On the weekend I finally found the excellent Office Space on DVD (and for a measly 15 bucks, too) at The CD Store in the freakishly large Sylvia Park mall. (I also caught a preview of the hugely entertaining Spider-Man 3 on the mall's biggest screen in the world -- which happily seems to have the biggest, comfiest seats and most leg-room in the world as well.)

If you haven't seen Office Space, it really is compulsory viewing for everyone who has ever worked in an office with the word "tech" in its name.

If you have seen it, you might appreciate these YouTube trailer re-edits...

Office Space as a hard-hitting drama:

Office Space as a slasher flick:

And just because it's Monday and our printer is actually not working, the original cut of that infamous printer scene (NSFW warning! Backing music contains naughty swear words):

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

The new rule is, when we're on deadline, you get videos of otters. Today there are two videos, to make up for having not posted anything all week.

Dancing otter:

Juggling otter:

Normal broadcasting will resume on Monday. Your May PC World will be out on 30 April; it's got a nice cover and you can win a $6000 Toshiba Qosmio! Woo! Make the most of it, we're changing the name of the magazine to OtterWorld from June.

(Videos via Popbitch.)

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Today's vid o' the week should probably be something Black Friday-related. Walking-under-ladder accidents, black cats, broken mirrors, that kind of thing. But after slipping over in the rain this morning, forgetting my lunch and being right up against deadline, I am not in the mood for indulging Friday the 13th and her cruel machinations.

Instead, here's a series of videos called We Need Girlfriends, by Ragtag Productions. Voila, episode one:

(And eps 2, 3, 4. 5 and 6)

Funny, independent, totally geeky TV on zero budget... these guys are who YouTube was made for.

Check out our complete guide to YouTubing in the May issue (on the streets April 30) if you want to do what they're doing.

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

The long-awaited coffee machine finally arrived at PC World towers on Thursday, and has done a great job of cheering us all up from our back-to-work, post-Easter glums today. Productivity has increased approximately 500% ... although that might just be because we're no longer wasting so much time perving at coffee porn.

Our machine is everything we'd dreamed it would be and more, but we are total lightweights compared to the guys below. If you're going to drink instant, making it with a laser is definitely the way to go:

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Friday afternoon's "YouTube of the Week" moves to Thursday this week, since we're all on our Easter holidays for the next four days. W00t!

Today, Alanis Morissette demonstrates her newfound mastery of the concept of irony, with a cover version of the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps". Alanis, it actually is ironic! We applaud you.

(PressF1ers, an absence of comments on this post will be taken as implicit encouragement for continual posting from Alanis Morissette's back catalogue. Cheers.)

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

Pierre Scerri of France has finally finished his 15-year, 20,000-hour labour of love: an exact 1:3 scale model of the Ferrari 312pb. And we mean exact. If Michael Schumacher was accidentally shrunk by a miniaturising machine, he wouldn't even care because he would still be able to drive this car.

Scerri duplicated the Ferrari electronics system in exact miniature, thanks to his background in computer mainframe design. That also helped him build a fully operational fuel injection system, identical to that of the full-size Ferrari.

He had to learn how to make glass so he could reproduce the exact pattern lens for the (working) headlights, and how to make rubber so he could mold his own tires.

The mini-Ferrari has an operating 12-cylinder engine; precisely calibrated rpm, oil pressure, water temperature and oil temperature gauges; hydraulically controlled brakes; and, after six months of tuning, header pipes that make exactly the same distinctive roar as the engine of a full-size Ferrari. The gearbox was the only element of the model Scerri had to outsource due to the specialised equipment involved, so he had it built by Colleti -- who, you guessed it, built the original full-sized 312 gearbox.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Google Maps gives handy driving directions from city to city, anywhere in the world. Large bodies of water prove no object either, with instructions to "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean" (29 days, 0 hours) when requesting directions from any US city to any city across the pond in Europe.

Unfortunately, the Google programmer with the sense of humour hasn't extended the joke to transtasman travel. And when I requested driving directions from Auckland to Christchurch, it actually told me to catch the Interisland Ferry, and correctly calculated the travel time. Which, I admit, is probably more useful than amusing instructions to get my togs on.

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Handy tag clouds on the produce, comments from fellow consumers, Pandora-style check-outs, and Professional Double-Power Ajax... it's Supermarket 2.0!

"It's all for free, right?"
"Of course, it is the internet."

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

In case you missed it, yesterday was April Fool's Day. We completely forgot about it, but Google went hog wild, launching both Gmail Paper and the TiSP in-home wireless access system on a slightly suspicious public.

Elsewhere on the internet, UK newspaper The Independent covered the grow-your-own Viagra craze, the Vista developers' site AeroXperience was changed to a Mac enthusiasts forum for the day, The Pirate Bay website announced its intention to move its servers to the North Korean Embassy in Stockholm, and overclockers.com.au redirected all visitors to a random cat-related page.

We particularly liked this announcement of the merger between Microsoft and McDonalds (mission statement: "Crap software for fat people"), and these practical jokes for any annoyingly smug Mac users in your life. CNet's elaborate fake-news homepage for news.com.com is well worth 10 minutes of your day (it looks like you're working, too).

An exhaustive list of almost 600 internet pranks perpetrated yesterday can be found here; the top 100 April Fools Day hoaxes of all time are here.

Did any of our local Sunday papers run any practical jokes yesterday?

Posted by Annabel McAleer at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )