Designer: Christmas Lights on Web a Hoax (AP)

Grok Headline matches for Designer: Christmas Lights on Web a Hoax (AP)

Those Internet-controlled Christmas
Lights? A hoax

Those Internet-controlled Christmas
Lights? A hoax 12/28/2004 02:59 AM
Engadget Dec 28 2004 6:15AM GMT

Too many Christmas lights?

Too many Christmas lights? 12/10/2003 07:56 PM
Is there such a thing as too many Christmas lights? I love seeing lavish displays of lights at Christmas time. Some folks like a few old-fashioned Christmas lights and some like to deck the halls in a blaze of glory (this one boasts 700,000 lights). And how much does it cost to run a fabulous display?

"Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!"

"Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!" 12/26/2003 09:03 AM

Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!

Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com! 12/25/2003 08:07 AM
UGLY CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. COM .. and then you have these

uglychristmaslights.com
track this site | 5 links

Alek's Christmas Lights: Humbug

Alek's Christmas Lights: Humbug 12/27/2004 07:21 PM

Christmas Light Switch A Web Hoax

Christmas Light Switch A Web Hoax 12/29/2004 08:07 AM
CBS News Dec 29 2004 11:34AM GMT

The Web Controlled Christmas Light Hoax

The Web Controlled Christmas Light Hoax 12/27/2004 07:35 PM
A few weeks ago, when we had our story about Christmas lights causing problems with broadband connections, apparently Alek Komarnitsky stopped by here at Techdirt to tell everyone in the comments that he had set up his 17,000 Christmas lights so they could be turned on and off via the web. I had forgotten about this until earlier this morning when a friend instant messaged me to tell me he's become addicted to the site and had been turning the lights on and off regularly. Well, it turns out my friend was taken in by a practical joke. The lights were real but the we b-cam and web-based control were a hoax that's now getting a bit of press attention. What's interesting, though, is that from the details it sounds like the hoax was more technically complicated than actually setting up a system to really do what he claimed it would do. Still, it's somewhat amazing that no one figured it out until now.

Man admits Christmas lights Web site
scam

Man admits Christmas lights Web site
scam 12/29/2004 11:38 AM

Christmas lights indicate a strong
economy? (Also dubious)

Christmas lights indicate a strong
economy? (Also dubious) 12/20/2003 06:23 AM
this article by Virginia Postrel .. more» .. WRITES

reason.com/hod/vp121903.shtml
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""Alex Komarnitsky claimed that his
17,000 Christmas lights "

""Alex Komarnitsky claimed that his
17,000 Christmas lights " 12/29/2004 11:34 AM

"Alex Komarnitsky claimed that his
17,000 Christmas lights

"Alex Komarnitsky claimed that his
17,000 Christmas lights 12/28/2004 03:30 AM
it was all a hoax

thedenverchannel.com/holidays/4027215/detail.html
track this site | 4 links

Colorado man admits Christmas lights
website was a scam Online casino strikes
again, buying naughty

Colorado man admits Christmas lights
website was a scam Online casino strikes
again, buying naughty 12/28/2004 07:39 AM
Cnews.canoe.ca - Tue Dec 28, 11:21 am GMT

passing up an opportunity to go home for
Christmas, so that his colleague could
spend Christmas with his wife and child

passing up an opportunity to go home for
Christmas, so that his colleague could
spend Christmas with his wife and child 12/21/2003 08:35 AM
offers to stay there .. Home News Tribune .. feel good story

thnt.com/thnt/story/0,21282,871918,00.html
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Lights? Not quite

Lights? Not quite 12/28/2004 09:09 AM
USA Today Dec 28 2004 1:19PM GMT

This is a Hoax - or is it?

This is a Hoax - or is it? 08/17/2004 01:37 AM

Direct and Related Links for 'This is a Hoax - or is it?'

“The Museum of Hoaxes was established in 1997 in order to promote knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. Why do we (the staff at the museum) care about hoaxes, and why do we think other people should care also? One reason is that we live in an era in which reality and unreality are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish, and the only reliable way to sort out what is real from what is unreal is…

Last One Out, Turn Off the Lights...

Last One Out, Turn Off the Lights... 06/11/2004 04:05 PM

Gateway to consolidate Midwestern facilities: With this, Gateway is leaving Sioux Falls completely. This is too bad, as Gateway is a child of South Dakota.

Gateway will close its Sioux Falls, S.D., facility this month, as part of its plan to return to profitability.

Here's a statistic for you: in the last four years, Gateway has reduced their workforce by 91%, from 24,000 workers worldwide in 2000 to just 2,000 workers after this latest round of layoffs.

Click here to comment on this entry

Where Was FERC When the Lights Went Out?

Where Was FERC When the Lights Went Out? 08/06/2004 09:40 AM

SF Chronicle: Death Star' trader admits manipulating California market. The Enron Corp. energy trader who devised the notorious "Death Star'' scheme to bill California for fictitious electricity pleaded guilty in a San Francisco court to a federal fraud charge and admitted plotting to manipulate the market during the state's energy crisis.

Who else should be indicted? An e-mail correspondent this morning points to one of the worst offenders in this scandal: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where inaction in the face of utter sleaze is a way of life. Instead of helping California and the other states that got screwed by the bandits at Enron and other energy companies, FERC has consistently stiffed the victims, offering a tidbit here and there but essentially doing nothing serious. FERC keeps insisting that it's on the case. We'll need some actual evidence one of these days.

Bryght lights

Bryght lights 09/01/2004 12:02 PM

Roland Tanglao reports......

If you haven't already, go check out our new venture, Bryght.

What is Bryght? Bryght is all of the following:

1. "The Salesforce.com of community content"
2. Content Management System + Community Blogging System + Email + DNS + Domain Name Registration + much more (see our features page for more details)
3. A hosted website service for communities, corporations, organizations and individuals built using the open source Drupal system.

What is the relationship between Bryght and StreamLine? None, other than the fact that I work on both :-) !

Seriously, StreamLine continues to resell Blogware blogs to individuals and Bryght is focused solely on hosted Drupal sites (with domains, email and DNS as well).

Why Blogware blogs? Because Blogware is still the best individual hosted blog service out there.
Why Bryght? Because Bryght is the best hosted website service for communities.

and those bright lights

and those bright lights 04/01/2005 02:42 PM
Just after 9 Wednesday morning, we said goodbye to Felix The Bear. He left us peacefully and quietly, surrounded by...

Think Blinky Lights

Think Blinky Lights 12/08/2003 03:38 PM
It's that time of year I usually fire up xsnow on my sparc console and stare at the swirling...

Toothing was a hoax!

Toothing was a hoax! 04/04/2005 11:59 PM
David Pescovitz: Earlier today, Jim Hanas, co-creator of Boring Boring, published a post on his blog asking "What ever happened to Toothing?," last year's UK craze where commuters hooked up random sexual encounters via Bluetooth-enabled cellphones. (Wired News story here . Reuters article here. BBC article here.) Surprisingly, Toothy Toothing, the source for many of those original articles, responded to Jim's inquiry. Turns out, Toothy (aka Ste Curran) made the whole thing up. (Or so he claims!):

All we did was register a forum (which has now been taken down by the service provider, but we have a backup) and fill it with fictional posts by fictional Toothing ’sceners. A week later, we had what appeared to be a vibrant UK Toothing community all ready to roll, and I sent the link off to Gizmodo, a gadget blog. They reported it (you can see that first story here, with a credit at the end to ‘S’, my super-subtle pseudonym). Everyone else linked to / blogged / ripped off their story. Things started to roll, and we became a ludicrous, implausible meme. In turn, that brought Real People to our forum. Others created forums for their localities - Sweden, Denmark, Italy, whatever.

A few days later, the print media requests started coming. We kept a record at the start of where we were mentioned, but there were soon too many to record in full. There are hundreds of tiny anecdotes, though. I had to write Penthouse-letters-page style sexual adventure stories for a full page article and interview in The Telegraph.

Link

hot abercrombie hoax

hot abercrombie hoax 04/19/2004 01:56 PM
cam exposes the truth. i categorically deny that i'm responsible.

PREVIEW: Is It a Hoax?

PREVIEW: Is It a Hoax? 09/10/2004 03:09 PM

Another Net Hoax for the Ages

Another Net Hoax for the Ages 06/28/2004 10:06 AM

Mercury News: `Pla in Layne' and Odin Soli: an Internet hoax. Now the person behind Layne has come forward and admitted that it was all an elaborate hoax. Odin Soli -- a 35-year-old male entrepreneur and writer, married with two children and living near St. Paul, Minn. -- said he created Layne as an experiment in ``interactive fiction.''

Remember the Kaycee Nicole story. This one has a weirdly familiar ring. One lesson: Don't believe everything you read, especially when you can't confirm the identity of the writer.

How the Microsoft Hoax Took Off

How the Microsoft Hoax Took Off 06/29/2004 05:45 AM
Is Bill Gates offering big bucks to track your e-mail? Jonathon Keats from Wired magazine is on the trail of the most forwarded hoax in Internet history.

Is it Real or a Hoax?

Is it Real or a Hoax? 09/17/2004 04:01 PM

Red traffic lights in Naples

Red traffic lights in Naples 06/05/2004 03:58 AM

I heard from one of our hosts last night that when driving in Naples, "there are three kinds of red lights. Some you must stop at or you will die. Some provide advice to be careful. Others are merely decoration." Seriously though, I have never seen so many drivers completely ignore traffic lights in my life.

The Truth of Neon Lights

The Truth of Neon Lights 12/02/2003 02:01 AM
She's turning 30. And I mean, turning. Walking, one street fades like a dawn fog and without a signpost or a lamplight she strides into Next, and 24 hours - towards a café she isn't sure is really as open...

Campaigns rev up as soon as lights go
down (USATODAY.com)

Campaigns rev up as soon as lights go
down (USATODAY.com) 09/03/2004 06:49 AM
USATODAY.com - The general election campaign roared to life Thursday night less than an hour after President Bush's acceptance speech here at the Republican convention. Bush was to head for the crucial state of Pennsylvania shortly after the balloons dropped in Madison Square Garden, and Democrat John Kerry held a midnight rally in Ohio.

Texting lights up Glasto

Texting lights up Glasto 06/26/2004 02:20 PM
Techzonez Jun 26 2004 5:12PM GMT

More Northern Lights photos

More Northern Lights photos 12/30/2003 12:09 AM
OK, I thought my pictures were pretty cool albeit a little dark and grainy, but check out these photos over at Yahoo....

Bright Lights Seen in Sky Over 5 States

Bright Lights Seen in Sky Over 5 States 07/10/2004 06:15 AM
Free Internet Press Jul 10 2004 10:12AM GMT

Sun Lights Up U.K. Servers, Desktops

Sun Lights Up U.K. Servers, Desktops 12/08/2003 10:33 AM
Systems vendor's low-cost office software line makes more headway against rivals as the company signs Britain's Office of Government Commerce to a five-year deal.

Turn off the lights when you leave.

Turn off the lights when you leave. 07/24/2004 06:16 PM
The end of the light bulb? E. Fred Schubert, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute "claims to have invented a 99-percent efficient reflector that promises to speed the replacement of light bulbs with LEDs." According to researchers, this could happen within the next five years. The current prototype is bankrolled by the ARPA and The National Science Foundation "recently award Schubert's team a $210,000 grant to create in three years a commercial version of his patented omnidirectional reflector."

"Schubert claimed that lighting accounts for 25 percent of U.S. electrical energy consumption. Since white LEDs emit more light per dollar and generate less unwanted heat, they are potentially a major energy saver." (see EE Times link)

Meanwhile, some of the oldtimers seem to be pretty refractory.

EV-DO lights up mobile data

EV-DO lights up mobile data 08/02/2004 08:00 AM
The light at the end of the tunnel to 3G mobile data services in the U.S. is getting brighter as technology that builds on Code Division Multiple Access networks comes into view.

Lights in Plague Park

Lights in Plague Park 12/02/2003 01:26 AM
Plague Park has a rather unusual collection of lights hanging from a tree. In the darkness they look like...

NYC Lights Design Competition

NYC Lights Design Competition 01/07/2004 02:02 PM
New York City Lights Design Competition (via Gothamist). What are the existing examples of urban illumination that impress? Are there unused designs or interesting ideas from art and movies floating around?

Control TiVo, Lights With Your PSP

Control TiVo, Lights With Your PSP 04/19/2005 08:47 AM

Myriad hacks are emerging for the PSP as eager tweakers have their way with the black box. Add to the list the ability to control your home automation system (and TiVo) wirelessly. Liquidice explains:

I now have the ability to turn my lights on and off. [I] have full control (Play, Stop, Pause, Menu) of my DVD player, TIVO, and High Def TV, all wirelessly from my PSP. ... I put an image map on [some] graphics and created some HTML pages which are hosted on my WACI NX server. The links are crafted so that when the PSP highlights and clicks on a spot on the image map, it instructs the WACI NX server to send an IR signal to my A/V equipment or triggers it's relays to cut power on the lights.

While he doesn't have step-by-step instructions, he explains his methodologies pretty clearly, and mentions that an official Sony web browser for the PSP will make things much simpler.

(#gizmodo frequenter AMIB points out (with some sass, it's noted) that the PSP isn't so spectacular in this feat because all the heavy lifting is handled by the home automation web server. A valid point, by way of saying any device or code that can make a GET request to a web server can accomplish the same thing.)

P SP Home Control 1.0 [psphacks via PVRblog ]

Lights, camera, technology

Lights, camera, technology 04/19/2004 07:07 PM
CNET Apr 19 2004 11:15PM GMT
Grok Description matches for Designer: Christmas Lights on Web a Hoax (AP)
GrokA matches for Designer: Christmas Lights on Web a Hoax (AP)

Designer: Christmas Lights on Web a Hoax (AP)

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