Zig//Zag//Copy//Paste

Real-time Ascii Art conversion of Google Street View panorama's done in WebGL.

(via Here's the Hot Wheels Double Loop Dare stunt from X Games)

It’s not a numbers game — influence spreads across close-knit networks of actual friends.

I Wish I Said Hello attempts to bring missed connection stories back to the public space in the form of street art.

Famed Bristol artist Banksy – known primarily for his works that treat the global terrain as his playground – has unveiled a series of new works that utilize the canvas. Dubbed titles like Ballerina, Lifestyle Out of Order and Parliament, his signature humor and sharp as a razor’s edge wit is prominently on display. While he will probably always be most known for his stencil work, it’s clear that Banksy is quite comfortable using more traditional means of expression that still have that cutting edge execution that has made him one of the biggest figures in all of art.

There's a shopping revolution happening--and it's taking place in stores, online, deep inside your wallet, and everywhere else transactions have traction. From the way we spend money, to the things we spend it on, to the sales outlets themselves, consumers are wandering in a wonderland of buying potential. PayPal's "digital wallet," Amex's slick socializing, Square's disruptive tech, Warby Parker's new way of selling eyeglasses, and Fab.com's, well, fab design site represent just a few of the people and companies at the forefront of the movement--and the innovations powering the way we shop now.

Check-in to the Social Cooler on Foursquare, and watch it magically pop open.

To increase awareness about drunk driving, we created the world's first microphone breathalyzer and invited people to sing karaoke. Once up on stage, with their guard down, we took them by surprise. At the end of each song, we didn't show their score, we showed their alcohol blood level.

Chocolat, a text editor for Mac, offers its users a free trial before asking users to buy its app. After the free trial is over, you can still use the app but... it'll display everything in Comic Sans. 

Search every word spoken on television. Live.

POSSIBLE partnered with the amazing talents of Bionic League, EightVFX, Mother, Ryan Heffington, LEGS, and Squeak E. Clean and programmed the light show content for Target’s presentation at New York Fashion Week. Lights, dancers, and music ignited the Standard Hotel, turning it into a beacon of entertainment amidst the skyscrapers of New York. Dancers would frequently change rooms, sometimes running up four flights of stairs while changing costumes and picking up props. One male dancer had an elevator waiting to whisk him from the fifth to the 16th floor in 45 seconds. Other dancers had anywhere between 10 to 30 seconds to change floors.

Madewell takes the choose your own adventure concept a step further with their new holiday video. The choose-your-own-adventure video — which employs user-directed technology — gives the viewer five seconds to make choices like tea with Dree Hemingway vs. coffee with stylist Marina Munoz; shoes vs. purses; and sparkles or confetti.

Since it debuted on YouTube on March 28, Skittles’s video has gotten more than 180,000 views — possibly because it features that staple of Internet memes: a cat. The video follows other equally strange ads of late for the brand, plus an extreme social media makeover of its site in 2009 that replaced the usual corporate page with a Twitter stream, and a campaign last summer in the U.K. that aimed to bury a man in a vat of the candy.

Keystone Light’s 30-packs come pre-armed with Keystone Light Canhole, an ingenious spin on the ever-popular yard game of Cornhole (or “bags”, “bean bags”, etc.). Ironically, Dirty Beer Hole hasn’t been able to find much out about this promotion since there really isn’t much on the internet about it… yet. Dirty Beer Hole, as a service to the folks at Keystone Light and to fans of value beers everywhere, is re-posting this promotional pic to the official Keystone Light Canhole box. Drink it in; you know you want to.

Troy, Michigan couldn’t afford to keep its library open, so it scheduled a vote for a 0.07 tax increase. The Tea Party waged strong anti-tax group waged a “Vote No” campaign against the increase. The city worked with Leo Burnett Detroit to run a counter campaign in the name of the Book Burning Party. Signs appeared around Troy with the message, “Vote to close Troy library Aug 2, book burning party Aug 5.” The campaign’s Facebook page became the hub for the new campaign, with Twitter, Foursquare, want ads, flyers and more to drive engagement. The campaign became international news as outcry over the idea of burning the library’s books drowned out the opposition and galvanized support for the library – which won by a landslide.

Even in the current economy, assumptions about poverty and homelessness abound such as “I’ll never be in that situation” or “If I were struggling, I’d figure out something.” McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham challenge those beliefs with the launch of SPENT, an online game that uses social media to educate people about poverty, homelessness and UMD. (via PlaySpent.org — McKinney)