Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Everybody knows how to play Hangman - but there's not much challenge in killing a helpless prisoner, is there? At its heart, Semantic Wars offers similar word-guessing "action". But in this game, you solve the word puzzles so you can build more fighters, archers, and wizards, to defend your castle and take over the other guy's. Set the difficulty to Easy and you'll breeze through, but the Hard level is a real _as_ard.

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We're all used to some tough-talking political ads these days. But Dr. Dwight McKenna, candidate for coroner in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, tops 'em all with this ghoulish salvo against incumbent Frank Minyard:

Yes, it's real, and yes, it's running on TV. Scare tactics are nothing new in campaign ads, but this is the first I've seen that could actually qualify as a horror film.

As seen on Talking Points Memo.

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I like nice things. But I don't have a nice budget. Or, really, any budget. And I've built a bookcase or two, but I'm not exactly MacGyver when it comes to the old hammer and nails. Enter Knock-Off Wood, featuring reverse-engineered instructions for building furniture seen in catalogs and magazines. The Plans section is where the real action is; I've already got my eye on these knockoff Land of Nod kids' storage chairs. Got any favorite sites of your own for building projects? If there's a category below "novice", that'd be me, so I could use all the help I can get.

As seen at Apartment Therapy.

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OK, maybe not. But it is, at least, sort of sad when respected institutions are splattered with the mud of the immature dirty mind. This week, the Canadian National History Society announced that they'd be changing the name of their 90-year-old magazine, The Beaver, because profanity and spam filters were making it difficult for teachers and students to access their online material.

Now, it's been a couple of decades since I was any kind of kid, but I've never in my life heard a contemporary use "beaver" in its, um, vulgar slang sense. Maybe things are different in Canada, maybe web filters are all set up by 80-year-olds, or maybe the kids these days are really getting into retro naughty slang. In any case, the magazine will henceforth be known as Canada's History. But what will become of young Theodore Cleaver?

Tripping up an outfit like the Canadian National History Society is one thing - but mighty Merriam-Webster, publishers of the standard dictionaries found in just about every school? Yes, they've run afoul of some parents in Riverside County, California, for including the phrase "oral sex". Seems to me I'd rather have my kids learn about such things from a dull grey eminence like Merriam-Webster than from an equally confused classmate (or, God forbid, the Internet). The dictionary's definition of the act - "oral stimulation of the genitals" - makes it sound about as arousing as a tonsillectomy.

Am I the weirdo here, or do these both seem like cases of overreaction to you, too? I feel sorry for any kid who has to research rapeseed or pussywillows. And I'll tell you one thing: nobody, but nobody better mess with Albert Pujols.

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Used to be, if you wanted to tell your online pals what you were buying, you had to go somewhere like Facebook or Twitter and type something like "Just scored a sweet new nose-hair trimmer - look out, ladies!!!" Then you'd have to field questions about how much you paid for it, and what brand it is, and the awesome deal-a-day site you scored it from, and before you know it you've got an unpaid part-time job as a nose-hair-trimmer consultant.

Not anymore. Woot has struck up a partnership with Blippy, a new social-commerce site that lets you sync up your customer accounts at places like Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix so you can effortlessly show your friends your consumer side. (Blippy is also founded by longtime wooter and F'ed Company founder Philip Kaplan, so we're a natural match.)  We're the first retailer to get on the Blippy partnership train, and we're also the first to allow account integration using the secure OAuth methods. Which, for you English speakers, means you can connect to your Woot account without sharing your Woot username and password with Blippy. And we're looking into developing a button at the end of our checkout process to let you click over and start sharing purchases right away. For now, sign up at Blippy, start an account, and connect to Woot from the Accounts page. If you'd like a preview, here's what other wooters are currently sharing.

Of course, many of you will think it's crazy to reveal what you're buying. Maybe it is. If the idea freaks you out, RUN AWAY! (Or just sign up to shop-stalk your friends.) Blippy does gives you the ability to temporarily turn off sharing, or to only show your purchases to your approved friends. But don't come crying to us if you use it and give away that birthday surprise or alert thieves about that BOC waiting on your porch. That goes double if you're also a fan of all those other social-networking apps that tell the world where you are at the moment and what you're eating and where you hide your spare house key. As for us, while we'll try Blippy, we might not quite be ready to attach it to our bank accounts just yet.

If there are any other social-media projects like this that you think need a little dose of Woot, let us know in the comments. Woot was the first retailer on Twitter, we were among the earliest to offer RSS feeds, and now we're the first to join forces with Blippy. Like the guy with chronic halitosis at a square dance, we're always looking for partners.

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If all you knew about CES was what you see in our blog posts, you might think the whole thing was about gawking at gadgetry and making fun of poorly-worded signs. But of course, CES is a place for making connections, for striking deals, for selling your sizzle to key decision-makers. So we made a point of touching base with the industry's power players...

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It's hard for two busy CEOs to find love together, especially when their keynotes are scheduled on different nights. So Ford CEO Alan Mulally had to resort to posting his mash note to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on a notice board at CES, sharing his love with tens of thousands of passersby.

But for the spurned party, there's nothing worse than compounding the heartbreak with this kind of very public embarrassment.

Our hearts will go on for another (and final) day of CES 2010 coverage tomorrow.

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A corridor at Las Vegas Convention Center. The end of a long day walking the unforgiving convention floor. Woot writer "Mean" Randy Cleveland is battered. Drained. Thirsty.

A nervous fan approaches. She doesn't want to disturb him - and maybe she's a little afraid of his fearsome reputation. But she thinks she has something that could help...

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Today we rode a motorized skateboard, shattered a JPG with our minds, listened to music through our cranial bones. And you won't hear about it in any of the big media reports about CES. Why? Because it all took place in a cramped little corner of the North Hall we call Chinatown.

Our blog posts have had some fun with the weirdness of this warren of Asian vendors, but we had more flat-out fun in an hour here today than in a whole day in the hyped-up Central Hall. And we've got video and photographic evidence to prove it...

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Is that a wireless streaming video device in your pocket, or are you just happy to see our CES 2010 Coverage?

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