One day I'll have children. And one day I'll make them sob hysterically as I hang this thing over their cribs. It'll motivate them to learn to talk so that they can yell "No, mama! Not the Mr. T mobile!"

The Mr. T Mobile is one of my favorite old memes and I'm glad that some fellow by the name of Shed Simove decided to bring it into meatspace. Even if it creeps the hell out of me.

Please note that I do not really intend to torture any future offspring of mine. At least not intentionally. [Jailbreak]

Like other substance addicts, tech-crazed geeks live in a state of denial. Let's face it, if you're reading Gizmodo, you're probably addicted to technology to some degree. But just how addicted are you? Take this simple test to find out.

Answer each of the 50 questions below and give yourself one point per question you answer "yes" to. At the end, score yourself. Be honest, this is just for your own benefit... until you report your shocking score in comments, that is.

1. Do you eat most of your meals while at the computer or in front of the television?

2. Do you sometimes bring your laptop when you sit on the toilet?

3. Do you check your feeds more than 1x per hour?

4. Do you make a nervous habit out of refreshing your inbox over and over, just in case someone emailed you in the last 45 seconds?

5. Can you not remember the last time you didn't check online reviews before eating at a new restaurant?

6. Do you freak out if you're in a car and there's no GPS?

7. Does the verb "tweet" come up regularly in your real-life conversations?

8. Have you ever changed vacation plans based on wi-fi availability?

9. Are there more than two portable electronic devices within reach right now?

10. If your house were on fire, would you run in to rescue your laptop?

11. Are you closer with some online-only friends than people you actually see in real life?

12. Are you pretty sure you'd have killed yourself if you lived in the days before Internet?

13. Do you buy things online that you could easily drive across town to get in person?

14. Do "electronics" have their own category in your monthly budget?

15. Are you a member of any sort of online "guild?"

16. Do you answer questions in support forums when you're bored?

17. Do you bring your smartphone with you to church?

18. Do you own 3 or more video gaming systems? (Oh come on, portables count.)

19. Do you have multiple t-shirts with references to Internet memes, linux, or webcomics?

20. Do you know what the word "meme" means, for that matter?

21. Has your significant other (or mom, if applicable) ever banned you from your smartphone?

22. Do you spend more time on Facebook than you do in the presence of actual people?

23. Are you currently in a virtual relationship? (WOW, Second Life, etc)

24. Do you have 3 or more active social media accounts?

25. When something happens in your life, is your first thought usually "How can I fit this into 140 characters?"

26. Do you need multiple wall outlets to charge all your stuff at night?

27. When you sit down in a coffeeshop, do you tend to position yourself close to a power outlet "just in case"?

28. Do you generally spend most of your day looking at a computer screen and then go home... only to look at a computer screen for the rest of the night?

29. Have phrases like "BRB" and "ROFL" worked their way into your real vocabulary?

30. Do you often skip meals because you've lost track of time in front of the computer?

31. Do you call people by their screen names when you see them in real life?

32. Do you have more than five tabs open in your browser right now?

33. Are there more than three screens of some kind in the room you're in right now?

34. Are there more computers in your house than there are people?

35. Do you tweet or read blogs while watching movies at home?

36. Do you put your phone on vibrate at the movie theater rather than turn it off, even though you're not expecting anything important?

37. Have you ever turned down a romantic encounter in order to play video games?

38. Does your Internet usage cut into the time you should be spending on personal hygiene?

39. When you see the last names Cerf, Otellini, Ballmer and Berners-Lee, do you know who is being mentioned?

40. Do you ever leave your laptop open in social settings, even though you aren't actually doing anything on it?

41. Have you ever had a dream where you were surfing the Internet?

42. Can you type text messages faster than you can handwrite the same words?

43. Have you ever left an event or date early so you could get online?

44. Would you classify yourself as an "expert" multitasker?

45. Can you read machine code?

46. Do you regularly have to put blocks of ice, portable fans, or frozen packages of hash browns on or near your computer to keep it cool?

47. Do you have carpal tunnel syndrome?

48. Do you keep multiple webcams around your house?

49. Are you up on the computer past 3am at least once a week?

50. Did you make it all the way to the end of this quiz?

Scores:

0-1: Clean as a Whistle - You are either 95 years old, or you lie compulsively to make yourself feel better about your internet addiction. Sorry to call you out like that.

2-9: Social Drinker - You're not great with technology, but dabble. You probably play sports and actually have a significant other. Either that or you've recently been released from Internet rehab and haven't slipped back to the old ways yet.

10-19: Coffee Fiend - You're about as plugged in as the next person—but you gotta have your daily fix. Let's face it, gadgets are everywhere nowadays, right? That's what you tell yourself at least, but what you don't know is everyone calls you "nerd breath" behind your back.

20-29: Chainsmoker - You recognize that you're a little too plugged in, and you're trying to quit. Your tech addictions are starting to ruin your social interactions, between signing out of the real world every 10 seconds and stinking up the room when you enter. Take this as your cue to shower.

30-39: Pothead - You're addicted, but you have no desire to quit. There's a box of Ho Hos on the desk, and you had to brush Cheeto dust off the keyboard to log into your computer, which you keep password protected with heavy encryption. You hurried through this quiz because your guild is waiting for you in the other window. You really should consider counseling.

40-49: Crackhead - You get all shaky when you think about technology, always searching for your next fix. You've considered constructing a biotech bathtub for your body to lie in, so you can plug your consciousness permanently into the Internet. Family members are planning to stage an intervention and check you into a clinic. You look forward to the shock therapy.

50: Permafried - There's no higher brain activity going on anymore. Doctors should prescribe you video games and/or marijuana for medicinal purposes. Just to keep you from flat lining.

Based in New York City, Shane Snow is a graduate student in Digital Media at Columbia University and founder of Scordit.com. He's fascinated with all things geeky, particularly social media and shiny gadgets he'll never afford.

Amazon's restored the entire book catalog for Macmillan, the first publisher to play hard ball with them—and have its entire catalog promptly pulled from the site.

The details of the deal aren't public, but the NYT specu-reports that Amazon probably "demanded that no other e-book vendors, such as Apple, get preferential access to new titles, or any kind of pricing advantages" and maybe asked for the ability of Kindle users to lend out ebooks, which would be awesome. Though Amazon's still the loser in this aboutface, ultimately. [Bits]

Al Franken can be a blowhard at times, but occasionally he's the hero of the tale. Like when he rips apart Comcast CEO Brian Roberts over some contradictions in the arguments for the Comcast/NBC merger.

The video's well worth watching if you enjoy seeing a CEO flustered and stuttering, but Consumerist sums up what went down rather well:

Sen. Franken said that Comcatastrophe Roberts had met him in his office and said that the FCC rules "will make sure that you always have a wide variety of programs because they forbid [Comcast/NBC] from discriminating against other company's programs."

Then Franken pointed to a sign he had printed with a quote from Comcast's attorneys saying that those same rules were unconstitutional.

"In other words, looking to get approval for this merger, you sat there in my office and told me to my face that these rules would protect consumers but your lawyers had just finished arguing in front of the Commission that it would be unconstitutional to apply these rules," Franken said.

Whoops. [Consumerist]

Game Developer Research says that Apple is winning the race among handheld game developers: 19 percent write now for the iPhone and iPod touch. That's more than double the amount of Nintendo DS and Sony PSP developers. Other interesting figures:

• Handheld games are now 25 percent of the whole gaming market, up from 12 percent before the iPhone/iPod touch phenomenon.
• During the last three quarters, all handheld game developers are writing for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

No wonder why Nintendo's President not a fan of the iPad. [Electronista]

In today's Remainders: Fun! A whole bag of it. The iPhone becomes a digital flipbook; Google sells a $300 scarf; Ron Jeremy blames the Russians; and a Batman and Robin comic takes the words right outta your mouth.

Flip Out
Sure the iPhone is great for browsing the web, checking e-mail, playing games, making calls (not really), and all the rest, but this clever YouTuber unlocked the true potential of the iPhone by turning it into a digital flip book. Five funs out of ten. [YouTube - Thanks SewerShark]

GoogleScarf
Google already provides your search engine, your webmail, your calendar, your maps, your address book, your smartphone, your other smartphone's operating system, your hopes, your dreams and the rest, so why not let them provide your wintertime accessories, too? The Google Store is now offering a $300 oversized scarf in Google's signature primary colors. They also have some Google-inspired vintage t-shirts and jewelry pieces for you most dedicated Googlers. Two funs out of ten. [TechCrunch]

Rated aRrrrrrr
Ron Jeremy, Mario enthusiast and accomplished pornographer, is worried about two things: the state of the porn industry and your online safety. What's causing him to worry? Some combination of piracy and Russians. As he explains, people who watch videos for free on sites like youporn.com don't realize the detrimental effect it has on his industry, but "piracy is piracy, whether the film is PG, R or X." We agree with him there. But shortly after making that reasonable point, Jeremy spiraled into a questionable rant on online scams and the nationalities that perpetrate them:

You have a checkingaccount? You're rich? You're still not safe. Someone asks you for the details you probably won't give it to them but your grandparents, your grandparents might fall for that...it's the saddest thing I ever heard...A lot of foreigners, and I won't mention names, Russians, are coming to America and there are a lot, a lot, a lot of people who know how to use Wi-Fi, Internet, satellite to gather personal information about people and scam or steal. Russian.

Russian indeed. Six weirds out of ten. [MobileLocalSocial]

Sidekick Backhand
Go to Batmancomic.info to create your own versions of this old school Batman comic. The Gizmodo staff has been using it to make fun of people (mostly us interns) all day! Ten funs out of ten!

Publishers joining Apple's iBooks store are turning their back on Amazon and its vision of the flat $9.99 ebook. Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices?

To screw Amazon.

The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks. They want you attached to their platform. That's why the Kindle Reader is on both PC and iPhone, as well as the eponymous e-ink device. Ebooks are huge for them. They sell six ebooks for every 10 physical books. That's why they want to own the market. Apple, on the other hand, sells content in order to sell hardware. The iTunes Store, the App Store and the brand-new iBooks Store exist so you'll buy iPods, iPhones and iPads, which is where Apple really makes money. iTunes revenue is just a bonus, though an ever fatter one with the explosion of the App Store.

You can see that the two companies place far different values on the content they sell. A more illustrative example: Amazon has been selling books at a loss—paying $15 for a hardcover bestseller, only to turn around and sell it for $10 on the Kindle. Apple would never, ever sell content at a loss. They make a decent bit of change, but apps and music are really just a way to fill up your iPhone.

Do you remember three years ago, when Apple was battling with the record labels for control over (legal) digital music? Apple still owns 69 percent of the market and sell 1 out of every 4 songs, period—in other words, they owned the market, which deeply frightened the labels, who were afraid of losing control. Universal, the biggest label, flipped out, and even tried to build the anti-iTunes. That failed, so the music business bit the bullet (or the poison pill) and went DRM-free, not with Apple at first, but with Amazon. It became a (sorta) credible competitor to the iTunes monster, long enough to give the labels just enough extra negotiating power. When iTunes music downloads went DRM free, many of them—particularly hit singles—suddenly cost $1.29.

The situation is remarkably similar, except this time, Amazon's wearing the market-maker pants. Some estimate Amazon's share of the ebook market to be 90 percent, but I've heard from people in the publishing industry say it's closer to 80 percent. But that's nitpicking. At this moment, Amazon owns ebooks. The book publishers' fears are the same as the record labels with iTunes: They're paranoid about losing control over pricing, and their own digital destiny. They're worried that books are being undervalued, and that once people have the mindset that the price of an ebook is $9.99, and not a penny more, they're doomed. They needed an insurgent player: Apple.

Apple has advantages that Amazon didn't have with music: Scale and technology. iTunes has just moved 3 billion iPhone apps. Apple's sold over 250 million iPods. By contrast, Amazon's sold an estimate 2.5-3 million Kindles since it debuted 2 years ago. Analysts predict Apple will sell twice as many iPads this year alone.

In terms of technology, e-Ink looks old and busted and slow next to the iPad's bright, color display. (Even the fact that the written word is much easier to stare at for long periods of time when presented on e-ink won't save the current Kindle.) An iPad can do more than books: Beautiful digital magazines, interactive textbooks, a dynamic newspaper. Oh, and it's a computer that does video, apps, music. Amazon's scrambling now to make a multitouch full color Kindle after betting on E-Ink, but that kind of development takes at least a year. Even if they churn out a full color reader that is somehow better than the iPad, it likely won't matter: It would just be a very nice reader to iPad's everything else, and it would be 9 months too late.

The print industry is swirling down the toilet, and apocalypse-era publishers minds' dance with hallucinations of digital salvation via iTunes for print. It's the iPod for books. What Amazon was supposed to deliver, but now maybe never will.

With that contrast in mind, all the publishers needed was a little push. All Apple had to whisper was, "Hey, we'll let you set your own prices for books. You should control your own destiny. We'd love to have you. You know, $12.99 is a really good price for a beautiful color version of your amazing books. BTW, why are you letting Amazon undersell you?" It doesn't matter that publishers make less absolute money through the agency model used by Apple—Amazon might've given them $15 for a book it sold for $10, but under the agency model, the seller takes 30 percent off the top. They wanted to feel in control, and that their books are worth something more. Steve gave them that, even as he's probably got his fingers crossed behind his back.

Amazon knew what it was doing by insisting on $9.99 as the price for ebooks. A flat, easy-to-understand rate—one that's notably cheaper than its analog counterparters—is a paradigm that works, especially when you're trying to essentially build a whole new market. It plays into the part of our brains that like easy things. That likes the number 9. (No really, 9 is a psychologically satisfying number.) Amazon believed in it so strongly, as I said before, they sold books at a loss to keep it up. (I'm not suggesting, BTW, that Amazon would be any more benevolent to the industry than Apple. They wouldn't.)

Price would've been Amazon's major advantage over Apple too—being able to undercut Apple by setting whatever price they needed to compete would've been its ace in the hole against the iPad's flashy color screen, and everything else it can do. And now that's poofed. Apple will be able to sell you ebooks for the exact same price as Amazon. By turning the publishers against Amazon, they've effectively dicked the Kindle over. Why? To fill out another bullet point as to why you should buy an iPad. The real question is how long it'll take publishers to realize that's all they are to Apple: one little bullet point.

The machines that make vinyl records today are the same hulking, steaming shapers of goop that were doing it 40 years ago. Very cool. [MAKE]

TechCrunch reports that Facebook is working on a full webmail system to replace their current messaging platform, including full POP and IMAP support and a customized @facebook.com e-mail address. The codename for the new system: Project Titan.

In the TechCrunch post, Arrington suggests that Facebook has been working towards a webmail service for some time, expanding their messaging platform to be searchable and allowing Facebook users to send messages directly to non-Facebook e-mail addresses. The site has also shown interest in giving its users a more accessible and more complete online identity with the recent implementation of personalized URLs and the proliferation of Facebook Connect login on third party sites.

Project Titan would take this effort a step further, giving users a personalized username@facebook.com e-mail address and letting them access it on Facebook itself or independently via POP and IMAP. Facebook already has 175 million people logging into their site each day, but adding a true webmail solution would be a strong step in their transformation from a centralized communications hub to a broader platform for staying connected online. [TechCrunch]

Apple's sweeping "Device to Device Location Awareness" patent covers a lot of ground, not the least of which are a hint at iPhone video conferencing and the ability to locate whoever's on the receiving end of your call.

According to the technology proposed in the patent, a caller's phone would ping the mobile device it's communicating with to request location details. The second device determines its location and sends the information back to the originating cellphone, where it's automatically displayed on the screen. It appears to be an opt-in service, so all you Sneaky Petes won't have to share your location if you don't want to.

One intriguing section of the patent also suggests a video conferencing future for the iPhone:

"Note that the reference to 'voice call' here is not limited to a conventional, sound-only conversation. It may also include video of the two users, synchronized with their audio."

It may indeed! And while the patent was only made public today, it was originally filed way back in the fall of 2008.

A full breakdown of the dirty details can be found at Patently Apple. In the meantime, all you video call-loving stalkers should be salivating right now. [USPTO via Patently Apple]

The early outlook on the Nexus One—just 20,000 sold in its first week—hasn't gotten any better. After a month on the market, Google's moved just 80,000 phones. Compare that to the original iPhone and Droid launches.

The relative sales results, shown above and using estimates by Flurry Analytics, aren't pretty for Google. Granted, it's not an entirely fair comparison. Droid and the iPhone were marketed within an inch of their lives, and had better carrier support than the Nexus One does on T-Mobile. But even taking that into consideration, 80,000 phones in a month? That's borderline embarrassing.

If nothing else, it's a reminder that as much as we care about Google's entry into phone hardware in these parts, to the public at large they're still a niche player at best. I also wonder, though: that few units, and they still can't handle their volume of customer support complaints? Yeesh. [WSJ; Furry Analytics ]