US intelligence community to begin social networking site

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

They won’t be able to poke one another or post photos of their drunken one night stands.  Or install widgets that plays games or sends virtual Winnie The Poohs.  But the US Intelligence community’s “A-Space”, the ‘Facebook and YouTube for Spies’ which is about to begin, will be hopefully able to better co-ordinate the fight against terrorism by bringing case officers and analysts closer together to discuss raw material.

Open to 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, A-Space will have opinions and raw intelligence gathered from agents out in the field.    A-Space participants will then be able to sift through it, discuss it, and debate it together.   They can even collect “friends” like on any other social network.

Obviously you’ll need the proper security clearance to see certain information and to friend certain people.  The guy at the front desk isn’t going to be able to send a friend request to the director and offer his opinions on raw intel coming in from Iraq!

But if you can’t have a poke, how about a stab?  “Agent Smith has just stabbed you in the back!  Would you like to stab him back?”.   Plus, instead of sending someone a virtual teddy bear, how about sending them a virtual bomb instead?

Then again, we don’t want the spooks to have TOO much fun…..

CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’ – CNN



Friday Evening Fun: Oktapodi

Produced as a graduation project by several students from the “Gobelins” French animation school, Oktapodi is a short computer animated film featuring two young octopus lovers fighting to escape from the hands of a brutal deliveryman. Video after the jump.

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Who are you gonna call? Ghostbusters set for a comeback

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The sight of Harrison Ford running around cracking his whip must have inspired them because now the four original Ghostbusters are set for a comeback, nearly 20 years since they last saved New York from ectoplasmic slime.

Columbia has hired two scriptwriters from the Ricky Gervais sitcom “The Office” to begin writing the script for Ghostbusters 3.   When completed, the four Ghostbusters Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson will be asked to come back and reprise their roles.  Murray and Aykroyd will likely ask for a huge amount of cash.

But it seems questions are already being asked about the likelihood of the film succeeding.   All four men are in their late 50’s or early 60’s.   With bad reviews of Harrison Ford in the Crystal Skull, partly because of Ford’s age, industry watchers and pundits are wondering if movie watchers will warm to 4 old men running around chasing ghosts.

As I mentioned, it’s been 20 years since the last movie.   As with Indiana Jones, have they missed the boat when it comes to making a third movie?   Has the Ghostbusters era come and gone?   What do you think?



Stimuli 3.0: The evolution of conventional lamps

Are you the kind of person who is sometimes so focused on his work that when you start working on your computer during the day, you don’t realize how long you’ve been staring at your screen until everything is dark around you? I know it has happened to me a few times in the past. However, I wasn’t a parent back then. There’s nothing quite like a child to bring you out of that kind of meditative trance.

So for those of you who can still do that kind of thing, you’ll love what designer Chris Natt has come up with: “[Stimuli 3.0 is] a lighting system whose shape and therefore light output sensitively varies inversely with the surrounding natural light intensity. For example, at dusk, illumination gradually increases as natural light recedes. At the heart of this device is a unique 3 axis gear box which enables this subtle alteration of lighting through an attractive and striking change in form of the device.”

Not only is the concept of “Stimuli 3.0” very interesting, but it also looks totally amazing. Additional pictures after the jump.

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Myth: All the best domains are taken

If you’ve been searching for a good domain name for a new site, but are getting depressed because you think all the best ones are already taken, listen to the following video. The fact is, there are still plenty of great domain names laying around, you just have to be a little imaginative.

[Via Self Made Minds]

First Seinfeld + Gates Microsoft Ad is Utterly Pointless

Before saying anything, watch as Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates make total fools of themselves.

Now is it only me, or are you guys also thinking that this is utterly pointless? I know that Microsoft and Mr. Gates are astronomically rich, but they could at least try to spend their money on something that would have the potential of having a positive impact on future customers.

Let’s just hope that the rest of the campaign makes a little more sense than this.

Don’t Trust That iPhone Password

By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Our own Mark O’Neill clued me in to this little gem.  The Register is reporting that the iPhone may not be as secure as once thought.  While the new “enterprise” features are supposedly state of the art, there is an easy hack available to bypass one of the security features in the first version of the firmware.

Some people on the MacRumors forums claim that it is possible to press the Emergency Call key and then double-tap the home key.  This will apparently give hackers access to the phone’s “favorites” section, which, in turn, can be used to enter other parts of the phone, including the browser and the email client.

For the moment, you can go into your general settings and change the “double click on home” option to “home.”  This should prevent the hack.

While this is a obviously a serious misstep for Apple, it is likely they will come out with a fix in the next firmware update.  Even so, for a device that is trying to gain credibility in the business world, little things like this certainly don’t help.

[Image via ModMyiFone]

Artery-Jamming Krispy Kreme Bacon Burgers

Just when you thought that McDonald’s and Burger King’s burgers were the ultimate in unhealthiness, these things appear to prove you wrong:

Yes folks, these are cheeseburgers in which the buns have been replaced by Krispy Kreme donuts. This was apparently served for lunch at Google NYC’s cafeteria to celebrate the birthday of the head of the cafe staff.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go empty the content of my stomach.

Other interesting dishes you might want to take a look at:

[Via Flickr 1 | 2]


[GAS] Cartoon of the day (September 3, 2008)

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The Source of All Spam

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The astonishing promise of DNA folding (Video)

In 2007, Paul Rothemund gave TED a short summary of his specialty, DNA folding. Now he lays out in clear, adundant detail the immense promise of this field — to create tiny machines that assemble themselves.