Late last year VW ran The Fun Theory Award, one of the winners, a take on speed cameras, is a joy to behold
"..Instead of using a speed camera to detect and fine speeders, a speed camera will register drivers who keep the legal speed limit and give them the chance to win a cash prize of SEK 20,000..."
(Thanks to
Both the competition and the entries themselves, highlight the joy of random play. Humans get bored with process. We might not admit it, but everyone enjoys disruptive behaviours. The best uses of mobile platforms to innovate time saving do just that. You remember surprise not simply job done well.
Actually the other use of this appears to be to counter planned terrorist attacks. Begun in LAX and now rolling out is a software process called ARMOR that randomises the position of patrols and checkpoints within airports. By having armed secuirty popping up in random, places at random times.
"...Developed by computer scientists at the University of Southern California and believed to be the first program of its kind to be used at an airport, ARMOR aims to thwart terror plots during the early, surveillance phase. Typical plots start when would-be attackers begin watching their target "18 months to four years prior to an attack" to look for security weaknesses, says James Butts, deputy executive director of law enforcement at Los Angeles World Airports, which runs LAX and other city-owned airports. "Part of it is to look for patterns in the deployment of assets. We're trying to block the surveillance cycle...."
The more a process or service can surprise, randomly shock the more you'd remember/recommend it, However I do think my mate Jon's idea of minefield hop-scotch maybe going too far.