Hasta La Gadget!

There’s a lot to be said for civility, sure, but any semblance of that phenomenon seems to have largely gone out the window when it comes to tech companies. From Steve Jobs’s Android hate to Larry Ellison’s HP smack talk, today’s tech firms don’t really seem to give a damn when it comes to civility.

Take this recent Google/Microsoft kerfuffle. Google rushed to tell the world that it caught Microsoft stealing search results for Bing. Google didn’t actually say what it was going to do about the perceived theft–in fact, it’s not really certain whether the company has any kind of recourse–it just wanted everyone to know that Microsoft is a dirty stinkin’ thief.

And now Microsoft is calling Google out on its decision to dump the MS-supported H.264 format. “Our point of view is totally clear,” An IE exec wrote in a recent blog post.

Now it’s not certain that Microsoft is calling out Google as payback for the Bing thing, but the timing is certainly curious. After all, Google’s decision to drop support for the format came way back in mid-July.

You know, where I come from there’s a world for this kind of in-public fighting. We call it “hiybbprqag.”

During its press conference at this year’s CES, Samsung made little bones about its vendetta against the bezel. The company bragged about how its forthcoming D8000 HDTV has virtually no border, going so far as removing a fake bezel from the top of the television and then holding a pencil to the set’s side, to show just how razor thin the actually bezel is.

Search engine giant Google has now claimed that Bing stole their search results. Bing is reportedly stealing from Google’s most common misspelled search terms and using it in Bing’s own search engine results. Google has reportedly known about this issue for about a year now, and finally caught Bing “red-handed”.

Since Bing came out in summer of 09, it have been battling with the search engine giant. Yahoo and Bing have become partners in order to create a larger competitor, but still faltered when it came down to the two search engines. Google claims that after doing research on this for over a year that it believes Bing is using IE’s toolbar to rip off search results from Google. Microsoft and Bing have released this statement

We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results.  The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites 

Later on when they were asked again, they issued this statement

We do not copy Google’s results

Google does not appear to have a copyright placed on the results, which means they really do not have a legal recourse to take. However, Bing should do something in order to prevent any further issues. Like remove the identical results or prove how they came up with the exact same results without ripping off Google.

Via ZDNET & Gizmodo

I could probably look at pictures of people wearing Wrap-a-Naps over their eyes all day. They alternate between looking like really misguided attempts at creating a homemade Ninja Turtle costume and people who appear to have been recently subdued by some brain-sucking parasite. I’m leaning toward the latter for the above image.

The Wrap-a-Nap, affectionately referred to as the WAN is “a long pillow that hugs your head with gentle pressure, giving you the sweet relief of complete darkness, muffled noise and 360 degrees of pillow protection,” according to its makers. It’s made of fleece and stuffed with a “squishy” filling.

It’s basically a mobile pillow that can also mask your eyes. And it’s completely ridiculous, a fact that its creators have whole-heartedly embraced, judging by the shot of the dude wearing one while on the toilet (after the jump), proudly displayed on the product’s site.

It comes in a number of colors, including Poseidon, Forrest, Bear, Enzo, and (best of all) The Executive. It’ll run you $15, and best of all, you won’t have any idea if people are laughing at you while you’re wearing it.