SEO Werkt!

Beep boop boop bee squeee! Happy May 4th a k a Star Wars Day (say the date out loud and you’ll figure out why). In celebration, quite a few hardware vendors have released special gear for the day, thereby allowing you to celebrate the magic of George Lucas in proper Mandalorian fashion.

First we have a charming facsimile of R2-A6, a green R2 unit that is a favorite of the Naboo security forces. Made by Mimobot, this sassy little droid you’re looking for comes with built in content including desktop backgrounds and icons. They also make a Jar Jar Binks USB key if you’re so inclined.

Next we have something from Lucasfilm lawsuit recipient Wicked Lasers whose Arctic laser looks like everything but a replica of a light saber. To celebrate May 4th, the company has released the $75 Phosforce that turns the Arctic laser into a white LED flashlight that can pump out an Ewok-blinding 500 lumens, allowing you to swing your thing around in the dark swamps of Dagoba or the back alleys of Coruscant.

To be clear, the Phosforce attachment must be purchased in addition to the $299 laser body and the adapter turns the Arctic’s decidedly dangerous blue laser light into eye-safe white light. It is not exactly an LED flashlight in the traditional sense but instead uses white-emitting phosphor. Also, to be clear, you can burn the heck out of your eyes if you mess with this thing wrong, so be careful.

Happy fourth and remember: Han shot first. May you live long and prosper.

Since The Oatmeal draws comics like 5 Ways To Fight A Crack Whore, the kids down in Mountain View figured they could play a joke on him.

This summer the artist wrote that Google+comment threads sound like *crickets*, poking fun at the social network’s lack of engagement. He also criticized not being able to “set up a fancy profile URL so I don’t have to link people to http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234 thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoop xv9donkeypie ” – a made-up, ridiculously long string of random characters.

Yep, you saw a “turd orgasm 99 meat poopy poop” in there. But hell hath no fury like an engineer scorned.

In retaliation, the Google+ team didn’t cite its user growth stats or give an excuse for why there are no custom profile URLs. Oh, no, that wouldn’t be nearly witty enough for the search giant’s brainiacs.

Instead, they just redirected http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie back to The Oatmeal author Matthew Inman’s Google+ profile “https://plus.google.com/100193529331792590881/posts“ . Congrats, Matt, you’ve now got “donkey pie” at the end of your own special Google+ vanity URL.

Maybe his comment threads won’t be such a ghost town now that anyone who types in the joke URL will be able to put the comedian in their Circles.

The best part might be that somewhere in the Google+ code is a little comment to future engineers about the redirect, noting “Don’t take this out, we’re fucking with The Oatmeal.”

Check out TechCrunch’s coverage of how The Oatmeal earned a bunch of money for charity by telling a trademark troll’s mom to go have sex with bears.

Your home is a place you want to keep secure, but getting all the high-end security gadgets and services available to help you do that is a pricey endeavor. This weekend, roll your own DIY security system. It’s more fun and it’ll save you some money. More »

Great discussions are nothing surprising here on Lifehacker. Each day, we highlight a discussion that is particularly helpful or insightful, along with other great discussions and reader questions you may have missed. Add your two cents and jump in on the fun! More »

Olympics fun. Bunch of blokes having a rant.

If you’re looking for a DIY project to get you started with simple electronics, or you just want some fun speakers for your den or basement that flash in time with the music you play, this project is for you. You’ll definitely need some equipment, but all of it—including the clear PVC pipe and the 3-inch speaker drivers (common auto speakers) are affordable and easy to come by, and putting it all together makes for a great weekend project. More »

Before logging into Diablo 3, Starcraft II, or World of Warcraft this evening, you may want to change your Battle.net password. Video game publisher Blizzard was hacked this week, and the company says its security team is currently working with law enforcement to figure out who is behind the breach.

“Even when you are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun,” said Blizzard cofounder Mike Morhaime in a statement. “We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.”

The damage includes a number of e-mails stolen for Battle.net players outside of China. Battle.net is the online system that contains a Blizzard player’s profile and also hosts online games. The Activision-owned company says that those on its North American servers are affected as well, which encompasses North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. For these account holders, hackers grabbed answers to personal security questions and breached the Authenticator devices that players use to add two-factor authentication to their accounts.

Blizzard suggests that players on the North American servers change their passwords, especially if those passwords were used for other online accounts. We think all Blizzard players should change their passwords as the company continues to dig into what was breached.

North American server players will be prompted to change their security questions as well in the coming weeks. A tip from GamesBeat Editor in Chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu: Don’t answer security questions honestly. Hackers can easily social engineer their way into finding out your security question answers. If the information on your Facebook account is public, you’ve done half the work for them. Coming up with fake answers puts an extra barrier between you and the criminal.

Blizzard was last hacked in May when criminals stole game items and currency. At the time some thought the hack was the result of a SQL injection attack.

Blizzard set up an FAQ regarding the hack, which can be found here.

Image via dailylifeofmojo/Flickr

Filed under: games, security

Great discussions are nothing surprising here on Lifehacker. Each day, we highlight a discussion that is particularly helpful or insightful, along with other great discussions and reader questions you may have missed. Add your two cents and jump in on the fun! More »

Facebook is dipping its toes into the cottage industry of turning digital photos into printed postcard moments.

The social network has today started permitting a small group of members to mail Facebook photos as printed postcards to their social network pals. The feature is powered by mobile-photo-to-keepsake startup Sincerely and got its start as a hackathon project.

“A few months ago, some engineers built a fun feature that allows people to mail their Facebook photos as a physical postcard to any of their friends on Facebook,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat. “You can send your own photos to any of your friends or your friends’ photo to them. The front will be the photo and the back you can add a note for your friend, just like a normal postcard.”

Postcard senders do need to pay a small fee, but Facebook is still experimenting with various price points, the representative said.

Filed under: social

How meta, right? Truth is, the infographic about infographics isn’t exactly a new concept. There’s a whole slew of them out there, and quite a few them actually poke fun at these highly shareable visuals. And it’s hard to blame ‘em. With so many people jumping on the infographic bandwagon, there is certainly no shortage of downright awful infographics floating around the web, all pretty deserving of ridicule.

But despite all the flack infographics have gotten, there’s still no question about it — people are drawn to those stimulating, informational visuals, and they can do wonders for your marketing. So while I came across my fair share of infographics making fun of infographics, we’ll share those for another day. The infographic below, from Infographic Labs, will actually help you understand the what, why, and how of infographics — what they are, why they can benefit your marketing, and the basics behind creating one of your own. So while infographics may be the subject of some criticism from time to time, that doesn’t mean you should write off their awesome marketing potential. After all, haters gonna hate, right?

Have you ever created — or worked with a designer to create — an infographic of your own? What were the results?