Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Volkswagen’s The Force Ad Lampooned by Thor [VIDEO]”

After 36 million views on YouTube, Volkswagen’s Super Bowl ad, “The Force,” was ripe for parody, but who would expect the hammer of Thor to be behind it?

In a clever promotion for Paramount Pictures’s upcoming movie Thor, a wee Thor wields a plastic hammer around the house with little effect until, just like in the VW ad, dad comes home and leaves his car in the driveway. Only now, there really does seem to be a power in the force of Thor.

Indeed, that power has been evident in Paramount’s social media outreach for Thor as well. The first trailer for the film has gotten 7 million views so far. The second has received about 1.5 million views. Thor also has 189,000 fans on Facebook. The movie opens May 6.

More About: Paramount, Super Bowl ads, thor, viral videos, volkswagen, youtube

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Call it Cloudgate, Cloudpocalyse or whatever you’d like, but the extended collapse of Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) is both a setback for cloud computing and an opportunity for us to figure out how to stop it from happening again.

Amazon may be best-known for its online shopping site, but it also has a substantial cloud computing business. It provides a scalable, flexible and particularly efficient solution for companies to store and deliver massive amounts of content. Its model of only paying for what you consume was a radical innovation when it launched in 2006.

In fact, Amazon Web Services has been so affordable and reliable that thousands of companies from Foursquare to Netflix utilize the company’s cloud computing technology and servers to run their businesses. They put their faith in Amazon’s cloud because there was no reason to think that it would falter. One of cloud computing’s key tenants is reliability through redundancy of both servers and data centers.

Then on Wednesday, Amazon’s northern Virginia data center started experiencing problems that caused major latency and connectivity issues. The trouble was apparently due to excessive re-mirroring of its Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes — this essentially created countless new backups of the EBS volumes that took up Amazon’s storage capacity and triggered a cascading effect that caused downtime on hundreds (or more likely thousands) of websites for almost 24 hours.

The collapse took its share of victims. Among the most prominent companies affected were Foursquare, Quora, Hootsuite, SCVNGR, Heroku, Reddit and Wildfire, though hundreds of other companies big and small were affected. Luckily, one of Amazon’s most prominent customers, Netflix, didn’t experience problems because it’s built for the loss of an entire data center, while companies relying on Amazon’s four other global data centers didn’t experience too many issues.

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A Learning Moment

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FathomDB founder Justin Santa Barbara has a detailed post on his blog about what may be the biggest problem to come out of this week’s collapse: Amazon’s cloud redundancies failed to stop a mass outage. Its Availability Zones are supposed to be able to fail independently without bringing the whole system down. Instead, there was a single point of failure that shouldn’t have been there.

This week’s disaster in the cloud is a reminder to startups to build redundancy into their applications and their own systems, but as Santa Barbara points out, most startups don’t have the time or resources to engineer for multiple cloud systems (each Amazon global region/data center has its own rules and features, making a simple “switch” to another center difficult). These companies trusted Amazon to keep them online, and Amazon failed to deliver.

Catastrophic issues will always occur, but in the pre-cloud era, downtime only affected a single computer or website. Today, a catastrophic event takes down thousands of websites, causing millions or even billions of dollars in lost revenue and productivity.

This incident is no reason for us to shun cloud computing, though. Its benefits (scalability, cost reduction, device independence, performance and more) far outweigh its cons. We do need to take a hard look at how we structure our cloud infrastructure though and find new ways to either prevent single points of failure or quickly move content off failing clouds faster, especially as the world’s computing power is consolidated into fewer and fewer systems.

Cloud computing is still in its infancy, and today’s events make it clear that we still have a lot of work to do. It could be a whole lot worse next time if we aren’t prepared.

More About: amazon, Amazon AWS, Amazon EC2, cloud, ec2, foursquare, hootsuite, reddit

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The son of Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab, has been missing, and may have been kidnapped, according to reports from the BBC and several Russian media outlets.

According to the reports, Ivan Kaspersky, a student of mathematics and cybernetics at Moscow State University, has been missing since Tuesday, and the police as well as the Russian secret service have been looking for him since.

Russian media outlet Lifenews claims Ivan Kaspersky has been kidnapped, with the kidnappers seeking a €3 million ($4.3 million) ransom.

A spokesman for Kaspersky Lab refused to comment on the report.

Kaspersky Lab is a private company headquartered in Moscow, Russia. It offers anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, and anti-intrusion software products. The company employs over 2,300 people; it reported more than $500 million in revenue in 2010.

Image courtesy of Kaspersky Lab

[via BBC, Lifenews]

More About: Eugene Kaspersky, kaspersky, Kaspersky lab, kidnapping

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New Verizon customers can pick up a HTC Thunderbolt, Verizon’s first LTE phone, for a reduced price of $129.99 over at Amazon this weekend.

The HTC Thunderbolt packs some very powerful hardware, including a single core 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU, 768 MB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, a 4.3-inch screen as well as 8 GB of built-in memory and 32 GB of additional memory on a microSD card.

Its claim to fame, however, is the support for LTE technology, which enables fast data transfer on Verizon’s network. Originally, the Thunderbolt’s price was $249.99 with a two-year contract, which leaves a full $130 in your pocket.

The offer is valid until midnight Pacific Time on Monday, April 25.

[Amazon via Engadget]

More About: 4G, amazon, deal, htc, htc thunderbolt, LTE, Thunderbolt, verizon

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Canadians planning to tweet election results during next month’s elections had better think twice, because it could result in a $25,000 fine or up to five years in prison, thanks to a 73-year-old law.

Elections Canada, the non-partisan agency responsible for administering Canada’s federal elections, has come under fire for saying that it will enforce the Canada Elections Act, specifically a section that mandates that nobody prematurely announce or send messages about the election results until all the polls are closed.

The following is from section 329 of the Canada Elections Act:

“No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.”

The law was originally enacted in 1938 to prevent radio stations from prematurely transmitting elections results, thereby influencing voter behavior on the west coast by the east coast. The polls close up to four and a half hours later on the west coast because of time zones.

This wasn’t a law designed for Facebook, Twitter and social media, though. There are simply too many potential sources of information for this law to be enforced in a feasible way. Despite that fact, Elections Canada says that public messages on social networks could be construed as breaking the Canada Elections Act.

“As administrators we have to inform people and make sure they are aware of that provision,” an Elections Canada spokesperson told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s not like Elections Canada will be monitoring your Twitter stream. However, if there are complaints, the Elections Canada Commissioner will investigate.”

Elections Canada has no choice — it has to enforce the laws that are on the books, and it’s up to the politicians to change the law. Citizens, especially Twitter users, have vowed to protest Elections Canada and the Canada Elections Act by tweeting, blogging and using social media to discuss election results as a way to defy the archaic law. Expect a lot of tweets with the hashtags #Tweettheresults and #elxn41 to be bending or breaking the rules.

It doesn’t seem like Elections Canada is going to go proactively go after citizens who tweet about election results, but we still hope this is the last time Canada has to deal with this law for its elections. Information cannot be suppressed in the digital era.

More About: Canada, elections, Elections Canada, facebook, politics, trending, twitter

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This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they’re doing to grow.

In your inbox, who can matter more than what. If the sender is someone you know, a coworker you collaborate with or a sales lead you’ve identified, the email becomes infinitely more meaningful.

Dallas-based RedCritter connects the who to the what with RedCritter for Outlook, an app store for Outlook that includes 25 applications ranging from the social to the practical.

RedCritter’s approach is not dissimilar from Xobni’s. The email add-on lives in the right-hand side of the user’s inbox and displays a plethora of dynamic data on the sender or emails.

Founded in January 2010, RedCritter aims to be more than just a tool to enhance your email experience. It wants to be a company that builds enterprise software that incorporates the latest technologies and social media innovations to make business systems easier to use.

“I want to build a new breed of enterprise application,” says RedCritter CEO Mike Beaty. “It’s always been an interest of mine to streamline business processes.”

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Apps for Outlook

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RedCritter’s most consumer-friendly product is the Outlook app store, where you can install any of the company’s 25 Outlook applications. Beaty describes it as converting standard email to Inbox 2.0.

Many of the apps simply add a social media layer. The Tweets app cycles through your email senders’ recent Tweets. The Klout app displays contacts’ influence scores. The Foursquare app highlights their profiles and badges.

Business users can opt to install the sfContacts app, which creates a connection between Salesforce and Outlook. The Attachments app highlights attachments from senders, while the Office Docs and Google Docs apps find documents related to your email or contacts.

With a Basecamp app, Highrise app, Constant Contact app and even a Dual Clock app for seeing the email sender’s time, there’s no shortage of convenience and context that can be added to the inbox experience.

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RedCritter Labs

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The startup is developing more enterprise products, such as RedCritter Guide and RedCritter Tracker. Beaty lumps them all under the RedCritter Labs label but suggests that individual products may be spun out as their own entities in the future.

RedCritter Guide is for website owners and is designed to help them enhance the usability of websites with easy-to-create interactive guided tours and online product demos for site visitors. The product is in an invitation stage, but readers can enter “MASHABLE” as the invitation code to gain access.

RedCritter Tracker, a web-based project management tool slated for July release, aims to improve the work relationship between companies and their developers. Tracker weaves gamification elements into the project management experience — so companies can reward developers for completing tasks.

“RedCritter Tracker offers streamlined project management for Agile methodology along with tightly integrated message feeds, gamification and rewards,” Beaty says.

The product includes a rewards store so developers can exchange their achievements for gift cards and other prizes.

“Developers will have a day-to-day incentive to complete more complicated tasks,” says Beaty, himself a long-time developer.

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Critter Who?

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RedCritter has been under the radar, Beaty says, focused on building and releasing new products. Meanwhile, other startups in the email-meets-social intelligence space command headlines on a regular basis.

Still, Beaty says investors are very excited by the Outlook tools. They have the opportunity to reach more than 500 million Outlook users. The investors he has talked to are also enthusiastic about Tracker’s gamification elements.

Beaty’s next big decision will be whether to take funding and move out west. While he doesn’t need outside capital to continue research and development on RedCritter products, he admits to being at a disadvantage by not being in Silicon Valley.

“You’re not in the club if you’re not out there,” he says.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, email, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise software, Outlook, Outlook plugin, project management, RedCritter, spark-of-genius

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Daily deals juggernaut Groupon has partnered with consumer packaged goods giant General Mills to offer subscribers a first-of-a-kind home delivery grocery deal Thursday.

The “Redeem From Home” General Mills Sample Pack features $40 worth of General Mills products — including a coupon book and breakfast, lunch and dinner fare — for $20.

The grocery deal was offered solely in San Francisco and Minneapolis. Eligible consumers responded with alacrity and snatched up the groceries before day’s end. In Minneapolis, for instance, the deal sold out at 3:05 p.m. local time with all 4,500 Groupons purchased.

General Mills believes itself to be Groupon’s first consumer packaged goods partner. There’s no indication that the soon-to-IPO company is exploring other consumer packaged goods deals, and we suspect that most big brands are likely to balk at the company’s margins, but there’s still something fresh about this supermarket sweep.

As for General Mills, the brand is hoping the deal will turn Groupon samplers into grocery-store name brand buyers.

“We’re always looking for efficient ways to sample our products and given Groupon’s scale, we thought this would be a way to reach a sizeable audience,” General Mills’ director of product marketing Karl Schmidt told Advertising Age. “Our goal is to get trial across a breadth of products and get people to go into the grocery store with follow-up purchases.”

Image courtesy of Flickr, Artbandito

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Exactly one year after its launch, the Facebook Like Button has become ubiquitous across the web and is still installed on thousands of new websites every day.

Facebook first introduced the Like Button at its F8 developer’s conference, along with Facebook Open Graph and instant personalization. Through the “Like”, Facebook spread its social footprint across the web. 50,000 websites installed the Like Button in its first week, and that number rose to 100,000 in less than a month.

That number hasn’t stopped rising since. Facebook said on Thursday that 10,000+ websites add the Like Button every day — identical to what COO Sheryl Sandberg said in October last year. In other words, the growth of the Like button hasn’t slowed down in the last six months. The social network says more than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook so far, including over 80% of the U.S. top 100 websites.

Facebook’s success hasn’t gone without notice. Google recently launched +1, its answer to Facebook’s Like Button, and a study last month by Eventbrite concluded that a “Like” is more profitable than a tweet.

What do you think of the Like Button? How has it changed your habits on the web? Let us know in the comments.

More About: facebook, Facebook Like, facebook open graph, like, like button, Open Graph, trending

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Anna Lindow is the Director of Marketing Strategy and Audience Development for Bundle, a New York startup that uses data to help people better manage their finances. Connect with her on Twitter, or email her anytime.

Imagine a really nice wedding cake. Are you imagining it? Good. Now imagine how that cake would turn out if you tried to recreate it in your own kitchen.

You should be envisioning a finished product that, depending on your baking abilities, ranges somewhere from a total wreck to a cake that you could eat but wouldn’t enter into a professional cake contest.

That's because you (presumably) aren't a cake specialist. Pastry chefs are trained professionals who have the knowledge and tools at their disposal to create the best possible product — one that you're willing to pay for and one that you'll be proud of showing off.

Now, if you've started your own company, chances are you're the type of person who is willing to roll up your sleeves and get things done yourself. But there are some areas of marketing in which the experience of a professional — administered at the right moment — can really make the difference between a polished, awesome product and a complete mess.

Here are five types of marketing professionals your startup should consider hiring.

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1. Copywriter

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Kids, don't try this at home. Copywriting is no joke. Left to your own devices, you run the risk of accidentally neglecting key points even if you are a good writer.

You won’t have very long to capture new visitors' attention. The same goes for FAQs. You understand the product, so it can be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't. An outsider's perspective can really help identify the gaps in your content and then help to create that text.

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2. Copyeditor

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Okay, so you're bootstrapping and you don't have the resources to hire someone to write all the site copy for you. Understandable. But even if you write everything yourself, you should strongly consider hiring a copyeditor. You've put months, or potentially years, into creating a product you're really excited about. Don't take a chance on diminishing its impact by having typos on your site. You're likely too close to your own work to notice mistakes, so pay someone else to do it.

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3. Facebook Marketer

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Facebook is a largely self-serve advertising platform, which means that customers have ample opportunity to create unstructured campaigns that won't have the best possible ROI, and there likely won't be an account representative involved to help optimize.

If you aren't intimately familiar with the platform yourself, hire someone to get you set up. Have them take you through various different segments to target, and get their feedback on images, copy, and landing pages to test out. Work with them to set up a system for monitoring which campaigns are most successful as you mix and match different creative and targeting. If you want to see results from Facebook advertising, you'll have to make it work for you, and this takes not only work-hours but also some knowledge of the platform.

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4. SEO Consultant

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Do you know how to structure your URLs so that they'll be best positioned to garner search traffic relative to your competitors? What about how to populate your meta tags and keywords?

Yeah, me neither. That's why I work with SEO consultants; getting into this type of nitty-gritty is their specialty. SEO is the kind of thing you want to get right the first time. Changing site architecture to make it SEO-friendly down the line can quickly become a hassle. Spend a couple of hours up front with a consultant who can help you make sure you've got everything set up properly. You'll be glad you did.

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5. Email Marketing Specialist

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Remember the part about getting things right the first time in SEO? The same thing applies to email marketing. Once you've put in the time and energy to design and build an email template, you don't want to have to migrate everything over to a different provider if you realize your current solution doesn't scale.

If you think that email might be an important part of your business — whether through newsletters, alerts, or promotional messages — it's worth it to talk to someone who knows the different platforms and can help you find what works best. Anyone who has had to migrate and clean lists of thousands of contacts will tell you that it's a task best avoided.

As an entrepreneur, you probably have an excellent set of useful core competencies yourself. If you're strapped for cash, see if you can barter your services. A front-end designer might create a simple personal website for a copywriter in return for his or her services — provided the work hours necessary for each project make it a square deal.

What marketing services are you willing to pay for, and what have you paid for that you wish you hadn't? Let us know in the comments below.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, danleap

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Investors have established the first investment vehicle dedicated to Android-focused startups and developers. Dubbed the A-Fund, the $100 million fund will invest between $500,000 and $4 million in products that will shape the Android ecosystem.

The A-Fund is being managed by DCM, a firm with a presence in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Toyko. Additional fund investors represent the top names in Asian mobile and social innovation and include GREE Inc., KDDI Corporation and Tencent.

"The rise of Android is a rare and massive opportunity — one that comes only once in a major tech cycle," said DCM co-founder and general partner David Chao.

By some reports, Android is already the top smartphone platform in the U.S.. DCM and friends are doubling down on the belief that Android platform is on the verge of a windfall in Japan and China.

It’s also following in the footsteps of esteemed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. KPCB established the iFund with $100 million in 2008 to finance iPhone development, and then upped the ante to $200 million in 2010. It’s seen relative success with its investments, and portfolio companies include the now heavily financed Flipboard, social gaming behemoth Zynga and the just-acquired Pelago.

The A-Fund, then, seems much overdo. “Android is one of the fastest growing technology platforms in the world in terms of both adoption and application deployment,” DCM’s press announcement states. “In the last 12 months, the number of Android enabled devices has grown 861 percent; today there are more than 250,000 applications in the Android market and millions of Android devices around the world.”

The A-Fund has made four investments that will be revealed next month, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While there’s clearly an interest in jump-starting Asian development around the Android platform, DCM and its partners are said to be to open to startups and developers from around the world.

More About: A-Fund, android, DCM, tencent

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News.me, the much-anticipated social news reading application for the iPad, arrived in the App Store Thursday.

There’s two big differences between News.me and existing competitors Flipboard and Zite: 1) It’s designed to help users discover what the people they’re following on Twitter are seeing in their own Twitter streams, rather than just what they’re sharing — a feature that, notably, only works if the users are also News.me users — and 2) It’s not free.

The app was developed at Betaworks, which also developed bit.ly, from a prototype developed by the New York Times Company (more on that here). Stories are ranked by relevance using bit.ly data.

The News.me app has some nice features. Users can use their fingers to expand the preview of a story before deciding to click through. They can also easily share content via email, Twitter and Facebook, and save content for later reading on Instapaper or News.me’s own built-in equivalent. Those who don’t have an iPad can use the service to get a daily email digest of news making the rounds on their Twitter feeds.

And that’s about it. It’s not noticeably better than Flipboard (actually, it offers a lot less in terms of features), and it doesn’t appear to be as intelligent as Zite. Also, it costs $0.99 per week, or $34.99 per year, after an initial free week; both Flipboard and Zite are free indefinitely.

News.me’s only clear advantage is its publisher backing; more than 20 major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Forbes have thrown their weight behind News.me. (Mashable is also one of the launch partners.) These partners will receive a fixed fee for each page view they attract; how much each page view is worth has not been disclosed.

More About: App, betaworks, bit.ly, Flipboard, media, new york times company, news.me, zite

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Erin Bury is the community manager at Sprouter.com, an expert Q&A site for startup founders around the world. You can follow her on Twitter @ErinBury and read her blog at ErinBury.com.

Less than three years ago, community managers were a rare group of employees most often found at technology startups. Today, the role of community manager is common at companies of all sizes — from startups to multinational corporations. Despite their ubiquity, there is still a lot of confusion around what a community manager actually does and what employers should look for when hiring one.

Performable founder David Cancel recently wrote about the traits he looks for in potential startup hires. He placed the most importance on cultural fit and the least importance on previous startup experience. He also discussed why he hires people based on their personality, not their resume. Employers should take the same approach to hiring a community manager. It's not necessarily about how many tweets the person has sent out, it's about whether they're passionate about your company and can become a brand advocate.

Here are the five qualities you should look for in a community manager to ensure he or she will be the right fit for your company.

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1. Passion for Your Industry

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A community manager is the face and voice of your brand, providing communications in both directions. If you're a florist, it's imperative that the person you hire is passionate about gardening. If you own a bakery, make sure the person either loves making or eating cake (shouldn't be too difficult). This person will be living and breathing your brand, so you need an employee to take an interest in publications, key players and events within your industry. You can't force passion, so find out in the interview if the candidate actually cares about what you do.

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2. Varied Experience

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A community manager is a jack-of-all-trades, especially at a startup. This person won't have one specific role — like public relations or customer service — within the company. Rather, your community manager will have hands in different departments. The more varied the candidate’s background experience, the better they'll adapt to the role. Look for someone who has a diversity of experiences on his or her resume — journalism will help him or her create amazing content, while PR and online marketing backgrounds will help him or her get the word out about your company and lead social media efforts. Look for experience with event planning, online analytics, SEO and customer service. You won't find someone with experience in all of these areas, so rank your top three priorities and find a candidate with experience to match.

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3. Resourcefulness

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While past experience is great, it's not a deal breaker for a potential community manager. It's not whether this person already knows how to do something, it's whether he or she can go out and find the answer without guidance. If you're an entrepreneur, you won't have the time to hold your new community manager’s hand while he or she learns the ins and outs of your business and your industry. And if you're a big company, you need someone who can take the initiative to find answers and work independently with different departments.

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4. Flexibility

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Every day for a community manager is different. Whether attending events, working on a PR push for a product launch or creating content for your online properties, this new employee needs to be able to roll with the punches and adjust his or her schedule based on the news of the day — and that doesn't always fall within the 9-to-5 workday. If a company crisis occurs on a Saturday or there's an important event on a Thursday night, you need your community manager to be on top of it without complaining. Find someone who thrives on that variety.

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5. Personality

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It's important for your new hires to have a great personality and to fit in well with your other employees. But when hiring a community manager it's also important to find someone who has a vibrant personality that will resonate with your community. Your community manager is the first point of contact for customers and community members, and his or her interaction dictates whether your audience will have a positive or negative opinion of your brand. Find someone who knows how to communicate in a fun, interesting way; who knows how to be diplomatic when people complain or criticize the company; and who can meet strangers at events. Finding someone who's a cultural fit internally is important, but finding someone who is a cultural fit with your community is imperative.

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Every company has a list of projects and responsibilities they want their community manager to manage. But don't just think about the tasks you want them to complete. Think about finding someone — with a personality and passion that reflects your brand — who can complete them in an independent manner.

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More About: business, community management, community manager, hiring, jobs, List, Lists, social media, social networking, workplace

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According to reports, Apple is almost ready to release a cloud-based music storage service compatible with iTunes.

Sources say the product is finished, and Apple might be ready to launch its service before Google’s competitive product sees the light of day.

Several sources close to the matter and aware of both companies’ plans told Reuters that Apple will soon let iTunes customers keep their music libraries on a remote server. The music would then be accessible from any Internet-connected, iTunes-running device.

But though the technology is in place, one all-important piece is missing from both music offerings: licensing agreements with major record labels. Google is stalling on its own music projects due to rumored tiffs with record labels, and Apple has yet to discuss any new licensing agreements with labels, according to Reuters’ sources.

However, since the latter company has been working with musicians for a long time vis-a-vis iTunes and iTunes’ new social component, Ping, one might imagine that Apple has a laid some groundwork for fruitful discussions around licensing.

Google was rumored to be building an iTunes competitor in the summer of 2010. The service was said to have an Android-friendly component or two, and the Android music store was expected to launch with the release of Gingerbread. The service was also rumored to include music-streaming options in addition to music locker features.

However, more current reports suggest that Google may be further than ever from an actual launch due to licensing snafus with major record labels, particularly Warner Music Group.

We’ll keep you updated on Apple and Google’s music services as the weeks wear on — particularly next month, when Google is set to make a slew of announcements at its annual developer conference, Google I/O.

More About: apple, cloud, Google, music

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The Web Development Series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

In our ongoing series on APIs, we’ve covered whether to offer an API and how to get people using it. Now, we’re delving into one of the most important questions an API-offering company can ask: free or paid?

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Paid Is the New Trend

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Augusto Marietti founded Mashape, a marketplace for building, distributing and hacking with APIs. He says that while the majority of APIs are now free, that trend is changing.

“I think that the monetization of APIs in 2011 is like the monetization of search back in 1999. … For example, Twitter started to charge [for use] of its data via APIs using Gnip as a reseller. Newer startups for which the API is the product, like Twilio or SimpleGeo, are coming out regularly. These startups are making money out of their APIs — a lot.

“The best bet is to keep a freemium model, so that all of your developers can try your API and use it for a while before opening up their pockets. You will see more and more startups having an API not only as a distribution mode but as an additional revenue stream, too.”

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Cover Your Costs

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Guillaume Balas is an executive at 3scale, which offers full-featured API management and monetization tools. He says, “At 3scale we believe this very much depends on what companies want to achieve with their API and who is going to be their users/customers. Not charging for your API access has definite advantages, such as improving branding and online presence and accelerating developers’ adoption … But don't neglect the economics of your API business and the costs (infrastructure, management, maintenance, support, communication and promotion) associated with it.”

He adds, “Brand equity is great, innovation is key. But cash is king — and companies must at least cover their costs.”

Dimitri Sirota, an executive for Layer 7 Technologies, which offers its own suite of API management tools for the enterprise, says you should do both. “Have your API be free to start with and ask people to pay for higher grades of SLA, premium functionality, enhanced support, etc. Maybe offer a revenue share,” he says.

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Consider a Hybrid Model

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Shanley Kane works on the product team at Apigee, a company that offers a range of API tools for developers and software companies. She says, “The choice to charge for an API or offer it for free needs to be connected to your business goals and objectives. For many companies, charging for data and services exposed through an API makes sense. APIs provide a better way for customers to integrate and innovate and are an important monetization channel.”

However, for companies that open an API to expand into new platforms like connected and mobile devices, or to encourage third-party innovation, she doesn’t recommend a paid model. “For these companies, charging for access just adds a barrier to entry,” Kane says.

Kane also suggests a free-paid hybrid model, wherein independent devs get free access to build apps and larger partners pay for higher rate limits and additional support.

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Make the API Part of Your Business Plan

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Oren Michels is Mashery‘s CEO. His company does API management and strategy for more than 100 brands and 25,000 applications. He says the API should be an extension of the company’s overall business model.

“If your business model is to sell TVs, you want it to help you sell more TVs. If you are traffic/ad based, you want to generate more traffic looking at your ads. If you happen to be in the business of selling data — a big ‘if,’ since few companies are — then by all means charge for your API. More accurately, charge for access to your data, which may include either charging more for it by API or including API access as part of the overall subscription.”

Do you have other tips for pricing an API? Let us know in the comments.

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Google Offers, the company's long-awaited response to Groupon, has gone live with a signup for beta program in Portland, Oregon.

Google promises "50% off or more at places you'll love," on a signup page and offers six locations — Portland; California’s Oakland/East Bay and San Francisco: and New York City’s downtown, midtown and uptown. So far, only Portland is offering a beta version of Offers, but no deals are available right now.

The program has been in the works since at least January, when Mashable got hold of a fact sheet on the service. According to that document, Google Offers will look and operate much like Groupon or LivingSocial and send an email to users with a local deal of the day. Consumers then have a specific time period (likely 24 hours) to act on the deal.

Google's service comes after the company famously tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion. Groupon rebuffed the offer and is now readying an IPO that could be as high as $25 billion.

The following teaser video doesn’t answer many questions about the program, but it at least features a catchy tune:

More About: Google Offers, groupon, LivingSocial, trending

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What do you do after one of your band members flies the coop? Well, if you’re Dream Theater, you do much more than send out a press release — you take to the Facebook junket.

Progressive metal band Dream Theater suffered a pretty powerful blow when its drummer Mike Portnoy left the band. In response, the band started holding auditions in New York City, testing out seven potential drummers to fill Portnoy’s stool.

One April 21, Dream Theater took to its Facebook Page to let fans know what was going on with the selection process.

The band launched a video Page powered by FanBridge (an artist management tool that recently acquired Damntheradio), that prompts fans to “Like” the Page to unlock content, which is a brief documentary explaining the selection process.

Fans are also asked to submit their emails via Facebook permission, so that they can receive future updates about who the new drummer will be.

We emailed a rep to find about more info about how the campaign will function, and received this response: “The video was made by Roadrunner Records [the band's label] and they're keeping mum about when the new drummer will be unveiled. The tour dates for July are still on, so they'll have to announce before then.”

All around, it seems like the band has taken a negative situation and leveraged it to generate buzz for its upcoming 2011 world tour. Not only did the band members (and their label) create content that fans want to see, they positioned it so that fans would have to Fan them on Facebook, and submit their email addresses (email addresses are like band PR gold).

We’re seeing more and more bands using the “Like gate” method on Facebook (hiding content from fans until they “Like” a Page), but this campaign adds another level of intrigue. We’re interested to see what emerges in the coming months.

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The Nissan Leaf won the 2011 World Car of the Year award at the New York International Auto Show, beating out the short list of three finalists — the Audi A8 and the BMW 5 Series. The Leaf was the first electric vehicle to win the award.

According to the jurors, Nissan‘s electric car has a lot going for it:

"The Leaf is the gateway to a brave new electric world from Nissan. This 5-seater, 5-door hatchback is the world’s first, purpose-built, mass-produced electric car. Dropped onto a unique platform and body, the Leaf’s lithium-ion battery modules and electric motor generate 108hp and 206 lb ft of torque, propelling the hatch from zero to 60mph in 11.5 seconds and a top speed of 90mph. It has a range of over 100 miles on a full charge (claims Nissan), takes around 8 hours to recharge using 220-240V power supply and produces zero tailpipe emissions. Its low center of gravity produced sharp turn-in with almost no body roll and no understeer. The good news? It feels just like a normal car, only quieter."

We think another reason the Leaf deserves the New York International Auto Show‘s World Car of the Year award is because of its Carwings system that leverages crowdsourcing to enhance its fuel economy.

What happened to the Chevy Volt, which costs $8,200 more than the $32,780 Nissan Leaf? It was still deemed cool enough to win the Green Car of the Year award at that same auto show.

We’ve driven the Volt and, as the jurors said about the Nissan Leaf, the Volt feels like a normal car, too. What really makes it feel normal is after you’ve run down its batteries, its gasoline engine allows it to keep going for just as many miles as conventional vehicles.

More About: Chevy Volt, electric cars, ev, Nissan Leaf, world car of the year award

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HootSuite, Reddit and Foursquare aren’t the only sites affected by issues with Amazon's AWS services — music collaboration platform Indaba is also down for the count. Good thing it has provided users with a host of angsty jams for remixing.

If you surf on over to Indaba, you’ll find an error message unlike any other:

Hey folks, we’re working hard to bring the site back online, but in the meantime, we’ve got a challenge for you! Download this beat that Rick put together for you guys and make a new song that expresses your feelings about this unfortunate situation. When we come back up, we’ll have an awesome Opportunity waiting for you to enter.

Now hop on over to our Facebook page to chat with your fellow Indabans until then.

We downloaded the collection of jams for remix, and, we must say — a ton of them are pretty rageful. Indaba regularly hosts remix contests, and we’re looking forward to seeing what this bad-luck-turned-good will yield for users.

Let us know if you decide to try your hand at remixing — instead of twiddling your thumbs — and share the results in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Flickr, craigCloutier

More About: amazon, facebook, Indaba, music, server

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Just a little more than a year since its launch, the iPad is already accounting for more views on website pages than longstanding open source operating system Linux.

According to data from StatCounter Global Stats, iOS accounted for 1.17% of U.S. April browser visits to the more than 3 million websites that use the company’s free web analytics service. Meanwhile, Linux only accounted for .71%. The iOS for iPad has also creeped past Linux in several other countries.

StatCounter spokesperson Ronnie Simpson said that the company separates its “desktop operating systems” category from its “mobile operating systems” category depending on whether a device that uses it fits in a pocket. Until the iPad, iOS doesn’t appear on the operating system graph at all. The visits currently represented in the iOS category only represent iPad use, not iPod or iPhone use. It looks like iPad traffic passed Linux traffic in the US sometime in December.

Performance monitoring company Pingdom, which first noted the stats in a blog post, pointed out that comparing iOS for iPad with desktop browsers is a stretch, and that tablet operating systems will likely constitute their own category in the near future.

Classifications aside, the quick adoption of the iPad’s browser is stunning considering that Linux’s enthusiasts recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary.

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After Wednesday’s revelation that iPhones have been storing location data since iOS 4.0, now it’s time for the fallout. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., was concerned enough about it to send Apple a letter, asking how and why this happened.

In the letter (full text here), Franken wants to know why Apple collected and compiled this data, why it wasn’t encrypted, whether it’s compiled on laptops, how it’s generated, how frequently the location data is recorded, how precise it is, who’s using the data and why consumers weren’t told about it.

Adding to this congressional inquiry was Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who is co-chairman of the House Bipartisan Privacy Caucus. He wrote his own letter to Apple, asking “Is it an iPhone or an iTrack? Apple needs to safeguard the personal location information to ensure that an iPhone doesn’t become an iTrack.”

Why did Apple do this? Respected Apple watcher John Gruber writes in his Daring Fireball blog that he doesn’t have a definitive answer, but says he has some insider information about the location tracking on the iPhone, calling it “an oversight” on the part of Apple:

“…my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn't, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that's meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history. I'd wager this gets fixed in the next iOS update.”

Apple still hasn’t commented about that location-tracking consolidated.db file.

There is a fix for the problem now, but only if you’ve jailbroken your iPhone. An app called Untrackerd made a surprisingly quick appearance on Cydia, the app store for jailbroken iPhones, and according to 9 to 5 Mac, will remove that location data and prevent more from being recorded.

Meanwhile, tech guru Andy Ihnatko downplayed the damage done by the tracking file, pointing out that it’s not storing GPS data, but less-precise cellphone tower triangulation data that only reveals “that you were in a certain vicinity.” He adds that the consolidated.db file is inaccessible unless someone possess both your iPhone and your computer. Finally, he says it’s “a non-issue if you’ve clicked the ‘Encrypt iPhone Backup’ option in iTunes.”

We’re expecting to see a response from Apple soon, and we’re hoping for a fix (that doesn’t require jailbreaking) that will give users the ability to turn off this tracking and delete its data.

More About: Al Franken, consolidated.db, gps, iphone, spying, tracking, trending

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There’s a little video buzzing around the web today that’s sure to put some “get up” into your “get up and go.” It features some dude who trains monkeys to ride dogs and herd goats, talking about dreams.

No, seriously, I find this to be actually inspiring. If this guy can make it… doing whatever it is he does, you can finish that novel/album/puzzle you’re working on.

Just the pick-me-up required to power through the “I don’t want to work anymore” atmosphere of Thursday.

[via The Daily What]

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The Social PR Guide Series is supported by Mynewsdesk. Our online newsroom makes it easier to exchange news with key influencers, reach top of search engines and automatically update your social media channels.

The public relations profession is built on a foundation of two-way communication. Whether it’s working with the media, writing a tweet or building a website, communications professionals are tasked with raising awareness of their employers' or clients’ work and perspectives -– and learning from and responding to the conversation.

Video sharing sites like YouTube are an excellent way to break the ice because nothing online is as personal and human as video. And right now, few activities online are more popular. In February there were 139.2 million unique online video viewers in the U.S. who spent an average of nearly 4 and a half hours watching video on computers at work and at home. Not surprisingly, YouTube was the leading online brand for video, followed by VEVO and Facebook.

With such a huge opportunity, how can PR pros tap into the power of sites like YouTube? It’s certainly a challenge — for every viral video, hordes more go unseen. Below, we highlight a few ways you can use online video to execute your communications programs.

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Kick off a Campaign

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PR pros are often called upon to develop and execute plans to introduce products, services and other organizational campaigns — video is often an excellent way to raise awareness about news and announcements.

For example, last year the Cleveland Clinic launched a public health campaign targeting its home base of Northeast Ohio, encouraging people to get active. Leveraging local sports celebrities like Mike Holmgren from the Cleveland Browns and Byron Scott from the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as its own health star Dr. Michael Roizen, the clinic aimed to build buzz and get people engaged in the new campaign using both traditional and online media.

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Respond to a Crisis

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In times of crisis, video is one effective way to respond to questions and help calm fears. By acknowledging those fears and answering questions quickly, organizations can show that they take the issues seriously and are committed to keeping the public informed.

For one example, search “flu” on YouTube and the third most-viewed video you’ll see comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with more than 2.1 million views. Amid widespread fears around the H1N1 (“swine”) flu in 2009, the public was fearful and wanted to know the latest from the government, including the risks and ways they could protect themselves and their families. To respond, the CDC tapped an expert in its Influenza Division to provide more information.

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Uncover Communities

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Tapping into the pulse of online communities is vitally important for public relations and communications professionals. YouTube and its millions of viewers and producers often form fascinating communities not only through videos but also through comments.

One such community has grown around the work of Bill Woods, the vlogger behind 1happydiabetic. Through his YouTube channel, Woods covers topics ranging from everyday living tips to advice for newly diagnosed diabetics. He responds to viewer questions on YouTube and has extended the community over to his website 1happydiabetic.com, where visitors can talk on a message board and comment on blog posts. Conversations like these provide more than just interesting insight into the mindset of the public. There may be a time when it makes sense for you as a company’s representative to respond to comments. In some cases comments can highlight an emerging positive opportunity — or even a brewing crisis.

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Extend Your Brand

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Want to step up your digital communications campaign using YouTube? Integrate the look of your profile page with your website homepage or other online communications channels. Creating consistency and connections to other channels makes it easier for visitors to get more information from your online resources.

An excellent example of this comes from the Mayo Clinic, which has made a name for itself as a social media innovator in the health space. The Mayo Clinic's YouTube page, which hosts more than 1,200 videos and boasts nearly 4 million video views, mirrors the organization’s website design, enabling YouTube visitors to not only watch its videos but click through to learn more about medical services, connect with other social channels and even schedule appointments.

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Connect with Media and Bloggers

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Historically, public relations professionals have worked closely with journalists by suggesting stories they might like to cover and helping to provide answers when journalists have questions. It’s no secret the media is evolving, and online video offers new opportunities for the two parties to engage.

One of the most obvious ways to leverage YouTube and other video-sharing sites is by creating and sharing your high-quality videos with reporters and bloggers. If you have good relationships and good content, reporters and bloggers may share your video with their readers by embedding it in a blog post. At the very least, a good video offers an excellent way to start a conversation. Just make sure the videos you are sharing are not merely leftovers of some other video project. To be truly successful, online video must be developed with the web viewer in mind, and they must add value to the conversation. If your videos aren't high-quality, then your emails to bloggers and reporters will be just another piece of junk mail.

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Measurement

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YouTube has a fascinating array of tools for measuring the reach of videos. Take the H1N1 flu example we talked about above. Using the public “video statistics” feature, you can see not only how many people have viewed the video and commented, but also where in the world viewers are coming from and even the first time someone viewed the video from a mobile device. These insights can be fascinating and incredibly useful for judging and reporting success later.

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Final Considerations

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It’s important to keep in mind that your videos may not get the same level of engagement and viewership as large organizations like the government or big retailers. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time to create and share videos. The next time you approach an online video, you should ask yourself and your team a few questions before getting to work:

• How does video fit within our larger communications strategy?
• What is the story we would like to tell with a video? Is video the best way to share that story?
• What does success look like?
• How will we respond if our video receives little attention or negative attention?

What do you think of using YouTube for PR? Let us know in the comments below. Share your favorite online videos, as well as your advice for PR professionals who use YouTube and other video sharing sites.

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Remember unboxing your last big gadget purchase? How many unnecessary layers of plastic, paper and cardboard did you have to wade through before getting to the actual hardware?

More to the point: Would you rather have more efficient packaging, less trash and a healthier environment?

The origami-like swaddling of hardware could be a much greener undertaking, and the companies focusing on better packaging solutions say their efforts could be a big part of making the gadget industry more sustainable. Supply chain firm ModusLink is one such company, and it’s done a bit of research on how much CO2 its environmentally friendly packaging is saving the planet.

ModusLink SVP Lorcan Sheehan wrote on the company’s blog that its sustainable packaging changes have so far “eliminate[d] a combined 4,085 metric tons of GHG through package changes — the equivalent of 672 passenger vehicles not driven, 8,254 barrels of oil not used and 404,421 gallons of gasoline not used.”

He says the new packaging is not surprisingly also good for the company’s bottom line; ModusLink saved its customers $6.2 million annually.

Take a look at the infographic below. Do you think more companies should be focusing on streamlined, greener packaging?

Image courtesy of Flickr, barnetcouncil.

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Manhattan-based, high-end luxury retailer Bergdorf Goodman has launched a Facebook contest to crowdsource the design of its next Fendi 2Bag.

Fendi Frenzy: The Color Challenge invites consumers to choose the colors of the upper and lower halves, as well as the handle and ID tags, of the colorblock tote from a predetermined palette.

Participants can submit as many designs as they’d like until Sunday, April 24, on the retailer’s Facebook Page. Next week, entrants will be asked to rally their friends to vote for their designs. The five with the most votes will be reviewed by Fendi’s design team to determine the winner, which will then appear in a limited edition collection at Bergdorf Goodman in the fall. (The winner will also, of course, receive one of the bags for free.)

In addition to the promotion on Bergdorf Goodman’s Facebook Page, both Fendi and BagSnob are hosting landing pages to promote the challenge on their respective Facebook Pages. Advertisements have been posted on bergdorfgoodman.com, the retailer’s blog, 5th at 58th, The New York Times, targeted Facebook ads and QR codes on the store’s windows.

The campaign embraces a larger crowdsourcing trend within the fashion industry, pioneered by companies like Threadless, which produces T-shirts designed by its community. Although a number of fashion brands have launched similar contests as of late, this latest is notable both for the magnitude and prestige of the brands involved.

More About: bergdorf goodman, facebook, fashion, fendi, luxury, MARKETING

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Google has made another huge investment in clean energy in the form of a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for one of its data centers in Oklahoma.

The search giant says this agreement is similar in scope to its recent purchase of 20 years’ worth of wind energy in Iowa. Google officially gained the ability to buy and sell electricity like a public utility in February 2010 with the specific aim of achieving carbon-neutral data centers.

So why is Google making these massive PPAs rather than purchasing power on an as-needed basis? In a recently published white paper on renewable energy, the company stated, “If we know that we are going to need renewable energy for a long time, it may be better for renewable project developers if we commit to a long-term contract rather than purchasing as we go, because it makes it easier for them to raise capital.”

In other words, Google isn’t just concerned about its own carbon footprint; it wants to improve the state of the renewable-energy industry overall.

The Oklahoma deal will help support the building of NextEra Energy Resources‘ second wind farm near Minco, Oklahoma. The 100.8 megawatt Minco II Wind Energy Center is expected to include 63 GE 1.6-megawatt wind turbines and should be up and running by the end of this year.

Google also partnered with NextEra for its Iowa PPA and invested $38 million in NextEra wind farms in North Dakota.

The company also invested an undisclosed amount in the Atlantic Wind Connection offshore wind farm and has invested $168 million in solar power company BrightSource Energy. Overall, the company has invested around $350 million in renewable energy in recent months.

Image courtesy of Flickr, imotov

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In an effort to “show how record companies are becoming superfluous to building buzz and distributing music” (according to a release), Ben Folds, OK Go’s Damian Kulash, Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer and author Neil Gaiman plan to write and record eight songs in eight hours at Berklee College of Music on Monday.

The group of artists will release the album during Rethink Music, a music conference presented by Berklee and MIDEM, in association with Harvard University’s Berkman Center and Business School, which takes place in Boston next week.

The aforementioned collaboration will be broadcast live from the recording studio, and the album will be released through Bandcamp — with all proceeds from the first week going to Berklee City Music.

This experiment is sure to have some interesting results. Ben Folds and Amanda Palmer are well-known for their tech-savvy goings-ons, and Kulash’s band split from EMI the other year to start its own label (following controversy over whether its viral videos should be embeddable on YouTube). Gaiman, Palmer’s husband, has also been rather active in the online sphere, and, well, he’s just generally a talented writer.

Still, something about that line in the announcement is niggling — “show how record companies are becoming superfluous to building buzz and distributing music” — when paired with these artists. From Folds to Gaiman, everyone here is a veteran in his or her field. In fact, a lot of the musicians who are tapping into the web to create buzz (at least in a big way) are established: from Weezer to Arcade Fire to Trent Reznor to Radiohead. (Even though OK Go may have split from the majors, it’s not as if being on EMI in the past had no effect on the band’s current fame.)

Yes, there are a ton of bands out there who — although unsigned and flying solo — have made a way for themselves, but this experiment is not exactly supporting that theory.

What do you think? Do you think there’s a future on the horizon where bands can do it for themselves, outside of the confines of a label? Or do you think musicians require some aid when it comes to building buzz?

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Finding Josephine

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Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Julian Assange are among the tech names featured on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The list, which was released on Thursday, also includes a number of people whose use of technology propelled them into the spotlight, including key Egyptian revolution figure Wael Ghonim, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and the ever-present Justin Bieber.

Zuckerberg's inclusion on the list should come as no surprise given he was named Time's "Person of the Year for 2010," a distinction that many thought would go to Assange, who is the founder of WikiLeaks. In returning to the role of CEO at Google, Page also became all the more significant, with his collegiate graduate adviser writing in Time that he expects Page "to pursue things that seem unreasonable and unreachable — until the very moment they become a reality."

Elsewhere, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made the list, with (the now very partial) Kevin Spacey writing that Hastings has "changed how the entertainment business reaches its audience and how that audience is able to access content."

Angry Birds developer Peter Vesterbacka and Charle Chao, developer of "China's Twitter" — Sina Weibo — round out the tech influentials selected by Time.

More About: cory booker, julian assange, larry page, mark zuckerberg, reed hastings, time

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Microsoft and Nokia signed a definitive agreement that seals the deal announced in February between the two companies, creating a formidable competitor against Google‘s Android and Apple‘s iOS.

Now, Nokia can migrate away from its aging Symbian operating system, embracing the Windows Phone software to create a new ecosystem of Nokia hardware and Microsoft software. The companies announced that Nokia-built Windows Phones are already in development, “with the aim of securing volume device shipments in 2012.”

While Nokia engineers are busying themselves creating hardware for the Windows Phone, Microsoft gains the power of Nokia’s mapping and navigation platform, certain to enhance Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Those mapping services will also show up on Nokia phones running Windows Phone, but there was no word about whether those mapping services would also run on Windows Phone handsets not made by Nokia.

What about developers? The companies plan to ease the transition for Symbian developers to move to the Windows phone operating system. According to a Nokia spokesperson (see video below), “All Symbian developers will have a free registration for the next year for the Windows developers program.”

Nokia will also reportedly open a Nokia-branded app store based on the Windows Marketplace infrastructure, where developers will be able to distribute their apps for Windows Phone, Symbian or Series 40 devices.

In our view, this looks like a mutually beneficial relationship, where Microsoft will have a formidable hardware manufacturer and map platform in its camp, while Nokia will gain Microsoft’s resources, including gaming expertise, Windows Phone, Bing search facilities on every smartphone and Microsoft’s vast marketing machine.

Which company do you think got the better end of the deal here?

More About: microsoft, Nokia, windows phone

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We’ve taken a trip back in time to look at the video game consoles of yesteryear.

These 16 commercials represent the early home video games market dating from 1972 all the way up to the late ’80s. We even managed to dig up the world’s very first video game commercial.

Take a look through our video gallery, in roughly chronological order, and let us know your memories of early home computer gaming — and your opinion on how they were marketed — in the comments below.

1. Magnavox Odyssey

Pre-Pong, the 1972 release of the "Odyssey" was the world's first home TV game system - or, as the ad calls it, the "electronic game of the future." The games are laughably bad, but it was a seminal release initially thought up by video game guru Ralph Baer.

2. Coleco Telstar

"The most exciting game you'll ever see on your TV set." That's the not-very-forward-thinking verdict from this 1976 advert which sees a happy couple merrily twiddling their knobs.

3. Atari Pong

Although the quality isn't great, Atari's first commercial for Pong deserves an entry on this list. By all accounts, the cowboy in the ad is telling "Darlene" (said to be the console's production codename) that she can come back from the arcade as they now have Pong at home. The role of the camp houseboy in the background is open to your own interpretation.

4. Atari VCS

We don't know what the maniacally happy family in this circa 1980 ad is on, but we'll take a week's supply of it for sure.

5. Atari 2600

The 2600 was the same model as the VCS in the previous clip, but we had to include this commercial just to share the awful rap in which "Atari" is rhymed with "yes siree." Cringe!

6. Intellivision

Mattel's Intellivision was a commercial success competing with Atari and other rival products. It eventually fell victim to the video game crash of 1983. How the graphics in this ad can be described as "realistic" seems bizarre from a modern point of view, but they were pretty good for its time.

7. Vectrex

Vectrex's unique selling point was a built-in screen, so little Johnny could game away while mom and dad watched Dallas on the big screen TV.

8. ColecoVision

This clip offers an interesting look at the peripherals available for "the only system you'll ever need," including a coming-soon home computer add-on.

9. Coleco Tabletop Donkey Kong

Standalone games were popular in the '80s, and none more so than Donkey Kong. Just imagine, a mini arcade in your own home.

10. NES

In Nintendo's first NES commercial, we see R.O.B., the system's "Robotic Operating Buddy." Sadly, R.O.B. was only compatible with two games and was soon dropped from NES bundles. The NES' launch was a notable milestone for the industry. As well as helping to rejuvenate the video game market after the '83 crash, the system introduced major game franchises such as Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy.

11. Atari 7800

The 7800 competed against the NES and the Sega Master System. Backwards compatible and competitively priced, its initial reception was good, but the lack of decent software due to Nintendo's restrictive terms for third-party developers meant Atari ultimately lost out in the home video game battle.

12. Sega Master System

The Sega Master System suffered the same fate as the 7800 due to a lack of decent games. Despite what voiceover man promises, the excitement did stop.

13. Atari XE

Would bickering video game company execs in bad suits and worse acting skills make you want to buy a console? Us neither.

14. GameBoy

As much as we love it, we're not sure Tetris could really ever be described as "outrageous," but the GameBoy was a revolutionary launch. Initial U.S. stock sold out in a matter of weeks.

15. Atari Lynx

The Lynx went head-to-head with the cheaper GameBoy and boasted a color screen versus Nintendo's monotone option. That wasn't enough, however, for it to win the majority of the handheld market share. The "portable video arcade" was eventually condemned to the scrap heap of video game history.

16. Sega Genesis

It's interesting that in 1989, Sega's marketing bods were still trying to convince consumers of how arcade-like their gaming experience was. The Genesis, or Mega Drive as it was known outside of the U.S., competed with the NES at launch although it wasn't too long before Nintendo laid a smackdown with the release of the SNES.

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Image courtesy of Flickr, Jamie

More About: advertising, atari, commercials, gallery, List, Lists, Nintendo, retro, sega, video, video games, videos, vintage

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