Nine-year-old Brendan Haas started with an idea, a toy soldier, and a Facebook page. His goal was to trade his toy soldier for a trip to Disney World, not for himself but for the family of a fallen service member.
“We heard about the guy, how he traded a red paper clip up until he got a house and we wanted to do something,” says the Kingston, Mass native. Armed with his soldier and his “A Soldier for a Soldier Facebook page, Brendan began trading items and growing his network until it spanned the nation and he reached his goal: tickets to Disney World, airfare, a stay at the Disney Villas and almost $900 in Disney gift certificates. All that remained was to choose a winner.
“People just posted that they had lost some family members in the war and we put them in the raffle.” +Continue Reading
We may have just received our first major clue in the “What do aliens have to do with Battleship?” mystery. Or at least some insight into the studio marketing minds that cooked up this movie.
Universal has launched a Facebook game that wants to “immerse users in the film using 3D assets, along with sound effects, music and film clips.” Here’s the clue: instead of each player being admiral of his on navy, one player directs a fleet of “alien Regents” and your navy opponent is trying to blow up your spaceships instead of boats. Of course, now it totally makes sense. +Continue Reading
It probably won’t be as much fun as tagging your buddies with a paintball gun, but the Navy is trying to bring the thrill of Capture the Flag to Facebook. The game will run from August 22–26 and you join a team by uploading that team’s banner to your profile picture. You mount attacks by “liking” pictures on your opponents’ pages. Check out full details in the Navy’s press release.
The Social Network, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, really is one of the best movies we’ve seen all year. However, if you’re strapped for time, this news report from Taiwan gives an excellent summary of what you’ll be missing.
If you read the tech blogs, all of them seem to have a dozens of stories alleging that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas and ripped people off when he was creating the site.
Now we get The Social Network, a movie written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and directed by David Fincher (Se7en and Fight Club) and coming in October. Of Facebook’s 500 million users, we expect that approximately 536 of them will pay money to watch this movie.
![Der Gro?mufti von Jerusalem [Amin al Husseini] bei den bosnischen Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS. Der Gro?mufti ist auf dem Truppenubungsplatz ein[getroffen] und schreitet die Front der angetretenen Freiwilligen mit erhobenem Arm ab.](http://images-undertheradar.military.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/nazicollaborators300.jpg)
Under the Radar is commentary. We don’t report the news; we offer our take on what happened.
