Hasta La Gadget!

You’re going to need something to wrap all those holiday gifts in, right? If you chose any of the gift ideas from our Daily Gift series, then you undoubtedly chose a geeky present. To stay with that theme, a nerdified wrapping paper is absolutely necessary. Sure, you could go with the QR Code Wrapping Paper we mentioned a few weeks ago. Or, you can honor the greatness of Twitter with Samsung’s Tweet Wrap.

As part of its holiday campaign to promote the Samsung RF510 laptop, The Barbarian Group has launched Tweetwrap, which allows visitors to customize their own Xmas wrapping paper. You can choose from six patterns. Then, you select the text for your tweets. You can choose by keyword, such as #HappyHolidays, Santa, Presents, I<3U, #Surprise, or #MerryChristmas. Additionally, you can enter and search for your own keyword, or for a username.

Then, you can place your order and get your tube of paper for $6.95. The site was offering 3,000 rolls for free, but you can still get your personalized paper for under $7 (plus shipping). Additionally, wrappers can then take photos of their presents and upload them to the site for a chance to win various Samsung prizes.

You can check out my Bieber wrapping paper to see another pattern (and a funny tweet).

According to reports, Yahoo, the Web’s once-dominant search site, is planning to layoff between 650 and 700 employees–or around five percent of the company’s staff. The layoffs are said to be spread across the company, but primarily occurring in its product group.

The massive staff cut is an attempt for the company to hit financial targets–really unfortunate timing, 10 days ahead of Christmas. The latest cut is the fourth in three years–two of which have occurred in the two years since Carol Bartz was hired on as the company’s CEO. The layoffs have been rumored for a number of months now.

Bartz, for her part, is still outwardly confident that the company is improving under her watch.

Yahoo services, meanwhile, have been experiencing some downtime–no word on whether this is related to today’s news.

First they take all of our jobs–now they’re appearing on our gameshows. A computer will finally get a chance to appear on Jeopardy, when IBM’s Watson makes its debut on the popular game show in February. The computer will appear on three episodes, taking on two of the show’s biggest winner–Ken Jennings, who won $2.5 (playing in a record 74 consecutive games) and Brad Rutter, who pulled in 3.2 million.

The winner of the three-way contest will bring home $1 million. Rutter and Jennings will donate half of their winnings to charity, should they be victorious. If Watson wins, meanwhile, it will donate all of its profits.

There are a number of difficulties that Watson must overcome, in order to win, including an understanding of subtle language nuances like puns and riddles. IBM scientist David Ferrucci is confident in the computer’s abilities, however, stating, “After four years, our scientific team believes that Watson is ready for this challenge based on its ability to rapidly comprehend what the Jeopardy clue is asking, analyze the information it has access to, come up with precise answers, and develop an accurate confidence in its response.”

Watson was named for IBM founder Thomas J. Watson. Over the past few month, its programmers have been running it through 50 mock Jeopardy games.

Julian Assange today was granted bail by a London court, thanks to Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith, who offered up a Suffolk mansion to the WikiLeaks founder. The one-time hacker will be kept, “if not under house arrest, at least under mansion arrest,” Assange attorney Geoffrey Robinson said.

Assange’s passport will be kept by British police. He will also be fitted with a tracking tag, required to stay at the mansion at least eight hours a day (four during the day and four at night). Assange will be required to check into London police every day between 6 and 8 PM.

The court set bail at 200,000 pounds (about $315,000). Two sureties of $31,500 each will be tacked on top of that. His next hearing is scheduled for January 11th.

Paul Buchheit created and served as the lead developer for Gmail. He also developed AdSense and is the guy who coined the company’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Bucheit left the company to found FriendFriend, which was later acquired by Facebook.

Since Google doesn’t sign his checks anymore, Buchheit can feel free to talk a bit of smack about the company’s current projects–projects like Chrome. Buchheit used his Twitter account this week to suggest the upcoming death of Google’s latest baby, “Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or ‘merged’ with Android).”

Buckheit went deeper in a FriendFeed post, writing,

ChromeOS has no purpose that isn’t better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display). I was thinking, “is this too obvious to even state?”, but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason.

Google has largely insisted that the two operating systems serve different markets. But, as TechCrunch points out, Sergey Brin himself has suggested that the company will someday focus on a single OS.