Remember that famous mosaic portrait of Steve Jobs that Fortune commissioned made from popular Apple products?

Well, a reader of Day Lyon’s Fake Steve blog created this portrait of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from snaps of Microsoft’s most memorable product — the blue screen of death. Check out the detail of Ballmer’s tongue:

This is actually quite astounding. Dear Reader Fraser has created a mosaic using 80 random Windows crash shots to portray Uncle Fester. Below is a detail of the tongue. Click on both to see them in greater detail. The full file is really amazing — we hope to make it available as a download soon so that you can print it out, frame it, give to people you don’t like as a winter solstice holiday present — you get the idea.

For what it’s worth, Fraser says he’ll create a poorly drawn portrait of anyone — just check out his site, PoorlyDrawnPortraits.com. Much love, Fraser. You sick bastard.

In many ways, Pointy Head’s Knocking Live Video is exactly the sort of app Apple likes to march out in parade. The app allows any iPhone user to rap with figurative knuckles on the iPhone of anyone else with the app installed. Once notified via push that someone’s knocking on their handset, Knocking Live Video opens up, streaming live video between both iPhones.

It’s a neat idea: exactly the sort of simple, social and fun communication tool Apple and AT&T like to highlight in their “There’s an app for that” ads… whether or not — in practice — it is just likely to be used as a spontaneous pornographic transmission tool amongst frat bros out birddogging as to transmit video of your kids at the pool to a traveling spouse.

The only problem? Knocking Live Video uses Apple’s private APIs to achieve its live video streaming.

For those unfamiliar with the ebb and wane of Apple’s actually pretty dependable product upgrade cycle, MacRumors‘ Apple Buyer’s Guide is a must–check resource for those looking to buy a new Mac, iPod or iPhone. With a glance, you can see how close any Apple product is to being refreshed, and if you check it now, you’ll see see that the MacBook Pro is only about a month away from getting an update.

So what will change in the next MacBook Pro? The new unibodies are only a year old, so it’s probably nothing much more drastic than a processor update, and not so coincidentally, Intel is planning to launch three new Arrandale-based, 32nm Core i5 and Core i7 mobile processors on January 3rd… just around the time MacBook Pros are historically refreshed.

We start December off with a couple deals on MacBook Pro laptops, including an Apple Store offer from $999. Next we have some price drops on a number of App Store applications for your iPhone or iPod touch. We round out our top trio of deals with Apple iWork ’09 for $55. Along the way, we take a look at Belkin’s iPod start kit and several software deals.

For details on these and many other Apple-related bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the break.

Even if Leander can’t quite figure out how to use it, the multi-touch capable Magic Mouse is quite a stride forward for Mac owners… especially given Apple’s execrable history of making decent mice. Still, no new piece of gear is without its technological problems. No surprise, then, that the Apple support forums have become the petri dish in which isolated Magic Mouse troubleshooting complaints have been allowed to multiply into a wider culture sample of product failure.

Quite new on the App Store is Launchball, a physics game that might look familiar to you if you’ve ever played the London Science Museum‘s online version.

The Museum has ported the web-based Flash game to the iPhone, with some help from Bright AI, and the result is lots of fun.

In an effort to stop campus gadget and computer thefts, New York police are bringing an ID program to the New York University students.

On Thursday afternoon, police will set up an engraving station in a dorm lobby for students to bring their iPods, cell phones and computers. Operation Identification is part of a city-wide police program to ID valuables that was extended to the campus after an ongoing increase in “iCrimes.”

An infrared pen will mark student gadgets with a serial number that will be housed in an NYPD database, allowing police to access a description, model and owner information, should the device be recovered. After items are tagged, police can view the serial number by shining a light on it.

This isn’t the first iPod ID scheme we’ve seen at a school — one New Hampshire high school recently embarked on the same kind of program — but it is the largest. NYU has nearly 55,000 students.

Once again, it’s debatable whether ID-ing gadgets will prevent swiping or if it would be easier if Apple provided some sort of lock-down system after thefts.

What are the chances of an invisible serial number stopping a quick grab of an iPod in a dorm room at the end of a long night?

Via NYU news

It’s Cyber Monday, so there’s a lot of good deals out there today. But these three deals in particular caught our eye:

• Logitech’s Squeezebox Radio — $149 at Amazon. The Squeezebox is a fantastic internet radio that looks and sounds great. It makes it dead easy to listen to thousands of online radio stations. Works great with Macs and Apple Airport networks (full review coming soon).  Normally $199, but on sale at Amazon for $149. This is a good deal. Recommended.
• Samsung 52″ 1080p 120Hz Widescreen LCD HDTV for $1,399 — 52% off at Amazon. Samsung’s big-screen HDTVs are some of the best available right now, but it’s difficult to choose the right one. The company has tons of models with slightly different features. There’s several models exclusive to Best Buy on sale right now, for example, but they tend to be crippled, offering last year’s tech, limited connectivity or slower refresh rates. But the LN52A750 52″ LCD HDTV at Amazon looks like a killer deal. This box is 1080p and has excellent connectivity — four HDMI ports, VGA, component and others, plus two USB (for watching MPEG movies off a thumbdrive). It’s also got a 120Hz refresh rate, which is much better than last year’s 60Hz. And it’s 52% off. The LN52A750 is on sale at Amazon for $1,399.99 with free shipping (that’s a $1,500.00 saving).
• Dell Inspiron Mini 10v — $279 at Dell Home. When it comes to netbook Hackintoshes, Dell’s Mini 10v is your best option. It’s a well-made little machine and thanks to new OS X distros, all the hardware works right out of the box (including WiFi). Dell Home offers the Inspiron Mini 10v for $279 with free shipping (that’s $119 off).

We end the month of November with a number of ways to get your Christmas shopping (remember, just 25 days left) off to a good start. iMacs and MacBooks were big sellers on Black Friday and we have them both. First up, 22-inch Core 2 Duo iMacs running at 3.06 GHz. The desktop computers come with 8GB RAM and AppleCare for $1,407. Next is a 13-inch MacBook laptop, running 2.26 GHz with 4GB RAM and 500GB HD for $1,149. Along the way we check out a third-generation iPod touch for $170, Apple’s 2TB Time Capsule for $449 and a new batch of App Store Freebies.

As always, details on these and many other bargains are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump. Good hunting!

Epson should have called the Artisan all-in-one the “Intern” instead — it works that hard to please. It’s up on all the latest technology, surprises with nifty tricks; and while it isn’t exactly cheap, for what it does it’s a bargain. And unlike that sloppy, kind of half-working old printer with coffee-stained teeth you hired ages ago, Epson’s new beauty is snappily dressed, fast and reliable.