Month: April 2007

• Livecontacts – Know where your friends are!
  European social friend finder type application
  (tags: geo locative location mobile tools mososo)

• UJS Rails Plugin—Unobtrusive Javascript for Ruby On Rails
  Cleaner looking Javascript for Rails.
  (tags: rails ruby software Javascript js library plugin)
• vexxblog » ffmpeg-php
  Great tutorial on how to setup FFMPEG for use with PHP
  (tags: howto tutorial video ffmpeg php code reference)
• UCSC Engineering Building Attacked by Giant Gorilla
  Donkey Kong rendered in Post-it Notes.
  (tags: donkey_kong post-its art fun awesome games nintendo videogames retro pixel)

• Cellswapper.com Get out of your cell phone contract – mobile contract – wireless contract
  Hmm.. this sounds strangely like that business idea Cameron was floating at lunch the other day, only less elite…
  (tags: business cellphones swap deals shopping useful could_probably_come_in_handy_soon)
• Arby’s – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  So now I know why Raffel is a vegetarian.
  (tags: the_truth_comes_out restaurant history)
• Random Stuff
  OMG. Making pancakes with narcotics. Possibly the funniest and potentially most dangerous little flapjack I’ve ever seen.
  (tags: awesome blogs weird food funny drugs pancakes cooking_with_class_As)
• My Reel Ugo Nonis
  Click on on the Eyeball Power reel. So funny.
  (tags: animation design designer graphics illustration so_funny_you_will_pee)
• Quiksilver Pro Africa
  WAP site for Quicksilver surfing event in South Africa. May even feature live video next week…
  (tags: wap mobile mobileappdesign mobileui mobileweb mobi video virginmobile)

While casually leaping on the trampoline of knowledge that is Wikipedia, I came across a few interesting nuggets – Acxiom, the company that provides a number of firms with business information, including Yelp, was a nominee for the 2005 Big Brother Award in the US. The award is intended to draw attention to alarming issues in society, particularly with regards to privacy and data security.

The “prize” is given annually to authorities, companies, organizations, and individuals that have done the most to threaten or violate people’s privacy, or that have disclosed people’s personal data to third parties.

I love the idea of holding a black tie affair for the Oscars of Infamy, or the Grammy’s of Information Security Gaffes, or the Orwell’s as they’re known in Australia,  as I think these issues deserve to get a great deal more publicity, attention and debate than they currently do. Unfortunately, they do remind me slightly of the mock ad industry award the Schmios (spoofing the Clios… geddit?) – although those seemed to me to be less about drawing attention and encouraging debate about a particular issue and more about the ceremony which provides a temporary soap box for people to mouth off about the current scandal du jour.

Sadly, the Big Brother Awards seem to have missed handing out an award last year in the US (too many nominees perhaps?), but previous winners included Sony-BMG (Netherlands,2006), Accenture (US, 2005) , Brittan Elementary School(US,2005 ,for RFID tagging of students) and Philips (Germany, 2006, for ensuring that CD burners create unique signatures allowing for traceability of recordable media similar to printer codes). Let’s hope these awards don’t die out and manage to achieve a higher level of credibility and visibility in the years ahead.

• Hardware:AGPS – OpenMoko
  Great FAQ on AGPS + DGPS, also includes fun facts like how the US defines accurate GPS devices as munitions. Hmmm..
  (tags: gps geo opensource openmoko faq reference mobile)