Canada Has Its Very Own Version of the AT&T vs. Verizon Ad Lawsuit Telus and Rogers are sworn enemies in the Canadian wireless carrier arena, sort of like AT&T and Verizon but on a much more quaint, socialist and cold scale. And like our own two big dogs, Telus and Rogers have been at each others’ throats recently about advertisements—Rogers has ads claiming it’s “Canada’s most reliable network” and that its speeds are twice as fast as any other network. Telus hit back, claiming it’s not true (Telus did after all just launch a 21Mbps HSPA network) and Canadian courts actually forced Rogers to pull the offending ads, an interesting twist on the lawsuit pattern we Americans pioneered. Anyway, I know we’re going to be crushed in the comments with high-larious anti-Canadian jabs, so let me pre-empt:

Igloo, cold, eh, hockey, The Arcade Fire, Bob and Dave MacKenzie, Pamela Anderson, who cares. [Boy Genius Report]

CollegeHumor Tackles Modern Warfare 2 (With Bonus Giz Appearance) CollegeHumor just posted a video in which comedy nerds play (and are subsequently killed during) Modern Warfare 2, with a bonus appearance by our own Adam Frucci. I can exclusively report that Adam Frucci is a very old man who is several years removed from college, but the video’s pretty funny despite this factual error. Discussed within: MW2’s similarity to Crash Bandicoot, Dick Cheney quotes, a tax-funded sequel to Psychonauts, and why the glamorization of war is awesome. [CollegeHumor]

LG BL4 Gets Christmas Edition You know, in America, Christmas editions are usually red and green, but in South Korea, it looks like they hang black tinsel on gold trees, because the LG BL40 Christmas edition is decked out in those colours. It’s a small upgrade from the original BL40, with an 8MP camera (up from 5MP, though who knows if it’s any better), a fancy case and entry into a contest with lots of prizes. It’s in Remainders because only those black-and-gold-loving South Koreans can get their hands on it so far. [Engadget]

VUDU Adds Wikipedia, Possibly the World’s Most Boring Update VUDU is a pretty nice media service, built into set-top boxes and TVs and offering nice 1080p streaming, and adds to its repertoire Wikipedia integration. It’s previously added Rotten Tomatoes, which is a little more obvious (and dare we say useful), and I personally might prefer IMDB rather than scrolling through prose paragraphs on my TV in Wikipedia, but it’s good that Vudu is constantly updating its product. If you have to ask why it’s in remainders, you probably haven’t read this far: Vudu, Wikipedia, snore. [Engadget]

Senseaware is going to be using these sensors in the medical transport field, who distribute organs on a regular basis, and offer it as a simple drop-in addition to the package. How this affects you is that FedEx is working on lowering the price so that not-so-essential packages can also get the same detailed tracking. [Fast Company]

Remote Fetch: Ball chasing is very good exercise for pooches, even if it can cause obsession and anti-social tendencies that will result in thousands of dollars in dog therapy. Capable of being remote triggered at 7- or 15-second intervals, or just automatically throwing balls your dog drops in the bucket, it might be worth the trouble. Think of it as the equivalent of a video game for a dog. $299 from godog.com.au [GoDogGo!]

Hotdoll:Ugh! Someone actually went and turned the hotdoll dog sex-doll concept into an actual product. The doll has a silicon… nevermind. We had one at Gizmodo Gallery and one owner brought one in to see if their dog – that loves humping – would hump it. He did not. I guess just like real people, it takes a flexible sexual orientation to find comfort in inanimate figurines. Price TBD [Hotdoll on Giz]

Indiana Jones and Star Wars Dog Costumes: Remember when Indiana Jones shot that guy with the swords in Temple of Doom? What if, no, listen, wait, what if Harrison Ford was a dog and in that scene and, instead of shooting the assassin, he used teeth! And, like in Star Wars, instead of light sabres, they had swords made of bones. Oh man, hilarious! Earnestly, these costumes are the only items on this list you should legitimately buy for your dogs. Roughly $US14 each. [SpoiledRottenDoggies]

Autofetch Motion Pet Ball: It looks like the famous Super Happy Fun Ball* from Saturday Night Live sketches in the ’90s, and although not radioactive, the Autofetch ball acts freakishly similar. The motorised dog toy takes a cookie and then spins around, wildly, until the batteries go out, or your dog goes insane and crushes the life out of it. Recommended! *Do not taunt! $US27 for two. [Autofetch]

Bissell SpotBot Pet: Puppy training is basically like potty training a kid, except your whole apartment is the nappy. Here we have a steam cleaner that sprays cleaning solution to the mess on your carpet, a rotating brush that scrubs while the vacuuming action drinks – sorry, that may have not been the best choice of word – up the dirty water, storing it in a reservoir for disposal later. Basically, it’s an automatic poop/vomit/pee cleaner. $US140 [Bissell]

Catgenie: Look, I know I said this whole list is a bunch of things you shouldn’t buy, but this is the one you should especially not buy: CatGenie is basically an automatic litterbox that takes 45 minute to cycle out the poop. Until humans engineer smarter pets that can be potty trained, there is no tech that can avoid domestic animal excrement handling. $US329 [Catgenie review]

Sleepypod Air: This is a travel bag for little animals. What makes it different from other bags is that it has special deceptive fold-in panels that squash your animal while going through security checkpoints, so no-one can tell you your bag is too big. (Don’t worry, I don’t think it’ll kill your cat.) Then, after you board, it expands a few inches but fits under a chair. It also has a slot for slipping through a rolling luggage handle, so the bag can rest on top, and has seatbelt clips for placing it in car seats. $US150 [Sleepypod Air]

The Hydroglass: For those who believe fish are pets, even though you can’t hug them, I’d find it hard to believe you could do better than this fish tank, which has a seven-head horizontal shower on top. $US14,500 [Hydroglass]

Don’t forget to recommend your own favourite pet gifts in the comments.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favourite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We’ll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

The New York Observer reports that the company formed by publishing’s Superfriends – perhaps Legion of Doom is more appropriate – will format and publish rags that “work across multiple digital platforms, whether the iPhone, the BlackBerry or countless other digital devices”, though they’re not developing their own reader hardware.

Which is where it gets a little sticky, says one of the Observer’s sources: “The really, really hard part is that you’ve got so many different kinds of devices running on different operating systems. And how do you handle that? The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer. When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want.”

In one sense, the venture will be very much like Hulu – a separate company from the publishers, run by Time’s John Squires, who’s been behind the whole initiative, as All Things D originally reported. It’s like Hulu for another reason, in that it’s more like a disjointed confederation whose motto is hanging together or hanging separately since every publisher clearly rolling their own, separate gambit as well: We’ve got the tabletised version of Wired (Conde); Hearst was planning its very own ereader at one point; and Time too.

It feels like the early, disjointed days of digital music, at best. There’s a good chance stuff you buy now (well, soon) isn’t going to work forever. Time’s thing. Maybe Apple’s thing. Some kind of Adobe formatted thing. Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s thing. One of them will stick and we’ll have our digital magazines preserving an old print format in a digital way – hey, the publishing industry might even save itself – but I’m just going to cower in a corner with free stuff in my web browser until this all gets sorted out. [Observer]

It also gets a native PDF reader, previously only found in the Kindle DX. The total battery life for the international version measures at seven days with wireless on (up from four days), and two weeks with wireless off (same as before).

It looks like Amazon just improved the wireless usage, which might have come as a result from switching from using Sprint as the provider to AT&T as a provider? Probably not, seeing as previous Kindle users also get the 85 per cent battery life from a firmware upgrade delivered automatically. PDF support comes over OTA upgrade as well, but no timeframe was announced for either. [Press Release]

Kill-A-Watt’s latest version lets you see three stats at once: the current voltage, elapsed time and cumulative use (which has an unfortunate abbreviation). You also get the programmable functionality, letting you set up unique times for each day of the week and 96 on/off settings per day. It’s also a surge protector, which I’m not sure the old one had.

You’ll have to pay $US70 for this updated version, which still only supports one outlet at once, as opposed to the $US10-$20 that you can get the original for. [ThinkGeek]

Each stun, of about 110 volts, delivers a shock that immediately and effectively disables the lobster’s nervous system, allowing you to brain-stab or boil with no fear that you’ll be going to some sort of hell presided over by giant lobsters in which you’re boiled alive and served with a delicious lemon-butter-caper sauce and maybe some kind of side salad, even though you know the lobster that ends up eating you is going to ignore the salad because hello, human! Delicious!

The lobster taser is officially, and disappointingly, called the CrustaStun. Opportunity missed, Lobster Taser Inventors. [MAKE]

Phil Schiller Talks App Approval, Avoids Saying Much of Anything
There are lots of legitimate concerns about Apple’s app approval (app!) policy, and in a recent profile in BusinessWeek, Senior VP Phil Schiller goes out of his way to not respond to any of them. Yes, we understand that there are legitimate reasons for having an extensive approval process, and we even appreciate the complication-free results. But Schiller neglected to respond to any of the real problems with the process, like, say, the Google Voice ban. We’re always interested to hear an Apple higher-up discuss the App Store, but we prefer it when something’s actually said. [Business Week]

Microsoft Reiterates Smackdown on Pirate Xbox Users
In response to Microsoft’s mass banning of Xbox Live users with pirate leanings, said pirates are contemplating hitting them with a class-action lawsuit – but Microsoft doesn’t seem even a little bit scared. MS’s response:

Piracy is illegal and modifying an Xbox 360 is a violation of the Xbox Live Terms of Use. Microsoft is well within its legal rights to ban these users from Xbox Live.

Translation: Hey, you guys down there, you pirate-y types? Cute lawsuit and all, but you ain’t got a chance in hell of winning this.

This winds up in Remainders because the lawsuit is still, as of now, speculative – no such suit has actually been filed. Still, that’s about as big an ice burn as you’re likely to see from the big MS. [Kotaku]

iPhone Magnification Camera Mod Came From the Recycle Bin
Bummed about the iPhone’s lack of zoom? Bummed enough to attach the lid from a pickle jar to the back of your iPhone? Here’s a tutorial for how to create a multi-zoom add-on with items found in your recycle bin and a few lenses pried off deceased cameras. It’s ungainly as hell, and I’m not totally sure the iPhone’s camera is good enough to be worth such effort, but it does seem like it would work and it even has an external flash. And, of course, we’ve seen much dumber mods before. [Instructables via Engadget]

Another Anonymous Netbook/Sleeping Aid Hits Wireless Carrier
Another day, another netbook. AT&T brings the LG X120 10.1-incher Stateside to be sold, subsidise of course, through Radioshack.com and the obviously so much more hip brick-and-mortar version, The Shack. It’ll be sold for $US180 with a two-year contract, which requires a $US60 per month data charge. As far as specs, it’s got a 160GB hard drive, 1GB memory, a 1.6GHz Atom and Windows XP, and in case of emergency will function as a sleeping aid so potent you might never wake up. What I’m saying is, it’s in Remainders because seriously you guys, snore. [Engadget]

The device is called the Violent Elephant Control Gear and is basically a 7kg box that attaches to the hind leg of an elephant. If necessary, it’s triggered by remote and woosh – ziiiip-tied is the elephant. I just hope that the poor thing doesn’t trip as a result and crush someone. [Psyorg via Fast Company]

Photo by Henry Brett

A good pair of in-ear phones: It’s impossible to overstate how valuable these are. Not only do they sound better than your stock earbuds, they dull the chorus of engine sounds, snores, baby cries and not-as-subtle-as-your-seatmate-thinks bean farts nearly as well as those Bose noise-cancelling phones some airlines hand out in first class. Look for the sound-isolating ones.

An iPod Touch: Yeah, I know, another iPod recommendation. Seriously though, perfect travel gadget: Video and music (and podcasts, sweet podcasts!) are travel must-haves, and games are a massive bonus. But what about apps to keep you busy or productive? White noise machines to put you to sleep? Internet access on the off chance your plane has free Wi-Fi? They’re From $268 at the Apple Store.

Timbuk2 Commute 2.0: It’s a solid gear bag, with more than enough space for a laptop, DSLR, various accessories and a phone or two, and it’s TSA compliant, meaning you can leave your laptop halfway inside your bag through airport security for a slightly less terrible experience. A medium-sized one retails for about $US100.

Some juice: Almost every gadget charges by USB nowadays, a habit that the Duracell Instant Charger will happily oblige. It’s most useful as an emergency phone charger, though it’ll work for almost anything. Officeworks sells them for $35.98.

If your travelling giftee is a Man of the World, consider the Kensington International USB Adaptor ($59.95). Here’s the theory: said traveller can plug almost whatever he wants into almost any wall socket, and charge his Duracell portable battery at the same time. MAXIMUM ELECTRICITY!

A stupid neck doughnut pillow: Because they’re awesome and anybody who says they
aren’t hasn’t slept on an airline cushion for eight hours. Plus, they’re cheap and easily found in any shopping centre.

Tethering: It’s a bit nerdy, and you might have some reservations about fiddling with someone else’s phone so much, especially given how sensitive carriers can be to this kind of thing, but if your traveller is aware of the risks, tethering is a wonderful gift. And not just wired or Bluetooth tethering – I’m talking Wi-Fi tethering, MiFi style (and without the extra contract, which would be a terrible gift). For the iPhone, this means a jailbreak. For Android, rooting. For Palm, enabling homebrew. For Windows Mobile, well, it may just be an app download. It can save money and headaches in hotels or airports with paid Wi-Fi, and it’ll be endearingly nerdy. Free!

Those laptop privacy shields: People will think you’re looking at porn if you’re using one of these, no matter how nice your suit is. Avoid, unless your traveller actually wants to look at porn.

Methanol cell chargers: They’re too expensive to recommend now, and it’s difficult to explain to customs how exactly they aren’t a dangerous explosive device. Why don’t you carry a normal battery like a non-scary human? Hmm?

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favourite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We’ll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.