Back in the olden days, long before the advent of electric light, our forefathers dreamt of a better place. They dreamt of running hot and cold water in their wash rooms, wireless telegraphy, and the rise of the horseless carriage. They dreamt of threshing machines that could tie down an acre of millet an hour and helioplanes that could transport humans from one place to another in comfort and style. But what was the dream that drove our forefathers to strive for better things, always? What dream sustained them through a Depression and two World Wars? What was the silent prayer they mumbled nightly to the heavens from their pinched and chapped lips? Friends, they dreamt of a website that lets you mix your own trail mix and cereal. And that dream is now a reality.

Mojamix is an online granola manufacturing system. You select your base, then add dried fruit, seeds, and nuts. They package up your foodstuff and send it to your home via first class mail. The average 12-ounce bag costs about $12 and there is the possibility of adding chocolate-covered cashews to the mix. This last part is what clinched it for me.

Come back with me to the turn of the century, about 1996. Your humble narrator was working for campus police at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh, creating FileMaker databases for their police reports. It wasn’t uncommon then to see DOS machines sitting beside Windows 95 machines and the web was a primitive and strange thing. There were only two browsers of note, Netscape and Internet Explorer, and firing either up was neither comfortable or interesting. But, hidden deep behind Netscape’s bland carapace, was Mozilla. When you typed “about:mozilla” in the Netscape address bar, for example, you got:

Here are some stories from this week on CrunchGear:

Japanese company announces Dragon Ball headphones
Toyjector: Cute mini projector to be released in Japan
Choken Bako: Cute Japanese piggy bank

The dawn of the 21st century brought us a problem: we had lots of data, but no real way to bring that data into the real world. We could feasibly lug laptops and phones around, but did they ever do exactly what we needed them to do? Don’t answer that.

Manufacturers, in their wisdom, decided to do something about it and so devices like the Peek – for email – and the CueCat – for nothing – were born. Here’s a look at ten “avatar” gadgets, gadgets that brought a web service into the real world, for better or worse.

Twitterpeek – We should be nicer to the Twitterpeek. This standalone device, designed specifically for Twittering, mirroring our own obsession with the microblogging service and, if anything, we willed it into existence with our collective desires for always on Twitter. Does it work? Eh. Is it a good idea? Eh. Is it for us? Probably not, but what do I know?

Another day, another Android phone. I believe we will soon come to a day when Android phones will be looked at with the same jaundiced eye as, say, the latest LG Chocolate, but since that day hasn’t come, I’ll share a few observations with Verizon’s new $99 Hero-alike, the Eris.

The Eris is basically a mini Hero. It’s slightly thinner and clad in all black and but the Sense UI is in place and all of the things that made the Hero great – responsive OS, apps, and social networking connectivity – are here. One thing lacking, however, is the “latest” version of Android with its superior navigation application and multi-touch.

In this political season, why not talk about the roughest political argument of them all: the real meaning of Apple’s announcement of over 100,000 apps in the app store. Are these apps important because, as Steve Ballmer says, the iPhone doesn’t handle the Internet well? Are these apps a testament to a strong ecosystem? Or are these apps a testament to Apple’s marketing might and the perception that you just might make your millions by selling flashlight app for the Touch.

The announcement, which basically says that there are over 100,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch with some of the true winners – Smule’s I Am T-Pain, for example – getting 10,000 or more downloads a day.

I just got my hands on the the Twitter Peek aka the Tweek and I’m trying to figure out who, specifically, this is for. First, consider this my review: this device is not very good if you’re a Twitter “power user” like myself or anyone else with maybe 100+ followers and a few hundred folks you follow. To be clear, this isn’t quite Peek’s fault as they’re clearly not interested in pleasing folks like you and me. They’re looking for folks from a different aviary, presumably new Twitter users who haven’t quite gotten hooked but are interested in the service enough to stick with it and have $199 burning a hole in their pockets absolutely right now and don’t really follow very many people. If you know any of those people, please send them to Amazon to pick this up.

For the rest of us, this thing is pretty rough. I follow 2104 people and so this thing was buzzing and Tweeting all afternoon until I finally turned it off. Weird batches of tweets would come in, all from one person, for example, or weird messages like “Oh Hey, you’re Tweeting so much! We’re going to try to catch up” or something to that effect. It’s also really slow. You have to click twice to read a Tweet – once to bring up the menu and once to read the Tweet – and scrolling is really bad. And it makes a buzzing and a tweeting noise when tweets come in – which is all the time. And it’s $99 with 6 months free or $199 for life. And it only does Twitter. No email. No texting. I’m really selling this thing, aren’t I?

Happy post-Halloween! Thanks for sending in your costumes and thanks, most of you, for following the rules. That said, I’m proud to show you the 11 best costumes in this line-up, as judged by all of us at CG. I added one extra because we just couldn’t bear to choose between the various Iron Men we saw.

Here’s how to vote:

Here are some stories you might have missed this week on CrunchGear.

All about the Motorola Droid
Helmet radar: coming to a supersoldier near you
Spooky Tesla Radio in a jar

It’s time to put on the Swami hat and predict just what we have in store for 2010 and beyond. Considering all of the movement in the gadget world in the past few months, I’m fairly sure most of this going to be accurate. Given the current status of some of these technologies, it’s hard to prognosticate very far out but there are a few things that have become apparent over the past year, especially the rise of Android and our expectations for the iPad.

Without further ado… the envelope please:

Apple TV -> 27-inch iMac -> Wall Mount for 27-inch iMac

It’s sad but true: Apple doesn’t care about Apple TV. All the real brain power is going to the desktop and laptop and probably onto the iPad. They’ve made it clear with the 27-inch iMac that they can make a high-resolution screen and powerful computer inside of a case the thickness of a college textbook. Who needs a TV, let alone an Apple TV?

The obvious conclusion here is that the 27-inch iMac becomes a real Apple TV. The Mac Mini already makes a great multi-media system and a quick update to FrontRow, now considered abandonware, may make it a great 10-foot interface.

Wait! Before you head off to that weekend costume party, snap yourself in your Halloween costume and enter our First Annual(TM) Halloween Costume Contest.

We’re offering one Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console to the winner of our First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest.

Here’s how to enter.

To repeat, do not upgrade your Apple TV to 3.0 if you’re running hacked ATV plugins like XBox Media Center or Boxee. I’m sure this will be fixed in a matter of days – if not hours – but as of right now it means a ride on the Failboat to Sad Trombone Town. That’s right: this update destroys the only thing that makes Apple TV usable and good.

Also, as an added bonus, Apple TV firmware 3.0 is insignificant. It adds Internet radio to the package and improves the UI. It also adds Genius playlists. My cup, as they say, runneth over.

You can pop through to see a video of me trying to hack my 3.0 Apple TV or you can just take this as a word of warning. More info on hacking Apple TV after the jump.

I was Tweeting with Michael Gartenberg last night about all the great Android games. After all, the Android Marketplace has so many great titles like Civilization Revolution, Canabalt, iShoot, and… oh… wait…

All kidding aside, the reason there is such a dearth of great games has to do with some programming choices in Android itself and it’s a problem that can – and should – be fixed before the Droid comes to market this November.

It’s been years since I let my subscription to Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery lapse. I could barely afford it and, as those Shriners soon found out, I am not actually a surgeon. However, I do enjoy pouring a glass of Old Granddad, sitting down in my favorite chair, and reading up on Snapping Scapula Syndrome or the Three-Dimensional Kinematics of the Rheumatoid Wrist After Partial Arthrodesis. It does a body – and a soul – good.

Thanks to a new online market, DeepDyve, I’m never further than a click away from those relaxing and enlightening scientific papers. The site, launched today, offers full-text search of scientific articles along with 99 cent downloads and a subscription service that allows fans of Clinical Chemistry to read as many stories as they’d like.

One thing that that struck me when I first slid open the Motorola Droid is that the software must have been a non-shipping copy. Historically, when Verizon ships a phone, the stuff in the VCast Music Center, VCast Video, VCast Navigation, and VCast Electo Pet Shop – essentially bloatware that masquerades as value added software. Swiping through the Droid menus I found none of that. No widgets offering NFL sports scores, no Apps offering downloadable videos from Lady GaGa, just a clean, clear interface. I know most Android phones don’t ship with much extraneous software (MyTouch, for example) but for Verizon this is a real first.

What does this mean? It means carriers are finally resisting the urge to bling out their phones like NASCAR racers. Without massive branding you get a cleaner experience and although I love the Hero’s Sense UI, the Droid in this pristine state shows us that carriers, and Verizon in particular, has grown up.

Here you are, friends and Romans, the Motorola Droid from Verizon, the phone you’ve been salivating over for the past few months. It’s now sitting quietly on the desk next to me, wondering where you are. The Droid wants you.

After working with the Motorola Cliq and MotoBlur, Motorola’s own operating system, I had high to middling hopes for this phone. Looking at it now I’m happy to report that Verizon finally has an Android phone worth a second look.

Verizon just confirmed that the Moto Droid will arrive next week for $199 with a new, 2-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate. Customers will need a voice plan starting at $39 and a web and email plan for $29 per month.

See our full Droid coverage here and look for a full hands-on later today.

HELLO HUMANS: DROID BY MOTOROLA ARRIVES NEXT WEEK

Verizon Wireless DROID By Motorola: World’s First Smartphone with Android™ 2.0

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – High-speed Web browsing, voice-activated search, customizable large screen, access to thousands of Android applications and hundreds of widgets and the best 3G mobile network in the country: DROID by Motorola arrives on Nov. 6.

Verizon Wireless, the company with the nation’s largest wireless 3G broadband network, and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), a pioneer in the mobile industry, today unveiled DROID by Motorola, the first smartphone powered by Android™ 2.0. DROID by Motorola features the brainpower and breakneck speed of a modern smartphone, designed to outperform where other smartphones fall short.

Peek, the tiny non-smartphone smartphone dedicated to email and messaging, is now available at Blockbuster stores across the nation. Peek buyers will also receive one month free of Blockbuster Total Access, a Netflix-like service that lets you rent DVDs and BR disks by mail or in-store. You can also refer a friend and get a $15 Blockbuster gift card.

The Pronto costs $59.99 with $14.99/month service. The Classic costs $19.99.

“Media insiders” in Australia are reporting that Apple has approached them to produce content for a device “larger than the iPhone.” The Sydney Morning Herald puts another shrimp on the barbie by saying:

Apple has sent specifications of the device to Australian media companies in an effort to sound out whether they would be interested in delivering their content to the tablet. None would speak about the device on the record.

This follows Bill Keller’s offhand remark that the paper was working for content on an “Apple Slate.”

I call bull.

Here’s a look at what happened on CrunchGear this week:

The real life Burger King Windows 7 Whopper is a disgusting joke to humanity
Quick Look: 13.3-inch Acer Timeline
Orchestral movements by LCD light

Every few months we get a press release about some great device from a no-name manufacturer who promises to change the world. One example was the TXTR reader from Germany last January. Another is zzzPhone, a company selling dual-SIM Android powered smartphones from China. Neither company produced much of anything.

Era of the Silicon Valley success story – two guys making something cool in a garage and selling it – is over, at least in hardware. The costs of making consumer electronics, including cellphones and computers, on a small scale have risen so much as to be prohibitive and then the marketing costs of that same hardware is even more prohibitive. Whereas, once, two nerds in a basement could build a computer company I worry that it takes more resources than any one man or woman can muster these days to even approach something like success.

Halloween is coming up and if there’s one thing I know it’s that geeks love Halloween. The opportunity to hide behind a mask, to subvert the status quo, and to dress up like sexy nurse/sexy witch/sexy balloon boy is a cause for celebration. That said, we’re offering one Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console to the winner of our First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest.

Here’s how to enter.

UPDATE – Link fixed.

SeeNow is a cute website that allows you to create those old timey “face-in-hole” pictures so popular at county fairs, hay rides, and correctional facilities.

The concept is simple: you upload, link to, or take a picture of your face and then put it into a series of clever situations or onto the faces of popular celebrities. Step 4? Profit!

Amazon has just made their new Kindle for PC available for pre-order online, a move that turns almost any PC in the entire world into a fully-fledged ereader. The software comes on the heels of all of the big Win7 announcements today evens up the playing fields when it comes to PC-based ereaders.

Amazon has long had the Kindle but Barnes & Noble launched a PC ereader long before Amazon, putting them at a disadvantage. B&N also has versions of their reader for OS X, BlackBerry smartphones, and the iPhone/Touch.

Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards,” which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it’s hard to tell what Nokia’s real problem is here.

Nokia, for example, has a few thousand patents dealing with UMTS alone while this one, #7,599,665, seems to deal specfically with radio hand-off between GSM/EDGE, UMTS, and WiFi.