For years, Oprah had the market cornered on the "Audience of Banshees" whenever she gave away a refrigerator. Now with Oprah stepping aside, Ellen is giving away her own junk—and her audience can scream.

Go go gadget helicopter!

Oh check it out guys! A brand new iPhone 3G just laying on the sidewalk in New York City! It must be your lucky day. Watch what happens when want quickly turns to fail.

Sure, you could undermine that colleague you despise by spreading lies about them around the company. If you're the more direct type, though, you can now buy a pen that doubles as "tactical defense implement." It was originally designed for "Marines hunting terrorists in burning deserts," reports the company. But there's no reason why it wouldn't work just as well at Condé Nast or Goldman Sachs! [Tuffwriter via BoingBoing]

If there's anyone who grasps the secrets of cultural "buzz," it's Spatial Information experts employed in academia. There's a new "Geography of Buzz" map that scientifically proves that "buzz" is centered...where events are held.

CNET gadget reviewer Bonnie Cha is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore! Why? Palm won't let her place both hands on a prototype of its iPhone-smashing Pre smartphone.

Why NYT gadget reviewer David Pogue succeeds despite always being late to the game.

Yes, Barack Obama will get a BlackBerry — after some government spook agency puts in an ungodly amount of encryption (and maybe some back doors so they can listen in).

Attendance at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the annual gadgetfest in Las Vegas, is down 25 percent from 2007, with 130,000 expected to attend. Are we just not that into tech toys anymore?

Have an iPhone? Obsessed with checking the oft-misleading results of state-by-state polls constantly from now until November? You're insufferable! Which means, of course, that there is an iPhone application just for you. [Gizmodo]

Sony, Samsung, Motorola and Hitachi have banded together to adopt Amimon's ready-and-shipping wireless HDTV chips for next year's products. Because the products will have no cable jacks, the new gear will sport a conspicuous logo that indicates it will connect to other devices with the same logo. If you want to play pundit, predict a format war between Amimon's WHDI and SiBeam's WirelessHD, which other manufacturers are tinkering with. But if you want to know who will win, Amimon's technology is already shipping and SiBeam's isn't.

Michael Arrington has made no secret of his ambitions to off CNET. The TechCrunch editor might want to spend some time studying the ways of his prey, though, before he moves in for the kill. For example: Gadget critics normally spend time with the devices they report on before reviewing them. Citing an embargo he didn't care to observe, Arrington panned the Flip Mino camcorder without ever touching it.

"I can pay $400 for an e-book reader, and then pay $7.99 for an electronic copy of a book, or I can just pay $7.99 for the actual book, which requires no expensive intermediary equipment to enjoy, and use that extra $400 to buy 50 more books." — Blogger John Scalzi reviews Amazon's latest toy

NICK DOUGLAS — The annual gadget orgy known as CES turned out some shiny pretty things, but it popped out some damn ugly (and stupid, useless, wasteful, and all the other things your momma called you) gadgets. Here's an illustrated recap of the worst, and just what makes each so unsellable.

NICK DOUGLAS — The Wall Street Journal published a scare-story today on how handheld devices make parents neglect their children. Children "are fearful that parents will be distracted by emails while driving, concerned about Mom and Dad's shortening attention spans and exasperated by their parents' obsession with their gadgets."

Microsoft's moving into hardware again, but this time it looks painful. The software-and-one-hot-gaming-console company confirmed the authenticity of viral ads marketing its new handheld, the Origami. An in-the-wild photo from Engadget looks like the wallet PC that Bill Gates wanted back in 1995.

A hardware hacker discussing the forensics of taking apart cheap gadgets: