Misc

Getting an iOffer from Apple

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
iOffer - How Apple do job offers

iOffer - How Apple do job offers

Ever wondered what it would be like to get a job offer from one of the most highly regarded companies in Silicon Valley? Well one blogger, Twisted founder Glyph Lefkowitz, was lucky enough to get one. And as all good bloggers should do, promptly posted an Engadget style ‘unboxing’. Commenting on things like the “hinge tension” and the “tab style navigation”, Apple can be sure that they have hired another disciple obsessed with the same attention to detail as The Lord Jobs Himself.

Read this, then go get yourself a job! Slacker.

Tories fail to do an ‘Obama’ online

Monday, October 5th, 2009
Barack Obama and David Cameron discuss their favourite LOLCATS

Barack Obama and David Cameron discuss their favourite LOLCATS

‘Oooh Barack, I wanna be like you. I love you. Oh please let some of your cool-ness rub off on me.’ Bleurgh. Jumping on the social networking bandwagon, The Conservatives in the run-up to the assumed general election next year, have just relaunched their new website which according to The Guardian is based on the model used by the Obama campaign in the the U.S. presidential elections last year.

myconservatives.com

However, they fail to report on how much of a pale imitation of the my.barakobama.com site actually is. On Friday when the story dropped, the site was down, great start. Looking a little closer it becomes apparent just how bland, boring and desperate it seems compared to the strong and confident online style seen by the Obama campaign team.

obamasite

I’m going to party, like it’s… a Windows 7 party

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Not satisfied with creating the worst operating system ever, Microsoft seem set to do the same in advertising. I do hope they are being ironic in this Microsoft 7 ‘Party’ advert.

Why yes I will go to the website and download an activity sheet for me and my demographically engineered group of friends to get involved in. Let’s hope it consists of drink, drugs and fucking cause that is sure as hell going to be a lot more fun than installing a dubious operating system.

Parodies are coming in thick and fast.

Rise of the machines

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Yet more indications of humanity’s impending destruction at the cold mechanised hands of killer robots have surfaced over the last few days.

They’re already outdoing us at athletic feats: Darpa has funded a robot which can leap over obstacles more than 7.5m high thanks to a piston-actuated “leg”, while Sandia National Laboratories has been showing off some grasshopper inspired mechanical critters of their own.

Soon, even your favourite drinking den won’t be safe, thanks to Deep Green, a pool playing robot which is already “better-than-amateur level” (check out the link for some cool augmented reality stuff too).

There is some slight consolation in that even your average couch dweller could probably still run rings around Hajime Sakamoto‘s football playing robot. Still, it’s probably only a matter of time until he achieves his dream of “building Gundam” though

To avoid a premature and painful death dished out by a blood thirsty automaton hell-bent on eliminating the human race, you could always shack up with one first, after all, David Levy thinks shagbots are just round the corner.

Google.gov?

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Obama Google

Yesterday, the U.S. Government federal chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, launched a new website called Apps.gov that enabled the purchase and implementation of cloud computing services for government departments for cost cutting/energy saving.

Google’s founder, Sergey Brin, was so excited about it that he drove all the way to the launch to announce that he would dedicate vast chunks of Google’s servers to enable the Obama administration to achieve it’s goal of modernizing the government’s information technology systems.

Just in the same way the relationship between church and the state in the UK is slightly dubious, with the head of state also being the head of the Church of England. The same could be said about the new relationship in the U.S. between Google and their government.

What Google will get out of this, in affect sale of Government data, is a scary thought for the population of the states. While cloud computing has it’s benefits for simple low level information, the fact that it may get it’s hands on medical records and tax information, is scary.

So now it knows where you live, that you have persistant diarrhea, and that you may be interested in not paying your taxes. Great.

Found via

BREAKING NEWS! Pigs may fly!

Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Image of rat flying, pigs to follow!

Image of rat flying, pigs to follow!

Yep that’s right, you heard it here first (well courtesy of Gizmodo)! NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have created a room temperature anti-gravity field that is capable of lifting small animals.

First on their list, although we cannot quote on this, is to make pigs fly, then to start work on something we have all craved since Back to the Future II, a Hover Board!

101 Uses for Social Media

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
Gina Ricobene and friends, need we say any more?

Gina Ricobene and friends, need we say any more?

#1 – Debt collecting via the daughter’s MySpace page

Don’t mess with JPMorgan if you miss your car loan repayments, as they seem to hire a debt collecting agency that target defaulters children. Financial Times’ Alphaville Blog is reporting that the firm had been looking for James Ricobene after he missed a few payments, but seem to have stumbled on his daughters MySpace page while trawling the internet for leads. Seizing on the opportunity of social media savvy yoof, they posted this friendly message…

We have been retained by, JPMorgan Chase Bank, to locate and repossess their missing collateral a 2007 Mercedes GL 450.

Please contact our office immediately so we can discuss the peaceful recovery of the collateral. Failure to contact me will result in further action against your father James Ricobene. Failure to comply with this notice of surrender is a class 5 felony and carries a maximum penalty of imprisonment for two years plus all applicable surcharges. You must contact the writer within 5 days to prevent this action from taking place.

Awaiting your immediate response.

Chris Flanagan
Senior investigator

Wow, daddy’s Merc is getting repossessed, that’s credit crunch in Beverly Hills for you. For comedy value Gina’s MySpace pic is below.

Convincing ARguement

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Check out this concept game from Agumented Environments Labs. Really looking forward to where this could go in the future. Imagine it on the streets! Hold up your phone and fire away at a virtual zombie crowd!!!

Introducing the ‘New’ Google!

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Today Google has announced a new (in inverted commas) version of their ridiculously popular search engine. While there is no major change to the user interface, the main work has been done under the hood in three specific areas; size, speed and accuracy. Research carried out by the dedicated team here at The Processor, has noted that the same search on the new Google and the old Google are producing some slightly different results, it is in the speed and quantity of results where there is most change.

A simple search returns similar results, but is delivering 3/4 less results in half the time. So it seems that these changes are more geared toward the power searcher and the developer using the API’s. Is this the first step in Google competing now to keep it’s share of the market? With Wolfram Alpha and Bing entering into the market, perhaps we will see a new flurry of activity from the Big G.

Online Battle Lines Drawn

Friday, August 7th, 2009

So it seems like the Kremlin are now just another government looking to take control over the Netz, with Georgian blogger Cyxymu claiming that Russian authorities were behind the recent Denial Of Service attack on Facebook and Twitter.

Cyxymu who’s real name is Gregory, a 34-year-old economics lecturer, told The Guardian “Maybe it was carried out by ordinary hackers but I’m certain the order came from the Russian government.” This may very well be the case, but the reason behind targeting a relatively unknown blogger remains unclear, is the Kremlin just wanting to show force? Because it seems to have had the opposite effect. (Below a cache of his LiveJournal blog)

LiveJournal cache of Cyxymu account

LiveJournal cache of Cyxymu account

What seems to be coming clear is that more and more the tools that we use on the net are actually being taken seriously enough by governments to make them the target of attacks as well as requests to shift badly timed server maintenance.