Geek culture

Welcome to another Yuletide episode from The 404 Podcast! We'll be publishing these podcasts, videos, and rerun episodes all the way up until we return on January 10 for a block of live shows from CES in Las Vegas!

It's that time of the year again: a time to look back at 2011 for its gaming prowess, to pay tribute to those elite pieces of electronic interactive entertainment that reside in a league all by themselves. Join Jeff Bakalar and guest Russ Frushtick for a rundown of the best games of the year.… Read more

Princess Leia's famous head buns are joining forces with your favorite headphones through the power of Etsy.

Since George Lucas has an Imperial Army of lawyers at his disposal, however, the official name of these headphone covers on JacquieLongLegs' Etsy page is "Galactic Princess Headphone Covers."

The $24 covers are made from synthetic hair. That's not surprising. Headphone covers made from real Carrie Fisher hair would probably fetch about $500,000 on eBay.… Read more

Sure, your kids looked pretty adorable out there on the slopes in their R2-D2 snowboarding helmets. We hate to break it to you, though: the droid look wasn't quite cutting it during the apres-ski cocoa-quaffing session. (Definitely weren't the droids we were looking for. Nope.)

We're thinking some cozier headgear would've been a bit more apropos. A helmet, after all, looks a tad out of place indoors. Unless, of course, it's--gasp--a custom crocheted Boba Fett helmet!… Read more

Life just seems more epic when you're wearing a cape. Yeah, you might get a few stares at the coffee shop, but still--capes are awesome.

I remember waiting impatiently for my mom to put the finishing touches on my cape just in time for me to wear it while watching "The Greatest American Hero." A year or so before that, my first-grade teacher gave me a handmade cape as a going-away present when we moved to a new town. I went as Superman for Halloween around the same age.

My 4-year-old daughter is clearly following in her old man's footsteps, having told me on a number of occasions that she is a superhero. I guess it's kind of in her blood; her last name does sound like it could be a superhero name.

Fortunately, we live in the world of the future, a world in which I can order a customized cape online. PowerCapes has been supplying the world's superheroes-in-training with handmade satin capes since 2001. It's not the newest service around, but when my editor mentioned it to me, I just had to try it. … Read more

A recent neuroimaging experiment apparently showed that the sounds an iPhone makes can trigger feelings of love in the gadget's user.

Well, such emotional connections are nothing new for Apple. Anyone who owned a Macintosh back in the day can probably remember the feeling of, if not love, then at least affection engendered when the machine booted up, the startup chime sounded, and the Happy Mac icon smiled forth. The device was functioning as it should, another session of satisfying and "user friendly" computing was about to begin, and all was right with the world.… Read more

It's easy to get a little jaded about the holidays.

If you're like me, you can't help but cringe when you hear that first strain of Christmas music wafting out of the speakers at your local drugstore in early November. ("Here we go again," you think.)

By the time Christmas Eve rolls around, you've battled crowds to grab your gifts and been bludgeoned with the latest Christmas cover tunes and advertising tie-ins. At this point, it's tempting to write it all off as nothing but an empty tradition or a moneymaking gimmick.

If you're lucky, though, you somehow manage to stumble on a Christmas story that hands you the holiday anew and makes the "spirit of giving" and "peace on Earth" more than mere platitudes.… Read more

Reddit user ModXMV has one cool uncle. ModXMV posted a pic of the uncle's creation, a DIY "Star Trek" mailbox dubbed the NCC-USPS.

In my imagination, the uncle is actually a Scottish engineer in a red shirt.

The project consists of a standard mailbox with an original-style Enterprise docked above it. This would be right at home outside of William Shatner's mansion.

The mailbox looks like it provides ample room for deliveries of back issues of "Starlog" and shipments of props purchased on eBay. There's no word on whether or not it is phaser-proof.… Read more

'Tis the season to be jolly, watch "Star Trek" reruns, craft Foursquare ornaments, and draft E.T. into service as a tree topper.

Tech geeks sure know how to celebrate with style. We asked readers and contributors to send along pics of their hopelessly nerdy Christmas trees.

The results range from a rescued traffic cone to a collection of "Star Trek" ornaments that would make Spock blush.

We filled out the slideshow with a couple of delightful additions from around the Web. Check out a wonderfully squicky Cthulhu tentacle tree and an impressive nerd tree that will have computer programmers dreaming of sugar plum fairies with 500W power supplies.… Read more

If you have a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone, you're more than likely a gamer, and this is something that will interest you this holiday season.

OnLive, the pioneer of cloud-based gaming, announced Thursday that its free OnLive app for Android has been updated to support the slide-out game controls on the phone. This means the phone's owners now can enjoy almost all OnLive games, including the latest AAA console-class titles.

Unlike other Android-based smartphones, the the Xperia Play combines the traditional touch-screen control with slide-out dedicated gaming keys, analog touch joysticks, and shoulder buttons, making it an … Read more