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REAL-LIFE PIXAR LAMP POWERED BY ARDUINO!!!

"While at least Life-magazine-killer TV has served as a platform for the creation of some great artworks (HBO's "The Wire," created by newspaperman-turned-TV-auteur David Simon, comes to mind) and inspired the creation of new art forms (see the upcoming Smithsonian retrospective of the work of "father of video art" Nam June Paik), it's hard to imagine what of lasting value hot web-native media brands like Gawker and BuzzFeed are contributing to visual culture and art history. Which brings me to an email I got last Wednesday from Gawker promoting its "top story" of Dec. 5., titled "The 13 Most Powerful Images of Naked Celebrities of 2012," which quickly racked up more than a million page views. It was a sequel to a Gawker post from the previous day titled "The 19 Most Powerful Images of 2012," which was mostly a shameless, edited-down rip-off of a BuzzFeed post titled "The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012," consisting of intense wire-service photojournalism from Reuters, the AP, Getty and others, which derive most of their support from old-school print-centric publications around the world. Gawker's excuse for its act of, uh, curation: "Who has time to scroll through 45 pictures?""

"Of the 30 brands that have signed on thus far, only five will be running campaigns in the U.S. Twentieth Century Fox, one of two global launch advertisers, will promote its upcoming film Life of Pi with ads in the Xbox Video app, Xbox companion mobile and tablet app SmartGlass app and the Casual Games app, which spans Xbox and Microsoft's desktop and mobile operating systems. And next month the other global launch advertiser, Nissan, will run ads in the Bing and Xbox Music apps. Though it seems the in-app ads are initially only slated to run within Microsoft's own apps, the company said several publishers-such as The Associated Press, Bonnier Corporation, Photobucket, Slacker Radio and The Tribune Company-have agreed to run the units. In announcing the roster of initial advertisers, Microsoft also put out some stats regarding consumer perception of the ad units. The most encouraging stat found that the ads scored a 92 percent in ad recall, but the other numbers suggest brands may prefer consumers forget their ads. Only 39 percent of respondents said they're happy to see advertising within Windows 8, and only 33 percent agreed that advertising on Windows 8 improved their opinion of a brand."

"But the increase in ad volume trumped the visitor increase. Using data from Media6degrees, AdExchanger reports that Weather.com had almost 7,000 percent more ads on Monday Oct. 29, the day Sandy hit, than it had the previous Monday. Accuweather.com and Wunderground.com also saw ad spikes, although they were far more modest, peaking at a 333 percent 7-day life Sunday Oct. 28 and 163 percent lift Saturday Oct. 27, respectively."

"Citi piloted LinkedIn's first branded community in April, erecting Connect: Professional Women's Network as a sponsored group for members to discuss topics online, such as women-on-women bullying in the workplace. Then in late summer something unexpected happened: Members began taking things offline. One New York-based member posted a question, asking if others would like to meet in person. That has spawned nine different meet-ups in not just New York but Seattle and Miami. "That's not necessarily behavior we could have predicted from an online social network," said Citi's managing director and head of North American marketing Vanessa Colella."

"When three-week old Latin-American restaurant Comodo - located in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood - noticed guests were repeatedly snapping pictures of their entrees and uploading them to Instagram, it decided to capitalize on the trend. The restaurant has embraced the hashtag #ComodoMenu and added it to the bottom of its real-life menu, encouraging guests to add, share and check out photos of food offered at the establishment."

Important to remember when brainstorming

"To address these [technology] forces, our vision is to build our brands through lifelong, one-to-one relationships in real time with every person in the world," Pritchard said. "The power of everyday people is driving monumental change and people power favors brands like ours. We have trusted brands that are part of everyday life. We genuinely care about serving people with superior benefits and doing good."

"more than half of children between the ages of five and eight have already used tablets to play or learn, according to some research. For kids between the ages of six and 12, the iPad was the most coveted gadget last Christmas. Tablets are permeating family life, too; in households that own a device, kids 12 and under get their hands on it more often than not."