Alex Merto, of the Behance Network, created the rather adorable Effin font. Each letter of the typeface is lewd, like the F is a furry.  He has one for each letter of the alphabet, in upper case only.

I couldn’t find a download link, but there are high quality images available for each of the letters. And the project has been released, by Alex, under a Creative Commons By-NC License (free to share and remix under the conditions of attribution and non-commercial user).

Although this story is nearly a month old, I still have enjoyed reading it several times since it’s original publication date exactly one month ago. Anna Jane Grossman guest wrote the “Memory [Forever]” feature. Grossman writes on the invention, near extinction of the Rolodex, and how it’s purpose has been replaced virtually.

From the article:

When I got my first job at a newspaper in 2001, I had a small Rolodex. I got it because everyone around me had one. What’s more, people talked about their Rolodexes. “I think I have her in my Rolodex,” they’d say. Or, “If he leaves, he’s going to take his Rolodex with him.” This, of course, meant that someone’s “contacts” were veeeeery important. Sometimes, people would take a card out of their Rolodex if I needed it, and I’d go copy the information and bring it back to them. There were people who stapled cards onto Rolodex pages and people who hand wrote all the information. Cards could be added or tossed or shared with ease. It was a genius, efficient and highly personal way of staying in touch.

It’s features like this that keep me on Gizmodo… Enjoy!

At CES 2010, Oregon Scientific unveiled the Wireless Appliance Manager. It is a savvy and rather sexy geekery that monitors and shows you–in real time–how much power you’re sucking from the line and how much money the line is sucking from you. Not to mention the amount of CO² you emit. Again, in real time.

The Manager comes in two versions: basic and advanced. The basic version–retailing at $60–can only receive a signal from one appliance. The advanced version–retailing at $80 plus extra transmitters–can receive signals from up to eight appliances at once. With either version, a programmable timer allows you to control sockets which turns the Manager into a control panel for your lights and appliances.

I can’t wait for the product to be available to consumers. I wasn’t able to find out a release date on the Manager, but I hope it’s sometime soon. These would make great gifts for anyone: the budget conscious, the greenie, or the curious.

[Parts of this post via Popular Mechanics]

As many of you whom use Twitter know, Twitter was highly embarrassed earlier this year with an eighteen year old kid–going by GMZ–broke into the account of a Twitter staff member using the password ‘happiness.’ GMZ proceeded to hijack many high profile accounts such as then President-Elect Barack Obama and Fox News’s primary feed. After that, Twitter wouldn’t allow passwords to be “too obvious,” like ‘password’ or ’123456′.

The other day it was discovered that Twitter has banned 370 passwords from being used. The more obvious passwords like ’111111′ and ‘password1′ are on the list but several commonly used passwords are also on the list like ‘iloveyou’ or ‘edward.’ If you’d like to have the list, you can view a text file of all the passwords (by TechCrunch).

Twitter is forcing users to doing something, in my opinion, the masses as a whole should do: secure their accounts using secure passwords. Sure, using your dog Maggie’s name or feeding your ego by being able to type ‘bigdick’ (yes, it’s on the ban list) each time you login is a great thing and definitely easy to remember, but you leave yourself vulnerable to brute force hack attempts–breaking into an account by systemically trying passwords until you get right one.

Find out more about keeping your accounts secure after the jump. Read on. »

Although Christmas has passed this year, there’s still plenty of stories circulating around about Amazon workcampers hired for the 2009 holiday season.

I found out about it from a post on Gizmodo on a couple of technomads, Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard, who took up the life the pre-retirement RVing. They started a site called NüRVers, a community of the new generation RVers. They worked at the Coffeyville, Kansas Amazon facility for a month before spending the holidays in St. Louis.

Amazon afforded the opportunity to workcampers to work at the Amazon facility during the holiday rush. The workcampers were hired for amazon by two temp agencies.

From the article:

Their first day inside, Chris was awed. “Walking inside reminded me of the scene from Indiana Jones when they abandon the Ark in that giant warehouse. It’s three stories high. It feels like an industrial library. Shelves going up and up and up.” Hundreds of employees scurried, some “orange-badges” or “green-badges” hired by two temporary employment services mixed with the sought-after blue-badges of full-time Amazon employees, guided to their next destination by computers that flashed lights when bins were full or guided workers through the maze with handheld computers. “Pickers are basically playing a human Pac-Man game. They’ve got a computer scanner that they carry around that tells them where to go. They find their little shelf. One slot might be a book. The next shelf over might be a toaster. Or an iPod. The next slot after that might be a pair of jeans.”

Amazon gave workcampers the work opportunity after the previous years fiascoes involving busing in workers from surrounding cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma whom worked ten to twelve hour shifts in addition to four hour commutes. Read on. »