Search & Destroy (see also: Five Best Malware Removal Tools)
43. Adium (see also: Adium Updates with Security Fixes, Better Facebook Integration)
44. PuTTY (see also: Add Tabs to PuTTY with PuTTY Connection Manager)
45. Songbird (see also: Songbird 1.0 Release Official, Fixes Bugs, Plays iTunes Purchases, Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better)
46. Sumatra PDF (see also: Sumatra 1.0 is a Blazing Fast Replacement for Adobe Reader)
47. XBMC (see also: Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap, Customize XBMC with These Five Awesome Skins, Turbo Charge Your New XBMC Installation)
48. Blender (see also: Learn Blender with free e-book)
49. CDBurnerXP (see also: Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools)
50. Everything (see also: Everything Finds Windows Files As You Type, Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities)
51. HandBrake (see also: HandBrake Updates to 0.9.4 with Over 1,000 Changes, 64-Bit Support)
52. Rainmeter (see also: Rainmeter 1.0 Brings the Enigma Desktop to Everyone)
53. AutoHotkey (see also: Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut, Hack Attack: Knock down repetitive email with AutoHotKey)
54. Google Calendar (see also: Our full Google Calendar coverage)
55. MediaMonkey (see also: MediaMonkey 3.2 Syncs with More Devices, Adds Auto Folder Watching)
56. Quicksilver (see also: A beginner's guide to Quicksilver)
57. WinSCP
58. Google Voice (see also: Make Unlimited Free Calls on Your Cellphone with Google Voice, How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice)
59. Boxee (see also: Build a Cheap But Powerful Boxee Media Center, Boxee to Launch Beta with Loads of New Features)
60. AdBlock Plus (see also: Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition)
61. Media Player Classic (see also: Five Best Video Players)

In case you're curious, here's a broad look at how your votes broke down among the 10 most popular:

The list above represents every application that garnered roughly ten votes or above. The highest vote-earner, Firefox, pulled in a couple hundred. If you're interested in how the full count went down, you can check out a Google Spreadsheet of the results here. Happy Thanksputering!

- found and shared from: Lifehacker

Pulls photos from Picasa.

Lets see how it works:

Hrm… I wonder how these will feed.

Yeah, I’m really sorry about all the Raptr posts. Just getting the feed in, so it’s doing all the initial posts. I’m sure I’ve got it’s feed setting set to too often, but… meh… we’ll see.

Check out Raptr. It’s a IM Client, like X-Fire, but can see your XFire activity, your Steam activity, and your 360 activity (plus, PS3 and WoW stuff too, but I don’t use either of those.) and lets you make a real time RSS feed and also fire off into your twitter and facebook accounts (altho, it’s got to be ANNOY to have someone use that for facebook.)

You can check out my Ratpr Profile here.

It’s even got sigs and badges:

or

makes me want to play some games on steam to have it get tweaked for that too (since it looks like it’s missing some of my stats.)

The leaks were real. This weekend, Walmart is kicking off pre-Black Friday deals, including a $199 Xbox 360 Arcade that comes with a free $100 gift card, effectively dropping the price to $100. Other deals are just as good:

• $298 HP Notebook Computer – 3GB memory, 160GB hard drive, Windows 7 Premium • Sharp 1080p HDTVs – 42" for $498, 46" for $698 (120 Hz), 52" for $898 (120 Hz) • Panasonic 46" 1080p plasma HDTV for $788 • Xbox 360 Arcade Console $199 with $100 Walmart Gift Card (for use on future purchases; minimum store quantities are at least 10 per store) • $148 Sony Blu-ray player (model #BDP-S360) • $29 Magnavox Upconvert DVD player (model #DP170MGXF, 1080p)

The sale starts at 8 a.m. Nov. 7 (that's a Saturday) and lasts, to some extent, through Nov. 13. But it appears these doorbuster deals won't last beyond the first day. Also of note, "Walmart will feature select 12-pound turkeys for less than $5, helping families serve a complete Thanksgiving meal for eight this year as low as $20." Limit two turkeys per customer. [Walmart]

- found and shared from: Gizmodo

Last week, NASA test fired a new rocket.

- found and shared from: APOD