Have you ever wanted to make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich but didn’t want to get out the ole frying pan. Well, your troubles are over. I ran across this exciting new product called Toastbags via popgadget. These little babies make it easy to fry up a yummy grilled cheese sandwich (or any grilled sandwich for that matter) without having to try anything. The Toastbags are reusable bags that you can slip your sandwich into and drop into your toaster without getting sandwich goo all over it. You can buy ‘em here. You can find more info at http://www.toastbags.de/ (not in English).

While waiting to see King Kong the other night, I ran across a new size roll of Mentos at the dollar store. They’re not the tiny mini-rolls, and they’re not as long as the regular size rolls either. It’s a special medium-sized roll for when you’re not in the mood for an entire large roll (that’s never the case for me) and you want a little bit more than the mini-roll. Personally, I think it is a Christmas gift from Mentos to me.

Along the same lines as my last post about Sim City Classic Online, here is an entire virtual Apple IIgs computer that runs through your web browser (again, unfortunately only Internet Explorer). This one has some great old games for the IIgs. And yes, it even includes Oregon Trail.

I can remember playing Sim City on an old Mac Classic in black and white! That’s back when you had to wind up computers before turnign them on! Well, guess what… The Original Sim City is now available (in all its glory) to play on the web. Maxis has made the game available again for free. You need to sign up for an account to play (Unfortunately you also need to be using Internet Explorer)

Another Christmas movie in 30 seconds re-enacted by bunnies…
A Christmas Story with bunnies

And what if A Christmas Story was a horror movie?
It might look a little like this.

Microsoft launched a new feature called “Bird’s Eye View” to their Virtual Earth mapping service. From what I can tell, it provides aerial shots of just a few spots around the country. I have to assume that they’ll be adding more, since the current list of bird’s eye locations is pretty small. This isn’t to be confused with satellite images since those are provided separately across all maps. These views look to be shots from an airplane flying around a few landmarks. They provide rotation around the landmark, but the scrolling is limited to just the small area around it. This new features is still beta, but seems pretty limited at the moment and since these look to be shots from an airplane will be slow to grow outside of a few areas. You can get a similar effect (rotation, full scrolling, etc.) in Google Earth (though not quite as close). It’ll be interesting to watch how far MS takes this service and what features get added.

Altoids has announced the winners of their “Tin Million Uses” contest which challenged people to come up with innovative uses for old Altoids tins. They selected six winners:

• Electronic Musical Instrument
• MP3 Player Case
• Cookie Baking Tin
• Speaker/Headphone Switcher
• Pinhole Camera
• Morse Code Generator

These are all pretty cool I’d also like to see the entries tha didn’t make the cut though. (also coverage on cnet News)