Cameras Are the New Guns. Don't Leave Home Without One.

Anything you're not happy about? Now with the internet's ability to make anyone look like a douche to 4 billion people, all you need is a compromising photo of your target. Just look at Singapore's own Whine Central, stomp. Intimate youngsters.. angry staff.. kiasu Singaporeans.. the list goes on.

As with regular guns however, it's easy to shoot, but trickier to avoid being shot at. For that I recommend shooting back with your own camera. Someone's got to Watch the Watchmen right?

All the Right Moves: Google

The Japan disaster hit. Whether you like it or not, people will help. It's generosity. It's also building goodwill among the public for better business in the future. On this front, I think Google responded perfectly to the disaster.

It launched its Crisis Response project, which consists of the people finder to help find the missing and a comprehensive Google Map with markings of evacuation zones etc. All this in Google's trademark no frills, easy to understand user interface.

I mean, you're either looking for someone or have information about someone right?

A statistician would say "on our 5 dimensional, 10 point scale, Google increased its 'Caring' score by 1.8 points and its 'Cool' score by 0.7."

My Social Media Post

Twitter doesn't need to know how bad your day was. The people who made it bad, do.

Logging in Securely

I always enjoy reading about hackers and their stories about late night sneaking through the cyber backdoors of some of the world's largest organisations. While it gives me hope that the brilliant mind can still stick it to Big Brother, it also makes me lose faith in well.. cyber security.

Take this excerpt from the book Kingpin by a guy hardly anyone of us would know of. The systematic, large scale stealing of credit card information from restaurant transactions. All he needed was for you to pay with your credit card at a pizza place and he would be able to sell your information to a credit card counterfeiter.

When I bought this T-shirt online with my credit card, I was prepared to have $60 (and the rest of my bank balance) totally disappear. But the cyber gods smiled down, the T-shirt arrived 2 days later, and my bank account was intact.

Even with this vote of confidence, I'm still skeptical of internet security. Unless needed, I will try to keep my private information off the internet completely. But in such an inter-connected world, where signing off at a restaurant could mean signing off your bank balance, really how safe are we?

Yeah right.

Ephemerally Permanent Pt. 2: Forever Mob

On the internet's ability to make everything permanent, the phenomenon of flash mobs it seems, has taken off. On the internet, the flash lasts forever. (+400 points if you spot me!)

Ephemerally Permanent

Technology and the internet can make everything last forever. Artists on the streets have (ab)used this fact to great effect. Pre-internet, generally their work might reach passer bys for a week before being painted over or "buffed" by authorities.

On the internet however, pictures of their work can stay online for as long as they want them to be available to a worldwide audience. And it seems for the authorities in particular, its slightly trickier to paint over something on the internet.

Blogs like Wooster Collective have dedicated themselves to promoting such art, and have gained huge followings from all over the world. On their site, pieces like Joshua Allen Harri's Air Bear (below), a cleverly placed plastic bag that inflates into a bear as air from the subway rushes through it, last forever.

This has totally changed the incentive and nature of street art and graffiti. Artists no longer have to find prominent but dangerous places to paint in order for their work to be seen. All they need now is photographic evidence of their work. I think this has spurred the Street Art movement, and produced some astonishing results.

Banksy (who also did that cheeky take on getting buffed above) has gained worldwide notoriety and his feature film Exit Through the Gift Shop has been nominated for an Oscar.

Get out there. Leave your mark, and the internet let's you live forever.