Archive for June, 2009

In an effort to promote Virgin America’s in flight Wi-Fi service, VA is teaming up with Google for the “Day in the Cloud Challenge” — the first ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and on the ground. Contestants can play anytime during June 24th, but they only have an hour from start to finish to to complete an array of puzzles, trivia, and brain teasers using Google Apps. On Google’s blog, they explain, “More and more people are storing their data (such as documents, calendars, email, and photos) online “in the cloud” with services like Google Apps. All that you need is an Internet connection to access and share that information with friends, family, and co-workers. With airlines like Virgin America offering in-flight Wi-Fi, it’s now even easier to stay connected while you travel, even when you’re flying through the sky.”

The top five scorers in the challenge will receive and awesome “Year in the Cloud” prize package that includes a year of free flights and free in-flight Wi-Fi from Virgin America, an HP netbook computer, and 1 terabyte of Google account storage for all of your photos and email. So what are you waiting for? Go to The Day in the Cloud Challenge and get your game on today.

You may have heard about Apple’s newest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G S, just released this past Friday, June 19^th. Although the new model is almost identical in outward appearance to that of the 3G (the model just before it), the 3G S does in fact possess significant internal differences. To start, the CPU capacity has increased from 412MHZ to an estimated 600MHZ and the RAM has almost doubled from 128MB to 256MB. A new graphics chip has been put in place that offers better visuals. They have also added a 3-megapixel camera, which now has auto-focus and video recording features. But what is the main difference between this iPhone and past versions? Speed! The main improvement the 3G S offers is that it is faster than its predecessors, offering speedier applications and loading times. Of course there are other great new aspects of the latest iPhone, like the copy and paste feature and compass application…but the need for speed seems to be one of the underlying reasons why customers are rushing out to purchase Apple’s latest creation. Check out more on the Apple iPhone 3G S here.

To view the full article, click here.

Introducing ECOBOT; a free app that calculates your carbon footprint by measuring the fuel, power, and paper you use. And it does much of this automatically, right from your desktop. By tracking your carbon consumption, it’ll help you see where you have the most negative impact so you know where to put the three Rs into action. Aside from reducing, reusing, and recycling, it can link you to places where you can offset your carbon totals.

Check it out at http://ecobot.taxi.ca/ to start tracking your environmental impact.

Picture this: you’re walking around a neighborhood of your liking wondering how much it would cost to rent an apartment in that new building you’ve been eyeing. Well wonder no more if you’re in Holland and have the Layar ap on your cell phone. Layar is being call the world’s first augmented reality browser, available on Android phones that have a camera, compass and GPS. Once you activate this ap, the browser displays real-time information on top of a variety of things you see on the street when you point your cell phone camera at them. Talk about useful, and think about all the advertising opportunities! Currently this ap is launching in Holland with select partners, but one can hope it will soon come to the states. Check out this video on psfk.com to get a little glimpse into the future. 

Source: PSFK

For the first time in history, more US internet users visited Facebook than MySpace, making it the most popular social network site in the US. In just a year, the numbers for facebook have jumped from 35,594,000 visitors to 70,278,000 visitors. 

Which social network site do YOU use the most?

Since anything you actually choose will probably not be what he’s looking for, get Dad an emailable uber-gift-certificate from GA, redeemable at over 300 e-tailers (Timberland, Sports Authority, EatGourmet, Ozone Billiards…), the perfect way to let him know he wasn’t around enough for you to even guess what general categories of things he’s into. 

Prove your love for copping out atGiveAnything.com 

In a city where $9 for a beer is not uncommon, many bars throughout Manhattan have gotten smart about ways to drive their prospective customers in, especially during these tough times when people have begun to really cut back. “ClickLinksforFreeDrinks” is a website designed for any bar-goer or night-life lover to reserve a bar for one whole hour, and receive complimentary drinks during that hour. In only a few easy steps, you can access the website, choose which Manhattan bar you prefer, pick a date and time, and invite at least ten friends to share the one hour of gratis drinks with. Each person invited can then go on to host a one hour open bar at any of the bars featured on the site. They will also be e-mailed their tickets prior to the event, along with receiving information on upcoming drinking events. People love deals and freebies, so what better way to increase bar attendance than by offering such a website?

The website was started by several tech specialists along with the Village Pourhouse, a trendy bar in New York City. One could conclude that the idea to introduce such a website probably emerged from a decrease in bar frequenters over the past year or so, and a bars desperate struggle to find a way to change that. People will be more apt to go to a bar that offers them an entire hour of free drinks, and will be more apt to spend money there after. The website also has a link to write in about your favorite bar, in hopes that more bars will consider becoming a part of ClickLinksforFreeDrinks. As of now, the website features four bars that take part in the promotion, but it hopes to add even more to the list. Check out www.clicklinksforfreedrinks.com and you could save on an entire hours worth of drink spending…and these days, that’s a lot of savings!

Visit Thrillist’s website or click here to view the full article.

New Yorkers are good at making noise.

And that just might help as Wise brings a whole bunch of potato chips to Citi Field on July 10 to attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the most potato chips ever crunched at once.

The New York Mets play the CincinnatiReds that evening as the “Big City Crunch” gets underway. Every fan entering the new ballpark will be handed a .75-oz. bag of Wise Potato Chips. At a designated time, instructions will be given to open the packages and, when given the go-ahead, to start crunching.

Brand reps are out in force around the area driving a Wise-wrapped van and distributing Wise Potato Chips. They are also getting consumers to try the Wise “Spin the Wheel” game where players can win Big City Crunch-branded merchandise, as well as tickets to the July 10 game.

At the ballpark, representatives of Guinness World Records will be on hand the night of the “Crunch” to record the occasion and, if all necessary criteria are met, shortly thereafter certify that a world record has been set.

The promotion was developed by Source Communications, Wise’ sports marketing agency, to increase awareness for the chips and Wise’s sponsorship as the official potato chip and Cheez Doodle of the New York Mets.

The Crunch supports a season-long advertising campaign at Citi Field, including outfield and LED ads for Wise brands. A New York local print, outdoor, TV and radio ad campaign promoting the Big City Crunch, featuring Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, began May 18 and will run through the July 10 event.

Source: Promo Magazine

While Google is great for plenty of stuff, but sometimes its scope is daunting: query “Size of Asia”, and how can you not click on one of the 50,000 results featuring a certain Ms. Carrera? Revolutionizing the fact-finding game, Wolfram Alpha.

The brainchild of some dude who received his PhD from Caltech by 20, Wolfram’s a “computational knowledge engine”, not a search engine, meaning instead of mining the morass of questionable “facts” on the Web, it uses built-in models to compute answers to fact-based questions, basically making it an enormous calculator that can spell BOOBS, but do it right-side up. Endowed with over 10 trillion pieces of data and 50,000+ algorithms encompassing vast areas of human knowledge (science, math, etc), the initial focus is on quantitative information, meaning it can do everything from graph up complicated calculus equations, to pump out historical sports statistics, to map the duration/magnitude of the next total eclipse (4:30 sec/”epic” anytime you cue up Bonnie Tyler). Since info that can’t be computed is curated from public data, you can plug in a business and get abbreviated filing info like net income, # of employees, P/E ratio, and track stock performance, even comparing daily returns to the S&P up to 10 years back; ask about any town, and you’ll get population data, elevation, and current weather; input a historical date, and you’ll not only get notable events, but also daylight information, and the time difference from that date to today broken down in myriad ways, because your birthday may be months off, but your 1472ndweekday is now!

The search acknowledges it’s currently limited to hard facts, so don’t bother asking anything subjective, but the goal’s to constantly upload new info from the likes of reference libraries and handbooks — but unfortunately for your initial query, not books that encourage the use of your hands. 

Source - Thrillist.com

Just re-launching with a buttload o’ new features, Kick alerts you when your favorite artists are in town, and now also lets you compile and share a face-melting history of past shows you’ve attended, because you didn’t see Phish 479 times for the gooballs…you went for the respect. On the impending gig front, just pick bands you want Kick to track, and they’ll crawl 29 ticket retailers to source upcoming shows, then email you when they’re scheduled to rock your hood; you can also let Kick’s “songkicker” app determine faves from your iTunes/Winamp/Windows Media Player library, helping you realize that even though you bought the Boomerang soundtrack for the P.M. Dawn, you wouldn’t mind seeing Toni Braxton and Babyface live. 

The all-new meat’s a “social concert database” housing info on over a million past shows (which appear when you search for artists), allowing users to create a personal gigography of stuff they’ve attended; click the “I Was There” button and the show’ll be added to your list, where you can get next-level by entering the set list, uploading photos or vids, or posting a personal review, ’cause if you’re vain enough to meticulously catalog and share your attendance record, you probably think that show was about you.

If any of your favorite past gigs aren’t on the list, you can add ‘em yourself by simply by dropping deets on date, venue, headliner, and supporting acts — cause the only thing cooler than bragging about the concerts you’ve been to is bragging about your awesomely deep knowledge of opening bands.

Unleash your awesome musical attendance record at SongKick.com