Group discounts can be a nice thing for both the seller and the customers, but one has to know his limits. A London baker learned that the hard way, when she was forced to bake 102,000 cupcakes, after offering a 75-percent cupcake discount on Groupon.

The discount obviously sounded too good to Grouponers, 8,500 of which signed up to buy 12 cupcakes for £6.50 ($10), down from the standard £26 ($40) price. Rachel Brown, which operates the Need a Cake bakery in London, had no choice but to hire extra workers and try to bake the cupcakes to satisfy the swarming customers.

“Without doubt, it was my worst ever business decision. We had thousands of orders pouring in that really we hadn’t expected to have. A much larger company would have difficulty coping,” said Brown, who lost up to £12,500 ($20,000) on the deal.

“We approach each business with a tailored, individual approach based on the prior history of similar deals,” Groupon’s international communications director Heather Dickinson told the BBC, adding that there was no limit to the number of vouchers that could be sold.

We’ve heard of small businesses having similar experiences before, and many of them aren’t too happy with Groupon. The lesson is clear: Groupon is a business tool like any other. It’s not for everyone, and its use requires careful planning – too large a discount, for example, can have unwanted consequences.

Image credit: Flickr, kristinausk

[via BBC]

More About: baker, cupcake, discount, groupon

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Six months after launch, RIM’s tablet – the BlackBerry PlayBook – still lacks a native email, calendar and contacts application. This is about to change soon, though, judging from a video presentation shown at the BlackBerry Innovation Forum on Wednesday.

The email app has a standard appearance, with a list of messages on the left, a preview pane on the right, and an additional toolbar on the far right.

The calendar also doesn’t stray too far from the norm, but has some nifty features under the hood; for example, on a busy day the calendar date gets bigger, offering a quick overview of your schedule.

Finally, the contacts app is powered by Gist, an app known to many BlackBerry users. It offers a ton of additional info for your contacts, including related news, tweets and blog posts.

Unfortunately, the release date is not exactly around the corner; rumor has it that all of this will launch at February 17.

[via BlackBerry Cool]

More About: blackberry, blackberry playbook, email, playbook, RIM

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: TweepsMap

Quick Pitch: TweepsMap provides a visual, interactive map of your Twitter followers by country, state or city.

Genius Idea: Measures the effectiveness of Twitter campaigns by analyzing the locations of your followers.

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Knowing where your Twitter followers are located can not only feed your curiosity, but it can also help you measure the success of your social campaigns. To do this, TweepsMap links to your Twitter account, analyzes your followers and provides a map or chart that shows where they’re located by country, state or city.

Launched in October, the tool helps Twitter users learn if their campaign is successful in a targeted region. For example, if your Twitter campaign is targeted toward Chicago residents, TweepsMap helps you see how many of your followers are actually located in Chicago.

“One of the most important aspects of a campaign is to measure location to see where your followers are and if they are engaged or not,” says Samir Al-Battran, founder of TweepsMap. “TweepsMap helps you learn whether you need to adjust your campaign to reach your targeted audience.”

After authorizing the TweepsMap API, it generates a color-coded map with Twitter birds spread across it to show the number of followers in that specific location — red birds represent the largest number of followers, and yellow represents the second largest number.

Check out a TweepsMap of Mashable‘s 2.5+ million users:

Mashable’s TweepsMap

The map shows that most of Mashable‘s followers are located in the United States, South America, the United Kingdom and India. TweepsMap also provides the percentages of Mashable‘s followers in three top locations – “44% of mashable’s followers are from #United States, 7% from #United Kingdom & 4% from #New York”.

Users can use the TweepsMap widget to display their own statistics on any website or blog.

“For individual users, TweepsMap is a fun tool to check out the distribution of their followers and share them on Twitter,” says Al-Battran. “For larger organizations, the goal of TweepsMap is to help them measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.”

TweepsMap does not automatically tweet results without the users permission or store personal Twitter account information.

One of the challenges with TweepsMap is that less than 10% of Twitter users do not add accurate locations on their Twitter accounts, says Al-Battran. Most users only add their country or state instead of their residing city. That’s why most of the Twitter birds on the TweetsMap represent the number of followers in a country rather than in a city.

The site now has about daily 1,000 users and Al-Battran plans to expand TweepsMap by launching premium services in the future for larger Twitter accounts.

Where are your Twitter followers located?

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, TweepsMap

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Ads for Toyota’s Prius V appeared over the weekend in Livestand, Yahoo’s new digital reading experience for the iPad. As exclusive sponsor of the new app, Prius has 40 percent share of Livestand ad space during the launch period.

Toyota is using Yahoo’s so-called Living Ad format, designed to grab users with high levels of interactivity, including photography and sequenced videos that use the device’s accelerometer and large canvas. The ads are priced in the $200,000 to $500,000 range for packages that run through Q1 2012, according to Alex Linde, Yahoo’s director of mobile and tablet advertising. He said prices vary according to the look and feel of the ad.

Dionne Colvin, national manager of media for Toyota, said in an email, “This ad unit takes advantage of how users interact and explore with the iPad as opposed to other digital and mobile devices.” He said the novelty of Livestand and the Living Ad will help Toyota make a splash with its car launch.

Unveiled earlier this month, Livestand is a key element in Yahoo’s mobile-centric product strategy. Built using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, it kicked off with 100 general and niche-interest publishing titles. Toyota is joined by another launch sponsor, DreamWorks Pictures film “War Horse.”

In an ad effectiveness study conducted by Yahoo and Ipsos prior to the official launch of Living Ads, users were considerably more likely to interact with a Living Ad for jeans brand Denim & Thread versus a static ad. Forty-four percent of those who saw it had a higher opinion of Denim & Thread after seeing it, versus 36 percent for the static ad.

While the numbers do indicate strong engagement with the ads, advertisers hoping for similar results should plan for a significant production investment. The Denim & Thread Living Ad used assets originally shot in 2010 for a plasma screen “motion poster” format.

Yahoo Livestand

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More About: Yahoo, Yahoo Livestand

Google has shared the dates that several products “which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for,” will be shutting down.

While the company had already announced the end of Google Wave and Google Gears, their respective demises now have specific dates attached. Additionally, Google’s long fogotten Wikipedia competitor — Google Knol — has been added to the chopping block.

Check out the video above for the full list of Google products slated to be retired and let us know which you’ll miss in the comments.

More About: Google, google knol, Google Wave, mashable video

The ol’ endzone dance just got even more social. When players in this Saturday’s Battle for the Golden Egg — the annual college football clash between Mississippi State and the University of Mississippi — celebrate after scoring a touchdown, they’ll be doing so on top of a massive Twitter hashtag.

In what’s believed to be a first for college football programs, Mississippi State has painted #HAILSTATE — the school’s traditional rallying cry and fight song — in its north endzone.

College teams typically decorate endzones with the title of their school, mascot nickname or a colorful pattern. But Mississippi State’s Twitter-based variation has already created buzz in the sports world.

“It’s a phenomenal idea,” Dallas Mavericks owner and Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban said in an email to Mashable. “It’s a fun way to involve social media at the game, and to TV viewers it’s going to stir up some emotions between both teams.”

“I can definitely see the the Mavs and other teams doing it,” Cuban added.

The hashtagging-the-endzone plan was hatched during a weekly marketing meeting, according to Mississippi State’s athletic director, Scott Stricklin.The original plan was to simply paint “Hail State” in the endzone. But when someone suggested hashtagging the slogan, Stricklin said, “there was this moment in the room, like, ‘Ohhh, that’d be different, no one’s done that before.’”

The school even considered hashtagging the name plates on the back of player’s jerseys, which will read “Hail State” for the annual rivalry game in football-mad Mississippi. A Mexican first-division soccer team recently replaced the player names on jerseys with their Twitter handles, also believed to be a first in the sports world.

Stricklin is unusually active on Twitter for a university athletic director, communicating updates to fans and retweeting photos fans send of themselves sporting school colors on designated “Maroon Fridays” before Saturday games.

Chad Thomas, the Mississippi State athletics department’s director of marketing, said he hopes the endzone hashtag will reach beyond just football fans.

“We want to wrap our arms around the casual fans and this is just one way we’re getting our name out to people who might not have any affiliation with us at all,” Thomas said.

It remains to be seen whether the in-game hashtag conversation will match the pre-game buzz. But, like Cuban, Thomas said he can see the practice of adding hashtags to fields, pitches and courts catching on.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it does become a trend,” Thomas said. “The fact is that one in four people now have smartphones in the United States, and that number is going to continue to grow. So why wouldn’t you, if you’re a sports team?”

More About: football, hashtags, social media marketing, sports, Twitter

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Duke Chung co-founded Parature in 2000, with a vision to provide superior customer support software accessible via the Internet. Today, Parature's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product suite supports millions of end users worldwide.

With the advent of social media channels, customer service has forever changed. Consumers are no longer willing to sit and listen to classical music on hold. In today's age of hyper-responsiveness, customers expect instant responses from support reps on very public online platforms.

Instead of shying away from social media, smart businesses will leverage their social channels to spread a positive brand reputation, to connect happy customers and to step up their customer support efforts.

Consumers aren't eager to blast negative messages about your company – unless your brand is unresponsive. I recently learned at an IBM conference that customers are five times more likely to post something positive than negative, and that companies usually have at least 10 warnings before someone posts a negative comment.

Happy customers who get their issues resolved tell an average of four to six people about their positive experiences, according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs. It pays to treat your customers well, not only for the repeat business, but also to gain the positive word-of-mouth consumers now broadcast across social media. Satisfied customers can become your most influential brand ambassadors. They'll help to answer customer service questions posted online and also tout their own positive experiences with your business.

Here are the five best ways to turn customers into brand ambassadors through customer service.

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1. Be Fast

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When a customer turns to social media for a support issue, he expects a brand to generate the fastest response possible. According to a recent UK study, 25% of social media users expect a response within one hour, and 6% expect a response within 10 minutes. If you allow a support issue to dangle for too long, you risk being perceived as a company that either doesn't know the answer or doesn't care enough to reply promptly.

Remember, most people on social networks aren’t itching to post negative comments. They only do so after a bad experience. Therefore, don't give them enough time to have a bad experience.

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2. Be Visible

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Private and direct messaging on Facebook and Twitter is all well and good, but when it comes to customer service, it's best to be totally transparent and visible. The answer you give to one customer could, in turn, help thousands more. Think of each post and interaction as a resource that future customers can reference. Not to mention, customers will be more apt to direct friends to your page with their own questions.

Social media sites foster an online community around your brand. Watch how customers discuss and respond to your products so you can join the conversation and better understand the community that supports your brand.

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3. Be Consistent

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It's vital that you ensure all customer support answers remain consistent across the web and across all social channels. If a common question is posted on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, then each response should communicate the same solution. Conflicting answers create confused, unhappy customers. Just as people expect consistent experiences with your products, they also expect consistent service across all of your channels. Brand accuracy drives confidence and credibility, and helps build brand loyalty among your customers.

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4. Be Organized

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If consistency creates brand ambassadors, then being organized is equally paramount. Admittedly, the cross-company integration and management of social media continues to be challenging. Maintaining a successful social media presence on just one network is a full-time job. Trying to do it over multiple networks is impossible if your support staff isn't properly organized.

Customers can spot disorganization a mile away, especially online. However, if you demonstrate that your company support knows what it's doing, you'll earn the respect and trust of brand loyalists. Organization goes beyond knowing who does what on the support team; it's also vital that everyone on the team is on the same page. Each team member must know where to seek reliable answers, and each must source information from the same place.

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5. Be Human

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As cool as Siri is, she still hasn't crossed from digital assistant to human entity. Until then, your social media customer support should remain as human as possible. On the bright side, social networks already take the formalities out of conversation. It's one of their biggest draws.

Therefore, a customer's name isn't "Inquiry #83kd4z." She's Christie from Denver. People respond best when they feel like they're talking to other people. Your customer support should make customers feel as if they’re posting a normal question on a friend's wall. Creating that kind of relationship with your customer should be the priority of any company.

Using customer service to create brand ambassadors isn't the Herculean task it once was. Social media is presenting countless opportunities to turn your company's support system into an open, interactive community, where customers can share their positive experiences with one another and spread the good word about your products and services – all on your behalf.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Kaptain Kobold

More About: brand management, Business, contributor, customer service, features, Marketing, Social Media

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"We Found Love" by Rihanna

Officials in France recently slapped a ban on Rihanna's controversial video, confining it to the late-night rotation. "We Found Love" joins a long list of music videos that have been banned in some form across the globe because of their touchy lyrics or depictions of drugs, sex and violence.

Flip through this gallery for examples.

Warning: Potentially not safe for viewing at work.

Click here to view this gallery.

Want to watch Rihanna’s latest music video? You won’t find it anywhere on French TV before 10 p.m. State officials have ruled that Rihanna’s controversial “We Found Love” can not be shown during hours when children may catch a glimpse of it.

Confined to the late-night rotation, “We Found Love” joins a long list of music videos that have been banned in some form across the globe, either because of their lyrics or their depictions of drugs, sex or violence.

SEE ALSO: Rihanna Redefines the Album Launch | Rihanna Sings in Augmented Reality App

Rihanna — whose new album Talk That Talk came out Nov. 18 — has raised eyebrows in the past with her steamy videos. Several countries banned her “S&M” and “Te Amo” videos. Like with other videos, YouTube requires viewers to be logged in and be 18 or older to view “S&M.”

Do you think RiRi’s video warranted being banned? What banned videos have we missed? If you just like the song regardless of the controversy, check out the 10 covers of it below.

Sam Tsui

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: celebrities, censorship, Entertainment, music videos, rihanna, YouTube

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Bernard Moon is co-founder & CEO of Vidquik, a new web conferencing and sales solution platform, and blogs at Silicon Moon.

I met the Huang brothers, Charles and Kai, a few years ago through a mutual friend over BBQs and casual poker nights, and Kai is an occasional StarCraft partner if my twin girls fall asleep at a decent time. I knew they founded RedOctane, but slowly I learned of their inspirational story that all entrepreneurs should be aware of. Their insights and learning are valuable for whatever stage or industry your company might be in.

SEE ALSO: Guitar Hero Gone: What Went Wrong?

RedOctane was the publisher of Guitar Hero, which many consider to be one of the most influential video games of the decade. It became one of a handful of billion-dollar video game franchises in history and reached that milestone at a breakneck speed. RedOctane was acquired by Activision in 2006, but shuttered in February of 2011 when interest in music performance games declined sharply.

I spoke with Charles and Kai about the bumpy road to a billion-dollar product, and the lessons aspiring entrepreneurs can take away from their journey.

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Q&A With Charles and Kai Huang, founders of RedOctane

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How did this all start?

Kai Huang: My dad has been in business his whole life and he's always told us, "When you grow up, you should really do your own business. If you work for a big company, that's fine but doing your own business is better." So that kind of stuck with Charles and [me] our whole lives.

When did you come together to start a company?

Kai: Right around '98. It was with a couple of other friends of ours. It was this open source, server appliance software. Back in '98 you know, a lot of companies still hadn't gotten on the Internet. Everyone was using dial-up AOL. So we thought there was a market for trying to get small to medium-sized businesses connected through Internet sharing.

We didn't get much traction. We were just doing software. We were always trying to license our software out to people who could make the hardware. We did it for about 10 months or so. We ended up selling the product to another company.

The lesson we took out of that was if you don't control the whole product, then basically you're a half-assed company because you only control half of the final product.

Charles Huang: That carried on through the development of RedOctane. As we progressed from hardware we realized we have to be able to do software as well as hardware because if we don't, we'll always be dependent on someone else to do it. Also, if they don't share the same vision, you're in trouble.

Right after Adux Software was when you started Red Octane?

Kai: In the middle of 1999, we sold the product off and wondered what to do next. We decided to start in online video game rentals. This was right around the time Netflix was starting with online movie rentals. We raised a million dollars from friends and family, we closed the funding round in March 2000. A month later the market bubble burst.

We quickly realized within six months the business model was way too capital-intensive. Netflix raised almost 200 million dollars before the market crashed. We raised a million, and we weren't going to scale the business because you’ve got to buy the games. In the movie business, DVDs were 10 to 15 bucks. Game companies gave no discounts. We were going out and paying $40-50 per title. When the market crashed and we couldn't raise money, we realized we needed to start generating revenue from somewhere else.

We were renting the Dance Dance Revolution game and customers were asking us if we sell or rent the dance mats. We didn't. After three months, we decided to source and sell them. We bought them for $20 and reselling them for $30. This was our first experience into the accessories and hardware business.

We discovered there was a real niche in high-end video game accessories that nobody was doing. We thought that in video games, especially at that time, gamers had a lot of money. They're buying consoles and games, and it's not cheap. They want high quality products but we felt there weren't a whole lot of people creating high quality products.

Eventually, we started to make our own dance mats. The second dance mat product that we introduced in 2002 was the RedOctane Ignition Dance Pad. It originally retailed for $100 and cost of goods was about $15. This eventually became the best-selling dance mat in the U.S. in 2003, 2004, and 2005. We were small but we were starting to build a very profitable business. So we actually broke even in our second year because of our accessories business.

Charles: There was an important lesson for us. Cash flow. We learned how to manage margins and cash flow, and how valuable it was to have a direct connection with the customer.

Kai: By 2003, we started to grow our business. We were doing about two and a half million in revenue and half a million in profits. We were making all these accessories and generating a small but healthy business.

We saw that Japan had all these big music games and wondered, "How come they didn't they bring any of them to the U.S.? We saw that these games were a lot of fun. They're very social. We noticed they were gender-neutral and not just boys and girls but young and old people were playing these games — something you don't see a lot in video games, and we thought that was pretty cool. We went to all these Japanese companies and asked them to bring more of their music games over and universally they told us they didn't think there's a market for music games in the U.S. except for Dance Dance Revolution, which is the only one they sold.

So that's when we decided that we better figure out how to get into the publishing business. That was in 2004.

In The Groove was our first game and [we] published [it] in the summer of 2005. We were doing about $6 million in revenues, and a couple million in profits. Cash flow was always tight, but profitability was good. We decided we wanted to take on a second project in publishing, and we called up Harmonics Music Systems. They were a game developer based in Boston. We had actually had contact with them four years before. They had developed a couple games called FreQuency and Amplitude. We were interested in making an accessory for their game, but nothing worked out. About a year and a half later, they released a game called Karaoke Revolution and it didn't have a microphone. So how can you play karaoke without a microphone? They used a headset. You gotta have a microphone. We called them up and told them that we're interested in making a microphone accessory, but this also didn't work out.

In 2004 we called them up again, this time it was a little different. We're not just interested in doing hardware, but we're actually interested in publishing a title. We shared our vision and they had a very similar vision as well. It took us about four months to convince them to work with us. They were used to working with Konami and Sony, and their response back, "You're a small publisher, so how do you compete against Konami and Sony if they make a similar title?" We signed them up as our developer in April 2005.

Going back to when dance pad sales were taking off, did you try to go back to the market to try and raise some capital?

Kai: We had been trying to raise money through the whole period, but we certainly did it again at that point. When you talk to Silicon Valley investors, most are not used to hardware. They said, "Hey, your margins are great but we don't do hardware. And this is gaming. We don't do gaming and we don't do hardware."

Charles: We don't invest in video games because it's a hit driven business, and I'd say, "Well, the VC business is a hit driven business." But that didn't convince them.

Kai: We almost went out of business three times from the beginning to when we were acquired. The first two times we said we're never going to let this happen again, and of course it happened again. The last time was right in the middle of launching Guitar Hero. We decided we were going to launch originally with 50,000 units for that holiday season. It was 2005. We ended up signing a deal with MTV, for marketing, and when we did that we decided to bump our hardware production up to 150,000 units, which was huge for us. Very expensive. Just the hardware investment alone and the cost of goods was $3 million for a company that was doing a total of $6 million. We had tripled our production forecast, so we pretty much ran out of money. We went out to VCs and we tried to raise money and we couldn't, and that was when Charles and I decided to mortgage our houses and borrowed as much money as we could. On top of that, we had to borrow another half a million dollars from a family friend, who happened to have the money lying around because they were remodeling their house. We used all of that to launch Guitar Hero.

When you decided to take out a second mortgage on your homes, at that point did you have a good sense that Guitar Hero would do well?

Kai: I think you never really know how a game's going to do and we were such a small company and we were so inexperienced that we wouldn't even know. But the one thing I think we clearly noticed was that anybody who played it and those people around it were drawn to it. You would get a small crowd of people who would stand there and watch. So we knew that the game was fun, but we had no idea how big it was going to be. Was it fun for ten people? Was it fun for a hundred thousand? Was it fun for millions? We really didn't know.

Charles: The first store that actually launched Guitar Hero was Best Buy and the forecast from them was 30,000 units for the quarter. They called us up after the first day and told us, "Hey, we just sold 3,000 in the first two hours, we need 80,000 units next week."

We told them, "No, you don't understand, these things are built in China and they come over on a boat. We have just 5,000 for this next week and you're going to have to split that with somebody else.” The product immediately sold out. Everything.

Kai: We shipped in 120,000 by the holidays, and it all sold out. Which is great, but in the scheme of things, 120,000 units to big publishers was a total flop. They need to sell millions and millions. When you're dealing with hardware, you know we can't call in the products immediately in three days like you can with software. We were calling, but in November and December, so we wouldn't get product until March. We were also concerned that if we called in a giant order now, and thought, "What if demand dies right after Christmas?"

So how many did you sell the next quarter or two quarters?

Kai: So that was the interesting thing with Guitar Hero, and why it garnered so much interest was that it was a video game that was on a very unusual sales curve. We were selling more every single subsequent month for the following ten months. So most video games launch, and then the next month they sell half, then the next month after that, half of the previous month's, and so on. But [with] Guitar Hero, every month our sales numbers kept going up and up and up until September of the following year, which is when we sold the most units. We sold 80,000 units that month.

We'd heard that people at Nintendo were playing the game and that they loved the game. We had only released the game on Sony's platform, so for a Sony game being played at Nintendo, we knew they must have really loved it.

Charles: Activision's CEO, when he first visited us, joked that half their [quality assurance] department was playing our game on a full time basis.

Kai: We finally then ramped up once again, for the 100th time, a road show for the VCs. We were finally able to get interest from venture capitalists. We got term sheets to close about $20 million dollars from VCs. Well, they were mainly private equity firms. We didn't really need the money at the time, but we were planning to raise the money and taking the company public within a couple years.

Charles: Then Activision came in and said hey, we'd like to talk to you guys.

Kai: Activision called us at the beginning of the year and told us that it's not just about distribution, but they were interested in potential acquisition of the company. We weren't interested in selling because we were looking at growing and going public, but the conversation kept going and going until ultimately in April we decided to sell.

We signed the term sheet in April and the deal was announced in June of 2006.

How about taking a step back. As entrepreneurs, did you guys have any concerns about working together as brothers?

Kai: I think for me I always had concerns, but it was never anything like I had to sit there and pull my hair out [wondering if] this is what I want to do or not.

Charles: I think there were a couple big pros and cons. One of the biggest pros was that you have familiarity and trust that has been going on for a lifetime. You don't have to learn what are the strengths and weaknesses of your partner, and that's one of the most important things of any startup.

So you guys want to talk about the next thing you're working on?

Kai: I'm OK with talking about it. One of the things that always interested us has been health and fitness, and it stems from our first experience with Dance Dance Revolution. We did a lot of marketing for that game and we took the spin that video games are getting a bad rap. There was a lot of violence in video games, but these [other] games are fun. They're music games and you can actually lose weight. We found a great example of this young girl. She lost 90 lbs. playing this game. She was shy, reclusive, and didn't have a lot of friends. She ended up making a lot of friends, lost all this weight, and totally changed her life. She graduated from college and went to work at Microsoft.

We loved this story. We basically took that story and used her as an indirect spokesperson. We ended up getting her on CNN, The Today Show and various magazines. So this whole concept of exercise, and health and fitness with gaming layered on top of it has always interested us. When Guitar Hero took off, we didn't have time to think about anything else. We always thought that [there was] a billion dollar market opportunity in music games, and a billion dollar opportunity in fitness games. Well, it turned out that music was a billion dollar opportunity not just for the category, but for a single game like Guitar Hero 3. Amazingly, when Wii Fit came out, it became the fourth product that became a billion dollar product. There was World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero 3 and then Wii Fit.

We want to figure out ways to get people healthier — more active and fit, ultimately leading them to a healthier lifestyle by leveraging gaming some how.

Awesome. Can't wait to see it.

Kai: Me too.

More About: contributor, features, Gaming, guitar hero, interviews

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Samsung attempts to undermine Apple’s mystique and its hold on consumers with a Galaxy S II ad that presents hard core Apple fans as lemmings who are so blinded by marketing that they can’t acknowledge a superior phone.

The ad, which was set to premiere on Facebook Tuesday evening and then hit TV on Thanksgiving, doesn’t mention Apple or the iPhone 4S by name, however. Instead, fans are shown lining up outside an Apple Store-like location nine hours before it opens. “Someone just left,” says one woman. “Why would they be leaving when we’re only nine hours away?” asks her male companion. “Uh oh,” says another guy in line, reading off his phone. “The blogs are saying the battery looks sketchy.”

Just then, a cool group of young men and women come into the line’s view sporting a Samsung Galaxy S II. The crowd is drawn to the phone, although one guy haughtily dismisses it. “I could never get a Samsung,” he says. “I’m creative.” “Dude, you’re a barista,” his friend replies. The ad also makes much of the S II’s 4G compatibility (iPhones are still on 3G), which leads to the kicker: “The next big thing is already here.”

Although the ad takes a new approach, Samsung is hardly the first brand to challenge Apple’s cult-like following. SanDisk bashed “iPuppets” and “iSheep” in 2006 when it took on the iPod’s dominance in the portable MP3 player category. More recently, Motorola attempted to one-up one of Apple’s proudest moment — its legendary “1984″ Macintosh ad — with a Super Bowl ad for the Xoom tablet that, like this latest Samsung commercial, presents Apple followers as clueless automatons.

What do you think? Will Samsung’s approach be successful? Do you give them points for trying? Sound off in the comments.

More About: apple, samsung, Samsung Galaxy SII

An ebook released Tuesday takes an inside look at the email correspondence of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

"Letters to Steve: Inside the Email Inbox of Apple's Steve Jobs" ($2.99), by CNN technology writer Mark Milian, explores how the tech innovator fielded emails from fans — and how he handled the missing Apple iPhone 4 prototype dilemma with Gizmodo editors.

Jobs often responded to customer emails directly, which is highly unorthodox for someone in his position. Many ended up online.

Milian spent months scouring the Internet, looking at blog postings and message boards for email correspondences, and spoke to many of those who were lucky enough to get a response. The book, available for the Kindle, is a compilation of what he found.

Mashable spoke with Milian about what it was like to receive an email from the former Apple chief executive — and what kind of questions generally triggered him to respond.

Mashable: What trends did you notice about Jobs' email responses while doing your research?

Milian: Steve Jobs is often described as a perfectionist, and he was known to be obsessive about typography. But he occasionally made typos. He was also inconsistent about whether he’d sign his name or include “Best” in his sign-off signature. Some of the sources I interviewed for the book believed he had assistants help him with his mail, but I didn’t find any evidence to support that.

Mashable: What type of emails grabbed his attention?

Milian: Flattery certainly helped people get a response. However, some would sent combative emails and still get replies, even if they were unpleasant. It's obvious that Jobs cared very deeply about many of the topics he took the time to address. He cared about customers having exceptional experiences with their products and Apple’s repair system. But he also cared about things you’d never guess he had a passion for. For example, he’d write long missives about Flash or the H.264 video codec or the Objective-C programming language. If someone happened to touch on a topic he was engrossed in at a certain point, it got his attention.

Mashable: Is it unusual for someone with such executive power to field customer service inquiries?

Milian: There’s a chapter in the book about how Jobs directly handled customer-service inquiries by e-mail and occasionally by phone. Sure, you'll find some CEOs on Twitter and Google+, but you won’t see them personally helping a customer get their laptop repaired. It fits with Apple’s mission statement to make sure customers have a great experience. If someone’s iPod is broken, that person is not having a good experience. Jobs at times felt like it was his duty to handle those types of emails.

Mashable: Which email exchange sticks out most in your mind?

Milian: Steve Jobs loved to end emails with a zing. An email I got exclusively for the ebook came from a man that runs a company. The man wrote to a bunch of people at Apple including Jobs about a flaw in the App Store’s ranking system. Jobs replied and explained some changes coming to the App Store, and then ended his email with a great jab: “I notice that your app has not received great reviews.”

He also played every angle in an attempt to get that [prototype iPhone 4] back, and it showed his brilliant negotiating tactics. However, Gizmodo was not about to give that phone up without a fight.

Mashable: What is it that most shocked you about the emails?

Milian: I was a bit surprised that so many people would so readily publish private correspondences without Jobs’ permission. I can see why, of course. He’s an icon, and people were excited when they received a message from him. But I found it unusual that many didn’t think twice about forwarding these e-mails to reporters or posting them to their own blogs.

More About: apple, ebooks, email, steve jobs

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From 4.7-inch smartphones like the HTC Titan to models like the 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note, it’s clear that manufacturers are seeing a market for larger-than-normal smartphones that still fall short of what we might consider tablets.

While they may not fit so easily into a tight pants pocket, they’re just the right size for stowing-away in a jacket and offer a slightly-more-readable experience than you might find with smaller-screened devices. One new member joining that club looks like it will be coming from Lenovo, as revealed through some photos showing-off a five-inch Android.

Besides giving us an opportunity to check out the buttons and ports, there’s very little these shots tell us about the hardware. The big question right now is if this device will be positioned like the Galaxy Note as a larger-than-average smartphone, or if it won’t support voice calling and come to market as a mini-tablet.

This Android may arrive as a Lenovo IdeaTab model, though its precise designation is still unknown. It may be too early to get excited about the handset until we learn more about its capabilities, but we’re certainly very eager to get the full picture on this device. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of it at CES 2012.

[ via Engadget ]

More About: android, lenovo, smartphones

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AT&T‘s proposed merger with T-Mobile has gotten a big thumbs down from the Federal Communications Commission. In a conference call with reporters, FCC officials said the agency has concluded that the proposed transaction would significantly diminish competition and results in an unprecedented concentration in the wireless industry.

This is the second significant blow to the proposed $39 billion merger. Back in August the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. This FCC order essentially agrees with the DOJ. FCC officials said that if the DOJ prevails, its suggestion of a trial-like hearing would be moot.

FCC officials essentially aren’t buying any of AT&T’s claims about the benefits of the mega-merger of these two cellular service giants, which would make AT&T the largest provider in the U.S. The FCC pored over 2,000 pages of documentation and held more than 100 meetings with all interested parties, including the applicants and those who oppose the merger, including Cablevision, Dish Networks, EarthLink and Sprint. Officials said the claimed benefits of the merger are not supported by the facts they uncovered. Instead, FCC officials see the prospect of significant job losses and are not convinced that a combined AT&T-T-Mobile will result in a faster roll-out of a high-speed 4G network.

The next step is a hearing before an administrative law judge that will, apparently, be very much like a typical trial and should include witnesses from both sides of the debate. The judge would deliver a decision on the merger, but that would not be the end of it. The judge’s decision would then be considered by the FCC commissioners.

AT&T’s Larry Solomon, senior vice president of Corporate Communications, told Mashable, “The FCC's action today is disappointing. It is yet another example of a government agency acting to prevent billions in new investment and the creation of many thousands of new jobs at a time when the US economy desperately needs both. At this time, we are reviewing all options.”

What do you think? Should everyone step aside and let AT&T and T-Mobile merge or would a combined company simply be too big and unfair to the competition? Sound off in the comments below.

More About: att, merger, T-Mobile

As retailers prepare for post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping, consumers increasingly turn online to search for the best deals. Last year, according to the National Retail Federation, 212 million individuals spent an estimated $45 billion total on Black Friday. This year, social media has played a big role in Black Friday marketing, and buzz about when and where consumers are shopping is stronger than ever.

Black Friday is already trending on Twitter, and it’s no surprise, especially since most companies are expanding sales from Thursday night all the way up to Cyber Monday.

Social media analysts at Mashwork monitored more than 270,000 tweets between Sept. 26, 2011 and Nov. 17, 2011 and found out where shoppers will be spending their money this upcoming Black Friday (whether it’s online or in line), and what products they’re going after.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Black Friday Deals on Social Media

What’s interesting, is that according to the study, more people will be buying for themselves during Black Friday this year than for others. However, the number of shoppers more likely to buy for others has increased from last year’s 26%.

It’s no wonder why most people have their eye on computers and tablets this holiday shopping season, since so many new products in the tablet industry have just recently rolled out. What’s noteworthy, however, is that because these products are so new — Amazon’s Kindle Fire, for instance — shoppers tend to discuss brands on social media that they are engaged and familiar with, such as the iPad 2.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see the kind of buzz on the actual day of shopping. Has social media played a role in your Black Friday plans?

Infographic provided by Mashwork.

More About: black friday, Holidays 2011, online shopping, shopping, Social Media, trending, Twitter

Google began its Thanksgiving celebrations early this year by putting up a holiday-themed Google Doodle on Tuesday afternoon.

The Doodle features a child-like drawing of a turkey whose feathers and wings move when your cursor runs over it. The Doodle also has a “G+ Share” prompt which lets you post it to your Google+ account. If you don’t have an account, then Google, which is eager to expand its social network of 40 million plus, will let you create one as well. A “Link” prompt also lets you share it the old-fashioned way wherever you want.

The Doodle is a change from last year’s Thanksgiving tribute, which went up on Thanksgiving day and was composed of turkey, cranberries and other dishes spelling out Google’s name.

What do you think of this year’s Thanksgiving Doodle?

The Christmas Google Doodle

Each package gets larger with a mouse-over, and a click on it returns search results pertinent to a specific country or the particular items featured in a scene. This one is from December 24, 2010.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Google, google doodles, thanksgiving

For the second day in a row Tuesday, Groupon shares plummeted — and flirted with falling below the company’s $20 IPO price.

Groupon shares fell 10% Monday, and were trading for as low as $20.03 around 3pm ET .

Groupon’s wasn’t the only tech stock to see a decline. LinkedIn shares spent part of Monday trading at a 7% discount. Monday was the first day that LinkedIn’s early employees and investors were allowed to sell shares after the company’s “lockup period,” a common IPO method of barring early-stage investors from abandoning their stakes in a company.

Groupon’s lockup period ends May 2.

When Groupon went public on November 4 with the largest tech IPO of its kind since Google’s trading debut in 2004, shares soared despite lingering concerns about the company’s accounting practices.

SEE ALSO: Groupon IPO: Everything You Need To Know

In September, Groupon announced a major accounting change that essentially halved its revenue. The company had been reporting all money collected from customers as revenue — even though a portion of customers’ payments actually go back to the daily-deal site’s merchant partners.

In August, the company was widely criticized for an unusual accounting practice that disguised some of its losses. Groupon’s original IPO filing used an “adjusted consolidated segment operating income” metric that ignored its high costs for marketing and acquiring new subscribers. The company was forced to admit that it was, in fact, unprofitable — contrary to earlier reports of profitability indicated by the unusual metric.

Groupon’s chairman, Erick Lefkofsky, is no stranger to sketchy startup dealings. He has gained a reputation among some as a serial entrepreneur eager to flip startups quickly with scant regard to their sustainability and longterm viability, according to a Fortune profile.

Can Groupon arrest its stock slide, or is the daily deals site doomed? Let us know in the comments.

More About: groupon, ipo, trending

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Just days after Google released its latest Ice Cream Sandwich platform for Android to developers, Nvidia is offering a sneak preview of what the updated mobile OS looks like on a tablet.

Nvidia released a promotional video of Ice Cream Sandwich running on an Asus Transformer Prime tablet, powered by quad-core Tegra 3. The demo highlights various new features offered by Ice Cream Sandwich, including a seamless transition swipe between the apps and widgets menu and the ability to drag and drop icons onto one another to create a folder.

The clip also showcases Ice Cream Sandwich's sleek video playback with 1080p capabilities and how it beautifully handles the graphics-rich Riptide GP game.

Tablet makers are now confronted with the task of developing devices with Ice Cream Sandwich that can better compete with the iPad.

What are your first impressions of Ice Cream Sandwich on a tablet? Is this the update that will finally give Android tablets the ammo they need to really challenge the iPad?

More About: android, Android Ice Cream Sandwich

One of the more fascinating apps to arrive recently for the iPad is 48 Hours Mystery from the folks at CBS Interactive. The free app includes information and video clips from the popular true-crime series. Best of all, an in-app purchase unlocks full-length episodes and other premium features.

Launched quietly last month, 48 Hours Mystery is the perfect companion to one of television’s most interesting and understated long-term series. In its freebie form, the app includes previews of upcoming shows and extra video clips not included in the on-air broadcast.

For $4.99 per year, however, the 48 Hours Mystery app transforms itself into something different, with on-demand access to full episodes from the current season. In addition, members are able to search and browse the archive of episodes dating back to 2005. Subscribers also get:

• View previews of upcoming shows
• Access written transcripts of each episode
• View photo galleries related to the crimes
• Video extras include footage, evidence and interviews not available on-air
• Post comments about the episode and see what other fans have posted
• Share your reactions to each episode with your friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter or via email.

While some may reject the app for its in-app purchase component, we think $4.99 per year is more than reasonable. For crime story buffs, the 48 Hours Mystery app is perhaps the must-have app of the year.

More About: 48 hours, cbs, television

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Google+ users might see their Klout scores go up Tuesday. The social media ranking company Klout has built a scoring model to calculate activity from Google’s 5-month-old social network.

Klout — which measures users' online influence — started allowing users to add Google+ to their Klout dashboards on Sept. 22 shortly after Google released Google+ API. Now the San Francisco-based startup has injected its measurement system with the new Google+ scoring model.

Some users saw their scores significantly increase. Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson‘s score jumped from 64 to 77. Lesser known active users experienced similar boosts. Google TV employee Erica Joy‘s score rose 62 points to 73, and nature photographer Tamara Pruessner‘s score elevated from 11 to 67.

Klout told Mashable it’s taken two months to reach the desired amount of registered Google+ users to accurately create the scoring model. “Once we have a critical mass of users, our science team dives into their data to build a comprehensive and accurate new scoring model for that network specifically.” said Megan Berry, Klout’s marketing manager.

SEE ALSO: Complete Guide to Google+ | Man Hysterically Fails at Explaining Klout to Boss [VIDEO]

No scores will decrease based on Tuesday’s changes and Klout will measure only public posts, Klout wrote Tuesday in a blog post. Sixty-two percent of Google+ users who connected their accounts to Klout are active on Google+ and “should see it affect their score based on their ability to drive action on that platform.”

"We have always believed that influence was the ability to drive people to actions and Google+ has great signals such as +1s and comments," CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable in September. "One thing we have noticed is that the conversation frequency and quality on Google+ really sets it apart from other platforms."

Klout has integrated 12 social networks to users’ dashboards. The service so far factors in Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. Klout is still building scoring models for YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress.com, Last.fm and Flickr.

Update: Klout plans to add Quora, Yelp, Posterous, Livefyre, Disqus, bit.ly and other services, says Berry.

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BONUS: What Klout’s New Topic Pages Look Like

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Klout released a feature in September that lets users gain insights on top content influencers as well as users who have received the most +Ks for respective topics.

To populate a user’s Topic Pages (see screenshots below), Klout analyzes the user’s public content.

Clickable Topics on Your Dashboard

On your Klout dashboard, you can click on a topic to open its Topic Page.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Google, klout, Social Media, social networking, trending

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Old Spice, looking to maintain the social media momentum that began with its breakthrough “The man your man can smell like” campaign from 2010, is making the leap from tongue-in-cheek advertising to tongue-in-cheek product releases.

The product: A bear-shaped deodorant holder.

That item, which looks like something that would have been a good Father’s Day gift in 1974, will go on sale on Wednesday via Old Spice’s Facebook Page for $19.99. To get the word out, the brand and ad agency Weiden + Kennedy have created the faux informercial above. In the tradition of faux informercials, like rival Axe’s “Clean Your Balls” last year, the pitch is intentionally cheesy. While Axe milked its double-entrendre to absurd extremes, “Bear Deodorant Protector” is just absurd. The ad stars just one man, for instance, who wears various outfits (including women’s clothes) to approximate an audience in an infomercial (he also plays host and product demonstrator).

Despite the bizarre premise, the video frequently emphasizes the fact that the Bear Deodorant Protector is a real product, one that perhaps owes a debt to Burger King’s meat-scented cologne, another I-can’t-believe-it’s-real product aimed at manly men back in 2008.

The ad comes after the brand released a Skittles-esque ad on Monday that showed an unattractive, pudgy guy literally falling to pieces as he rides his motorcycle (below).

What do you think? Do you like the Bear Deodorant Protector? Is Facebook the best place to launch this somewhat silly product? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Advertising, Marketing, old spice, wieden & kennedy

Google, PayPal, Visa, American Express — they’ve all jumped on the mobile digital wallet train as a way to usher in commerce through their electronic platforms and reinvent how people pay for items and services. With more than 100 million users of its virtual purse, PayPal predicts the physical wallet will cease to be carried by the year 2015. And as digital currency transactions begin to proliferate the consumer market, merging opportunities for non-profits to create more successful fundraising campaigns with corporate sponsors are ripe for the taking.

In the same vein that online donation destinations and text-to-give initiatives, like MobileCause, have raised millions for natural disaster relief, mobile digital wallets can be used to make contributions at any digitally connected businesses that promote philanthropic programs. The seamless transactional value of digital wallets is extremely convenient for donors and organizations. Many people interested in donating to a cause through a website may be concerned with having to enter their contact and credit card information or with receiving follow-up phone calls that some text-to-give campaigns require in order for financial information to be verified.

The luxury of mobile digital wallets is that they contain all of that information in one protected place, which eliminates any multistep process that may deter prospective charitable gifts. Just as phone carriers facilitate SMS donations, players in the digital wallet space can partner with retailers and brands to promote and expedite transactions for social good. In addition to circumventing the aforementioned issues, mobile wallets can potentially send alert messages, reminding people to make donations with nothing more than a tap on their smartphones.

One of the biggest issues a number of fundraising efforts and charities face when it comes to mobile giving is the enormous decrease in attention to a cause as soon as buzz of a tragic incident or big campaign begins to die down. By partnering with mobile digital wallet providers, non-profits could foreseeably seek micro-donations from users on a regular basis. Since a number of people around the world have their checking accounts set up to allocate electronic funds on a monthly basis, why couldn’t the same concept be applied to digital currency for non-profits?

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The Major Players

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For a deeper understanding of philanthropic possibilities via mobile wallet, here’s a look at four of the major platforms.

Google Wallet: Using near-field communication (UNFC) technology, the Google Wallet mobile app enables shoppers to make payments by waving their smartphones over cash register scanners. With Google Wallet, checking out at a brick-and-mortar store becomes nothing more than tapping a phone at the point of purchase. On the charitable front, retailers could team up with Google, brands, non-profits, or all three, to process donations made at check out registers.

PayPal: PayPal has joined the competition in the physical retail world by developing a way for consumers to pay for products by entering their mobile phone numbers along with a pin number. PayPal also happens to be trusted by many non-profit users for processing credit card payments and checking transactions. Perhaps, the same organizations that have already-existing PayPal relationships could use PayPal’s answer to the digital wallet for processing and receiving funds.

Visa’s V.me: Visa’s solution to the virtual wallet, V.me, allows users to connect to other monetary sources, such as credit cards, and make payments without ever giving the seller any personal information, thus making online mobile purchases quick, easy and secure. All consumers have to do to make a transaction is sign into V.me with their username and password. Visa is also rolling out an innovative product designed to enable cellphone users in the developing world to make mobile payments.

American Express’ Serve: American Express has dished out it own version of the digital wallet with Serve. Using Amex’s security and data systems, Serve makes digital transactions possible by bringing multiple payment options together into a single account that can be funded by bank accounts, debit cards and charge cards. The American Express Members Give program connects people to one million different non-profits and allows Amex cardholders to make recurring donations throughout the year. Imagine how much more tractions the campaign would get if it enabled users to donate via Serve?

Ultimately, all of these mobile wallet services have the ability to empower corporate social responsibility initiatives as well as amplify the fundraising efforts of non-profits that have aligned missions.

Overall, any currency trends that penetrate the digital consumer market can be adopted by fundraisers worldwide, and non-profits who take advantage of the increase and potential of mobile wallet transactions will see their charitable giving numbers rise equally as high.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, coreay

More About: american express, corporate social responsibility, google wallet, mobile payments, non-profits, paypal, Social Good, Visa

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Google+ has made it easier to see what articles and blogs your friends are reading, the company announced Tuesday. Articles that get a +1 from Gmail contacts or Google+ circle members will now show up in users’ Spotlight sections, a post to the official Google News blog explained.

The +1 button has become widespread on search results, blogs and news sites since Google launched it in March. But until recently it was difficult for signed-in Google+ users to see what their connections were reading and discussing.

Now, in the Spotlight section of Google News, you can see the profile pictures of connections who shared an article and and click through to their profile pages. Users can also add their own +1, letting them pass stories from their Spotlight section on to their own circles, and spreading the conversation.

Where do you most commonly share articles — Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook? All of the above? Will this change make you more inclined to share via Google+? Which social network is best for sharing and discussing what’s going on in the world?

More About: gmail, Google, google news

NASA’s $2.5 billion Mars rover dubbed “Curiosity” is set to liftoff on Saturday, the start of a 350+ million mile journey to learn about the possibility of life on the red planet — either in the past or in the future. Check out the video above to learn more about the mission.

More About: mashable video, NASA, space

Brian Casel is the founder of CasJam Media, a web design shop that works with clients worldwide designing custom WordPress CMS sites. Connect with Brian on Twitter @CasJam.

For those of us who work with WordPress every day, it has been exciting to watch our beloved content management system evolve over the years from a blogging tool into a web publishing powerhouse.

Today we take a look at the all new WordPress 3.3, which after months of beta testing, is expected to be released in late November.

SEE ALSO: Top 4 Ecommerce Tools for WordPress

Compared to the milestone WordPress 3.0 release — which introduced important new functionalities, such as custom post types and built-in multisite mode — version 3.3's improvements may seem less groundbreaking. But, in fact, the impact of this release may be felt by more people than ever.

Most of the improvements are aimed toward improving the user experience for all users, not just those of us building WordPress websites. Your clients will immediately see the changes in 3.3, which are bound to improve their experience too.

Here are the major improvements coming to WordPress 3.3.

1. Redesigned Admin Bar

The redesigned admin bar brings a handful of strategic enhancements.

There are less links/elements shown, and the ones that remain are carefully placed for a reason. The search box and appearance menu were removed, and the user menu moved to the right side, similar to Google's user bar.

By making it a shade darker and bolder, the admin bar is now more prominent in the WordPress back-end.

Click here to view this gallery.

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Other Noteworthy Improvements in WordPress 3.3

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Now that we've covered the most visible improvements, here are some under-the-hood enhancements, particularly of interest to developers.

• Responsive Layout: This is really just setting the groundwork for a fully responsive layout, which is expected in version 3.4. But in WordPress 3.3, the left side menu automatically collapses on smaller screens.
• Postname Permalinks: Before you had to set /%postname%/ as your custom permalinks setting, but now it's a selectable option. More importantly, performance issues have been fixed, so this setting is now usable for sites that have a large number of posts and pages.
• jQuery 1.7 and jQuery UI 1.8.16: Updated jQuery and now the full jQuery UI toolset are now packaged and ready to be enqueued in WordPress 3.3.
• WordPress Editor API: Plugin developers can now customize the post editor, including the TinyMCE buttons. You can even add additional editors.

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Get Updated!

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As always, it's recommended to get your sites updated to the latest version of WordPress as soon as it’s available, so keep an eye out for the release, and get ready to start digging into these great new features!

More About: contributor, features, Tech, trending, upgrades, Web Development, WordPress

Two porn firms, including the company that runs Playboy’s website, have filed a lawsuit against ICM Registry over the creation of the .XXX top-level domain name. The firms claim that the names are too expensive — up to 6x the cost of registering a standard domain name — and a form of digital segregation.

Find out more about the lawsuit in the video above and let us know if you support or reject the creation of the .XXX domain in the comments.

More About: Domain Names, mashable video, porn, trending

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The Mashable Awards celebrates the best of digital, and perhaps no category showcases the digital world better than entertainment. From Game of the Year — which isn’t just about graphics, but a combination of creative visuals, compelling narratives, tight gameplay and social integration — to Viral Video of the Year, which celebrates an art that is no longer just about cats and fails. Viral vids have become an effective way for brands to get their products in front of eyeballs.

The entertainment category also highlights disruptive new growth areas, like online video streaming, which used to be a real pain thanks to low bandwidths and overcrowded viewing rooms. Now video streaming has become one of the most important ways we consume media. Your selection for the Best Online Video Streaming Service or App is a real mixed bag, with perennial favorites such as YouTube and relative newcomers such as Hulu.

Of course, social video is no longer just confined to the computer screen. Television has been getting even more social in 2011 thanks to a new breed of programming, and the Most Social TV Show award honors those networks who took advantage of the emerging trends.

Movie studios have also realized the power of social media to help promote films and reward fans. It should be no surprise, then, to see some blockbusters in your top picks, though there are some stand-outs in the Best Social Movie Campaign category as well.

Finally, the entertainment category celebrates another area of major disruption in 2011: music. A crop of new platforms are delivering more music to fans than ever before, and the cream of the current crop are nominated for the Best Music Service or App award.

Here are all the nominees in the Mashable Awards Entertainment category for 2011.

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Game of the Year

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This category honors the reader's choice for the best game that has a social component launched in 2011.

• WWE ’12 — WWE ’12 is the latest in the WWE’s nearly-annual wrestling game series. The latest iteration has so much buzz around it that it made this list before it was even officially launched (the game comes out Nov. 22). So will it win? That will depend on whether the reviews can keep pace. Early reviews are already placing the game in A-range.
• Zombie Lane — Zombie Lane is the only non-HD game on this list, but don’t let that dissuade you. The game has won major accolades and a serious fan base addicted to its zombie-killing gameplay. The premise is simple: Zombies have overrun your neighborhood, it’s up to you to take it back. What it doesn’t have in graphic fidelity it more than makes up in fun factor.
• FIFA Soccer 12 — FIFA, the popular football (soccer) game from EA has a long footie-game rivalry with Konami’s Pro Evolution series. FIFA, however, made the cut this year with its stellar new game. The World Cup might be a ways off, but there’s good reason to start your training early.
• Battlefield 3 — The biggest fight this year took place between two first-person shooters: Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Both games delivered top-notch graphics and fast-paced gun play along with competing social layers that extended the gameplay online. Which is better? Your votes will decide.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 — Most analysts had money on Modern Warfare 3 winning the year as the biggest game to be released. While the single player got some deserved knocks for its linear plot and short run-time, the multiplayer is where Modern Warfare 3 came alive. But will it be enough to topple the competition?
• Uncharted 3 — Would-be adventurers have been flocking to the Uncharted series for its international flare and cinematic style. From Naughty Dog, the same studio that brought you Crash Bandicoot, the latest Uncharted game improves in nearly every way from its predecessors.
• Batman Arkham City — The Dark Knight returns in this sequel to 2009′s Batman: Arkham Asylum. Bats is back with new gadgets and a massive city to explore. The game mixes stealth gameplay and gadgetry with satisfying, bone-crunching combat. With the new Chris Nolan movie on the horizon, is this the year of the bat?

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Viral Video of the Year

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This category honors the reader's choice for the best or most-memorable viral web video launched in 2011.

• "eHarmony Video Bio" starring Debbie — Debbie loves cats. We wish we loved anything as much as Debbie loves cats. She just loves cats. And she wants them to be on a rainbow.
• "Friday" starring Rebecca Black — All right, you asked for this one. Rebecca Black became an Internet phenomenon when she put out this ridiculous song with its ridiculous video and its ridiculous lyrics. Well, it became ridiculously popular. In a twist of fate, Black took down the original video because of disputes over song rights.
• "Nyan Cat" starring Nyan Cat — This is as bizarre as it is frustratingly catchy. Think of it like a “Hamster Dance” for the modern age.
• "Mr. Simple" starring Super Junior — K-Pop makes its glorious return to the Mashable Awards with this music video for mega-band Super Junior. The song’s pretty catchy even if the only words you can make out are “Mr. Simple,” “blow your mind” and other pop utterings.
• "Super Bass" starring Sophia Grace Brownlee — Both charming and talented, young Sophia Brownlee does an adorable cover of Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” which is about a bunch of stuff we hope Brownlee doesn’t figure out for a long, long time.
• "Talking Twin Babies" starring Ren and Sam — Two babies talk to each other in what can only be described as the cutest argument ever recorded in 2011. The video has received its fair share of overdubs and major outlets, such as ABC News, have even run segments on it.
• "Webcam 101 for Seniors" starring Bruce and Esther Huffman — Do you know what’s cooler than one million video views? Nearly 9 million video views for two old people trying to figure out how to use their newfangled webcam. Good on you, you crazy kids.

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Best Online Video Streaming Service or App

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This category honors the reader's choice for the best service or app for consuming streaming commercial media and entertainment.

• YouTube — Perhaps you’ve heard of this little video startup called “YouTube.” The site has established itself as the de facto video service for the masses with an index of content that expands by the second. However, volume doesn’t necessarily equal quality, and it’s up against some stiff competition.
• Boxee — Social TVs are finally starting to hit the mainstream and Boxee was one of the first game changers. The little black box lets you watch TV shows, movies, stream music and push content from your laptop to your widescreen. These are all good things.
• NHL Gamecenter Live — If you like hockey, or live sports in general, then NHL Gamecenter Live might already be in your life. The streaming service takes games from across the league and lets you watch them live along with classic games, replays, mobile viewing and different camera options. The high price tag ($169-per-year), however, might make people shy away.
• Netflix — 2011 was a weird year for Netflix, which saw a boost in its user base and then a series of disastrous drops as it increased its subscription price and flubbed the launch of DVD-only spinoff, Qwikster. Still, for sheer streaming performance, Netflix is one of the best, most seamless ways to access more movies and content than you can shake a stick at.
• Hulu — Hulu is performing like gangbusters this year with original programs complimenting its already huge catalog of shows from most of the major networks. If you want to watch TV, and don’t mind watching it a day late (earlier for Hulu Plus subscribers), few services compare to Hulu.
• VEVO — VEVO has been carving out its own little niche as the go-to spot for new music video and music-related content, including live features and premieres from some of the biggest bands out there. Even though MTV has been giving VEVO a run for its money, VEVO is still the homepage for many online music lovers.
• HBO Go — Love watching HBO? Well then HBO Go is the place to be. The site has all of the network’s hit shows along with special content and movies all with a simple log-in from your service provider. HBO Go provides a challenge to larger streaming sites like Hulu which pride themselves on the depth and selection of their content. Is it enough of a challenger to win the Mashable Award?

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Most Social TV Show

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This category honors the reader's choice for the best broadcast or cable television show that utilizes social media in an innovative, memorable or integral way.

• WWE Raw — Wrestling has always been about getting the fans involved, and the WWE’s premiere show is no exception. WWE Raw added a social layer that allows fans to chat with stars, comment on forums, sign in to create a profile, and has Twitter and Facebook baked directly into its website.
• Pretty Little Liars — This ABC show got all social as well with GetGlue integration that lets fans earn points for their comments and shares. It also ramped up the show blog and included some nifty mobile campaigns that reward users with plot clues and exclusive content.
• MTV Roadies — This show from MTV went all out on Facebook and Twitter by posting new videos, images, updates and exclusive sneak peeks on the social networks before they hit anywhere else.
• Attack of the Show — Attack of the Show may be the elder statesman of this selection but it’s certainly not showing its age. The show continues to bring on cool guests and push its social interaction ever further. Users can actually appear in-show by tweeting questions and comments to the studio, which will either be answered or streamed during the broadcast.
• Supernatural — CW is taking a page from ABC’s book by applying mild gamification to Supernatural, a show about two super-powered brothers that fight the supernatural powers that be. Users can check in to the show and the show’s site to receive points and join the fan community.
• Bones — Bones may not break new ground with its social features but it knows what it does well. The FOX show has put its social profiles front-and-center and its Facebook page has got some nice bonus content such as photos and polls to keep the fan community buzzing.
• The Glee Project — The Glee Project is a competition to find the next great star to appear on its older sibling show, Glee. Even though it may play second fiddle in popularity, The Glee Project takes the cake when it comes to social. The show complimented its multimedia options with cast bloggers, a GetGlue points reward system for fans, online “homework” assignments and a fan favorite voting booth.

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Best Social Movie Campaign

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This category honors the reader's choice for the best digital media campaign for a major or independent motion picture launched in 2011.

• The Muppets — If you’ve somehow missed a promo for The Muppets you must live under a rock. The movie has literally been everywhere these days, including a fully fleshed out social experience. The Muppets are individually and collectively tweeting, running contests on Facebook, hosting hangouts on Google+, making social media cameos and all manner of other extras. It might be bordering on overkill, but you can’t fault their commitment.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Everyone might be making a big fuss over the new Twilight movie, but let’s not forget that Harry Potter was the talk of the fantasy town for most of 2011. Not only did the film perk up to what fans were saying on Facebook and Twitter, but the movie prompted a mobile app and interactive quest to build excitement.
• Red State — Red State was Kevin Smith’s first attempt at straight-up horror. While it received tepid reviews (in the 60% range), it might be best remembered for its social auctions. Leading up to its release, Smith “auctioned” off teaser posters featuring the characters through a Twitter account. He tried the same tactic with the movie itself but was met with criticism when he later backed out on the deal. At least the proceeds from the posters (allegedly) went to charity.
• The Big Lebowski Facebook Release / Milyoni — The Big Lebowski has had a hard road earning its cult status. After piddling box office sales the movie gained a rabid fan base for its slacker protagonist and the distorted vision of L.A. in which it takes place. Facebook commerce (F-commerce) company Milyoni took The Dude social in 2011 by releasing the moving via a limited engagement on the social network, allowing fans to stream the flick with Facebook credits.
• Rise & Shine: The Jay Demerit Story — Who says you can’t fund a movie using Kickstarter? The producers of The Jay Demerit Story, which follows prospective-footballer Demerit in his quest to play on the largest stage, started up a campaign to get themselves funded. In a little over three months the movie picked up more than $223,000 in donations.
• Senna — Senna, which documents the life of Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna da Silva, became a critical hit for its vintage style and enigmatic subject. The social campaign didn’t go far beyond Twitter but what’s there is a goldmine: engaged moderators provided news, updates, multimedia and content, helping the film gain the traction it needed in the U.S.
• The Inside Experience — This interactive movie took social to a whole new level. The film is about a woman (played by Emmy Rossum) trapped in a room with only a laptop to help her. Viewers could interact with the character by uploading and watching videos and trying to help the poor woman escape by posting to Facebook and Twitter. Pretty darn neat.

Best Music Service or App

This category honors the reader's choice for the best online music service or app.

• Tracksfor.com — Tracksfor.com might be the most social option on this list. Users can listen to songs and create playlists simply by sending out hashtags over Twitter. Want to listen to a party mix? Tweet #tracksfor #partying and the platform will set you up.
• Fit Radio — Playlists have been big for 2011 and Fit Radio is all about creating the perfect workout playlist. The app will create pumped up playlists from any genre (ever work out to high-octane indie music?), though good luck finding some John Coltrane.
• Rhapsody — Rhapsody is holding strong as a go-to app for live-streaming music. Just $10 a month gets you access to pretty much any song you want (though there are some hold outs). There’s also a list of compatible electronics so you can take that music cloud library with you wherever you go.
• Spotify — Europeans have been enjoying Spotify for a while, but with its U.S. launch in 2011, the music streaming platform has finally crossed the pond. Spotify boasts a comparably impressive library to competitors with both free and premium options. Free gets you every song you could possibly want so long as you endure intermittent audio ads. Premium drops these and adds the ability to stream to your mobile device. Not a bad deal, but absentee artists such as Coldplay could derail its plans for domination.
• Pandora — Pandora has proven that it’s not going away any time soon. Unlike its streaming brethren, Pandora is all about music discovery and personalized playlists. Users can’t simply play any song they like, Pandora instead will build an intuitive online radio station based on your likes and affinities. Not a great app if you just want to hear a particular song, but unbelievable fun if you’re in the mood for something (sort of) new.
• Grooveshark — Grooveshark is a lot like Rhapsody and Spotify with a little bit of Pandora thrown in for taste. Grooveshark has a huge library of music available for streaming, but its Grooveshark Radio section helps you find new music with recommendations based on your listening habits and searchable parameters.
• Rdio — Rdio is another comprehensive music streaming platform, but with a definite focus on social. Users can find and share what they’re listening to through social recommendations. Music is all about shared experience and what better way to get in the spirit than literally sharing your experience with friends online?

Click here to vote!

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The 2011 Mashable Awards Are Presented by Buddy Media

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Buddy Media is the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers, empowering them to build and maintain relationships with their consumers in a connections-based world. The Buddy Media social marketing suite helps brands build powerful connections globally with its scalable, secure architecture and data-driven customer insights from initial point of contact through point of purchase.

More About: apps, Film, games, Gaming, mashable awards, mashable awards 2011, Music, television, TV, Video, video games, viral video

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Arnold Schwarzenegger, your contact lenses are calling. Researchers at the University of Washington have successfully built and tested what may be the first-ever Terminator-style heads-up display contact lens. For now, the lens displays only a single, well-focused pixel and the wireless power is only enough to give the appearance of constant illumination, but this is the first step toward, as researchers describe it, building lenses that “may receive data from external platforms (e.g. mobile phones) and provide real-time notification of important events.”

Officially called “A single-pixel wireless contact lens display” the super lens, which researchers successfully tested on rabbits, is comprised of a polymer substrate, light-emitted diode, antenna, and an integrated circuit to harvest the wireless power. Researchers built the lens through a highly complex process that included fabricating the antenna, electrical interconnects, electrical isolation and pads for solder coating directly on the contact lens.

To successfully build a working lens, the researchers had to overcome several key challenges. First of all, the lens display, which sits in a live eye, is standalone, meaning it can’t have wires running out of it. So power transmission and storage all has to happen wirelessly and primarily on the lens itself. Obviously, the lens had to be bio-compatible with the human eye — it can’t inflame or in any way damage the sensitive organ and the radio frequencies have to remain at safe levels. The third and most obvious challenge was building the necessary technology at a “micrometer scale.”

A red LED, which was used on a previous test lens, was subsequently replaced with a blue micro-LED mounted on a sapphire wafer. Researchers found that, due to the proximity to the retina, they could not focus the blue light. So a series of micro-thin Fresnel lenses were added to rectify the image.

The finished lens was tested on an anesthetized rabbit with no ill effects — though no one has asked the rabbit for comment.

A single pixel does not an image make, but this is clearly the first step in always-available heads up display and augmented reality. University of Washington researchers envision a whole spectrum of uses for the lens technology. From the research paper submitted to the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering in September:

“As contact lens based biosensors advance, they may alert the wearer of physiological anomalies, such as irregular glucose or lactate levels. With more colors and increased resolution, contact lenses may display text, be used with gaming devices, or offer cues from navigation systems.”

Obviously, researchers are working on ways to build more color, resolution and computing power into these lenses. Yet, even with just a handful of pixels, researchers believe future lenses could communicate short emails, text messages and navigational information. Someone wearing more powerful lenses could also, someday, look at a store and see a Yelp Monocle-style overlay of information. “If such displays were successfully deployed, they would fundamentally change the nature of interaction between humans and visual information,” note researchers in their paper.

Don’t go shopping for super contact lenses just yet. The researchers only built a one blue pixel display and also found that the natural conditions of a living eye dramatically diminish the lenses' ability to hold power. Surely a problem they can overcome, but it could be quite a few years before we’re all walking around with super eyes.

Terminator Contact Lens Up Close

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More About: contact lenses, display, displays, lenses, trending

Twenty percent of teachers have personally experienced or know another teacher who has experienced cyberbaiting, a new study reveals.

Cyberbaiting — a form of cyberbullying of teachers conducted by students — occurs when students taunt their teachers, capture their reactions on a mobile recorder and threaten to upload the footage to the Internet.

The cyberbaiting stats were among the findings of the Norton Online Family Report, which examined the effects of growing up in the digital age on youth.

Probably due to the widespread prevalence of cyberbaiting, 67% of teachers say being friends with students on social networks exposes them to risks. Despite the apparent risks, 34% of teachers continue to friend students.

Roughly half of respondents (51%) report that their schools have social media codes of conduct dictating how teachers and students can interact online.

Not surprisingly, 80% of teachers think there should be more education about online safety in schools. Seventy percent of parents agree.

StrategyOne polled 19,636 people — including 12,704 adults, 4,553 children and 2,379 teachers — online between Feb. 6 and Mar. 14 in 24 countries. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 0.87% at a 95% level of confidence.

Do you think schools should have rules in place dictating how teachers and students interact in cyberspace?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, skynesher

More About: cyberbaiting, cyberbullying, education

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Three young siblings from Mexico are attracting heavy attention for their cover of Adele’s thumping pop anthem, “Rolling in the Deep,” to the tune of nearly 3 million YouTube pageviews in just 12 days.

Siblings Angie, Gustavo and Abelardo Vazquez — known as VazquezSounds — uploaded the video Nov. 10. Aside from netting massive pageviews, the video has helped the band’s recently created YouTube channel break into the top 40 most-subscribed channels for musicians in Mexico with 24,000 subscribers.

VazquezSounds has been featured on Good Morning America, CNN en Español and other media outlets.

Here’s a breakdown of each sibling’s age and musical talent, which is on display in the above video:

• Angie: 10, vocals
• Gustavo: 13, drums
• Abelardo: 15, piano, guitar and bass

SEE ALSO: Mashable’s Weekly Cover Song Face-Off Competition

VazquezSounds is one of many in a long list of musicians who have covered Adele’s smash hit, including another trio of siblings — Boyce Avenue (see video number one below). In the following gallery, you’ll find acoustic, beatbox, choir, duet, garage rock, guitar, live, mashup, military and piano versions.

Acoustic: Boyce Avenue

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BONUS: Celebrity Covers of “Rolling in the Deep”

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A slew of music, TV and Internet celebrities have put their own spin on arguably the year’s biggest pop song. This gallery includeds covers from Linkin Park, John Legend, David Cook, Mike Posner, David Cook, lip-sync extraordinaire Keenan Cahill, and Glee‘s Rachel Berry and Jesse St. James, among others.

Live: Linkin Park

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More About: Adele, Entertainment, Music, music videos, trending, viral videos, YouTube

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Although many anticipated that Apple would open its Grand Central Terminal store in New York City before Black Friday, construction workers at the location confirmed on Tuesday that it won't be ready in time. The store, opening in the highly-trafficked commuter terminal, will be Apple’s largest retail venue.

"It won't be any time too soon," a construction worker at the site told Mashable. "We still have a lot to do, so my guess is that it will be ready in December."

It's been rumored that the Cupertino, Calif., company will be announcing later today when the store will open. Apple hasn’t given a date for the opening yet.

In the meantime, it remains boarded up in the train station's main terminal, with the sounds of drills and construction serving as a backdrop for commuters.

This will be Apple’s first U.S. opening since the departure of Ron Johnson, the former senior vice president for retail at Apple who helped create its iconic store design with Steve Jobs. Johnson is now the CEO of J.C. Penney.

The Grand Central Apple Store will reportedly cost the company more than $1 million in rent each year to reach the 750,000 people that pass through the venue each day. The store will be the company’s fifth Apple Store in New York City.

Image courtesy of Flickr, achimh

More About: apple, Apple Stores, grand central, Top Stories, trending

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