Okay. This might be considered overkill in some circles to have two stories about the SI Swimsuit Issue. But I wanted to brag on my friend Chris Gibbons excellent Flash design for a project that launched today to promote the joint Sports Illustrated/NBC effort to find the next SI Swimsuit Model. A project I was involved with last year, this time around, it’s been expanded to include a six-part reality series (Wendesdays 8/7 on NBC). Viewers will vote to choose between the last two finalists in a later episode. The Flash treatment here is very slick. And the material isn’t too bad either.

When a company declares that one of it’s guiding pricinples is to ‘not do evil’ in their S1 filing, you would expect that their approach to promoting themselves is going to take a slightly different tact than the usual Fortune 500. To that end, Google has already used the resources of innovative agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the folks behind Burger King’s Subservient Chicken and Method Soap’s ‘Come Clean‘ campaign.

The first work by Crispin was a series of billboards in hi-tech areas of the country seeking job applicants for Google featuring the following statement: “{first prime digit found in consecutive digits of e}.com.”

Anyway, the New York Post is reporting that Google is looking to expand their conventional advertising in light of greater competition from Yahoo and Microsoft. Google nor Crispin would comment.

BBC footage from a second-story balcony in Aceh, Indonesia. This is one of the most compelling videos I’ve seen to date of the wave striking, in a blink of the eye obliterating everything in it’s path. Single story dwellings are swept away, and only two-story buildings seem to be spared. Via Waxy.org.

BoingBoing reports on a remarkable idea to help warn people in remote areas, as in the case of the Christmas Tsunami. ‘Problem: No effective system of mass, international alert existed in South Asia to quickly warn those in harm’s way of the tsunami’s approach.

One approach to a solution, created in the span of about 24 hours by an impromtu volunteer geek corps: A tech system called Alert Retrieval Cache (ARC) which collects, sorts, and routes SMS messages for the puposes of alerts and relay communication. An early warning system based on SMS, short message service.’

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