Really I don’t know why?!

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Here it is in all it’s glory, now no longer featuring my 3 year old daughter as David and I both concurred it looked like she was being held for ransom.

It is literally a teaser, Qajack is teasing me.

Full disclaimer I’M BIASED, but it’s going to be a game changer, fusing information exchange and search with game play and social networking.

We’re days away from internal testing, now video has been implemented and then weeks away from opening it up to beta testers and then, all being well, we’re going to push forward with open beta and encourage everyone to play with what they know, even if it’s just stuff about Britney, Brangelina, TomKat and Pocks (I made that one up, Posh n’ Becks?).

Thanks to everyone who contributed video.

Qajack - The Teaser from David Okuniev on Vimeo.

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Yup a serious article about serious issues from someone who has started to take themselves more seriously.

In an effort to expand my mental capacity and endeavor to devise applications for the humanitarian aid / NGO community I’ve been reading up on just what a mobile phone can offer to sustainable digital development in the Developing World.

Via Jon Thompson’s fantastic Aid Worker Daily I bring you the top 5 technologies for the developing world: Read the rest of this entry »

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Less Jack Sparrow more speed boat, AK-47 toting desperados, how piracy has changed from it’s toothless rogue image to modern day grand larceny on the high seas.

Thank insurance bonds for the Live Piracy Map then:

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Data visualization, is it wrong to love it so much and can I get help?

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I never thought I’d be posting a video by Hale and Pace, but being a Yorkshireman, this makes absolute sense:

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If it’s good enough for Will Ferrel with his viral smash (is that technically an epidemic?), The Landlord, it’s good enough for me.

This morning I enlisted the help of my 3 year old daughter to help create an intro video for Qajack.

She had to wear a post-it saying: Qajack {Ka-Jack} is gambling with…. She had just used the phrase ‘I’m going to chase down that bong’ at least that’s what it sounded like, so I felt vindicated not upping her pocket money and getting her to participate for free. I mean that’s what Web2.0 is all about?

Qajack has become the thing we think about last thing at night and first thing in the morning. It has started to consume, David, myself and Daniel. We’re a couple of weeks away from private beta and already it’s useful to reflect on the processes involved in it’s creation thus far.

We adopted the 37Signals Getting Real mantra, iterate, iterate, iterate. Qajack has been a 9 month project so far and it’s changed from the signed off templates, with later additions; the users activity feed becomming the hub of the site, the ability to comment on Questions you are participating in. Working out a strategy to win Jacks and perhaps most stereotypically start-upish, decide on the business model!

Daniel claims it came to him in the shower. David called me to say ‘have you read Daniel’s email yet?’, he never calls unless it is exciting, I had thought myself down a pro-version cul-de-sac.

Without revealing too much, because we got to maintain interest for the big launch and hopefully get some traction on Techcrunch by giving them the heads up, it’s ad-based, but it takes contextual advertising to a whole other level, by making the advertising part of the game play.

The problem most start-ups have, that are ad-based is ‘why will people click on the ads?’, sure make it contextual, tick, make it seemlessly fit with the user experience, tick (unless you’re Facebook), make people want to engage with an ad because it will reward them… tick, tick, create a community, which like a search engine is predicated on people looking for answers and thus already in a mind set to engage and explore, tick, tick, A+ straight to Oxbridge for some punting.

I began to approach seed stage financing in April, with hindsight, much too early in the developmental process and since then Qajack has morphed and we have learned from it. Funny money is no longer swishing about in VC land. But strangely that fact makes me think we’re more likely to find the money we need to scale and open up beyond beta. So come January I’ll be handing round the hat and bellowing the application’s unofficial tagline; Play with what you know to all who will listen.

Without irony and just a touch of arrogance, we got something special here.

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Philine sent me this link to a site advertising some groovy new phone that does everything, sure, it looks neat, I want one, it even makes coffee and turns into a harmonic… for several minutes I, cynical, dastardly old I, actually believed this to be true.

A device to end them all.

Instead it turns out to be a no doubt expensively produced high risk (site takes an age to load) viral for Nova Scotia.

There’s an add on the side of London buses running at the moment for some pomegranate juice drink that has the tagline ‘cheat death’, wonderful, get’s your attention - who knew that Pomegranate, natures natural artery cleanser could be such an effective marketing tool?

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(via Beautiful Crime)

Graffiti, character assassination and technology, read it and weep:

Two Ottowa strangers on Facebook:

Me: We saw graffiti by the Ottawa river that read “Sarah Graydon is a whore”. Then we looked you up on Facebook. The end.

Sarah: There’s more then one Sarah Graydon in Ottawa you fucking dick.

Me: Yes.

Sarah: So why did you send me this message? Where was this?

Me: It was under a parkway bridge, down near the river, where I walk my dogs. It was painted on a wall.

I was walking my dogs with my wife and we saw the graffiti. And I said, jokingly, “I wonder who Sarah Graydon is? Maybe I should look her up in the phone book.

More here…

Digg It

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For those of you missing my regular wordly wordy witty musings, I’m working on it! In the meantime…

All the advice you ever needed:

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