Want to feel like a real frontiersman? Are you tired of being oppressed by “The Man”? Do you not even know who “The Man” is referring to? Then you gotta live off the grid! It’s like being a pioneer, only with the Internet and packets of instant Starbucks. It’s a lot of work, but here are 10 reasons it’s awesome.

No Junk Mail

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Companies can’t mail you crap if you don’t have a registered address. So what if the mailman can’t find you? UPS and FedEx goes anywhere you pay ‘em to. No more circulars, phony timeshare offers or “Urgent News! Must Open!” Salesmen coming to your door? Not a chance! And you’ll never have to look your neighbor’s kid in the eye again and refuse to buy band candy or girl scout cookies.

You’ll Always Be in Fashion

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Making your own clothes out in the middle of nowhere means never having to apologize for how you dress. Hell, why even wear pants? It’s not like you’ll be living near anyone. If you are, it’ll probably be in a small community where the rules of fashion are either uncared for or invented anew.

If the Apocalypse Comes, You Won’t Notice

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Let the Rapture scoop up all the Christians. Let nuclear war or the zombies rape the cities of New York and Los Angeles. While civilization goes down like a bitch, you’ll be comfortable and warm out in the middle of nowhere. And once the dust settles and word reaches you of the primitive, radioactive Hellscape, you can return to rule the mutants, being the last person alive to know how to properly stoke a kiln. Class wars, riots, and any kind of societal uprising/turmoil will no longer concern or effect you. Living off the grid can give you a feeling of safety that all the laws in the world cannot.

No Utility Bills

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Before the first plumbers and his butt crack, God just left water everywhere in these things called “streams” and “creeks” and “rivers”. With a little practice, a fire and a pot, you can make clean drinking water for free. You’ll probably even be able to build a system of pipes that can deliver water straight into your home. Need some electricity to fire up your laptop? Once you master how to hook up a generator to a standing bicycle, you’ll get exercise and all the porn you need to survive. And solar panels get better and better every year; what’s better than getting free energy from the sun? Just be wary that evil corporations may try to infringe on your land and force you to pay for energy from their company. One man, William Williams, faces multiple penalties and fines for cutting down utility lines — that the company planted on his private land!!

The Cops Can’t Find You

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Living off the grid is especially handy if you also happen to be living a criminal lifestyle. In today’s police state, it’s becoming increasingly harder to obey the law because it infringes on personal lifestyle choices that are irrelevant to the rest of the world. If you’re tired of constantly looking over your back just because you smoke pot, refuse to go to jury duty, don’t want to pay outrageous parking tickets or simply enjoy being naked in your own home, living off the grid may be the right choice for you. Let’s face it, when civilization collapses, it’s probably wise to be somewhere where the last guys with guns can’t find you.

The Law Becomes Very Murky

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When the cops can’t find you, you can pretty much make up your own rules. It’s kind of like floating in international waters, but without the bad Cruise food and second rate entertainment.

No Insurance Payments

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If the mail and the cops can’t find you, neither can your insurance company. In fact, why have one? If you get severely injured, you’re just going to die anyways. No sense paying $500 a month so the EMT’s can’t find you. On the up side, if you can build a car or some kind of post apocalyptic facsimile, you can drive it however you want. Helmet, no helmet, seat belt, no seatbelt, brakes, no brakes, on fire, not on fire, it’s all up to you. Just keep in mind that showing up at the hospital without health insurance may be worse than not going at all — oftentimes, the doctors will literally just let you die.

Your Food is Free

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The woods is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. The food is fresh if you can catch it and you’ll never have to deal with a snooty waiter ever again. If you like salted, smoky meat, off the grid cuisine is right up your alley. At no point will your wife turn to you and say, “Honey, you’d better not eat that, your cholesterol.” She’ll more likely say, “Give me that meat! I haven’t eaten for three days!” Honing your farming skills before moving off the grid is a good idea; you will then be able to harvest your own (completely organic, chemical and modification free) food — which is an incredibly useful skill to have, especially if the rest of the world is plunged into another depression. Growing and catching your own food is also incredibly less wasteful than buying products with unnecessary amounts of paper, plastic, and metal packaging.

Your House is Free

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If you can build it, you can live in it. The United States is actually a big empty place and Montana has less than seven people per square mile. For a mere couple of thousand dollars of wood and your labor, you can build a house that is at least as good as anyone else’s. You won’t be close to a Starbucks or a Wendy’s, but hey, at least you won’t be near a Starbucks or a Wendy’s.

Lower Taxes

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Think about all the money you’ve ever paid for taxes. Now imagine that it’s all back in your pocket right now. That’s how much you could have if you live off the grid. What “the Man” can’t find, the Man can’t tax. And with an overhead as low as yours, a $30,000/year gig means you’ll probably have close to $30,000 at the end of that year. If only someone had told Wesley Snipes sooner. This, however, is fraud. The taxes on an off-grid house, though, are significantly less than on any other house.

Museums are normally full of dusty old bones and the belongings of rich people that somehow managed to not get stolen. But before you plunk down twenty bucks to see the Pope’s bathrobe or Julius Caesar’s toilet brush, try some of the more strange and bizarre museums that exist. Much like the History Channel, the amount of actual history is pretty low, but its much more entertaining.

The Pez Museum

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Oh, sure, rich guys like Eugene P. Snickers and Baron Von $100,000 Bar may have gotten candies named after them, but how many candies actually have a rich enough history to support a museum? Answer: None. But it turns out, Pez has a museum anyway. Technically, it’s dedicated to the dispensers, but who cares? You’ll probably be so jacked up on sugar when you visit, you won’t even remember the tour.

The Devil’s Rope Museum

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Dedicated to all things barbed wire, the Devil’s Rope Museum is located in McLean, Texas. Situated in a remodeled brassier factory, the museum boasts 12,000 square feet of space. And don’t even think about breaking in, because even the exhibits themselves are painful to pick up. Sadly, no word yet if Pamela Anderson has gotten her own space there.

The Museum of Bad Art

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Housing “Art too bad to be ignored”, the Museum of Bad Art is located in the Boston Area. Horrible artists from around the world slave night and day to fill its walls with paintings more terrible than Vin Diesel’s acting and Mandy Moore’s singing.

The Burlesque Hall of Fame

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Initially thought to be a bust, the Burlesque Hall of Fame hasn’t yet been stripped of its assets. But seriously, it’s got tons of boobies and who doesn’t want to see that? It gives hope to those of use attempting to raise money for the “Webcam Girl Hall of Fame.”

The International UFO Museum and Research Center

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Located in Roswell, New Mexico (where else?), the museum is a magnet for abductees, conspiracy kooks and anyone else wanting to get an alien T-shirt with one of those Close Encounters guys on it.

Museum of Witchcraft

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No, this museum isn’t dedicated to your ex-wife or your former mother-in-law (well, maybe the mother-in-law), but it is dedicated to practicing witches and their history. Visit it or you’re likely to be turned into a newt.

The Circus World Museum

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Rumor has it, a group of carnies won this museum in a crooked dice game, but it’s never been confirmed. What is known is that if you love the smell of elephant feces, like to look at human deformities and aren’t afraid of clowns, this is the museum for you.

Currywurst Museum

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People in Germany love their curried sausage so much, they’ve actually opened a museum dedicated to it. Let’s face it, German cuisine has to celebrate what little good stuff it has. It was probably Sgt. Shultz’s favorite cultural center during the war.

The Parasite Museum

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Leave it to the Japanese to make everything weirder. Located in Tokyo, the Parasite Museum is dedicated to those tiny riders that invade your blood stream, intestine or whatever. Just make sure you wash anything thoroughly if you shop at the gift shop. You don’t want to take any exhibits home with you.

The Dog Collar Museum

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Located in Leeds Castle in England, the Dog Collar Museum is dedicated to all things dog collar. London has a lot of museums, the tourist spill over has to go somewhere. How bad is your vacation if you actually stop at a place that even your dog would hate?

The Mutter Museum

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If you didn’t get enough sideshow freaks at the circus museum, get yourself to Philadelphia and check out all the medical oddities at the Mutter Museum. Equally disgusting as the Parasite Museum and twice as depressing as the Orphan Museum.

The Paris Sewers Museum

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Can’t get enough of floating poo or Phantom of the Opera? Now there’s a place you can go! Actually the poo is gone and the phantom is too old to run around the sewers, but you can visit the museum. It’ll probably be a great respite from the angry French people there.

The Torture Museum

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Finally! A place Dick Cheney can visit and be part of an exhibit. Located in San Gimignano, Italy, the Torture Museum preserves the golden era of thumbscrews and sticking hot pokers up the bun. The only real torture is waiting in line to get in or having to put up with the locals endless babble about soccer. (Sorry, football.)

The Spam Museum

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Dedicated to that ham-like substance, the museum is like one giant commercial for Hormel Foods. And who wouldn’t want to be trapped in a commercial?! If you need something to do in Austin, Minnesota (and believe us, you do) stop on by. If you’re lucky, the tour guide won’t make you eat any.

The Phallus Museum

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Perhaps the museum’s Icelandic location is an indication that the people of Iceland have way too much free time. The Phallus Museum is full of dicks and we don’t mean the staff. You’ll make so many Anthony Weiner jokes by the time you get to the end of the tour, even you won’t think it’s funny anymore.

How many times have you clicked on a search result only to land on a page that’s just not user friendly? If you’re like most Internet users, it’s a regular occurrence. And, like most, you probably click that back button within seconds. However, when you find a site that has a great interface and you seem to automatically know how to use the features, you bookmark it just as quickly so you’ll always know how to find it again.

If this sounds like you, check out these sites. Every one is extremely usable with a great user interface–they’re definitely worth a place of honor on your favorites list.

Metrofax

This company recently launched their new site on May 3rd. As you explore the Metrofax Internet Faxing redesign, notice that the site’s purpose is instantly recognizable and you can immediately see how to navigate the site. “Overview” “Features” and “How it Works” is clearly right in the front under a slider box- your eyes are drawn to whatever information you would need. If you saw the old site you would notice how much it’s changed.

Digg

Digg is an increasingly popular site that offers a great looking and fast-loading user interface- and while there are some qualms about the change in interface and usage, you have to admit that it’s a bit cleaner. If you have a lot of content to put on your site, but you don’t want it to look too busy or cramped, you can’t find a better example of an exceptional format.

Edmunds

Edmunds recently ventured off their blog and made an Edmunds Tumblr- where they’ll be focusing more on sharing their company culture (such as Edmunds’ rides) rather than general publisher informaton. You’ll see that they pulled in the colors and designs of the Edmunds site, while keeping the layout nice, clean and evenly spaced.

Taptu

The beauty Taptu is that they’ve taken simple to a new level. Notice the big buttons that instantly catch your attention and draw the eyes to the navigation tools. It has also effectively used all of the available screen space to display a ton of thumbnails without overwhelming the viewer.

Yellow Pages

When the Yellow Pages took their famous phone directories from those legendary paper versions to an online model, they carried their branding, including that vivid yellow color, with them to give users a familiar experience. As you view this site, notice the effective use of spacing to emphasize important information.

Amazon

Some of you may not know this, but Amazon started off primarily as a bookseller. It was the go-to place to find the most obscure publications imaginable. Now that they’ve spread out to other markets, they’ve continued to make shopping easy and reliable through an extremely usable interface.

Bank of America

As a mobile app, Bank of America has made this program extremely simple and intuitive. When you arrive at the home page, there’s no question about what the over-sized buttons mean. Click one to sign in, another to find nearby locations and others for information about Bank of America and online banking in general.

Facebook

Whether you’re using the full-blown version of Facebook or the mobile app, all those dedicated users can’t be wrong. This site features one of the richest, yet easy, interfaces in today’s online world. It loads fast, provides tons of content, looks great and even noobs can use it with ease. Not much to improve on here!

As you review these sites, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by their usability.

What website do you love that has a great interface?

Great art can be a worthwhile investment, quite apart from its beauty. The lure of easy money has led many artists to attempt to ape their betters, gaining large fortunes from their imitations of the masters and their works. As the means possessed by auctioneers and buyers to detect forgeries have grown, so too have the skills and subterfuge of the forgers. Many forgers have gone on to achieve their own kind of fame, the fame of the master con artist.

10. Yves Chaudron

Original Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most instantly recognizable piece of art in existence. In 1911 the famous portrait of an unknown woman was stolen, and when the culprit, Vincenzo Peruggia, was captured, he maintained that he believed the painting should be housed in Italy. However, it seems that it was less patriotism and more native greed and the desire for profit that motivated the crime. According to one theory, an Argentinian had arranged for six sales of the “original” Mona Lisa to buyers who would in fact each receive forgeries painted by Yves Chaudron. It’s hard to feel sorry for such buyers; after all – caveat emptor.

9. Tony Tetro

Tony Tetro painting in jail

The LA district attorney called Tetro “the single largest forger of art works in America.” With his career in forgery having lasted over 30 years, this doesn’t seem like hyperbole.

Tetro forged pieces of art by a wide range of masters – from Rembrandt to Dali to Chagall – and was only caught when artist Hiro Yamagata was surprised to find what was purported to be his own work hanging in a gallery.

Forged Caravaggio: St John the Baptist

After spending 5 years in prison, Tetro forged a new career in the production of “forged” works for private clients, but a court order that requires him to sign all of his works should stop him from pulling the wool over more buyers’ eyes.

8. Otto Wacker

Wacker’s trial

Forgery was a family business for Otto Wacker, a respected German art dealer in the 1920s. His brother Leonhard was a talented painter and restorer of artwork, who was likely the true creator of the works that Wacker passed off as genuine Van Goghs.

Original Van Gogh Self Portrait

It was no doubt Wacker’s professional reputation that led Van Gogh experts to accept his story that the paintings came from Russia by way of Switzerland and that the Russian individual involved had to stay anonymous for fear of family reprimand. In 1928 the fakes were found out, although several art critics and dealers continued to believe that they were genuine. In the end, however, X-rays and pigment analysis proved them to be fakes and Wacker was sentenced to 19 months in prison.

7. Ely Sakhai

Original Vase de Fleurs

Ely Sakhai ran an art forgery sweatshop in the attic of his gallery, where Chinese immigrants slaved over copies of paintings by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Sakhai covered his tracks well, never buying well-known works and selling the originals to Western buyers and fakes to Asian buyers who were unlikely to have the paintings assessed.

Sakhai

He was found out when, in 2000, the two big auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, both offered the same painting for sale – Paul Gauguin’s Vase de Fleurs. The Christie’s painting was soon found to be a fake and the FBI followed the trail right to Sakhai’s door.

6. Giovanni Bastianini

Bust, thought to be by Mino, but in fact by Bastianini

Bastiani became infamous as the world’s first well-known forger of art. In the 19th century he sculpted busts in the style of Renaissance greats, aged them artificially and waited for them to be “discovered.” He would have stayed anonymous for a long time, as nobody ever had any notion that the pieces were not genuine, but his partner in crime eventually gave him up when he became resentful of his poor cut of the takings. There clearly has never been honor amongst thieves.

5. John Myatt and John Drew

Forged Modigliani

John Myatt tried to be an honest man. A gifted artistic mimic, he originally offered his paintings for sale with the tagline “Genuine fakes.” However, his collaboration with John Drew led him into criminality when Drew found he could re-sell the paintings for up to £25,000. So began what has been called “the biggest art fraud of the 20th century,” in which Myatt forged over 200 works by Bissiere, Chagall, Le Corbusier, Giacometti and more.

John Myatt

Convicted in 1999 and released 4 months later, Myatt now paints portraits and copies, and “genuine” Myatt forgeries have sold for up to £45,000 ($74,500).

4. Tom Keating

Tom Keating painting

Tom Keating broke the law to make a point. He found the artistic world to be rotten and corrupt – a system where those in the know connived “to line their own pockets at the expense both of naive collectors and impoverished artists.”

Forged Degas

His forgeries were works of subversive warfare with “time-bombs” indicating their inauthenticity planted within them so that they would emerge as forgeries and, he hoped, bring down the system. His forgeries included works by Samuel Palmer, François Boucher, Edgar Degas, Amedeo Modigliani and Rembrandt. He has claimed 2,000 forgeries but refused to identify them.

3. Eric Hebborn

Hebborn painting

Eric Hebborn preferred to create his own paintings in the style of the masters rather than copy existing works, which handily meant that he could not be found out by two owners of the same painting having a quick conversation. He was found out when a curator noticed that two paintings by different artists had been executed on the same paper – though he continued to create forgeries for the next 5 years.

Forged Piranesi

In 1984 Hebborn confessed his crime, not out of guilt but instead to denigrate the art world that had rejected his original works; he later published The Art Forger’s Handbook. In 1996 he was found in an alleyway, his head crushed in, although it is unknown if this attack was related to his forgery.

2. Elmyr de Hory

Portrait of a Woman in the style of Modigliani

Immortalized in the book Fake! by Clifford Irving and the movie F for Fake by Orson Welles, Elmyr de Hory claimed to have sold over 1,000 paintings to reputable galleries and dealers worldwide, faking works by masters such as Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and Renoir. He began his descent into forgery when his friends mistook his copies of famous painters’ works for originals, creating original works in the style of famous masters rather than copying existing images.

De Hory

Every so often he would try to sell his own paintings, but he never found a market for them and would return to the lucrative business of copying. De Hory was constantly short-changed and cheated by his business partners – at least one of whom may have signed the works with the names of the aped artist, as de Hory always denied doing this, maintaining that this made him innocent of criminal charges. Following his death by suicide, his paintings soared in value, such that de Horys have since themselves been forged.

1. Han van Meegeren

Vermeer Forgery

Han van Meegeren was another painter who turned to forgery when his own work was scorned by critics. Hugely talented, he was arrested by the Dutch government during WWII for collaboration with the Nazis, as he was held to have sold a Vermeer to Hermann Göring. He confessed to forgery as this was a lesser crime than treason. His forgeries were so accomplished that he had to paint a Vermeer before experts to prove his talent and thus his innocence.

Image of trial

He died in 1947, the same year that an opinion poll named him the second most popular person in the whole nation – the Dutch people admiring his cunning in fooling both art experts and the Nazis. His paintings sold for such high prices that his own son was later found to have forged his father’s work and sold them as “genuine” van Meegeren forgeries.

Video games have become a ubiquitous and popular form of entertainment among people from all walks of life and of all ages. The companies which supply and market these games, such as Nintendo, Blizzard, Sega and EA Games, have become household names. But what about the geniuses behind the games, those who have been inspired to create these relatively new forms of media entertainment? Brains, design brilliance and storytelling imagination by the bucketload are all required of these video game virtuosos. And for those who rise as the cream of their crop, big rewards await, both financial and in the regard of their peers and fans. So who are the most successful, influential and visionary video game creators of all time?

10. Masaya Matsuura

Originally a musician, Masaya Matsuura became interested in the technological developments of the 1990s, eventually transitioning to the production of music-based video games such as PaRappa the Rapper and Vib-Ribbon, through his company, NanaOn-Sha. Matsuura is not short of praise and recognition. In 2009, Develop Magazine surveyed 9,000 video game developers, asking which member of the industry was their personal hero. Masaya Matsuura came in at number eight. He was also the recipient of the 2004 ‘First Penguin’ award from the International Game Developers Association, a recognition of his innovation and contribution to his field. Suffice to say, his earnings must be no poor reflection on such accolades.

9. David Jones

A career spanning the best part of two and a half decades led to David Jones, a British game developer, taking the number four spot on Develop Magazine’s list of heroes. He co-founded DMA Designs in 1988, for whom he developed the addictive and iconic Lemmings game series. Then in 1997, DMA Designs brought out his creation, Grand Theft Auto, the world-renowned game franchise where the player is a criminal who must navigate the seedy underworld of various cities. The first game went on to spawn an often controversial but highly successful series, with various A-list celebrities lending their voices to the different titles, and staggering worldwide sales of over 120 million copies across the franchise.

8. Hironobu Sakaguchi

Hironobu Sakaguchi doesn’t feature in Develop Magazine’s list of all time greats, but his 2000 induction into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame is sure to come as some solace. In 1987 he created the epic role-playing game, Final Fantasy, the name of which was inspired by the idea that if it did not sell he would go back to the university he had dropped out of several years earlier. Final Fantasy was a tremendous success. It is one of the best-selling video game franchises ever – the series had sold almost 100 million units as of 2010 – and is credited with popularizing many of the standard features of today’s role-playing games. Sakaguchi has also developed other successful games including Blue Dragon and Kingdom Hearts.

7. Michael Morhaime

It’s no surprise that Michael Morhaime ranked in Develop Magazine’s top ten list of heroes, in which he took the number nine spot. In 2008 he was honored at the Annual Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards and was also inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame. As the president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, he has created such iconic games as Diablo and World of Warcraft. WoW, the defining massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has a massive 12 million subscribers, giving it a 62% market share and the world record as the most popular game of its kind. In 2009, Morhaime received an annual compensation approaching the $1 million mark.

6. Satoshi Tajiri

Gotta catch ‘em all! Satoshi Tajiri created video games that were inspired by his childhood hobby of insect collecting. Still, it’s lucky for everyone who grew up trying to be the best Poketrainer of them all that Tajiri was perhaps something of a strange child, because without him we wouldn’t have Pokémon. The development took six years and almost bankrupted Tajiri’s company, Game Freak, but in 1996 the game was released to the world at large. Tajiri’s contribution to, and influence on, video game design has been recognized by IGN, Electronic Gaming Monthly and Edge magazine, and he is an undisputed giant of the industry. We trust the man who refused his salary while working on Pokémon is reaping the benefits of his hard work now.

5. Will Wright

Will Wright received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001, was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2002, and was ranked in third place in Develop Magazine’s list of industry heroes. Widely regarded as one of the key figures in gaming, technology and entertainment, he is best known among gamers as the man behind the addictive city planning game, SimCity, and the non-gamer friendly life-simulation game, The Sims. The Sims is the best-selling PC game of all time, and has spawned a successful franchise that is popular even with those who are not fond of traditional antagonistic computer games. Meanwhile, his latest brainchild, Spore, sold approaching half a million copies just three weeks after hitting the shelves in 2008.

4. John Carmack

From the primitive graphics and gameplay of Commander Keen to the immersive, multiplayer, first-person shooter environments of Quake and Doom, John Carmack has always been at the cutting edge of video game programming and design. It was this that saw him inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2001, awarded at the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards in 2007, and placed at number two in Develop Magazine’s survey of heroes. In 2010 he was further honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Conference. A generous man and advocate of open source software, Carmack’s success might best be measured in the esteem with which he is held both inside and outside of his industry.

3. Hideo Kojima

The current director of Kojima Productions and Vice President of Konami Digital Entertainment, Hideo Kojima has created and developed a plethora of acclaimed video games and video game franchises – and must surely be earning a salary that mirrors this success. Metal Gear, Boktai and Policenauts are among his most well-known projects, with the Metal Gear series of stealth games a massive hit in particular, selling over 27 million copies worldwide. Newsweek named him in their top ten people in the world of 2002, and in 2008 he received the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for a video game designer at the MTV Game Awards. In 2009 he received another lifetime achievement award, this time from the Game Developers Conference.

2. Sid Meier

Ranked at number five in the Develop Magazine poll of industry heroes and the second ever inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame, Sid Meier is best known for developing the games Civilization and Pirates! A pioneer in the strategy game arena, Meier co-founded Firaxis Games in 1996, which was later to be acquired by Take-Two Interactive for the cool figure of $26.7 million in 2005. Sid Meier is so successful and admired as a designer that even when he is not the principle force behind a game, the game makers are only too happy to splash his name on the cover to drive sales. A living legend, and doubtless a hugely financially successful one at that.

1. Shigeru Miyamoto

There’s only one Shigeru Miyamoto. The undisputed king of video game designers and producers, Miyamoto was the first inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame, having being given the inaugural recognition in 1998. He was also the runaway winner of Develop Magazine’s industry heroes poll and is widely seen as the most influential video game creator of all time. Reeling off his creations makes for a list of some of the most successful franchises of all time – Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, various Wii games, and many more – with various of his more recent titles selling tens of millions of copies. In 2007, Miyamoto received the Lifetime Achievement prize at the Game Developers Choice Awards and in 2008 took the top spot on Time Magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People of the Year. He is the second highest earning employee at Nintendo, taking home $1.4 million in 2009 – a figure surpassed only by the salary of the video game giant’s president.

Despite the world’s trials and tribulations, it seems like a lot of inventors are hell-bent on creating products which are nothing more than a worthless gimmick. This is because people would rather try and buy their way to health and happiness than work toward it. Money-hungry inventors and investors are all too eager to give the lazy and stupid what they want: useless crap which promises to improve the quality of life while really serving no more purpose than a dust-gathering end table in an unused room. Here are 15 of the most worthless inventions to ever separate a fool and his (or her) money.

The Dumbell Cane

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Like olde tyme fitness in an olde tyme way? Then you need the Dumbell Cane from the early 1900′s! Invented by what we assume was an olde tyme scientist, the Dumbell Cane was essentially a very heavy cane with a nickel top. This was more likely used to club unruly man servants and those jerks on the Hi-Wheel bicycles.

Get a Grip Wine Glass Grip

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Have you ever said to yourself, “Gosh, I’m too stupid to properly hold a wine glass!”? Do you wonder how you might make it abundantly clear that you are a clod in front of a group of sophisticated wine drinkers? Look no further! The “Get a Grip” wine glass grip puts a bright red grip on your wine glass that says to the world, “I am probably a toddler, and you should call child services right now.”

Prosthetic Dog Balls

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Do you feel bad about what you did to Rover? No, not the peanut butter thing, the other thing when you took him to the vet and got his nuts removed? What is your best friend going to lick for the rest of his life? The answer is Neuticles! Neuticles allows your dog’s junk to return to its former glory. Now he’ll have something to do while you visit your therapist.

Cleavage Coverage

Let’s face it: boobies are distracting. You don’t want to be doing a kidney operation when the nurse leans over to help and gives you a clear view of her meat jugs. Fortunately, there’s Camiband! Now when that hot chick goes to work, she can wear this and pretend people take her seriously.

The Flatulence Deodorizer

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After years of failure with corks, the inventor of this gadget decided to go in a different direction. Why not stop butt gas near its source? The Flatulence Deodorizer is kind of nice way of saying “Fart Tampon”. But unless your gas is SBD, the noise is probably still going to give you away.

Cat Wigs

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Finally, something for bald cats! Cat Wigs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. It’s the perfect gift for your crazy cat lady that isn’t quite crazy enough. It’s probably the same kind of people that tried to order Kitten Mittens. It is highly doubtful that a cat would ever tell its owner about a desire to own a wig and mittens, and much more likely that weird single women across America are struggling to force these stupid inventions on their poor, squirming cats who want nothing more than to be left alone to their windowsills and strings.

The Dog Sack

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Like your dog enough to take him on a drive, but not enough to let him in the car? The 1950′s had the answer… Kind of. It’s a Dog…Sack…thing. Just fasten old Rover in this bag and I’m sure he’ll remain perfectly still while you barrel through traffic at 60 mph. It’s a good thing pets were disposable in those days.

Phone Fingers

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It’s not really clear what demographic of people would be interested in this product, but for those have a weird rubber fetish and/or love the tiny finger condoms used at the dentist, Phone Fingers is the way to go. Why look like an idiot pounding the touch screen while wearing gloves, when you can look like a douche from the not-too-distant future? It’s truly a product that says to the world, “I’ll buy anything that’s in a Sky Mall catalogue.”

Subway Chinrest

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No, this isn’t a device for Jared, the fast food spokesman if he gained back all his weight, it’s actually a device for people to lean their chins on in the subway. It was marketed in Japan, the only country where this might not look completely insane. But finally, Bill O’Reilly has something to hold up his giant forehead if he gets too tired.

The Pizza Fork

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Sadly, this is not a fork made out of pizza, which would at least be delicious. It is instead a fork with a pizza cutter on the handle. It’s sort of like a lame Swiss Army Knife for people too lazy to wash utensils AND cook.

The Plow Gun

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We don’t know what kind of farm the inventor was running to build this, but it must’ve been pretty bad. When you have to take your turnips hostage or shoot your mule in a hurry, this invention from 1826 is for you. Either way, you’re not getting on a plane with this baby.

Fork Alarm

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And you thought the Pizza Fork was going to be the dumbest fork on the list. This invention has a timer that allows the user to know when its time to take another bite. Still, you have to understand that it was patented in 1995, a crazy era for forks and timed eating. Seinfeld was still on the air and if you could be “Master of Your Domain” you at least had to be master of your fork.

Helicopter Ejection Seat

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No one wants to go down with the chopper, but is it better to get ripped to shreds instead? The Helicopter Ejection Seat probably had good intentions, but the guys that invented it just didn’t think it through. Maybe a Helicopter trap door would work better.

The Prostate Gland Warmer

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Patented in 1918, the prostate gland warmer was suppose to stimulate a man’s “abdominal brain”. Instead it ended up more like an alien probe sans the alien. From the looks of that invention, it may have been adapted for the ladies later on.

The Useless Box

Even more useless than a computer floppy drive or Ryan Seacrest, the Useless Box performs as advertised. It’s a robot whose only function is to turn itself off. Now if only they could somehow adapt it so it would work on Joe Biden’s mouth.

Many people think that mind mapping is a process best used by creative individuals. But there are many ways that mind mapping can help in a business setting as well. It’s important to remember that a business is nothing more than a collection of individuals working together for a common goal. Consider the following ways that mind mapping can help in a business setting.

Find Areas You Can Improve

Mind maps are graphical representations of thoughts. You may not know that you can improve an idea, a product, a service, or a product until you see a road map for that area. If you have a section on the map that seems sparse, it’s time to brainstorm new ideas.

Give Thoughts Structure

Business professionals can use mind mapping to keep track of ideas that pop up in random places. That conversation at the water cooler may translate into your next great marketing strategy when you add it to what already exists on your mind map.

Design a Flow Chart for Change

Any time your business implements a change, you can expect problems to arise. Mind mapping can help your business design a flow chart so that the change is implemented more smoothly. You can track what things need to happen in order to notify all staff of the changes, and you can brainstorm potential problems and solutions before you attempt to implement the change.

There are many cloud computing based mind mapping programs (accessible from anywhere), as well as smart phone apps.

Understand Complexity

A business rarely has a simple structure. You may have several departments working together or a series of processes needed to create one product. With mind mapping you can track how one concept relates to another. You can also see how many sub-elements each main concept has.

Track Information

When you use a mind-mapping program, like FreeMind, you have a method you can use to track information. Summarize reports, add a hyperlink to a specific article, incorporate a graphic, or track other important information all in one location. Additionally, you can see how the information fits into your business model.

See Your Business Pipeline

Do you know what it takes to move an idea into a finished product? What does each department need in order to complete a task? Mind mapping allows you to create a graphical image of your business pipeline. You can track what Sally needs to do in order for John to do his job so that Peter can finish his task.

Enhance Recall

The mind works by connecting ideas to one another. Children learn how to read by being able to associate letters with sounds. When you use a mind map, you are making connections similar to the ones that your brain will make. This process can help expand your mental cognition about your business. You may be able to know the workers in an office by thinking about your mind map and its breakdown of departments.

Mind mapping isn’t just a tool for the creative individuals of the world. Businesses can take the same process and use it to understand the complexity of the company’s model better. With mind mapping, a company can gain the necessary tools to surpass the competition.

A logo represents a company. It defines that company’s identity and purpose. It is an integral part of brand strategy. Without a logo or brand identity it would be impossible for a consumer to identify one product or service from the next.

Most consumers have very strong opinions regarding their favorite brand. These opinions are more emotional than rational. Some brands (e.g. Nike, Coca-Cola etc.) resonate with customers more than others. Customers form an emotional attachment to these brands, often disregarding better products and services for ones with higher visibility and brand recognition.

Some brands even become synonymous with the product and the consumer starts recognizing the product by its brand name (e.g. Xerox).

It is therefore of the utmost importance that every company–especially the small business–has a sound brand strategy and a strong brand identity with a unique identifiable logo.

Brand Identity and Small Business Logo Design helps small businesses in many ways. A few of the more important ones are listed below.

1. It helps give the company an established and professional feel. This increases the customers trust in the products or services the company offers.

2. A powerful brand identity is important as in general, people find it easier to recall images than text. There is an old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”. The logo represents that picture and can be remembered and identified with greater ease than a thousand words describing the company.

3. Logo graphics can bring about awareness of the products or services that you offer in cases where the company name is not self-explanatory.

4. As the company grows, the consumer base stays loyal to the brand.

5. The brand value generated can also be leveraged when selling stock in the company or the company itself for a higher perceived value than the actual value.

MyCorporateLogo.com offers affordable logo design and corporate identity design services to start ups, small and mid-sized organizations. They have designed logos, websites, brochures, letterhead, business cards, and stationary for many industries.

Why would anyone contribute an article to Wikipedia? News footage to CNN iReport? A T-shirt design to Threadless? In some cases, customers may be motivated by curiosity, personal interests, or deeply held social values. In other cases, they have more commercial goals or a desire for personal benefit.

The biggest cause of failure in network collaborations is likely a misunderstanding of the customer’s motivation. Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher, and Chrysanthos Dellarocas of MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence describe the motivations for network collaboration as love, glory, or money. These three categories can provide a good starting point for understanding why customers choose to collaborate.

Love
In many cases, participants choose to collaborate with others out of purely social motivations. These motivations may include: altruism (the desire to contribute to the common good); a passionate interest in the topic; work that is entertaining, fun, or creative; participation and connection in a community; the chance to contribute to social values they believe in (such as a cause or candidate); or a sense of duty or obligation (perhaps because they are already enjoying the benefits of the project).

These social motivations are the kind that spurred supporters of Barack Obama to participate in the MyBO network for his candidacy. They also explain why users contribute to Wikipedia without financial reward or byline. New Wikipedia articles are typically written by users with a particular knowledge of their subject and often a passionate interest in it. Other users who frequent Wikipedia may take the time to fix an occasional misspelling or error that they spot out of gratitude for the value they gain from the site. The power of the networking tools behind MyBO and Wikipedia is that they allow all these small acts of generosity to add up to very large impact, far beyond what was feasible in our prenetworked past, when it was virtually impossible to amass and assess contributions of people scattered around the world.

As Clay Shirky has observed, “We have always loved one another. We’re human. It’s something we’re good at. But up until recently, the radius and half-life of that affection has been quite limited. With love alone, you can get a birthday party together. Add coordinating tools, and you can write an operating system . . . In the past, we could do little things for love, but big things, big things required money. Now, we can do big things for love.”

But what if your cause is not an inspiring political candidate or a charity or a free public service? It is very unlikely that you will get people to contribute for “love” alone, even if they do have a passion for the project. Your customers may love taking photos of local events, but they may not want to share them anonymously on your news platform if you will be earning a profit from and retaining the rights to the images they produced. Fortunately, humans harbor other motivations.

Glory
The key to CNN attracting unpaid collaborators to its iReport news project is that their submissions are not anonymous. If a customer’s photo, video, or story appears on CNN’s Web site or broadcast, his or her name is credited for all to see. The opportunity to be seen as a “citizen journalist” contributing to such famous and popular network provides a powerful motivation to the iReport customer network.

Even without such a mass-media spotlight as CNN, mechanisms that highlight and confer social status can be an effective motivator for active collaborators. As we saw in the last chapter, the top participants in technical forums will answer thousands of questions posed by fellow customers when they are recognized in the forum as a major contributor. Forums can use public markers of status-awards, name recognition-to draw attention to users’ high level of contribution, their expertise and knowledge, or their creativity, taste, or style.

Money
Of course, sometimes the best way for a for-profit business to motivate network collaboration is to offer money or other commercial benefits.

When Cisco announced its Innovation Prize, or I-Prize, in 2008, the company placed an open call for teams anywhere in the world to identify billion-dollar business opportunities for Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group. After several rounds of winnowing down twelve hundred business proposals received from 104 countries, Cisco announced the winners: Anna Gossen, Niels Gossen, and Sergey Bessonnitsyn, a wife, husband, and brother team of two computer science students and an engineer. The three not only received $250,000; they were also given the opportunity to work for Cisco on their proposed new venture, a “smart grid” framework to reduce the passive consumption of power by electronic devices. The prize award was a small price to pay for Cisco, which estimated that the project could generate a billion dollars in revenue within five to seven years.

It is important to note that while the prize was a good deal for Cisco, it also represented an extraordinary reward for the recipients, who were doing work (business plan development) that was not part of their normal careers or business. Some short-sighted companies have seized on the notion of “crowdsourcing” as a means to exploit the same vendors they would normally hire to carry out a professional task. Rather than hiring one firm to complete work, they simply ask many to submit a solution and offer to pay “the winner” at a rate similar to what would normally be professional work for hire.

This kind of spec-work masquerading as “collaboration” can yield resentment and a bruised reputation, as ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky found when it tried to solicit logo designs for an advertising client with a thousand-dollar prize. Businesses should not confuse collaboration with exploitation. But money can be an effective reward when the sum received or the type of work is out-of-the-ordinary for participants.

Hybrids
In many cases the motivations for members of a network to collaborate with a business are a hybrid mix of social, status, and financial rewards. Threadless contestants may be motivated as much by the chance to see their design advertised and worn by others (they are not, generally, professional clothing designers) as by the cash reward. In the Netflix Prize, the team that produced the winning solution to improve the company’s recommendation engine received not only a million dollars but extensive coverage in mainstream media such as BusinessWeek, Wired magazine, and the New York Times. And although a quarter million dollars may have attracted participants to the Cisco I-Prize, the winners were probably motivated just as much by passion for their business idea as for their long-shot chance at winning the money.

Official bio: David Rogers, author of The Nework Is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age, teaches at Columbia Business School, where he is executive director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership. He speaks at conferences worldwide and has consulted and advised numerous companies and nonprofits, such as SAP, Eli Lilly, and Visa.