Archive for the 'Asides' Category

Effortless Good

March 5th, 2008

Effortless Good is a fantastic idea and great extension. Simply, Amazon runs an affiliate system which gives webmasters a fee for every purchase they refer. Effortless Good is a Firefox extension adds a referral code to when you visit Amazon so that the referral fee is collected and then split between four causes: the Rainforest Alliance, Save the Children, Grameen Foundation and the Participatory Culture Foundation. A fantastic idea and some great causes too (although I’m not too sure about the last one)

MySpace Platform launching next week

March 5th, 2008

The MySpace Platform is launching Thursday March 13th. Myspace applications are launching using OpenSocial 0.6.

I don’t even use Myspace any more but it was really interesting to log on the other day and to see some of the new features MySpace has added such as tagged photos, notification pages on the front page and of course, now applications. Facebook certainly revolutionised the social web.

Skip Facebook Forced Invites

March 3rd, 2008

A bookmarklet allowing you to skip forced invites on Facebook. Fantastic, saves you time and saves you from having to spam your friends. But I’ve found that applications which force you to invite people generally aren’t worth the time anyway. Best thing is to uninstall it immediately but sometimes they dump these on you after you spend 30 minutes answering a quiz.

Cyber Warfare

March 3rd, 2008

Just a few musings:

  • if a country launches a cyber-attack on another country is it considered a declaration of war? A cyber-attack could arguably have more damage than conventional weapons: it could take electricity and security systems offline which could endanger lives.
  • Is a country attacked by electronic means allowed to respond using conventional bombs?
  • Given the amount of danger a cyber-attack could cause, should it be added to the list of prohibited weapons which currently include biological, chemical and nuclear weapons?

The Great Firewall of China

February 24th, 2008

There’s a fantastic article over at The Atlantic about the great firewall of China. And in October, Wired talked about why the great firewall is misguided and ultimately futile. A really interesting read. And my apologies to my readers in China who probably won’t be able to access my blog for the next few days…

Monopoly Movie

February 21st, 2008

Universal have purchased the rights to produce a movie based on the game Monopoly. Monopoly is iconic for sure; some people try to run the Monopoly board in London, visiting every place on the board. But how can you make a movie out of it?

Brain Control Headset

February 20th, 2008

This is really cool. A headset is going on sale later this year which interprets your thoughts to allow you to control games. It uses EEG technology and the headset will cost $299. Just add a virtual reality system and we get the brain in a vat argument again.

147 spams

February 19th, 2008

In the 24 hours this install of Wordpress has been running, the blog has received 147 pieces of spam. A few bits of spam were even made before I even finished installing the application. Thank the lord for Akismet.

Facebook Degree

February 18th, 2008

The National University of Singapore is offering classes in Facebook Development. “We had 80+ applicants for the course, but because we have limited teaching resources, we only offered places to 55 students”

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