Y! Answers Makes New Distraction for Canadians

It's called Karma's Quest. We wonder if Canadians are doing anything else these days besides playing other promotional puzzle games and posting pets on the internet. We're going to guess that no, they're not. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Yes. Blender Companies Can Make Virals, Too

Coffee and Manipulation points us to some virals for Blendtec, a company that hawks ordinary-looking blenders that are apparently not so ordinary. We were mesmerized in a pathetic sort of way when the man in the white coat fed a rake to his blender on the :90 second soup cycle.

We suspect these virals strike a chord because they speak to a desire to put things that will create fatal shrapnel in contact with swirling kitchen blades. But hey. It's not like videos go viral because they're deeply profound. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Polaris Makes the Best ATVs And They'll Kick Your Ass.

Remember the sandbox? In the sandbox it was a big deal to find out who spit further and who could destroy who at mercy. In business things aren't so different.

With the creative help of McKinney in Durham, NC, CEO Tom Tiller of Polaris challenged the CEOs of his industry competitors to an ATV duel. The object was to find out who's better at building ATVs. Polaris won by forfeit, meaning everybody else bitched out (3 declined, 3 acted too cool to answer).

more »

Yet Another Slick Site Pushes 'Music Powered by People' Idea

Because Napster, MySpace, iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody and countless others are perhaps missing something that these people aren't, we announce the arrival of Haystack. You can register as a listener or an artist and toss around really savvy words that we're sure indie purists use all the time, like "tastemakers" and "music stuff."

Haystack even gets all Shakespearean on our asses and makes up its own buzz words: a "stack" is vividly defined on the homepage so there won't be any confusion about why anyone would cognitively pair "haystack" and "music."

When we finally grasped the concept we thought, "Guess every roll in the hay deserves a soundtrack." But we're not sure that's what they were shooting for. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

MINI Mail Makes Sending Email A Painfully Laborious Chore

Sure it's cool to have a send-to-a-friend feature on your site but when it take 30 to 60 seconds just to load, it's really not that much fun when a simple browser File > Send Link action will do just fine not to mention much faster. Yea, the creative and graphics on this Mini site are cool and all but sometimes practicality gets lost on one of the scraps of paper left on the floor of the creative conference room during concepting.

The funniest part of this whole feature is the copy which reads, in part, "Type in your friend's email address and the message you'd like to send. And wait for the smoke to clear. Like all things MINI, make it quick." Well, we'd love to make it quick but all of us don't have optical T1/T3/whatever Internet connections nor the site loaded into our cache because we've been obsessively viewing it over and over to make sure our creative work is perfect.

Brand Identities Filled With Pedophilia, Faggots, Bodily Fluid

It seems a lot of businesses in this world need a slap in the face when it comes to the double meanings their company names and logos connote. First, we have pediatric doctor's office signage that alludes to pedophilia. Next, we have get rich quick wackos who like to embed their sexual preference in their logos. Now, we have a store in Brookline Massachusetts that likes to create visions of a certain bodily fluid with its unfortunate name KumOn. Perhaps everyone really is as bad at proofreading as we are.

Jewish Social Network Gets James Bond-Style Promotion

Leveraging a little James Bond action, this promotional video for Jewish online social network Koolanoo from Keta Keta hits home literally and figuratively. This clip is a follow up to the initial clip which featured a bikinied hottie by the pool getting assistance from one of her "brothers." This second clip is playful and engaging enough to keep interest long enough for the payoff.

JWT Rolls Big, Game Gets Free Ads, Video Makes Money

- "Oh, great. Another frickin' release asking me to spend precious time that I don't have." These guys really want you to see their brand spanking new website.

- Capitalizing on the growth of online video and riffing off Bling's search and win model, WeWin offers viewers of videos a chance to win prizes.

- JWT Detroit pulls an Agency.com and rolls big while hunting for talent.

- People love Gears of War so much they're making their own commercials for it which will surely make it into every social media fan's presentation for the next six months.

- Consumer generated content is a great way for people to make money....as long at they pump out 1,000 hours of the crap.

Candystand Releases Pyro Game

It's called Skyburst and it's, don't blink now, a "fireworks arcade-style puzzle spectacular for everyone to enjoy!", and it's to promote those new LifeSavers Fruit Splosions candies. Yippee.

Okay, essentially it's a pyro game in a cheap tuxedo stitched by bright-eyed anime kids who write copy in exclamation points. Don't get us wrong. We like fire and we like anime, better still when they're together. We just wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Boneless Animals And Farewell Tour Return For McRib

Like an aging rock star who won't roll over and die, Mcdonald's has brought back their McRib sandwich with the MicRib Farewell Tour II, a follow up to last year's original McRib Farewell Tour. On the site, visitors can build their own rock concert light show that can be recorded and sent to friends, download McRib themed t-shirt designs, download McRib "power rock ballads" and download McRib wall paper for their computer. While that all makes for a good time, we found ourselves spending way to much time just watching that intro rocker chick do her thing. Over and over. Yes, we are truly ill. We admit it.

Also back is the BPFAA (the Boneless Pig Farmers Association of America) website, bonelesspigs.org, a fictitious organization that promotes the good will of boneless pigs. This whole boneless animal thing. It just makes one wonder if all the PETA videos capturing the mythical boneless KFC chicken are for real.