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Have you ever been playing a video game and thought “Gee, I bet I could be a British Spy?” Well then, most likely you were playing a James Bond game. Apparently, though the surveillance arm of British intelligence thinks there are a bunch of gamers out there who would make good spies.
USA Today reports that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will be placing in-game ads in to certain games to attract candidates to fill their positions. The ads will be placed online in games like Need for Speed, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Splinter Cell (Splinter Cell being the only spying game of the bunch) on billboards within the game atmosphere.
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It’s been a good long while since we have had really ridiculous product to mock discuss here.
Today though is just a jackpot of a day where we have come across not one, but two totally different products worthy of being called out for this distinction.
First up we have Phone Fingers. “What’s a Phone Finger?” you ask (and I’m glad you did). A Phone Finger is, essentially, a condom for your finger. Made of very thin durable latex, you just roll it up your index finger and you’re protected.
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In the last two weeks Radiohead has been making a ton of news with the release of their new album In Rainbows. There has been a ton of hype surrounding it, as one of the most popular bands around decided to release their newest album directly over the internet and allowed customers to pay what they wanted for it. You may have read about it in one of my previous posts (1, 2).
Anyway, on Wednesday the album was released, folks could go online to the Radiohead website and download the album for what ever price they chose (including $0.00) or they could purchase a $80.00 box set that would ship in December with some special stuff included, making this the first album released by a super-major band without the help of a major label.
Well, apparently that was all a load of hooey. According to the Financial Times: “Radiohead’s much-debated decision to let fans choose what they pay for its new album online is a promotional tactic to boost sales of compact discs, the band’s management said yesterday.” Yes, they released a version of the album online to promote sales of the actual album. There are actually a number of things in this article that annoyed me to some extent or just plain pissed me off. Let’s look at a few of them, shall we:
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Yes I Wrote about a week ago that the Radiohead album was coming out today and that it would only be available on their website and that it was a pay what you want deal (that would be here).
Well it comes as no surprise to anyone that it came out today and their site was so flooded with people trying to download it. After 6 hours of trying I was finally able to get through (there was a bit of a disconnect between items actually getting into my “basket” so I couldn’t “pay”).
When I did get through though it was easy as pie. Put the disc in my basket, clicked on checkout, created an account and paid $0.00. The website then gave me a link to download a zip file (I am on a T1 connection, the 48.8 zip file took less then 1 minute to download) which I opened, copied into iTunes and now have the pleasure of listening too.
While it doesn’t surprise me too much that the site was excessively slow today, it does surprise me that there wasn’t more planning ahead for such network slow down. Billed time and time again as the most popular band in the word you would think Radiohead would have significantly beefed up its servers for this release. I’d have no complaints if this were the direction music releases were to go in.
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Travelex took a bold step into the future the other day and announced that they have developed currency for use in space. An interesting step, since we currently don’t have any commercial space flights, but with companies like Virgin working on developing commercial space flights (and I believe already selling tickets for them) and a Spaceport being built in New Mexico, this currency could meet a demand that hasn’t yet sprung into being.
The Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (QUID) was developed to answer the problems of using our current currency in space According to Professor George Fraser from the University of Leicester:
“None of the existing payment systems we use on earth – like cash, credit or debit cards – could be used in space for a variety of different reasons. Anything with sharp edges, like coins, would be a risk to astronauts while the chips and magnetic strips used in our cards on Earth would be damaged beyond repair by cosmic radiation. What’s more, because of the distances involved, it is more than 230,000 miles from the Earth to the moon, chip and pin technology is also out of the question.”
So to solve this we have an all new currency. 1 QUID will be equal to £6.25 or $12.5. Travelex predicts that by 2050 there will be tourist trips to the moon and has already requested to open the first currency exchange location there. I guess which such advanced planning they will be the number one space travel currency converter.