If you’re just waking up out of your post Super Bowl stupor, a crumble of Doritos dusting your chest and beer cans littering the coffee table, floor, and dog, you’ll be excused for not knowing that all the greatest entrepreneurs in the world (and Om Malik) are wearing colorful socks. See, apparently dudes in the Valley wear sassy socks. It’s something that’s done. But why? Well, apparently wearing colorful socks helps you stand out in the dressed-down, always-on, loosey-goosey, fancy-dancing world of Silicon Valley. In a land where no one can see your bespoke suit with working cuff buttons, how are you supposed to show your power? With socks, people. With socks.

In fact, fancy socks are like a gang sign.

OK, so now you know how to get funded: wear funny socks. But where can you get those socks? You’re in luck. The guys at 80stees emailed me to offer a set of every sock on this page to two lucky TechCrunch readers. That’s 16 pair each for two lucky ducks. How would you wear them? Well, think about the use case. Headed out to talk to Sequoia? Wear the Batman socks. Interviewing a programmer? Wear the Wonder Woman socks. Pivoting? Wear the Superman socks. Easy.

To win, comment below describing what you secretly wear to meetings for good luck. Thanks to 80sTees for helping all us nerds stay at the height of fashion.

Welcome, kids, to TIL – Today I Learned. Today’s TIL is “Don’t post your correspondence with AppleCare representatives or Apple will totally tell the government on you.”

David Boles had a nice Apple monitor that died on him. He had a little trouble transferring AppleCare coverage to his new monitor after it pooped out and so he posted some advice on his blog. Nothing major, just “don’t forget to connect your AppleCare accounts.” Very innocuous.

But then, from out of the inky shadows, comes Apple like the Spanish Inquisition, informing him he’s breaking the law worse than Josey Wales:

I suspect that this email didn’t come from a native English-speaker (“If no compliance is made, further action will have to be forced upon”) and it’s laughable that anyone would hold that “This transmission” garbage up as proof that you can’t post an email. Heck, I just reposted it so now Apple will have to sic the government on me, too.

Anyway, it’s a fun situation that I’m sure will be cleared up by nobody caring about it in a few days.

We get a lot of PR pitches (“Write about our social media network for fish lovers! If you don’t, we’ll take our exclusive to TetraLover.blogspot.com,” “We’ll give you a private jet if you write good things about Apple – Sincerely, Tim Cook,” “Take a look at these iPhone gloves!”) and there are few I’ve dreaded more than writing about the aforementioned iPhone gloves mostly because the founders kept emailing me about these damned gloves. These things come from a Dutch company called Mujjo and they purport to allow you to interact with your iPhone with any part of your hand, including your wrist, knuckle, and palm. The founders must have used them to punch out emails on the icy Hague metro every day of the past month because they were pretty darn persistent.

The question when dealing with these sorts of pitches, really, is two-fold: a) does the product advertised work? and b) will I write about the product after being literally hounded for three weeks by these guys? In answer to both, I would respond with a resounding (literally) “Yes.” They work and yeah, what the heck, Mujjo, people like gloves, right? Also a post will get Mujjo to stop emailing me.

I tried these during a few colder Brooklyn afternoons and, like most gloves, they kept my hands warm. Unlike most gloves, I could use them to tap my iPhone screen. Could they be used to tap your iPhone screen with your knuckle? Sure. They’re full of conductive thread so smack away. Is that a major selling point? Not really, but if you’re paying $30 (25 Euro) for touchscreen gloves, these things better let you touch the very heavens with your triquetrum so this is an acceptable middle-of-the-road solution. So there you have it: gloves that are good as gloves and iPhone interaction tools. A double whammy.

If you’re still with me, let’s discuss the takeaways here:

1. These gloves work well.
2. If you email us enough we will eventually cave.
3. Don’t try that technique with every stupid thing you’re trying to pitch because if the product is absolutely stupid no amount of badgering will win our hearts.

Product Page

Are you ready to destroy the Dragons of Skyrim with your trusty orcish arrows and shortsword? Do you wish to hop on your trusty horse and ride endlessly up steep slopes and through wooded glens? Do you have a TI-84 graphing calculator? Well you’re kind of in luck.

An intrepid Skyrim fan created a Skyrim simulator that is basically a text adventure game with a few clever graphics. It definitely doesn’t recreate the glorious golds of a Skyrim sunset or the spooky caverns of Kolskeggr Mine but you can at least while away the hours in Social Studies.

If your teacher isn’t paying attention today in Calculus, you can grab the program here and live the adventure, albeit in a very truncated way.

via Kotaku

Popular file-hosting site Megaupload, probably known to our readers for a variety of reasons, has been taken down after the FBI charged some of its staff with copyright infringement and “conspiracy to commit racketeering.” Seven people have been charged, and four arrested (in New Zealand), and the site itself appears to be down as authorities around the world closed in on the site’s resources.

Bizarrely, it was also just revealed that the CEO of the company is none other than Swizz Beats, the husband of Alicia Keys. Clearly the rabbit hole goes much deeper than the FBI expected.

Mr. Beats is just the acting CEO, and probably was brought on by founder Kim Dotcom as part of the site’s efforts to legitimize itself in the eyes of the law. Part of this effort was the publication of the so-called “Mega Song,” in which a number of musicians espouse the service as a useful and fast way of transferring files.

In December, Will.I.Am, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and the others pulled their support, and it was claimed that they never consented to appearing in the video, which was subsequently removed from YouTube.

Naturally, it was quickly replaced by users who had downloaded it, and you can watch it below:

Megaupload filed a countersuit against UMG regarding the video, but there doesn’t appear to be any movement by the company on today’s news. The Department of Justice has issued a press release describing the action taken and the employees who were indicted; the release also alleges that Megaupload failed to comply with DMCA provisions.

The FBI stressed that the takedown had nothing to do with the ongoing SOPA/PIPA controversy; indeed, a direct takedown of the site with international cooperation is much more in line with existing methods for dealing with “rogue” websites.

It seems as if the whole story will have to come out in court, as Megaupload likely doesn’t have the resources to continue operating while its staff is on the lam. It should make for interesting reading once the dust settles.

Update: In retaliation, Anonymous, or one of their many members or factions claiming to be Anonymous, has attacked the Justice Department’s site and appear to have brought it down. AnonOps summarizes: “Tango down!”

Update 2: It seems that Swizz Beats is not in fact acting CEO, or really involved with Megaupload in any serious capacity. It seems like the NY Post had a bad source.

While I suspect there’s a lot lost in translation here,Foxconn chairman Terry Gou made a wildly distasteful joke this week at the Taipei Zoo, saying (according to WantChinaTimes): “Hon Hai (Foxconn) has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.”

The comments came during a presentation at the zoo where the superintendant Chin Shih-chien gave a talk on feeding and taking care of his charges. Gou has apparently hired Chin to make recommendations and help Foxconn executives learn how to manage large organizations.

To be fair (and I don’t want to defend this guy, but still), he could have been talking off the cuff using a colloquialism like “herding cats” to a group of insiders. However, we must consider the worldwide animus aimed at Foxconn thanks to the recent suicides as well as a ThisAmericanLife piece by Mike Daisey, a noted thorn in Apple’s side.

Foxconn is much more benign than critics let on and, in the end, it’s companies like Foxconn that keep us in our gadgets. However, a CEO slipping like this – in front of a world already clamoring for his head – is pretty terrible.

This Kickstarter project aims to rend the very fabric of space and time. The product is a camping pot for boiling water and doing a little cooking in a pinch but get this: the pot is made of paper.

The pot is completely biodegradable and folds flat in your backpack. It’s mostly designed for a single use although you can feasibly boil a few bottle-fulls of water in it over time. The foods you cook must contain water but they are not limited to highly liquid consumables:

Made by a company called Energia, these pots will cost a few dollars and pledge of $75 gets you 32 cooking pots. There’s no description of how this works so I suspect they’re just using Dragons Bane or some other fireproof elixir to keep these pots from burning up. They’ve raised $500 so far out of $25,000, so you’d be getting in on the ground floor.

Project Page

Remember the mini-slate Samsung released a few months ago? The Samsung Galaxy Note? Pretty cool little device. As we enter CES week, the press releases are flying fast and furious and this one caught my eye. It’s for a small company that makes accessories for gadgets and I suppose (I can’t find the original) it outlined Anymode’s plans for Samsung Note accessories.

The release also noted that the Samsung Note would hit AT&T this year. There were rumors of this, but Anymode essentially confirmed it. Until they didn’t.

A few hours after the original announcement, I got an email retracting the earlier statement. It stated:

I love the memory-hole-esque line “The information was not provided by Anymode, AT&T or Samsung , nor did Anymode, AT&T or Samsung approve it.” Yes, Anymode, you did “provide” it. You sent it out. Stand up for your convictions here. It’s a small slate. It’s not a cure for cancer.

In the end, this whole dance is part of the modern CE scene. What you’re seeing here is a small partner messing up and two other partners – much bigger and with more lawyers – pressuring them to convince the world something never happened. I’d call it a cover-up if it didn’t insult the memory of Watergate.

These curtsies, bows, and twirls are what passes for information dissemination in a world run by the rumor. This is why Microsoft left CES – the impetus to launch around a major trade show in a world that can accept breaking “news” in a few hours, not a few months. CES was good when magazines were working on back-to-school issues in January. Now they work on back-to-school blog posts the week before junior straps on his backpack.

Expect more fun line this over the next few days. CES, as they say, is a wild ride.

When we last left Paypal, the company was busy destroying Christmas for a bunch of kids. This week they’re shredding violins into bits while taking money from unsuspecting sellers. When will we stop trusting these guys? When they kill a puppy?

Regretsy reader Erica sold an ostensibly rare violin to an eBay buyer who paid using Paypal. The buyer disputed the authenticity of the instrument and asked for his money back. Rather than handle it amicably with Erica, the buyer went to Paypal who advised them to supply proof that the item had been destroyed and they would refund the money. The buyer then shredded the violin into chowder and sent a handsome photo to Paypal and Erica. Paypal refunded the money.

This left Erica in a tight spot. She no longer had the money and the item she was attempting to sell was shredded. Actually, that’s the end of the story: violin shredded, money taken away. It is, in a word, heartbreaking.

Now a lot of this story isn’t out yet and I have a line in to Paypal about this, so before we get out the pitchforks lets discuss what happened. Paypal has a well-documented policy that it does not allow the sale of fakes through its service. This applies, presumably, to Mucci purses and Drada wallets and fake Bolex watches. However, no one in this situation was in any position to objectively appraise this piece and Paypal could not confirm or deny the accuracy of the buyer’s claims. To reduce this argument ad absurdum, what if this was a painting or sculpture attributed to Raphael and was really made by Michelangelo? In any case it’s real and Paypal’s CSRs have no business passing judgement on these things, let alone take the buyer at his word. Paypal, in their zeal to perform customer server theatre, is judge, jury, and proxy executioner here.

Erica might be a total faker. The buyer may be in the right. But it’s not Paypal’s job to appraise violins. My understanding is that Paypal is a proxy between two parties and a better solution would be to hold the money in escrow – less shipping – so the violin can come back to the owner and the cash then goes to the buyer.

When we first introduced the Siri clone Iris, I figured that would be the last of the outright Siri-alikes. I was wrong. Programmers are taking advantage of less experienced users and creating apps that are downright insulting to the average intelligence.

One app, called Siri for Android is a hard link to Google’s voice controls while another, called Speerit is a Korean clone that purports to connect to Apple’s servers (which is untrue).

Whether you believe these apps should exist on the Android Market or not, its clear that there are enough new users out there who will fall for some of the oldest software tricks in the book. A word of advice: if it’s called “Siri” and it runs on Android, it’s probably not real.

via 9to5mac

With all this talk of 360-degree customer service and Zappos ninjas who help babies out of burning buildings while taking orders for clogs, it’s nice to remember that for every heartwarming tale of customer satisfaction there is a dude like Paul Christoforo.

The tale begins with a controller accessory. It’s called the Avonger en-kontrol (my misspelling) and it’s some kind of octopus that helps you press more buttons on your game controller. We wrote it up in February 2011 so you can check it out there. A quick web search will bring up the actual product. I’m not about to give them any Google Juice.

Plenty of people pre-ordered and waited patiently for the devices to ship. One customer, Dave, emailed the company with a question:

The “marketing guru” Paul Christoforo (who runs SEO expert site OceanMarketing (amazing, right?)) eventually gets into a heated Internet exchange with Dave (read it all on Penny Arcade when it comes back up) and ends his tirade with this gem of social media marketing done right (warning, NSFW language):

If you tl;dred that, here is one of the pertinent points:

This is the 38-year-old marketing manager and LinkedIn User (and presumably president of a company that is apparently trying to make a living selling marketing accessories) responding to a customer. I doubt this strategy is in the Amazon CSR handbook.

The fact that I’m writing about this feeds directly into Christoforo’s sense that any PR is good PR, but I assure you that’s not the case. Battles against Internet tag teams that involve Kotaku, SomethingAwful, and Reddit rarely end well and products built marketed by petulant 38-year-old former real estate salesmen rarely, if ever, ship. It’s easy to build a buzz on the Internet, and it’s just as easy to kill it in a few keystrokes. Wurd up.

UPDATE – After many machinations, it’s clear the Christoforo isn’t the brains behind this project and that it’s a legitimate device. Don’t hold Avenger Controller responsible for this debacle.

Leica has just announced the V-Lux 3 superzoom camera, 12.1-megapixel CMOS camera with 4.5-108mm F2.8-5.2 lens with 1080p60 video capture. Not surprisingly, this thing is actually a rebadged Panasonic DMC-FZ150 which lends truth to the old adage “A fool and his money are easily duped by camera companies.”

While I love Leica’s traditional M-line, this move is such an egregious cash-grab that I would prefer not to comment on it further.

While I’m fairly certain that this is a publicity stunt tied into the upcoming CES season, BEHRINGER (their caps, not mine) has announced the iNuke, an 8×4 foot, 700 pound iPhone/iPad dock. It costs $30,000 and pumps out – no joke – 10,000 Watts.

This is part of their Eurosound brand, a higher-end range of 50 products that is cashing in on the newfound popularity of expensive but horrible headphones (see: Beats). To be fair, Behringer has always made good audio gear and mixers, so why can’t they dip a toe into the CE market? It’s a free planet, right?

Anyway, look for the iNuke at an aircraft hangar near you, because I doubt most houses will be able to withstand its onslaught of pure, unadulterated power.

It’s the holiday season, when a webmaster’s mind turns to thoughts of love and charity. Take Regretsy, for example. The site collected a bit of money and began buying and sending gifts to the kids in the Regretsy community whose parents were having financial problems. In this economy, that could be just about anybody and, the Internet being the Internet, there was an outpouring of affection and donations. It warms, as they say, the cockles of the heart.

Unfortunately, Regretsy used Paypal.

As of yesterday, Paypal shut down the account and put a hold on Regretsy founder April Winchell’s account. They also forced her to refund the money she collected, less the fees Paypal took out – twice.

I’ll let you read the post yourself. It’s a gem of horrible customer support. But this part is classic:

PAYPAL: Only a nonprofit can use the Donate button.
ME: That’s false. It says right in the PDF of instructions for the Donate button that it can be used for “worthy causes.”
PAYPAL: I haven’t seen that PDF. And what you’re doing is not a worthy cause, it’s charity.
ME: What’s the difference?
PAYPAL: You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.

A sick cat, eh?

Now April is a repeat offender. She’s raised money for needy people before and I suspect she’ll do it again. Clearly this sort of largesse is far too suspect to be ignored, especially in the cesspool of iniquity and scam-artists that is the dark binary star of Ebay and Paypal.

What’s Paypal’s problem? April used the “Donate” button instead of the “Buy Now” button on Paypal, a mistake that many make when, you know, soliciting donations. Donations, it seems, require pages of documentation citing non-profit status, something not mentioned directly on Paypal’s website. Instead, anyone can make a donate button – heck, I just did it – and then suffer the consequences when the Paypal militia figures it out. Why not lock the “Donate” button down and make the homeless shelter hire a lawyer in order to file for the ability to accept donations? That seems like it would be effective, non?

Paypal is historically histrionic when it comes to fraud. Either you’re getting screwed on a massive scale or your entire account is shut down on spurious charges. I understand that Paypal has to face scammers and fraudsters every day, but seriously? You hear more about folks like Merlin Mann and now Regretsy getting dinged than the scammers who tried to rent us a place in the Catskills that didn’t belong to them last winter. We trusted them, after all, because they took Paypal.

Paypal no longer seems like the service of choice for things like this and I’d recommend companies start looking into alternate ways to collect money including Amazon (Kickstarter uses this quite effectively) and Google Check-Out or, barring that, hosting their own merchant accounts. An envelope full of money passed by hand through a throng of drunken revelers seems like it would get to its intended recipient faster and more effectively than Paypal.

UPDATE – A Paypal spokesperson wrote:

PayPal Statement:

We can’t comment specifically on the Regretsy.com account due to our privacy policy. However, we can confirm that the funds have been released and we are working directly with the account holder on this matter. We are also making a donation to Regretsy to help families in need this holiday season. We’re very sorry this occurred.

For reference, we have clear guidelines for any business who uses PayPal to accept donations. For example, we require certain documentation to prevent misuse of the donated funds and, if the recipient claims charitable status, to determine whether they are properly registered. As a regulated payment service, we’re also required by law to follow these guidelines.

We appreciate that this can be an inconvenience, but we have a responsibility to all our customers – both donors and recipients; or buyers and sellers. In this instance, we recognized our error and moved as swiftly as possible to fix it.

Here’s an odd little quirk of the modern age you’re not likely to see again soon. South of Holborn in London (many nice bookstores in the area), there’s a tube station that has been out of use for decades. Aldwych (previously Strand) station has been preserved as an historical landmark and used in a number of films and shows. Just recently it was opened up to the public for tours: £20 for entry, doubtless an interesting spectacle popular among both tourists and locals.

And just outside, a sign reading: “Due to their combination of high-quality sensor and high resolution, digital SLR cameras are unfortunately not permitted inside the station.” How delightfully absurd!

Now, naturally there must be some restrictions on recording equipment. You mustn’t use flash photography on the Mona Lisa, and professional videographers and photographers apply for licenses for off-hours shoots and so on. So it’s not like you can bring your tripod, flash umbrella, models and stylists to do an impromptu shoot wherever you like. But really, now. A wholesale ban on an extremely popular device very likely to be possessed by the people coming to this location?

And of course the DSLR format is by no means a guarantee of quality pictures, if preventing quality is the aim of this policy. A mobile phone will take better pictures than DSLRs from a few years back if used properly. And compact high-quality cameras are gaining ground as well: would the security guards confiscate an X100 or Olympus PEN camera?

In the case of a museum or tour, in which the property is in fact private and you are paying for admission, you must agree to their silly rules, though I expect such rules will soon be dropped as they are recognized as pointless and ineffective. But this kind of ignorant restriction is of a piece with the more disturbing ones we see placed on public photography, in which entire buildings are supposedly immune to picture-taking from the street. The rules are imaginary, of course, or at best arbitrary, as shown here. It’s not even worth arguing about how you might circumvent it.

This sign is something you can just shake your head at and buy a postcard to make up for a lack of photos, but the mindset behind it — aggressive ignorance — is dangerous.

[via Amateur Photographer and PetaPixel]

These USB rocket launchers are nothing new, but this model now supports direct control via an iPhone or iPad, allowing you to remotely aim and rain down hellfire upon unsuspecting office mates from outside of the room. Casual Body Armor Friday will never be the same.

With a 270°horizontal rotation, a vertical flexibility of more than 40° and a shooting distance of around 25 feet, the iLaunch Thunder will cover more than 1,400 square feet of your workspace. That definitely gives you more than enough coverage to declare some serious office warfare!

The launcher connects to your phone via Bluetooth and you can aim remotely. Sadly, there is no built-in camera for aiming more precisely and at $82 it’s a bit expensive, but it may be just the thing you need to unleash hell on accounting.

Product Page

The $99 TouchPad fire sale was the best way to close the book on webOS and the TouchPad itself. It got the TouchPad into the hands of the fans. Only those that cared about the product lined up outside of Best Buy to grab one of the cheap notebooks. It’s also probably safe to say that most of these people do not have any interest in HP’s crapware notebooks. These people just wanted a solid tablet for a great price.

HP, you should have taken your win and walked home. But you didn’t. You’ve screwed up. Again.

The TouchPad’s story is a sad one. A product born out of Palm’s inspiring vision for the future of mobile and HP’s expertise at killing innovation. Despite featuring a solid operating system, the product landed with a thud and only webOS die-hards opted for the $499 TouchPad. HP announced just 7 weeks after it launched that it was killing all webOS hardware development and would clear out the remaining supply for just $99, which sold out nearly overnight.

The story all along was that another batch of TouchPads was coming. Retailers and even the HP website had sign-up pages to notify potential buyers of available TouchPads. But here we are, a couple months later, and the $99 TouchPad hasn’t resurfaced.

However, the TouchPad has randomly popped up at different retailers, but there is often a major caveat. Best Buy got a round of 32GB $150 TouchPads late last month but they were only available for purchase with an HP notebook. Then Tiger Direct (and sister site, Circuit City) started selling the TouchPads but only with an expensive accessory pack, bringing the price up to $279. Then, just today, Office Depot’s Black Friday ad leaked showing a TouchPad deal similar to that found at Best Buy; buy any HP PC and get a 32GB TouchPad for $150.

You just know somewhere deep in the corporate machine that is HP, an overpaid executive and his team of cronies thought up this scheme. “People want the TouchPad, right? Alright, then let’s make a quick buck off these people. If they want one, we’re going to force people to buy one of our cheap, adware-filled notebooks. Oh, and we’ll pull support for the TouchPad or, maybe, half-heartedly support it for the stragglers.”

This isn’t about capitalism or free trade. HP had a chance to make some friends and earn some good will. The TouchPad is clearly not worth anything to HP. The first fire sale demonstrated that. Now they’re using it as a bait, waving it in front of potential buyers, just hoping to trick someone into buying one of their crappy notebooks. HP has every right to make a buck but sometimes it’s worth foregoing a tiny bit of additional revenue to earn some respect. After years of self-destructive behavior, HP needs respect more than anything else.

If you have more money than sense, I have an iPhone case for you. Watchmaker De Bethune has created the DW4 aka the Dream Watch 4, an iPhone case made of bead-blasted titanium with an embedded mechanical watch in the back. Why? Because the poor can suck it is why.

Only twelve of the limited edition cases will be made, with one given to John Corzine as a retirement gift. The rest will be flaunted on the streets of various famine-torn nations by impossibly thin Russian models who will order huge plates of food that they won’t eat.

No pricing, but seriously?

via Ablogtoread

I’m a DIY kind of guy. I feel that doctors are at best overpriced handymen whose skills and experience count for little when it comes to understanding my body. Hey, it’s my body, right? I should be able to figure out what’s wrong!

It follows then, that I may want a USB endoscope in order to examine my innards and assess the damage done by various drugs, objects, and substances I’ve ingested, including 77 zipper teeth that I pulled off of my winter coat one afternoon when I was hiding the the park waiting for girls. When I saw that Brando was selling an endoscope for a mere $44, I was about to jump but I was quickly thwarted. Sadly, I won’t be able to view myself from either end today or any other day, for this endoscope is only for “sewers, water pool or drains.”

While I feel that this endoscope is perfect for the aforementioned sewers, water pool, and drains, don’t you think that a little Vaseline and some luck could make this an excellent medical device? Come on, Brando! Think outside the water pool!

Anyway, it’s available now. I guess I’ll have to keep using my hand to figure out what’s going on in there.

Product Page

Can’t get your Angry Birds done on just one iPad? Are you what would be commonly termed “a Bluetooth-toting dbag?” Do you think you’re more important than most people? Do your co-workers (or employees) hate you? Here’s the double iPad case of your dreams.

Made by a small case manufacturer, ZooGue, the double iPad case is launching tomorrow and should be the toast of the country club come Monday. After all, you can’t GTL if you’re not connected to your homies back at the home office on your two red-hot iPads!

No price yet, but if I were ZooGue I’d add a certain premium for the man – or woman – who has it all and wants just a titch more. Slap some Ed Hardy art on there and you’ve got a trifecta.