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"Here are five lessons in the art and science of storytelling I learned by studying the pros ... 1) Adopt a newsroom mentality Make content development a core part of the way you do business - just as it is in journalism. Embed it in every department. Hire journalists just as LinkedIn, Qualcomm and others have done. Curate voices like we do on edelman.com. 2) Hand-craft your content for each venue Some companies try desperately to create singular pieces of content that can be simply be dumped in different places. That no longer works. Instead, Hand-craft your content for each venue. Jonah Peretti, Buzzfeed's co-founder, summed it up best when he said: "Twitter is for your head, while Facebook is for your heart." 3) Cultivate superstars who have a POV News and information, to some degree, is commodity content - it's everywhere. Deep, thoughtful analysis, however, is in high demand. Just as the New York Times has Nate Silver and ESPN has Bill SImmons, you too can grow and cultivate rock stars who create thoughtful content with unique analytical point of view. 4) Be relentlessly data driven Speaking of Mr. Silver, if there's one thing he taught us this year it's that data rules. Follow in his footsteps in not only how you use data to inform and deliver your storytelling but also in how you measure your results. Many newsrooms, for example, now have real-time dashboards that help shape their decisions. 5) Let constraints fuel creativity Finally, it's often hard to convince management to put resources behind content until there's proven ROI. However, constraints can breed creativity. The Wall Street Journal's daytime video network, for example, was challenged to cover the Olympics without footage. So instead it creatively turned to using puppetry - and with great success. Be creative to get around constraints."

Leap Motion, an $80 device that turns any computer into the one from Minority Report. The iPod Mini-sized controller sits in front of the keyboard and reads three dimensional hand motions, allowing the user to interact with the screen without touching it. (The user's hands have to remain with an 8-cubic-foot area.) Unlike some previous attempts at no-touch interaction, Leap Motion doesn't require the user to learn artificial movements.

"There's a robot snake that slithers along on wheels, and actually snaps out to bite your hand when the infrared sensor sees you there. You can shake a smartphone to make it hiss and strike, or tilt to use the phone's inertial sensors to steer."

Kopin Golden-i Wireless Headset, a head-mounted computer that enables firefighters to analyze a situation and make smarter decisions. Much like Google's forthcoming Project Glass, the Golden-i headsets house a camera, microdisplay, GPS locator, speech recognition and gesture control. This allows users to benefit from computer technology while keeping their hands and concentration free on the task at hand, making it especially suitable to servicemen. Using data such as maps, heat profiles, oxygen levels and heart rate - as well as audio and visual connectivity to colleagues and staff - firefighters can gain a better overall view of the situation, helping to save lives as well as protect themselves.

The Economist is handing control of its website to its tablet magazines controller, in a bid to unite the previously competitive units.

Japanese company Seraku aims to make your network a little more ubiquitous with a prototype design for an Android-powered mirror. It uses RF proximity sensors to detect where your hands are placed so that you don't have to smudge it all up in order to check those sports scores, 

e-ink slap bracelet?! Still awaiting Pebble hands on.

It's Kia's attempt to create the world's smallest stop motion film, challenging the work from Nokia's N8 stop motion short. This time though, the stop motion film has been hand drawn on over 900 fake nails with 1,200 odd bottles of polish used to create the story.

Kellogg's is using a "Tweet shop" in London's Soho to promote its new product, Cracker Crisps. The idea is customers "pay" for a packet by tweeting a message about the snack to their friends and followers. Customers sample their wares in a "try before you buy" area and write their Twitter review. The Special K representatives then check every customer's tweet before handing over a 60p packet of crisps.

"News Distribution Network isn't a household name, but news consumers sure watch a lot of the videos the company distributes. In fact, NDN broke the top 10 in comScore's ranking of top online video properties in October, with an audience topping 53 million. It just signed a deal with CBS Local to distribute video from 13 local CBS stations including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. And a handful of sites are now starting to let NDN remotely program video on their sites."

"Big brands and agencies are used to lots of attention from Facebook and Google, so it's no surprise the presidential campaigns, with their vast ad budgets, got some, too. But as the election fades, Ad Age has learned more about just how closely the two largest sellers of digital advertising worked with the campaigns, even sending employees to work onsite at campaign offices and their respective digital consultancies. "Google staffers were hand-selected by Google to sit in our office and help us," confirmed Zac Moffatt, digital director for Mitt Romney's campaign. Multiple people who worked closely with the Barack Obama campaign did not respond to requests for interviews."

"Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix, which develops social games for major motion pictures like The Hunger Games, said the in-game ad market presents both huge opportunities and new risks for brands and agencies. He cited statistics from NPD and said that there are almost 200 million online gamers out there who play games for an average of 13 hours a week. Yet, the majority of ad spend still goes to TV or banner ads and only a fraction to games, he noted. "How are we going to close that gap?" he asked. The discussion was organized by SponsorPay, a Berlin-based engagement advertising company whose application rewards users that watch an ad with virtual currency and other goodies. SponsorPay is one of a handful of companies out there including SocialVibe, Flurry and WildTangent seeking to help games developers monetize their product and brand advertisers engage consumers with such ads. Games entrepreneur Wilson Kriegel, formerly with Zynga, addressed this potential by discussing his involvement with mega-hit Draw Something, an online drawing game developed at his former company OMGPop, which Zynga acquired in March. The game allows people to draw things and share them with their friends. Since its launch early in 2012, it has seen over 90 million installs, 10 billion drawings created and was a top trending topic on Twitter.  Companies including McDonald's, Disney and Sprint have incorporated their ads into the game. Kriegel said that ad features including in-game banners, game features and in-game call to actions seen a clickthrough rate of 1 percent to 10 percent-unheard of in an industry where average CTRs are 0.7 percent."