GelaSkins had an exciting announcement today: they unveiled a new line of iPod, iPhone, and laptop skins based on Marvel Comics superheroes, including Iron Man, Spider Man, and the X-Men! All of the designs are available now in their store in the various shapes and forms they come in, but they were kind enough to provide me some review samples prior to the release for an exclusive over at Gearlog on behalf of PCMag.com.

The snapshot above is one of the images I took of the new iPod Skins, but wait until you see what I did with my iPod, and then what I did to my Macbook Pro using the new designs! Head over to Gearlog to see!

[ Gearlog :: Hands On: GelaSkins Marvel Comics Collection ]

Mashable.com posted a number of beautiful free Wordpress themes lately, a topic which is near and dear to my heart. Wordpress is the backend of all of my blogs, including this one, and while I love the themes I’ve chosen, they’re only getting better over time and I love watching new ones be developed, designed, and made available to the public.

This collection of 14 themes is particularly nice, and a number of them are designed for the modern user’s display: multiple columns of data, room for ads if the blog wants to post them, and an attractive and image-heavy layout that can work for more types of sites than traditional top-to-bottom blogs. If you’re a wordpress junkie like I am, head over and check them out.

[ Mashable :: 14 Fantastic Free Wordpress Themes ]

As you all well know, I’m a huge fan of really impressive and creative-looking workstations. Desks, home offices, you name it, I love seeing them – and this roundup of what the author called “minimalist” workstations at Webdesigner Depot is no exception. I wouldn’t call them all minimalist, but I can definitely see the contrast between these workstations and some of the huge, sprawling, multi-display, multi-computer setups that a lot of pepole have.

Most of these workstations feature one computer, maybe one or two displays, and a pretty organized workspace – a lot of them even feature some bias lighting to set the mood. Not all of them are horribly practical for anyone who uses their computer for long periods of time, but I’ll say one thing for them, they all look good.

Now then, I definitely want to get some bias lighting for my workspace.

[ Webdesigner Depot :: A Showcase of Minimalist Workstations ]

Whether you like your thumbdrives to also open beers for you or you just want them as flush to the side of your computer as possible, over at Pixelelement I noted a roundup of 10 awesome thumbdrives perfect for geeks of all tastes! Whether you love to skate, snowboard, or surf, or perhaps you’re like me and you’re an anime fan, you’ll appreciate at least one or two of the drives in the roundup.

I definitely dig the TrekStor bottle opener above, but I’m also a fan of the little Gundam USB drive in the roundup, and the Transformer (Ravage was never one of my faves, but I dig it!) – I don’t know if I’d like the Nano, just because I’d most certainly lose it.

[ Pixelelement :: 10 Awesome USB Thumb Drives for Geeks ]

Timebeat, or more appropriately, [ timebeat ], is incredibly reminiscent of the early days of the Web when people were making very abstract and artistic sites that may not necessarily serve a proper purpose, but were certainly inspiring, interesting, and evocative.

Timebeat is a flash-based clock, and when you visit it shows you the current time down to the pulsing heartbeat, which ticks every second. The numbers swivel and turn around multiple axes. The whole thing is incredibly hypnotic, and you could sit and watch it for ages.

Thankfully, if you love it as much as I do, you can even download a screensaver of timebeat that works under Windows and MacOS.

[ timebeat ]

update: links are fixed now! Please head over to Facebook and join our fan page!

Addicted to Facebook but also want to get your fix of Gears and Widgets every week? Now you can become a fan of Gears and Widget on Facebook! Become a fan and interact with me and other fans of the site and help us grow a community of geeks who love and want a different voice in tech news and commentary as well as the big names!

[ Gears and Widgets: Facebook Fan Page ]

Over at WebDesign Dev, there’s a rundown of the type that I always adore, 50 of what the editors think are some of the best workspace setups, from the classy and minialistic to the cluttered and functional, to the absolutely absurd.

I love posts like this, like my old post, Amazing Dual-Monitor Mac Setups, and of course the venerable Lifehacker’s series of featured workspaces (check out their Most Popular Workspaces of 2009) – there’s something about looking at the desks of other people that always thrills me.

In any event though, I caught wind of this one because Danny Choo tweeted the fact that his workspace made it in the top 50 here, and then looking through the others I fell in love. All of these tend to give me ideas for things to do with my own desk, but the bulk of them are just amazing to look at. Head over and check them out!

[ WebDesign Dev :: 50 Awesome And Creative Web Designer Workspace Setups ]

Google recently released Google Public DNS with the desire of speeding up web surfing for the masses. If you’re not entirely sure what DNS is, head over to Wikipedia and read up. But the question remains – if you, like most people – have your DNS set to automatic (meaning you’re using DNS servers supplied by your internet service provider) or if you’re like me and have embraced OpenDNS, you may be curious whether Google’s new public DNS represents any real improvement in DNS lookups over what you already have.

Well, ExtremeTech ran the numbers, and the results may be surprising. Head on over and take a look!

[ ExtremeTech :: Is Google Public DNS Faster than Your ISP's? ]

Full disclosure, The Classy Geek is my own project, a site I’ve been working on for months with the goal of being the Web’s premier destination for all things both geeky and classy.

The site will be a go-to resource for geeks who want to look at confident as they feel, or feel as confident in themselves as they are in their knowledge and their skills. The way I see it, if you know how to configure your own ESX host at home and set up a couple of VMs, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to pick out a nice tie for your company holiday party. If you can see the periodic table in your head and even start naming some of the elements in random parts of the table, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to pick a nice wine to pair with a fine meal. And I’m here to help out with that.

That being said, the entire content won’t be all how-tos, there’ll be plenty of geeky goodies, product reviews both techy and lifestyle-related, rich articles and content, and discussion on topics you may think are taboo in the geek community, like how to confidently approach members of the opposite gender without coming off like a creep, and more! I’m even considering doing a podcast in the future if there’s interest. In the meantime though, the site launched today, so head over and take a look, leave me a comment, and let me know what you think!

[ The Classy Geek ]

So Facebook has announced a number of changes to its privacy policy – turns out the whole “networks” thing, which most people used as their high school, middle school, city or town, or workplace, were ambiguous ways that people were allowing others they may not have intended to have access to their profiles to get access to those profiles. It’s not so much closing a loophole as it is the advancement of a privacy policy that Facebook has been working on for a long long time.

In a blog post at Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg noted that these are only part of the changes – privacy settings will be simplified so you only allow access to one of three groups: friends, friends and their friends, or everyone. While everyone is talking about how this change will streamline privacy settings and change the way you allow people to access your profile and the information on it, and how it’s removing the concept of “networks” as an outmoded way of creating an artificial sphere of influence (Zuckerberg correctly points out it’s clearly a holdover from when Facebook was organized by participating schools), there’s a couple of things – namely how the new privacy settings will allow you to choose who sees what as you post it – that I think are worth talking about.

Let’s dive in behind the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Facebook Privacy Changes May Actually Make It Useful…