Why Is Utah So Weird And New York So Expensive?

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In politics, perception often trumps reality. Put another way: What people think they know about a politician, an issue or anything else goes a long way to determining how they feel about it — whether or not their initial perception is based in reality or not.

An awesome map reveals what we think about certain states. Married to Google’s autocomplete function for “Why is [fill in the blank state] so…” the map tracks the most common words typed after “so”, and maps the top four auto-completes for each state.

Check out this amazing map.

 

Dikembe Mutumbo Saves The World

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On December 21, 2012 the Mayan calendar ends and many think that calamitous things will happen when it does. Fortunately, our world has a defender: Dikembe Mutumbo!

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Navigate Dikembe Mutumbo through different levels in order to help save the world! The week four adventure is available now, with the next game episode coming December 17, 2012.

 

 

The Adman’s Version Of Lumps Of Coal

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There’s not a lot of joy to the world in BBH New York’s holiday microsite {link no longer active}. It’s mean. It exposes the worst of the ad industry. It’s downright hilarious.

The agency took reader comments from industry blogs AgencySpy, Ads of the World and Campaign Brief and turned them into Christmas cards.

The hook is that they’re some of the nastiest comments you’d imagine, coming from readers who found reason (and time and energy) to undercut their colleagues in the ad industry as creatively as possible.

What makes the whole thing funny is how the comments are presented. The site is visually Christmas cheer from frame to frame, and each comment is calmly read aloud while Christmas music plays in the background.

BBH New York wisely chose not to show the work being critiqued, though in some cases the nastiness extends to new hires at big agencies. It’s possible a little research could turn up who those comments were about.

In some ways creativity in the body is like steam. Sometimes it just needs to vent.

Relive The Year Through Twitter Highlights

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Twitter has again created a visualizer to recap highlights of the past year both from within its network and the world at large. The site began featuring these in 2010, but this year’s is the best yet in terms of presentation, and most comprehensive for what it covers. Twitter is also introducing a novel feature that’s sure to live well into 2013 and beyond. Using third-party app Vizify, the visualizer’s “Your Year on Twitter” feature lets users create an infographic of their Twitter activity over the past year.

Maybe it’s because of all of those Windows 8 ads over the past few months, but there’s a hint of Microsoft’s OS in the site’s interface. It breaks down highlights of the year by category. Click on “Golden Tweets” and there as the headliner is President and First Lady Obama’s unforgettable embrace. Thankfully it looks like the first family didn’t use Instagram to send it out — the photo still works. There’s gamer love in there too, literally. Included is the touching wedding announcement tweet from anime voice talent Kouichi Yamadera and Rie Tanaka.

Believe it or not, Twitter gets news exclusives, and it’s not just Justin Beiber updates. Among two memorable 2012 events on “Only on Twitter,” one was in the heavens, the other in the depths below. JPL used a constant stream of tweets to keep the curious updated on Mars rover Curiosity. James Cameron sent a tweet from his exploration of the Mariana Trench, broadcasting the moment he became the second explorer to reach the bottom of the ocean’s deepest known area.

“Pulse of the Planet” is wonderful recap of just how varied what humankind can care about in a year can be. From the Olympics, the Super Bowl and Euro 2012 to the U.S. election and the defeat of SOPA/PIPA, and even tragedies like Super Storm Sandy, it’s amazing what we can rally around. For better or worse, there’s no sign of the fiasco surrounding the Mass Effect 3 ending.

Speaking of game flame wars, one might expect to see game industry highs and lows under “Trends,” which recaps the year’s top hashtags and followed topics. The only one on the list looks to be Draw Something, which shows up near the bottom of tech trends. Overall a quick peruse of Twitter’s “top” topics in tech, movies, music and even food raises the question of just how much of what trended was driven by negative rather than positive sentiment.

Last, and let’s call it least, Twitter shows us that no matter how late we think we adopted the site, there are those even later to the party. “New Voices” offers shocking revelations of recognizable people who sent their first tweets in 2012. One look at political figures catching on this late, for instance U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and California Senator Dianne Feinstein, and it makes you want to short each and every one of their stocks for the next election. Except Paul Ryan, who’s already delisted.

Source: 2012.Twitter.com

Realize Your Inner Geek

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Looking to learn more about the second season of Comic Book Men and the guys from Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash? Then you’ll want to explore the Comic Book Men Season 2 interactive press kit {link no longer active}. Set up like an online comic book, fans can flip through and check out embedded videos, animated versions of the guys’ comic book alter egos, photos from Season 2, comic book art inspired by the series, bios and more.

 

Your Tweet Is Denied

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The State Department wants to make sure its staff can’t use Twitter to actually “twitter.” The department is seeking new rules that prevent employees from constantly chattering online or making any statements of public record without prior approval. Among proposed guidelines is a two-day period to review tweets by its staffers before they’re posted. Blogs and public speeches would require five days. Long-form works such as books would be in the queue for 30 days.

Citing political blog Diplopundit, the Washington Post says the department may be responding to embarrassing revelations in both a book and an ongoing blog by Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who helped in the Iraq reconstruction effort. Van Buren is no longer with the agency. The legacy of his truth-seeking could be new rules that might be well meaning but have that undeniable air of scary government overreaction. Among changes would be expanding confidentiality from classified information to what the State Department would define as “protected information.” There’s no word yet on whether the proposed rules are implemented.

Source: Washington Post

Make A Meme Out Of What You Really Think

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Newcastle Brown Ale is offering an app called The Subtexter – part of its ongoing “No bollocks” – that lets you expose the more honest subtext behind cliché photos on Facebook.

Turn your subtext into actual text directly on the picture. The Subtexter lets you choose a clichéd category, select a stock photo and cover it, meme style, with impact type and a number of witty captions like “Look, I’m relaxing and bragging” for vacation pics and “I’m at brunch, I hope you wish you were here” for the many budding food photographers.”

 

Super Fans Rise To The Top

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To help celebrate the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy, Square-Enix recently held a contest to find the greatest Final Fantasy Super Fan. To be eligible, fans had to create a 60 second video showcasing how much of a Superfan they are. The content of the video was up to each fan but it could have included their Final Fantasy collection, outfits inspired by a Final Fantasy event they may have organized and attended or how they may have encouraged others to embody Final Fantasy.

Voting is still open, so vote as many times as you’d like for your favorite fan! The winner will be announced on December 10th who will have their name included in the closing credits for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and receive two tickets to THE CELEBRATION FINAL FANTASY 25th Anniversary concert January 12th, in Paris, France!

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YouTube: New Look On The Ground, New Partner In The Air

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If you’ve been to YouTube in the past 24 hours you probably noticed it looks different. The site has launched its second redesign in as many years. According to the site’s blog, the new design is meant to help “find the channels you love and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.”

YouTube has always been good at suggesting content based on videos watched. The new look adds a mechanism to keep promoting channel subscriptions. That’s likely related to the $100 million fund the site and its parent company Google created to help creators develop premium content. YouTube recently reaffirmed their commitment to that fund, renewing many of the shows it helped launch earlier this year.

The new look and functions translate to other platforms as well including mobile, PlayStation 3 and Google TV. Overall it’s a much cleaner setup that makes YouTube’s recommendations “both videos and channels” what visitors primarily see on their home page. A recommended playlist also now stays on the screen even while watching a video. Yet although the feature is meant to encourage browsing with a video playing, it could use an improvement. The playlist doesn’t scroll independently, which means scrolling below the fold moves the video out of view.

Separately, YouTube announced a partnership with Virgin America that brings a selection of its programs to in-flight entertainment for the first time. Starting in mid-December, passengers on Virgin airline flights in the U.S. and Mexico will be able to watch content from YouTube channels H+ The Digital Series, WIGS’ Blue, Geek & Sundry’s Written By a Kid, Crash Course and Barely Political’s The Key of Awesome.