Worserer

I never had heard of free apps of the kind before, so I installed it for a quick tour.

I was instantly blown away by the smart idea behind the app. It’s a multi-agent beast where all users report instantly the traffic conditions through their phones. They can either report explicitly or just by signaling their speed via the built-in “GPS” capabilities of the iPhone.

I didn’t catch as much the vibe of the community behind it, but it looks like there are contests and social experiences you can try out. I could potentially relate to other drivers stuck in traffic like me, or get prizes for using the app regularly.

An other smart thing ; you can report occurrences (accidents, traffic) by pressing big buttons. The minute you switch to a keyboard, the application will stop you if you are driving.

I think congratulations are in order for Mr Stallman and his staff for sharing one of his interests: parrots. On one hand, it made half the web snicker ; on the other hand, it triggered a series of posts by well read bloggers who deeply care about free expression.

While I believe that it probably wasn’t the goal, this post reinforced Mr Stallman’s persona and other parts of his message (the distinction between Linux and GNU/Linux) were further distilled on the web, maybe reaching further.

Sincere congratulations, this is very good PR. I admire that Mr Stallman shared this personal trait with the world. I hope to hear more about parrots – why are they fascinating and what can we learn from them ?

Following on my previous post, I wrapped the code behind a minimalistic Sinatra app, deployed with Passenger and Nginx.

Try it out below: the page uses the HTML5 audio tag, and oh boy this thing is just pure joy, all the controls show automagically :)