Are wall clocks too 19th century for you? Do beads freak you out? Combine the best of both worlds with this Time Curtain prototype from Soner Ozenc. Yes, it's a curtain with LED-style numbers representing the current time so you can see exactly how long you've been sitting there on your couch instead of getting out and exercising. Mildly useful, and only then from one side—unless you like reading time backwards. – Jason Chen

Product page [Sozerozenc via Neatorama]

Future Foley news analysis headlines:

• House Repubs Pull a Real Boner
• Was Hastert Too Cocksure?
• GOP No Longer Cruising to Reelection
• Foley Comes at Uncomfortable Time For Reynolds
• Will GOP Leadership Reach Around to Protect Foley?
• New York Times: In Foley Blame Game, Republicans Line up Into Givers, Receivers

The Foley Scandal: How Bad a Blow to the G.O.P.? [Time]

• The blood will continue to spill at Time; Jon Meacham shakes things up at Newsweek. [NYP]
• In another attempt to emulate Esquire, Radar looks to move into their old space. Up next: A piece on how sexy Scarlett Johansson is. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman met Jimmy Carter once! Also, Jon hates the media. We feel ya, bro. [Marketwatch]
• Are we the only ones getting a little tired of hearing about Roger Ailes? [Romenesko]
• Jesús Díaz Jr. resigned as publisher of the Miami Herald after a power struggle with columnist Carl Hiaasen. How come no one resigned back when Dave Barry made his 5,000th booger joke? [Miami Herald]

• The blood will continue to spill at Time; Jon Meacham shakes things up at Newsweek. [NYP]
• In another attempt to emulate Esquire, Radar looks to move into their old space. Up next: A piece on how sexy Scarlett Johansson is. NYO]
• Jon Friedman met Jimmy Carter once! Also, Jon hates the media. We feel ya, bro. [Marketwatch]
• Are we the only ones getting a little tired of hearing about Roger Ailes? [Romenesko]
• Jesús Díaz Jr. resigned as publisher of the Miami Herald after a power struggle with columnist Carl Hiaasen. How come no one resigned back when Dave Barry made his 5,000th booger joke? [Miami Herald]

• That Cathy Horyn correction? It was a big "fuck you" to Styles editor Trip Gabriel. [WWD]
• Time is an important magazine that must innovate if it wants to stay relevant. This burst of obviousness brought to you by, yes, Jon Friedman. [Marketwatch]
• Friends of Janice Min want you to know that putting Whitney Houston on the cover of Us Weekly was Jann Wenner's idea. Jann Wenner's bad idea. [Radar]
• Jack Shafer wants more and better rowbacks. [Slate]
• Fired Fox news baseball analyst Steve Lyons isn't racist against Hispanics; it's the Jews he can't stand. [USAToday]

Time magazine, which never tires of grinding out "... of the Year" lists in the last quarter of every calendar, has chosen YouTube as 2006's "Invention of the Year." Sure, YouTube was technically conceived two years ago, but there are 1.65 billion reasons to hop on this bandwagon now, before it disintegrates into copyright-infringed kindling. Time applauds YouTube for monetizing "the lonely, pressurized, pent-up video subconscious of America," though unfortunately the metaphor is left high and dry with no ejaculatory release. Speaking of which, YouTube defeated an STD vaccine for invention's highest specious honor, not to mention a robot that drags injured humans out of combat. That robot would be so much cooler if it was on YouTube.

Best Inventions 2006 [Time via CNet]

Yep, it's true: Time cuts its rate base, tries to convince advertisers that people pass issues on to friends. Be real, Stengel: Those nursing homes only get one copy each week. [NYT]

Viacom stock down due to $8 billion Freston severance package, slate of crappy movies, embarrassment of being responsible for Mind of Mencia. CFO Michael Dolan takes the fall. [NYP]

It must suck to be an newspaper editor. Even if you're as talented as Dean Baquet, you can still get fired. The only thing that must suck even more is being a neophyte reporter making $27,000 a year to report on staph infections amongst inner city homeless: you're definitely getting fired, and there's no cushy landing spot at the New York Times for you. [NYT]

If Morgan Stanley has its way, there'll be no cushy landing spot at the New York Times for anyone. [NYP]

NBC about as dumb as you suspected. [B&C]

HBO dumber than you expected, but we're grateful for the opportunity to make more Amanda Congdon tit jokes. Seriously, is this the longest fifteen minutes in history?[Mediaweek

Men's Health only wound up losing 5 per cent of its ad pages this year. [WWD]

Say hello to our friends from IvyGate. [Harvard Crimson]

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PopSci and Time just dropped their best of tech lists. We'll spare you the read and show you the best from both.

PopSci's gadget list is droll. But most notable in the Gizmodo-ish types of gear is Samsung's LED-backlit thin DLP set for its wide color gamut, and this far out LED TV that uses 1,380 individually controlled LEDs to give an LCD 100 times the contrast, and 10 times the brightness, of other LCDs. Yowzers, at $50k, it better. More on this later.

PopSci's home category is really great for pointing out the stuff you might pass over at Home Depot. In this section, their Grand Winner is a new twist on an old favorite tech: The nail. Really. Click on to read why its worthy.

I'd make a joke about how strange it is to put a splinter of metal in a best of tech category— I mean, ribs, twists, and a bigger top? Come on! But in the end, who can argue with a fastener that is hurricane and earthquake resistant? Then there's the Skystream DIY home Windmill kit, the world's most powerful mini drill, and the toughest tape ever made. (Small photos above.)

Not to mention some very cool engineering projects like the Grand Canyon skywalk, a translucent U-shaped glass walkway that sits 3/4 of a mile off the canyon floor.

Time's picks are less exciting, and more mainstream, but undeniably, they see the big picture: Their grand winner was YouTube. Yawn, but yes, we can't live without it.

Most of the award winners here seemed like they were either very random, but cool, like the wovel, a combination wheel barrow and shovel for you poor bastards in the north east. Drive the shovel forward on the wheel and then flip the snow sky high as you use the tire as a fulcrum.

And the excellent, but offseason Excalibur Lounger, which we love. Maybe because of Time's photos. Call me!

And the Skystream gets another mention. The windmill itself sits on a 35 foot pole and can provide a house with about 80% of its total electricity usage. Cool, except they predict it'll save you $600 a year, and the setup costs you $10,000 including install. It still ain't cheap being green.

Maybe the best of all is the hug shirt from cute circuit. It pairs with a cellphone by bluetooth, and when a loved one sends you a txt message the shirt replicates the warmth, embrace, and heartbeat of your sex slave. It's very romantic. And not yet for sale, probably because it doesn't work very well. Virtual hugs are light years behind the real thing.

This post was too long. –Brian Lam

Best of What's New [PopSci]
Best Inventions [Time.com]

Last week, one of your esteemed editors was asked to blab on a CNN panel of bloggers for the purpose of speculating who Time magazine might choose as the 2006 "Person of the Year." It probably would have been much better to mention this beforehand, in order to come to the chat forearmed with a read on the current sentiment on the Gawker street. Nevertheless, the actual choices tossed around -- Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Donald Rumsfeld, Britney Spears -- are less interesting than the process itself. Supposedly, POTY is given to whoever influenced world events the most during the past year. Trouble is, though various personalities had spikes of impact, it's hard to say any one person consistently drove events (or the news) throughout 2006. This sets up the first of two conflicts of POTY choice that Time editors and their advisory panels muddle with every year.

The first decision is figuring out, in the absence of a single big human candidate, whether or not to declare a nonhuman, a group, or an abstraction as the POTY. Examples of this in the past include "The American Fighting-Man" (1950), which became "The American Soldier" (2003); "The Middle Americans" (1969); and "The Computer" (1982). Many people dislike abstract picks just on principle, preferring that the POTY be an actual person. While we're hoping very, very strongly that this year they don't pick something like "The Blog" or "YouTube," we also have trouble picking a particular person who really drove events all year long. And if we did, it would probably be a villain. Which brings up the second POTY conflict.

Ever since 1979's Ayatollah Khomeini choice resulted in a shitstorm of bad publicity, Time has been notoriously unwilling to choose a "bad guy," even though they repeatedly point out that POTY is not supposed to be an honor, strictly speaking. This despite selections like Adolf Hitler (1938) and Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942) in the past. They punked out in 2001, choosing Rudolph Giuliani over Osama bin Laden, which means that it's highly unlikely that this year they'll choose, say, Kim Jong-Il. Despite all this, we're curious about who they'll eventually choose just because we're curious about the rationale for the choice. So, let's test the wisdom of crowds thing. Make your picks -- not who you want to be POTY or who you think should be POTY, but you guess will be POTY -- in the comments below, or send them to gawkpoty@gmail.com. Defend and explain your choice if you can; and note that Tom DeLay is on the advisory board, for what that's worth. We'll collect the most perspicacious picks in a later roundup, and if you're really on your best behavior, we'll have a pre-game vote.

'Time Person of the Year' Likely to Be, Well, a Person [Ad Age]
Person of the Year [Wikipedia]

TIME magazine invited some people over to talk about but not actually pick “Person of the Year” or something, and Liz Smith picked up some hot, disgusting gossip at the party.

Tom DeLay was there on a furlough, and he nominated none other than Nancy “Murtha” Pelosi for the made-up honor:

“I’m going to shock you,” said he. “I think the real Person of the Year ought to be Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House. She worked for years putting a strategy together, building a huge coalition. She held the Democrats together in the House like I have never seen before. She is going to change America!”

Could we please stop with the conciliatory crap?

Movers, shakers gather to help Time select person of the year [Liz Smith]

You'll recall our learned discussion about Time's "Person of the Year," and speculation on same. To recap, the "Person of the Year" is traditionally assigned to the person, persons, or thing that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year." That gives Time a lot of room to maneuver, but note that the two big questions revolve around type (one person? a group? a thing? an abstract concept?) and quality (a "good" person versus a "bad" person?). There hasn't been a "bad" person since 1979 (Ayatollah Khomeini), and when a single person can't be picked out of the crowd, groups of a few particular persons (such as Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates, as "The Philanthropists" last year) have been recently preferred to choosing things or abstracts.

So given all of that, we asked for your own choices as to who Time would pick for this year's POTY. After the jump, a little more background handicapping, current odds, and a big-azz poll to predict the unseen future.

Last week, Ad Age ran a piece exploring the minds behind this year's POTY process; advisory panelists include former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, NBC's Brian Williams, blog diva Arianna Huffington, and Newark mayor Cory Booker. Time ME Richard Stengel also went on record stating his preference for the POTY to be an actual person, so keep that in mind. MarketWatch's erstwhile dunderhead Jon Friedman is none too happy about DeLay's inclusion, just as he was displeased by last year's POTY choice (he was rooting for Hurricane Katrina). Sportsbook.com -- the same online oddsmaker that had to cancel betting last year due to suspicious bets around a possible leak of the POTY choice -- this year predicts that the winner will be Google Chairman/CEO Eric Schmidt, a 7-1 favorite. We have a tradition of following this race as well, thought not with much success at predicting the real POTY. ("Mother Nature"? Stupid hippies.)

But this year is your/our year! We feel it in our prognosticatory bones. Below is a poll cobbled together from all reader-submitted or publicized possibilities, plus a "None of the above" escape hatch if you're, like, a total pussy. Only nominees with a real chance of getting picked are presented (sorry, Borat). Choose the nominee you think most likely to be chosen as Time's 2006 Person of the Year (not the one you'd personally prefer was chosen). We'll track the race until the actual POTY is announced, and if we're collectively correct, we'll treat you/us to a big ol' self-congratulatory pat on the back. Maybe Time Inc. will even send us a holiday popcorn barrel for joining in on this annual publicity circle jerk. Offer void where prohibited.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Earlier: 'Time' Person of the Year: Who Needs People?

Our efforts to handicap Time's "Person of the Year" continue apace, and voting in the reader poll remains brisk. Elsewhere, this first wave of publicity has crested and rolled back, leaving only a Time-sponsored speculative nubbin (though we think it's neat that astronaut James Lovell picks Kim Jong-Il). Right now, you seem to think "The American Voter" the most likely choice, but there's plenty of space for other candidates to catch up. Poor Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani only has one vote! We'll let this race run through next week; then in anticipation of the official announcement in mid-December, we'll narrow the field to the top vote-getters for a runoff. If you haven't voted yet, do so (and inspect current results) after the jump.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Earlier: 'Time' Person of the Year: Let Us Reason Together

In the phlegmatic "race" for Time's "Person of the Year," there are multiple conflicting agendas and predictions. In particular, it's instructive to observe odds versus betting behavior on Sportsbook.com, which puts Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a 7-1 favorite. However, Schmidt has so far drawn less than 1% of votes in our own reader poll, which currently has Stephen Colbert as the favorite (insert indulgent eye-roll here). Bettors aren't interested in the sure bet though, as where's the fun (or big payoff) in that? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has drawn the most bets, taking in almost a third of total wagers so far (he's at 4% in our poll). Kim Jong-Il, at 10-1 against, has drawn 17.8% of wagers (he's at 1.5% hereabouts). For its part, Chrysler is wagering millions to be the POTY's sole corporate sponsor, a bet with long odds and little obvious payoff.

After the jump, our full poll continues, so take a moment and exercise your democratic prerogative. Next week, we'll narrow it down to a runoff among the top vote-getters, ultimately revealing how well you've chosen when the POTY is announced in mid-December.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Earlier: 'Time' Person of the Year: Voters Vote for Voter

sillysealcheekychick posted a photo:

sillysealcheekychick posted a photo:

sillysealcheekychick posted a photo:

sillysealcheekychick posted a photo:

LividFiction posted a photo:

Warholized with fd's Flickr Toys.

I got this watch for Christmas. It's the nicest I've ever had, and it will see the most use of any of my watches since my $40 Timex, which lasted me three years.

LividFiction posted a photo:

Warholized with fd's Flickr Toys.

I got this watch for Christmas. It's the nicest I've ever had, and it will see the most use of any of my watches since my $40 Timex, which lasted me three years.