alex johnson

Make the most of a key moment in history with these beautifully rendered paper dolls featuring President-elect Barack Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters. The elegantly designed set includes a complete wardrobe of authentic outfits worn by the couple on the campaign trail. Features brief biographical notes and a bonus "Election Night Scorecard." - alex johnson

Perhaps this has been going on for a while, but I’ve never noticed it before. YouTube users often create an original video using their favorite popular song as the audio. I’m afraid that they won’t be able to do that much longer, since YouTube has started muting videos that use unauthorized copyrighted music (and that pretty much means all user-created videos.) - alex johnson

Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you're fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences. - alex johnson

I'm often prone to hyperbole, but these guys are probably my favourite cover discovery of the year. - alex johnson

Founded in 1900 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife Katrina, herself a poet, Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment. - alex johnson

Africa is a huge continent made up of hundreds of different tribes of people. When first starting to explore the music of Africa, it can be quite overwhelming! Here are some CDs from different cultures and regions of Africa to get you started. - alex johnson

Set in the United Kingdom in the early to mid-1980s, the story surrounds the post-Oxford life of the protagonist, Nick Guest. As the novel begins, Nick moves into the household of the Fedden family, comprising his friend, crush, and fellow Oxford graduate Toby; Toby's eccentric sister Catherine; their wealthy and aristocratic mother, Rachel; and their Thatcher-obsessed father, Gerald, a newly-elected MP for the Conservative Party. Nick has his first romance with a black council worker, Leo, but a later relationship with Wani, the son of a rich Lebanese businessman, illuminates the ruthlessness of 1980s Thatcherite Britain. - alex johnson

Several weeks ago, BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine shared a term in one of his predictions for 2009 that was intriguing because of how it describes a growing phenomenon in media today … the rise of the shadow media. The shadow media are the professional journalists, writers, editors and thought leaders who have been displaced either by choice or necessity as part of the upheaval that traditional media has been going through over the past few years. While before, these content creators may have just moved to a new role within traditional media (as Josh Quittner did when Business2.0 magazine folded) - but today more and more they are branching out on their own. - alex johnson

It’s a trick of the numbers — more coming than going out. Most people don’t know. I’ve managed to keep it quiet, but folks are going to find out. Google has my gmail notifications. Twitter could have my data somewhere on file — can’t count on a fail. Someone like that reporter who found out that Dan Lyons was the fake Steve Jobs could break the story. So I might as well come clean now. People unfollow me on Twitter. - alex johnson

He is probably the most exciting street artist out there, not because I own several pieces by him, but his stuff always makes people smile. They are executed with a childish innocence, and have a kindergarten like vibrancy or as some say the “fluorescence of a acid rave.” He is Bortusk Leer, and he creates monsters - not normal monsters, but mutant beasties with funny faces. I gather his new adventure will see him doing some TV work, which will bring his creative genius to your attention. Here’s a little animation - alex johnson

I just created a new Twitter account, and it got me to thinking about all the data visualization I've seen for Twitter tweets. I felt like I'd seen a lot, and it turns out there are quite a few. Here they are grouped into four categories - network diagrams, maps, analytics, and abstract. - alex johnson

On NewYear’s Eve I participated in a twitter Rave – Social Media advocates could learn much from #nyetwarty and #happy09. - alex johnson

NEW YORK The Ogilvy Group today cut about 10 percent of its staff across multiple units in response to client spending reductions that exceed the WPP Group shop's new business growth, sources said. - alex johnson

Influence Search: Search all of Twitter, but sort the results by the people who get retweeted the most. This will help you find opinions that others feel are worth spreading - alex johnson

In less than 2 minutes... Brand yourself on Twitter by creating your very own Twitter background. Then, let us promote your Twitter Profile for you on the web. - alex johnson

HTML Entity/Unicode Viewer - alex johnson

This is Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky's third season writing for Sex and the City. Their partnership began when they were nine years old in Philadelphia. Since then, they have worked together and separately in various writing fields. Elisa has written fiction and worked as a journalist in New York. Her "Cheap Date" and "Celebrity Date" columns in the New York Post chronicled her pursuit of the perfect man and the perfect $10 bowl of pasta. Her work has also appeared in McSweeney's, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and Nickelodeon Magazine. Julie, an award-winning playwright, has also written for magazines and TV animation, and edited comic books at DC Comics. Two of her plays were made into short films. Together, Julie and Elisa have written for MTV, Nickelodeon, and wrote sit-com pilots for Studios USA and ABC. Last year, they sold their first screenplay, "Shrinking Violet" to Revolution Studios. - alex johnson

Tweetmarks is a service to easily organize links you share on Twitter. This service is from same guys who created TweetBeep, a Google Alert like service for Twitter. Like their earlier service, this also provides you with plenty of options. Most interesting is one where Tweetmarks add your links to del.icio.us account automatically. - alex johnson

As you might know Twitter accepts more than just basic text. The service is UTF8 compatible which means that instead of tweeting “I love you” you could just as well use “I ♥ you”. Or how about this: “I’m going to ✈ to ☭ in the morning after I make a ☎ to make sure my ♂ is ✔ with it. ✌ for now and don’t forget to ✍ and lets have ♨ soon!” - alex johnson

SocialToo is working to complement your social experience by providing you with all the tools you need to get the most you can from those you follow on the web. We're automating the processes needed to make this experience as easy as possible, and providing you with tools to reach your audience to its fullest potential. - alex johnson

Version 1.0 of Power Twitter, an add-on for Firefox created by Narendra Rocherolle at 83 Degrees, was just released. If you use Twitter and were excited about services like Tweetree, this is something you’ll want to add immediately. Power Twitter moves Twitter Search, inconveniently located on a different subdomain, right into the Twitter site itself. You can also just search a single user’s updates from that user’s Twitter page. Twitter should have long ago integrated a search box directly onto the logged-in Twitter home page. They haven’t, but Power Twitter fixes this. - alex johnson

If you love a particular blog you’ve stumble upon, chances are you will want to follow his Twitter account. But let’s not make this too difficult for users to find where’s that Twitter link. Catchy graphics are always better than plain text and they are easier to spot. If you are keen to increase Twitter followers, here’s a compilation of 100+ Remarkably Beautiful Twitter Icons And Buttons you can apply on your site. - alex johnson

Despite my heavy usage, I’m on Twitter Hiatus. I’m known for being a very active twitter user, recent applications have tracked my daily usage from being 20-30 tweets on average. I’m not like other twitter users, as I have a very specific method in which I use the tool. However, two weeks ago today, I stopped using twitter, and announced that I’m on temporary Twitter hiatus. - alex johnson

Twitter’s ability to virally spread ideas has given rise to many fads. The latest to set Twitter abuzz: gauging your “Twitemperature“, a mysterious measure of your engagement in the community. Who then, is the world’s hottest Twitter user? Not Mashable, alas: we’re stone cold. According to the service, a little known Twitterer named DaMav tops the temperature scale, with a rating of 873°F. - alex johnson

If you have been to just about any “A List” blog in the past month, you will have noticed at least one reference to Twitter if not several dozen. Twitter is the new must-have in the blogosphere. But just what in the world is Twitter and why would you want to join the movement? Have you looked at Twitter’s homepage befuddled and wondered, “Now what?” Read on to learn why Twitter is popular and in demand - alex johnson

A new study indicates that the brain selects brands from people's memory according to a number of predictable unconscious rules. Findings from the study - a comprehensive review of fundamental neuroscience research - are being published in the December 2008 issue of Journal of Brand Management. The Brain Selects Brands the Way Google Selects Websites - alex johnson

Ketamine, an anaesthetic that is popular with doctors on the battlefield and also with vets because it allows a degree of awareness without pain, is a new hope for the treatment of depression – but the minute-by-minute images produced by Professor Bill Deakin and his team show how the drug achieves this in an unexpected way. - alex johnson

The idea is pretty simple: Create a giant database of people's first tweets. Think of it as an anthropological dig through Twitter. - alex johnson

We are considering how brands are perceived when using Twitter. Thanks for participating. Please consider the following 6 statements and select whether you Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree with the individual statements. At the end we will ask you a bit about your profile. Entire survey should take less than 2 minutes. Leave your twitter id if you are interested in the results when we are done. @warrenss and @researchguy - alex johnson