Alek Komarnitsky claimed that his christmas lights were web-controlled. Visitors to his site could turn them on and off, and view their work via a webcam. So people with visions of inducing epileptic seizures in his neighbors were busy clicking away. Alek even took a helicopter ride with a local TV station and showed them the lights on his house madly flashing as thousands of visitors to his site supposedly turned the lights on and off. But an article in today's issue of the Wall Street Journal reveals that the web-controlled christmas lights were just a hoax. The mad flashing seen from the helicopter was caused by his wife operating a remote control in the house, and the webcam images were generated by a computer program, though as Gene points out in the hoax forum, the guy's story about how he rigged up the webcam to simulate activity is so convoluted that one suspects the revelation of a hoax is itself a hoax. I guess that in this case we'll just have to trust the WSJ. This all reminds me of that web-controlled toilet that was popular a few years ago (you could remotely flush it). I can't remember whether or not that too was a hoax and sadly I can't find any links about it either.