The results are in folks - the first ever Brighton Munge-off (patent pending) has come and gone and the winners have been announced.

You may want this explained a bit - which is fair enough. We recently took our in-house developed Facemunger application on its first outing to Glug Brighton 2 (a designers' networking event held by Crush and Agency Rush). Here willing gluggers (or glugites? Glugians?) were encouraged to snap photos of themselves with their friends and let the application work its magic to swap their faces. The results were... interesting. The application, created by our Head of New Technology Joe Baskerville, proved to be extremely popular, and with almost 400 images captured that evening alone, going through them to find the ones to share was a tough job (on both the decision-making faculties and, much more prominently, the eyes). But here they are - the best of the best of the Facemunges from Glug Brighton 2.

2010 is billed to be the year of many things: the tablet (if Wired and PC World are correct), the smartphone (going by some analysts and journalists), 3D TV (according to some) and of course, the Tiger (no relation to Apple's OS though I'm afraid). However, with all the hype and speculation, one trend that will be making its public debut in 2010 that has so far been missed by critics and foreseers alike is the new art of facemunging.

Before you recoil in horror trying to dream up the possibilities of what this might be, allow me to elaborate a little. But, in line with the old adage that 'a picture paints a thousand words', allow me to do it with an image. It's not a pretty image by any stretch of the imagination, and for those of you who know Ben or Eleanor personally, this will bear an extra, far more disturbing weight than usual. However, it displays perfectly the power of facemunging. Be warned; what follows is not for the faint of heart.

Ready? This is your last chance to turn back now.

Okay, here goes (but don't say I didn't warn you):

According to the legend that is Mr. Shakin' Stevens, 'Snow is falling all around me'. Not wanting to disappoint Shakin' (as - I have it on good authority - he's known to his friends) we've once again decided to extend this statement to the digital realm with the relaunch of the Infinite Snowflake!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Infinite Snowflake is our way of spreading season's greetings through the ether. Have a look at the page here to design your own flake through our own in-house developed flake-maker. Just draw a pattern you like in the triangle, and our flake-maker will use it to create a beautiful (... or not so beautiful) flake of your own devising. Once it's ready, generate your newly made piece of digital drift and it will get added to the ever-expanding uber-flake, compiled from all the flakes created thus far. You'll also get the chance to add a message of season's greetings should you so wish, and send the flake on for other people to enjoy too.

No, this isn't the new craze in ballroom dancing, nor is it the first attempt at communication with alien beings. It is something altogether more exciting! Bear with me and I'll reveal all...

Thursdays are always a much anticipated day here at Cogapp HQ. It's nothing to do with their proximity to the weekend, nor are any of us fans enough of Thor as to warrant getting excited by a day named after him. No - the fourth working day of the week heralds the arrival of Cake Thursday for all Cogapp kind. At 4 o'clock on this hallowed day, we all gather together for a bit of time over cake, tea and all manner of other delicacies and discuss what we're all getting up to (in between bites of dessert-y delights of course).

However, whether it be due to anarchy or inspiration, our Technical Director Ben suggested that instead of the normal occurrence of informal chats and exchanges, last week's Cake Thursday (yes... I am going to insist that 'cake' be capitalised in this instance) be dedicated to a brief session of Pecha Kucha presentations, cunningly titled Pechapp Cakecha (... see what we did there).

Easter egg hunts are nothing new to the physical or digital world. Whether it was the search for the chocolately goodness I so enjoyed during the springs of my childhood (and adolescence... and teenage years... and last year) or the eternal hunt for the hidden digital gems that plague my time with DVDs, the internet and various other media of recent years, the promise of finding that ever-elusive prize was always of great interest to me.

All right, I'll admit, I might be over selling it just a bit there, but who can say they don't enjoy the occasional easter egg when they stumble across it? My interest in the subject piqued again recently when I stumbled across a pseudo-egg in the BBC iPlayer website. Whilst trying to catch up with some Mock the Week antics, I found myself unable to hear Frankie Boyle's musings on how much he hates, well, everything. On examination, I noticed the iPlayer volume was down, so I went to turn it up (as you do). Lo and behold, on doing this otherwise innocuous task, I found that the iPlayer volume goes up to none other than 11.

Any Spinal Tap fans out there will immediately grasp the relevance of the volume going up to this number. In an infamous scene in the mockumentary 'This is Spinal Tap', guitarist Nigel Tufnel debates with Marty DiBergi the importance of having an amp that goes all the way up to 11 to make it louder, as opposed to just increasing the volume of 10.

The Codeo is a contrary beast; he hibernates all summer long while the students he depends on for his existence bask in the sun instead of in the warm glow of their computers. As he sleeps, he sees strange dreams. Probably something like this: (explore Codeo winners and challenges by clicking the images) What next?

The Internal Blog continues to provide Cogappers with a distillation of the somewhat crude and slippery substance that we know as the World Wide Web.

Yes folks, it's that festive season again, and thoughts naturally turn to 'what application should I use to draw a snowflake?'

Well, for starters, there's Cogapp's own Infinite Snowflake. This allows you to draw a pretty snowflake using our tasteful Christmas colour palette, and to optionally send it as an e-card to your friends.

It's been a while since you were last fed, so you must be hungry for the latest tasty morsels from the smörgåsbord that is the Cogapp Internal Blog (these elaborate analogies are getting harder to think of, ok?).

10 tips for managing a creative environment
Spotted by Gavin.

After coming back from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Gavin spoke to the production team about 10 tips for managing a creative environment by Adaptive Path - a really interesting presentation where they went to talk to a number of different creative groups, looked at how they managed their creative processes and then developed a ‘ten tips’ presentation. You can find it here.

Patients Like Me
Spotted by Gavin.

Also at the New York Conference, this site came up loads:

Patients Like Me is a website that allows users to share experiences, track symptoms and ask advice from others - all specific by condition.  Useful in Cogapp's work with Arthritis Research Campaign, as well as the Kidney Patient Guide.

Following Ian's distillation of our internal blog a few weeks ago, here are some more delicacies we wanted to share with the wider world.