Gabriella Coleman, of Triple Canopy, recently penned a fantastic article titled, “Our Weirdness is Free: the logic of Anonymous—online army, agent of chaos, and seeker of justice.” The story is truly a must-read, especially in light of the recent SOPA and PIPA legislation proposals attempting to place potentially crippling restrictions on the world wide web as we know it.

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Here’s a nifty little tip for you Facebook users out there:

Have you ever wanted to get rid of the annoying string of digits that makes up your Facebook profile ID that appears in the address bar?

Simply visit www.facebook.com/username and pick out your ‘vanity plate’ for your personal username or company profile.

I promise you … it’s really that simple! Just do me a favor and select something a little bit more appropriate and professional than StudMuffin27.

This batch of RJS Friday Fun Links focuses on some cool technology on the horizon … and perhaps the worst singer since William Hung.

General Motors is researching a cool project they call “Windows of Opportunity.”  The basic idea is that backseat passengers often get bored, so why not provide them with interactive entertainment via car windows. Receiving help from students at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel, four applications have been created thus far:

Otto, an animated character projected over passing scenery that responds to real-time car performance, weather and landscape. With Otto, passengers can learn about their environment in fun, playful ways.

Foofu, an app that allows passengers to create, explore and discover through finger drawing on window steam.

Spindow, an app that provides its users a peek into other users’ windows around the globe in real time.

Pond, an app that allows passengers to stream and share music with other cars on the road, downloads favorite tracks, and share messages with other passengers on the road.

Perhaps someday in the future, this technology will become reality!

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We want your feedback!

We are in the initial stages of planning our first-ever RJS User Group Conference. We hope to attract a large number of customers for a few days of in-depth product education, training and collaborative idea sharing.

The free conference would be held at RJS headquarters or a nearby hotel this summer or early fall. We would provide a variety of sessions on software best practices, hold interactive product training seminars, and teach you programming tricks and more.

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We weren’t lying when we said RJS had a great 2011. And with an extremely positive outlook for 2012, we’re expanding our headquarters in response to the hiring of new personnel and the need for additional offices and meeting space.

A quick shot of our software development wing currently under construction.

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Last Monday, well-known technology guru John Ghrist penned a great article titled, “Technology Focus: Document Management Searches for an Identity.” Within the article, three document management technology leaders – Gary Langton, CEO and co-founder of Intellichief; Dan Forster, president of InFORM Decisions; and our very own Richard Schoen, president and CTO of RJS Software – were asked to define the differences between document management, content management and records management, pontificate on document management’s future in the IBM i market and, finally, identify the role social media will play in the future of document management.

It’s the final snippet above that I wish to discuss today.

Brrrr! I hope you’re reading this post all bundled up with a fire crackling and a mug of hot cocoa steaming up your glasses (wishful thinking?). Enjoy this week’s RJS Friday Fun Links!

If you’re looking for some winter fun, perhaps a little sledding is in line for the weekend. Just follow this innovative crow’s lead.

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I spent a little time today getting caught up on some security news. Here are three fascinating security reads, I think you’ll enjoy:

Revisiting “Dude, your car’s infected!”

Last March, we posted a story about an article in Motor Trend detailing the interesting proclamation that cars may soon be in need of “McAfee or Norton protection.” Basically, a research team developed a virus called “CarShark” that allowed a car’s computer system to become exploited. Here’s a recent white paper on their findings.

The good news is the attack vectors and vulnerable subsystems are unique by car make and model. Thus, an exploit that makes one car vulnerable doesn’t necessarily cross over to another make or model at this point in time.

However, I believe it is simply a matter of time before the car industry starts implementing standards similar to the computer industry. For example, the computer industry’s ATX form factor standard simplified the assembly process by specifying locations of mounting holes and bus slots. These types of common sense changes could very well see their way into the auto industry as our computer technology becomes more fluid and replicable in all cars. But with a simplified system, comes easier access for a CarShark-like virus to take form.

A Truly Black Friday

After the Thanksgiving holiday, City College of San Francisco discovered their network had been breached. Now what makes this story especially shocking is the hole in the network that caused this breach has been open for over A DECADE. The network was compromised way back in 1999 and was a consistent source of private information for computer criminals in China, Russia and multiple other countries. Private data, including personal banking information was stolen from” tens of thousands of students, faculty and administrators” at the college over the past 12 years.

AT&T Wi-Fi Woes

In April 2010, CNET wrote an article about AT&T phones automatically connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots named “attwifi” without even bothering with username or password. Apparently the Einsteins at AT&T believe no one but AT&T would possibly name their wireless network “attwifi.”

In today’s day and age, this little goof was found and naturally exploited. A fun little blog entry from May 2011 ran an “attwifi impersonation experiment” with surprising results. AT&T still hadn’t eliminated this loophole and a high percentage of AT&T devices still automatically connected.

Imagine my surprise when a co-worker emailed me this last week, clearly illustrating the whole “attwifi” is still unfixed and still being exploited! A person on the above thread who plays around with the “attwifi” loophole allows users to connect to his fake hotspot, however uses a few harmless tools to flip images upside down and/or make them blurry in the hope people notice and start paying attention to what they’re connecting to.

And branching off the concept of altering the look and feel of web pages, check out this video by g0tmi1k of what he can do with Squid scripts. My personal favorite is the ASCII art script.

For those who haven’t yet registered:

Don’t miss my 2012 Kick-Off Webcast – A Big Year ahead for RJS and our Customers on Thursday, February 19th at 11am CST. While RJS had a great 2011, we have even bigger plans in place for a fabulous 2012.

I will be addressing the following topics:

• RJS in the cloud
• Expanding WebForms
• Growing SignHere
• Adding mobile functionality
• Enhancing products with Single Sign-On
• And more…

Register today!

I don’t know about you, but this week was rather long. Clearly the holiday hangover is over and its back to the grind with a vengeance. Reward your hard work with a few RJS Friday Fun Links!

As a marketing professional, I always enjoy seeing the creative concepts other companies and agencies develop. Unfortunately, it seems for every great campaign, there are a dozen terrible ones. Today’s marketing failure comes from North Dakota’s tourism department. Clearly going for a young, metropolitan, boundless entertainment vibe, the fairly simple concept was instead presented as an “offensively sleazy and desperately uncool” mistake.

If you’re looking to change your diet in 2012, I’m sure eating organic is probably on your list. While this is a worthy change to any diet, the cost associated with purchasing fresh produce is often exorbitant. This helpful article from PBS shares “the dirty dozen” fruits and vegetables that should be purchased organically and “the clean fifteen” that are safe to consume in non-organic form.

Finally, The Daily Beast released their list of the most anticipated films of 2012. It looks like an impressive crop, highlighted by The Hunger Games, The Avengers, Rock of Ages, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit and The Great Gatsby, among others.