Wow, according to this Snopes piece, AOL owns the rights to the song Happy Birthday. Oops! It’s all very legit, but just shows how crazy a world it is when a little ditty penned in 1893 could still be generating $2m a year in royalties for a bunch of suits. Yeuch! [via madville] Meanwhile the war of the suits has begun in earnest. After several years of phony war stuff, real battle is now enjoined. No, I’m not talking about…

A bicycle made out of bamboo? Gadzooks, what will they think of next?

The Hit HBA-001 Bluetooth Phone Adapter lets you give your old mobile phone Bluetooth capabilities. Simply plug the gizmo into your antique phone’s 2.5mm headset jack and voil�, you will then be able to use groovy, cool Bluetooth headsets and suchlike. Apparently.

K9 is a free spam filtering program which apparently incorporates some fairly sophisticated ‘learning’ algorithms. Haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, but it’s on the list.

The Corporate Fallout Detector [warning: link includes direct Quicktime load] is an interesting little experiment. It basically reads product barcodes, checks the manufacturer against a couple of ethical type databases and then gives a geiger counter type reading as to how socially responsible the company is. Neat idea. I imagine that a cool pen sized version of this would become a mandatory shopping aid amongst many of us who really don’t want to contribute to nasty corporate shenanigans around the…

Depressed by the changing British weather? Cloudy July days got you down? Well why not invest in a geeky little Desktop Beach. $24.99. If this helps, maybe you need to get out a bit more?

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I don’t care if it does cost $850,000. The thought of this…er….thing ploughing its way through the water has me in absolute stitches. Ladies n’Genlemen, we present the Terra Wind (no stop, I can’t take it anymore) – ‘the world’s first luxury Amphibious Motor coach/Yacht.’ Can you imagine driving this thing up onto a beach or a crowded ramp somewhere? The laughing, the pointing, the eggs on the windshield? It’s too much. Now this Cuban…

The good folk at Imation kindly sent me through a short paper on taking good care of your CD and DVD discs. The advice offered is very sensible and may be news to some people (f’rinstance I didn’t know that humidity could corrode the dye area under some circumstances). I decided that it might be useful to add a few bits to it (the last five tips have been collated by me) and present a Top 10 CD Hints &…

The PC Mobile Trauma Kit – a collection of every tool and spare part a Maximum PC editor might need to triage and revive a PC in crisis.’ I would change the Snap-On screwdriver to a rechargeable electric version, it can be such a pain unscrewing dinky screw after dinky screw on a troubled PC.

The Society of Dyers and Colourists have a museum. A Colour Museum to be precise. Lots of fascinating information and trivia relating to colour. Groovy. [via bifurcated rivets]

GNOD – the Global Network of Dreams – is a nifty site that uses AI techniques to help you find new music, books, movies or websites that you may like based on your existing preferences. It’s actually quite cool, appears to work and is well worth a visit or indeed a bookmark.

The Phantom is a new games console from Infinium Labs. It’s due out next month, is based around a PC architecture and will not have a CD or DVD drive. That’s right, it will rely on downloadable or streamed games only via broadband. Not even dialup gaming will be supported. Er…??? I will paraphrase a comment I once used in an article about the ill-fated Boo.com Web site – ‘just how long can a company stay in business waiting for…

So what do you do when inkjet printer cartridges are so expensive and you need to do a lot of prints? Why hack your machine to do continuous flow printing. Like this HP system, a Canon model or the version for Epson printers. You can even get an Epson ‘chip resetter’ to reset their smart cartridges to full as necessary. Kiss goodbye to your warranty girls and boys, but do enjoy the savings.

The Dumb Warnings site features some of the more bizarre, hilarious and pathetic real life product warnings aimed at avoiding litigation. Some are truly classic, folks. Unknown Blow Dryer – Warning: Do not use while sleeping.Rowenta Iron- Warning: Never iron clothes on the body.

There are plans to bring eBay to the television screen? Really? Ouch! ‘The original concept for the syndicated show was for a daily half-hour format featuring a combination of user experiences on the eBay auction site and in-studio discussion and interviews. Live auction bidding was also planned.’