First Show - Flickr, RFID and Top 10 Video Games

Asalaamualaikum,

We covered the following Tools, Trends and Islamic Websites on the Internet.

Tool: Flickr
What is Flickr?
It's a website where you can store, name, edit and tag all of you pictures which you take and do a variety of cool things with them, such as put them into various different albums.
Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Flickr is a way to get your photos to the people who matter to you. With Flickr you can:

• Show off your favorite photos to the world


• Blog the photos you take with a cameraphone


• Securely and privately show photos to your friends and family around the world

Basically, Flickr is what butters the borders between your photos to the people you want to see them.

You can join different groups on Flickr such as the Muslim Cultures Group. Or, you can even start your own group :) For a full introduction into Flickr and how Flickr works, click HERE for more detail into what it's about and how to get started...

The First cool tool for Flickr which I showcased on Wired was Mappr. To use it you do need to first have an account on Flickr.com.

This brilliant tool allows you to see photos taken in different places on a map s ot hat its easy to see where they were taken. It also allows you to search for various "tags" which the pictures might be labelled as. For example, you can search for "sunset" as a tag and it will show you on the map, every sunset photo taken and where in the world it was taken.

Awesome, eh? Well if you want more Brilliant tools for this application, check out the Flickr Services section :)

TRENDS : RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
RFID, as I mentioned on my show, is the latest jump in technology which will have a definite impact on our lives, socially, economically, politically and many other spheres, it will change the entire way in which we live.

RFID is basically a chip with an antenna which can store record and transmit information. The details of how it works and what it does are too much to put onto this blogpost, click HERE, for a detailed account on what RFID is, its applications, how it is currently used, and the controversy around RFID Technology and Privacy.

OTHER TRENDS & TIDBITS
Paranoid Parents - Schoolchildren in Japan have the option of wearing school blazers embedded with GPS satellite tracking technology, so their paranoid parents can track them - or at least their blazers - from their laptops.
Ref: New Scientist (UK)

Smaller social circles - Research by sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University North Carolina (US) has found that Americans have fewer friends. Back in 1985 the average American had three people to talk to about their problems. Now the figure is just two. Reasons include longer working hours, the Internet and mobile phones, all of which reduce face-to-face contact.
Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK)

New idea to beat crime - Police in Stoke-On-Trent in the UK have started doing their office paperwork in fully marked police cars outside the homes of well-known criminals.
Ref: Staffordshire Police (UK)

Word detective: Frisbeeterian
People that believe that playing Frisbee is a religion and that when you die you don't really go to heaven or hell - you just land on a roof and stay there forever.
Ref: Wordspy (US)

Bad predictions #1 - The Paperless Office
In 2002 sales of office paper were 22% higher than in 1999.
Ref: New Scientist (UK)


17% of Sony PlayStation users in the USA are aged over 50. Ref: Observer (UK)

36% of US high-school students believe that the US government should approve news stories prior to publication or broadcast. Ref: Harpers (US)

In 2003, 24 children were named Unique in America but only one was called Xerox. Ref: Sunday Times (UK)

Wearable Technology
This is Brilliant Innovation - clothes which perfectly complement your accessories like your iPod. I won't go into detail but check out these sites for more information...

Levis Redwire DLX Jeans
FitSense Wireless Health Monitoring System
Oakley's O ROKR Blueooth eyewear
iTheatre II - Mobile Video System - already available in South Africa.

ISLAMIC WEBSITES & BLOGS
AerosolArabic.com - An Excellent Islaimc Graffiti Artist, Mohammed Ali, based in the UK. He makes brilliant use Graffiti to spread and communicate Islamic Concepts. His art is Beautiful, Modern and Islamic and he Exhibits his work world-wide.

AlMusawwir.org
A blog that serves as a tribute to Beauty and its Creator, Almusawwir.org's convention is the celebration of the natural aesthetic. Evocative, moody black and white photographic prints present nature and the wilderness in a stark simplicity which takes nothing away from the richness of its splendour.

The word Al-Musawwir is a component of the Asma-ul Husna (the 99 names of Allah) and could be interpreted as "The Bestower of Beautiful Forms". In line with this definition, Almusawwir.org presents artful photographic captures woven with Quranic Aayah and Hadith as textual explanations of the relationship between Beauty and God.

The blog's author explains; "Most of the photographs have been taken in the San Francisco Bay Area, California; an area that is rich in natural, and human made (and plundered) diversity - with the beautiful Pacific Ocean, magnificent Redwoods, and a bay that has shrunk with landfills."

He writes further, "Sheikh Ibn al-Arabi says: "Know that the divine beauty through which God is named "Beautiful," and by which he described Himself in His messenger's words, "He loves beauty," is in all things. There is nothing but beauty, for God created the cosmos only in His form, and He is beautiful. Hence all cosmos is beautiful." … A sound report has come in the Sahih of Muslim from God's Messenger that he said "God is beautiful, and He loves beauty." He is the artisan of the cosmos, and He gave it existence in His form. (The Self Disclosure of God - William Chittick - pp. 28, 29)…Our cosmos is also the social, societical, or people situation/context… And as Islam is a reflection on beauty, and compassion, it is also a call towards a movement of justice. As Fazlur Rahman suggests in his book Health and Medicine in the Islamic tradition (p 13) …" the extraordinary Qur'anic emphasis on monotheism on the one hand and socioeconomic justice and egalitarianism on the other are organically linked — the Qur'an seems to proclaim "one God, one humanity."
Review By Saaleha Bamjee

Wayfarer's Rest - A blog by Talib al-Habib, famous for his "Songs of Innocence" and his performances at the Al-Ansaar Souk in Durban last year. His blog cover, just as his songs do, very deep concepts in Islam as well as his general ponderings on Life. He also responds to requests and questions from commentors, so if you have a question, I'm sure he'll respond :)

PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER FOR AN UPDATE ON Muhammad Junaid Khan's Top 10 Video Games of 2006 across Xbox, Playstation 2 and Playstation Portable Platforms.

Wasalaam.

Muhammad Karim.