ExtremeTech, one of my favorite sites for reviews of gaming gear, gadgets, and modding goodness, has published their own holiday buying guide, including some great gift suggestions ranging from affordable and less than $10 USD and as high as, well, as high as it goes!

There are gift ideas for budgets of all sizes, with gift ideas ranging from paperback books to hot new backlit gaming keyboards (like the Saitek Eclipse II) to some of the season’s best video games (Guitar Hero II, anyone?) and to larger gifts like the Nintendo Wii and some of the editors’ favorite DVD box sets, and finally all the way up to the much coveted PlayStation3, or the hottest video card on the block, the NVidia 8800 GTX.

Head on over and take a look at the selection, and you might find some cool gift ideas for the geek on your holiday shopping list!

[ Extremetech :: Extremetech's Holiday Buying Guide ]

There’s nothing new about this, but in the end, human beings really are the weak link when it comes to keeping sensitive information safe online. Where it comes to keeping critical information safe, most people are both horribly naive and also admirably trusting of the source of a phishing expedition. For example:

That’s what the U.S. Military Academy at West Point did in 2004 to a group of 512 cadets, selected at random for a test called the Carronade. The cadets were sent a bogus e-mail that looked like it came from a fictional colonel named Robert Melvillle, who claimed to be with the academy’s Office of the Commandant (The real Robert Melville helped invent a short range naval cannon called the Carronade nearly 250 years ago).

“There was a problem with your last grade report,” Melville wrote, before telling the cadets to click on a Web page and “follow the instructions to make sure your information is correct.”

More than 80 percent of the cadets clicked on the link, according to a report on the experiment.

Worse still, even after hours of computer security instruction, 90 percent of freshmen cadets still clicked on the link.

Ouch. That’s pretty bad. Still, phishing attacks are hard to prevent, and can be easily done with even the slightest bit of information about the subject. The article discusses several attempts to protect people from their own, and where the application developers like Microsoft and others have to catch up in the process of making their products safer and offering the kind of information to the user that they can use to tell if someone is out to trick you or not.

[ Humans Called Weak Link in Tech Security ]

From the USB missle launcher shown above to a blimp that actually drops bombs, from a finger drum set to a real live fortune telling booth, there’s 10 great gadgets that will keep you away from the hum-drum at the office and keep your colleagues laughing and your boss wishing you all had better things to do.

Seriously though, I could definitely line the corners of my cube with the USB missle launchers, and a claw candy machine for those times when I definitely need a sweet treat, but want to feel like I earned it. Head on over to the article to see more cool time-wasting gadgets and how you can pick them up for your desk or office!

[ PC Mag :: 10 Ways to Slack Off at Work ]

PC Mag has their own roundup of this holiday season’s gaming consoles, and which ones they think are the best buy. From the PS3 being essentially the cheapest Blu-Ray DVD player on the market today and its amazing graphics, to the XBox 360 and its new HD television support and external HD-DVD drive, to the Nintendo Wii’s affordability and accessibility to all age groups, all of this year’s console offerings look good.

Again, personally, I think that this year’s best bet would be a Nintendo Wii if you can get your hands on one, but more likely an XBox 360, since there’ll be tons of them available and the game library for the system is huge. Still, there’s more to the selection process than just what you can get, but in some areas, it might just come down to that. For that kind of information and more, head on over to PCMag and see their rundown of the newest consoles!

[ PC Mag :: Game Systems Smackdown ]

From the Star Wars kid, whose antics in front of the camera will forever live in infamy, to the Dean Scream (I didn’t think that was so embarrassing as it was cool), to Cat Schwartz’s rather…*ahem* adult mixup with photoshop, this is a pretty good list of the most embarrasing web moments of all time.

I’m not totally sure if I agree with number one, but I definitely agree with the scale from which they go from 10 to one-you’ve probably seen them all by now, and if not, there are links to a number of them, and the rest are easy enough to find on your own out there in the wild wild web, but some of them, like the video of the DEA officer who brought a loaded gun into a school to teach gun safety (strike one), proclaimed to the class that “I’m the only one in the room that I know of that’s professional enough to carry a Glock .40,” (strike two), and promptly shot himself in the foot with it. (aannnd you’re outta here!)

Also on the hit list are the CNN anchor who left her mic on in the bathroom, the cab driver mistaken for a consultant and broadcasted live on BBC news, and others.

[ PC World :: The 13 Most Embarrassing Web Moments ]

PC World has a roundup of all the new game consoles, including the PS3, (just released today) the Nintendo Wii, (to be released on Nov. 19th) and the XBox 360 (already out). Which one should you buy for the holidays? Well, in my opinion, the one that’s available for the holidays-and that would be the XBox 360. There will only be so many Nintendo Wiis available when they launch that it’ll surely be sold out for months after the holidays, the North America only got something like 400,000 PS3s and they’re all sold out already, snapped up by buyers who waited in line outside of electronics stores for days just to get their hands on one…and promptly turn around and sell it on eBay for three, four, or five times the price.

Even still, the analysis goes into the pros and cons of all of the new systems on the market, and runs down some of your best options this holiday season for which console would be a good bet for different types of gamers. They examine the advantages of the XBox 360’s existing game library, the PS3’s graphics and its ability to play Sony’s proprietary Blu-Ray high definition DVD format, and the innovative gameplay and games of the Nintendo Wii. They also look at the pricing, and your likelihood of actually obtaining one of the systems before the end of the year. Here’s a hint: good luck getting a Playstation 3.

Personally? I say get a Wii if you can get your hands on one, and perhaps an XBox 360 either at the same time.

[ PC World :: So Many Game Consoles: Which to Buy? ]

I just realized that the last five (now six) stories are about Apple or somehow Apple related! Even so, I can’t pass this last one up.

Apple announced last week that their widely popular line of consumer notebooks would now ship with Core 2 Duo processors under the hood! I have to admit, I thought that this might happen-that Apple would go ahead and announce the new laptops before the holidays.A number of people were waiting for Apple to follow up their move with the MacBook Pro a few weeks ago by also upgrading the MacBooks, and I knew several people who were waiting specifically for Core 2 Duo processor upgrades before making their purchases. Suffice to say they’ve already got their new notebooks on order, and Apple’s shipping them in time for the holidays.

The new MacBooks aren’t taking a price increase, but they’re definitely offering a performance boost, with cheaper RAM upgrades, larger hard drives in all models, and dual-layer superdrives in the two higher-end models, not to mention processors starting at 1.83GHz and up to 2.0GHz in the mid-level white model and the high-end black model. If you’ve been holding off from buying a Macbook until there’s been a processor or hardware revision, now’s the time, and just in time for the holidays.

[ PC World :: Apple Ships Core 2 Duo MacBooks

(image courtesy of Lifehacker!)

Apple’s made it even easier to share your iTunes playlists or your own customized iMix on your own blog, MySpace page, or other website. Even better, click on one of the songs listed in someone’s playlist and you get a 30 second sample of the track right there to listen to. (Unfortunately the playlist doesn’t stream from the page, it launches iTunes in order to play the sample, but that’s the point-to get more people to the iTunes music store!) It’s not particularly original, especially with other music services offering similar web-sharing playlist features, but it’s still pretty cool, and definitely important considering the popularity and breadth of the iTunes music store. It’s definitely a neat way to virally spread the use and popularity of the iTunes music store with a feature that I think a lot of people love to use.

[ Lifehacker :: Share iTunes Playlists with the World ]

(image courtesy of SciFi Blogs!)

For all the hype and the commercials surrounding the Zune, and Microsoft’s attempt to make the Zune a full on iPod killer, there does seem to be something left to be desired in Microsoft’s new mp3 player offering. A few people have heaped praise on the Zune, mostly because it’s been the only real competition to the iPod as of yet and not so much by virtue of its features.

David Pogue, writing for the New York Times, had the opportunity to try out Microsoft’s Zune, and while it seems to be a solid portable music player with lots of features, it’s still no match for Apple’s iPod. While it has great customization features, and a large and crisp screen, the Zune is lacking significant features. (And no, an FM tuner is not a significant feature. If FM tuners were all it took to drive people away from the iPod, Apple would have added one a long time ago-I’m tired of people claiming that an FM tuner makes a better mp3 player-I, for one, listen to my mp3 player so I don’t have to listen to the radio!)

No macintosh functionality, of course-Microsoft isn’t likely to return the cross-platform favor that Apple extended. Add to this ad-hoc wifi that only works between Zunes; which is great and all for those people who find social networking a critical feature in their portable devices, but I can’t really see it taking off in any major way. First of all, you and all of your friends have to own Zunes for the music “sharing” functions to work; and even then, the Zune wraps up your music in intrusive DRM that we’ve discussed before (even if it violates the copyright of the song to do so) before sending it to a friend, making sure it can only be played and accessed for three days before it’s inaccessible anymore and “tagged for purchase” from Microsoft’s Urge music store-that is, if it’s even available among Urge’s offerings. And given that Microsoft has abandoned MSN Music entirely for Urge and subsequently left its old customers (with their old DRM) out in the cold, I wonder how many offerings that’ll be until the next best thing comes along for Microsoft.

Add to this the somewhat cheap-feeling plastic case and the inability to use the heavily touted wifi to sync with your computer or even download music from Urge, and the inability to download video for the Zune, and you have not just a pretty impressive lack of features, but even a lack of features that the iPod has-Microsoft just isn’t measuring up, or even trying to-they’re putting their bets on the social networking features of the Zune, and only time will tell if it pays off for them. Personally, I don’t think it will, and I’m not interested in a Zune at all, especially not as a purchasable option, but I will enjoy seeing Apple’s response-perhaps it, unlike Microsoft’s player, will be a true innovation.

[ New York Times :: Trying Out the Zune: iPod It's Not ]

The blog Apple Matters has a pretty comprehensive list of tips and tricks for Mac OS X users, from using the Tab key to cycle through open applications in Expose to the hidden power of the option key. A ton of simple keyboard shortcuts and tips are in this article, nothing extraordinarily perspective changing, but all of them interesting enough that they more than warrant an article of their own and most of them are tricks that most of us probably haven’t seen before.

For example, try these two option tricks on for size:

Option-click on the close tab icon in Safari, closes all other tabs. Handle this one with care – there’s no warning dialog.

Option-arrow moves cursor by word. One for the Windows switchers who are used to using ctrl-arrow.

I knew the second one; in fact I know several people who do a lot of document editing and writing who live by this tip, but I didn’t know it until I had to help one of them with their Mac!

[ Apple Matters :: 20 Useful OS X Tips ]