If you want to create a viral video these days, you need to do something great and unique. A couple of days ago, Sony Australia smashed a PS3 slim into a Bravia LCD TVat high speed. Now, Vodafone NZ hired a production team to orchestrate cellphones into “playing” Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture.The effort took 1000 phones and 53 different ringtone alerts, synchronized to recreate the famous classical piece. The resulting videois nothing short of amazing; you can also see the “making of” videos below. If you like the resulting tune, you can download it to your computer, as well as the 53 ringtones used to create it, over at the Vodafone NZ site.Kudos to Engadget for digging this one up. Tags: ad, cellphones, classical music, viral video, vodafone

  If you’ve been following the Pirate Bay drama, you know that this site will never be what it used to be. However, amidst all that hubbub and even after the (so far) unsuccessful saleof the site, the actual siteremained operational. Thus, many users who were there just for the torrents perhaps didn’t even notice that something is wrong. This is about to change. TorrentFreak reports that the Amsterdam court ruled that The Pirate Bay must remove all copyrighted torrentsfrom the site within three months.The Dutch court initially ruled that Pirate Bay must block access to Dutch citizens; a decision which the site’s founders decided to appeal. It worked to some extent, as that judgment has now been nullified, but the Court now decided that The Pirate Bay – while not guilty of copyright infringement – is guilty of assisting copyright infringement, a phrase we hear a lot in cases such as this one. Now, Dutch anti-piracy body BREIN will supply a list of copyrighted works to The Pirate Bay, and the operators of the site must remove them within three months, facing a fine of $7,500 per person, per day. The problem with this decision is the fact that The Pirate Bay has always refused to admit any guilt of copyright infringement and has probably never had plans to devise a system for removing copyrighted works from its servers. With a bunch of lawsuits looming over the founders, they’ll probably have to comply with BREIN’s requests and stop users from uploading new torrents whatsoever. It may be just one country (Netherlands), and the Pirate Bay can choose to appeal this decision, too, but the lawsuits are piling up. Although The Pirate Bay founders always claimed that the site can live on without them, in the end simply shutting it down might be the least painful route for everyone. Tags: the pirate bay, torrents

  Apple’s “I’m a PC” and “I’m a Mac” dynamic ad duo are at it again in three new “Get a Mac” commercials that take direct aim at today’s Windows 7 launch.In “Broken Promises,” PC Guy flashes back to Windows editions over the years (with fashion or lack thereof to match), each promising not to have “any of the problems my last operating system had.” The ad ends with the line “this time it’s gonna be different. Trust me.” Ouch, Apple!Check out the aforementioned ad embedded below, and the other two ads over at Apple. The latter pair both feature Windows users eagerly getting ready to make the switch — not to Windows 7, but to a Mac. What do you think, are the ads effective, or has Apple gone too far with this one?[Thanks, Erictric]Tags: ads, apple, mac, MARKETING, Windows 7

  Just a couple of weeks ago Amazon announced a new international versionof the Kindle digital reader. The original order price was $279, just $20 more than the U.S. version of the Kindle that got a price cut the same day to $259.Lo and behold, folks who pre-ordered the international Kindle got an email from Amazon letting them know that “due to strong customer demand,” the company has decided to drop the price of the worldwide Kindle to $259to match the U.S. version. Those who pre-ordered will automatically get a $20 refund credited to their Amazon accounts.Amazon referred to it as “consolidating our family of 6″ Kindles,” and it does certainly simplify things. It also marks one of those rare moments as a consumer to receive a spontaneous bit of good news — good news you can take all the way to the bank.The device started shipping October 19, and as tech journalists start to get their hands on the international Kindle they’ve noted it oddly ships with a U.S. plug, has relatively slow 3G service, and curiously allows you to web browse to Wikipedia and only Wikipedia (and only the English version, at that).If you’ve ordered and received your international Kindle. what are your thoughts on the device? If you’re considering an eReader but haven’t picked one up yet, what’s holding you back?Reviews: KIndle, WikipediaTags: 3g, amazon, books, digital books, e-ink, ereader, GSM, Kindle, wikipedia

  Mozilla Labs announced a new project today: Raindropis an “exploration in messaging innovation” brought to you by the same team behind the Thunderbird open source email client.Built around the idea that “email isn’t fun anymore,” Raindrop aims to be a sort of intelligent inbox filtering system that kicks minor messages and notifications to the sidelines while foregrounding messages from Mom and other important people you actually know. Raindrop also wants to pull in messages from Twitter, Facebook, IM, and eventually any other communication platform with an API. Direct messages and @replies would be seen as more important and therefore foregrounded over regular not specifically to you messages. The idea is to make a people-centric communication tool that brings your various services together in one interface, instead of constantly playing a game of “find that browser tab” when you want to check up on a particular conversation or thread.While the concept is extremely exciting to those of us very weary of slogging through almost unparseable email accounts and wielding a formidable array of web-based communication tools, Raindrop is still in the very, very early stages. In fact at a lowly version 0.1 release, the platform is still only available to developers at this point.Still, we look forward to seeing what comes out of Raindrop. Like Google Wave, it’s an attempt to re-imagine web-based communication for the modern era from the ground up. Raindrop will also borrow some elements from Wave like the ability to view images and videos inline, and it will be interesting to see what other parallels might emerge between the two.Check out an introductory video about Raindrop below and let us know what you think. Do you have any suggestions for the team working on re-inventing online communication? Or do you even plan to get your hands dirty and get involved with the open source Raindrop project?Reviews: Facebook, Google Wave, TwitterTags: communication, email, facebook, mozilla, raindrop, twitter

  The Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) in San Francisco has just made history as the first transit agency to partner with Foursquare, the location-based application and game that we think has the potential to be as important as Twitter(they also just launched 15 new cities).We’ve already seen local businesses take the plunge, offering up special location-based deals that Foursquare automatically serves up to users as they check-in, but now BART is getting in on the action to encourage more public transit use.Regular BART commuters will now be able to unlock a BART-themed badge, and also become eligible for $25 in promotional tickets that will be awarded randomly to Foursquare users who check-in at stations during the months of November, December, and January.From the official BART announcementof the deal, we also learned that this is just the beginning of the partnership. The transit agency is also looking for even more creative ways to tap into the location-based potential that Foursquare offers for promotions, and highlighting local businesses.We think it’s genius and hope to see the idea get spread to other metropolitan areas. In fact, this biased writer, who just so happens to be the mayor of many local San Diego venues, would love to see the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System strike up a similar arrangement.Reviews: FoursquareTags: BART, foursquare, public transportation, transit, transportation

  Google added a couple of nice changes to Readerto serve the goals of improving your discovery of new items and personalizing your feed reading experience.First up, they’ve introduced a new Explore section designed to enhance discovery. A new “Popular items” section helps the most interesting new stories bubble to the top. Popular items surface the news stories or viral videos gaining attention around the web, not just from within your own subscriptions. The recommendations feature has been renamed “Recommended sources” and moved over into the new Explore section. It makes use of your web history if you’re opted-in plus your Reader Trends to recommend new sources you might want to subscribe to.The next change is a great step towards an even more personalized feed reading experience. The new personalized ranking feature re-orders the items in your unread feed based on your own past reading history and overall activity inside Reader. It gives you a view of your feeds informed by what you’ve liked and shared in the past.To turn on the personalized ranking view, go to the Feed or Folder settings dropdown in the feed or folder you’re viewing and select the playfully named “Sort by magic” setting. If you don’t like the results, you can improve them over time by liking and sharing items in your feeds. Let us know your thoughts on popular and personalized addictions to Google Reader. Does it enhance your information-gathering experience? Will it increase your usage of Google Reader, or have the potential to make you switch RSS programs? Or is RSS just plain dead to you?Reviews: Google ReaderTags: feeds, Google, google reader, personalization, Recommendations, rss

  Fresh off the heels of their recently released iPhone app, CNN has just announced a massive redesign to CNN.com. It’s not live yet, but the new CNN.com will be a pretty drastic departure from the status quo, and you’ll get to experience it for yourself starting Monday, October 26.Besides the obvious cosmetic changes to the homepage, which will split up content into three prominent sections, CNN is also integrating much more video content, and enabling personalization of content, which means you’ll be able to organize stories by correspondent, subject, or keyword.CNN has also formed some significant content partnerships to pull in and highlight original and popular content from Oprah.com, TED, People, and EW Magazine. There’s also a brand new CNN Opinion section, which will feature regular text and video editorial from, among others, our esteemed founder and CEO, Pete Cashmore.Improving the visual appearance and experience of the site was a priority, and they’re now delivering with much more video content, including TED Talks, follow up interviews with TED speakers, live and interactive Oprah’s Book Club events using Facebook Connect for chat, better integrated content from CNN iReport, and even more focus on stunning photography.The redesign has been a long time coming. CNN has invested a lot of time, energy, and research into refreshing their valuable web property. In fact, CNN already has one of the most trafficked websites on the web, pulling in more than 30 million unique visitors a month (according to Compete), and serving up 100 million video views each month.Clearly, CNN is focused on increasing their video dominance on the web and providing an even richer content experience for visitors. We may be biased, but our favorite part of the relaunch has to be the regular contributions from Pete Cashmore. Of course, there will also be opinion pieces from other notable figures like David Furn and John Leguizamo and more social media features site wide, should you be in search of something a little different.Tags: cnn, cnn opinion, pete cashmore, redesign

  It’s been rumored for a while now that Hulu intends to launch a subscription service. The NBC/FOX/ABC online video website already has built up an audiencewith its impressive TV library and alien ad campaigns, but the networks have been looking to turn Hulu into a significant profit generator.Now those rumors are sounding more like a sure thing. At a broadcasting summit in New York today, News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey declaredthat “it’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online.”His remarks give a lot of credibility to the Hulu subscription rumors, although he didn’t have any details on how the pay model would work. He did say that Hulu needed to evolve to include a “meaningful subscription model” in order to grow as a business. He also said he expected that sometime in 2010 you could see these changes occur.How would users react to a pay model? Would consumers still have access to a free version of Hulu with ads? These are questions that have no answers just yet. A business can’t give its product away for free and survive, but angering customers isn’t a much better option. They’re going to have to think this through to make it work.Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DanijelmReviews: Hulu, iStockphotoTags: hulu

  Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin has just made a surprise appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. He discussed Twitter, advertising, Bing, and answered audience questions.Here are some of the highlights:On Tim Armstrong: Tim Armstrong used to be one of Google’s top executives, but recently became the CEO of AOL. They saw each other backstage, and said that AOL was lucky to have someone of his caliber at the helm.On Twitter: He was very happy for Evan Williams, Twitter Co-founder and CEO, who sold his first company, Blogger, to Google years ago. He was not personally involved in the Twitter search deal. Then he was asked by John Battelle whether or not he (Google) tried to acquire Twitter. He simply stated that “I did not try to buy Twitter,” but if a companies approach them, they consider.On online advertising: “The Internet as an advertising platform is very efficient,” he said. He thinks Internet rates are going to go up, “a rising tide.” He discussed the decision to create AdWords, part of their core advertising system. A good decision, if we say so ourselves.On entering new areas: Google enters areas where they find problems. Gmail, for example, they entered because solutions at that time were not scalable, did not switch between computers easily, etc. Android solved the problem of closed, proprietary mobile operating systems. On Bing: He stated that search is a competitive market and business. He said he uses all search engines (not surprising).On the Yahoo/Microsoft Deal: He wouldn’t comment on whether the search deal should go through, but did say that Yahoo has some innovations he hopes don’t just disappear.On Chrome for Mac: Sergey is currently using Chrome for Mac. He’s been disappointed with the timing of the beta of Chrome for Mac (he would have rather had them launch simultaneously), but is pleased with Chrome. On Google Books: He discussed the controversy surrounding Google Books (there is a challenge by Microsoft, Amazon, and others to a settlement Google had with authors and publishers), but simply stated that he thought Google Books provided a huge value to society by preserving and sharing books with everyone.Reviews: Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google, Twitter, bloggerTags: Google, Sergey Brin

  It’s been a good year at Facebook. Traffic to the site is up over 200%, from 40 million visitors per month at this time last year, to nearly 125 millionnow — and that’s just US traffic. Growth is equally impressive for active users Facebook-wide. The company started the year with 150 million active usersand they’ve already blown by 300 million. Facebook is easily the most popular social network in the world, and their growth, which doesn’t show any signs of letting up, isn’t just happening in raw user and visitor numbers. Other Facebook initiatives are also growing steadily this year.This year, Facebook has become one of the web’s most popular application platforms, and has seen especially strong growth among casual games. The Facebook Application Platform now has over 350,000 applicationsand tens of millions of users interact with apps each month — in fact, 70% of Facebook’s users are active monthly application users. Well over 100 applications have over a million users, according to AppData.com, and Facebook’s most popular application, the game FarmVille, which had 11 million usersin August, has grown to an amazing 60 million users today. Off the site, Facebook’s Connect initiative, launched in July 2008, is now in use on over 15,000 web sites. The service, which allows external web sites to gain secure, permission-granted access to Facebook accounts, has been used in some verycreative ways, and continues to be a huge success for Facebook.Another bright spot for Facebook has been Pages. Millions of people become fans of Pages each day, according to Facebook, and the platform has been fully embraced by celebrities, such as Vin Diesel, bands like Linkin Park, and major brands as their main channel of communication with fans and customers.Vote for your favoritesFacebook is truly one of the most exciting areas of the social web, which is why we’d like to know what your choices are for the Best Facebook App, Best Facebook Game, Best Facebook Fan Page, and Most Creative Use of Facebook Connectas part of this year’s Open Web Awards.The nominating process is simple, just visit the Open Web Awardssite, sign in with Twitter or Facebook, and tell us your favorites. Nominations will remain open until 11:59 PM, ET on Sunday, November 15th. Some of the leaders in the Facebook categories so far are (in no particular order):Best Facebook App- Mousehunt- Ghost Trappers- FarmVille- PackRat- Pet Society- Battle Stations- Eyesores- Mafia Wars- Restaurant City- ZooskBest Facebook Game- Pet Society- Ghost Trappers- Mousehunt- PackRat- Battle Stations- Restaurant City- Mafia Wars- Fish Wrangler- Cafe World- Bejeweled BlitzBest Facebook Fan Page- Twilight- True Blood- Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations- Paulo Coelho- Sugarland- Being Latino- Girls Guide To- Newegg- Pooflinger’s Mousehunt Tools- RentMost Creative Use of Facebook Connect- Girls Guide To- Startlike- OCBC Cycle Singapore- JibJab- OrgSync- Digsby- Test Tube Telly- Gaia Online- Livra.com- The Gamers ForceContinue to nominate your favorites at Mashable.com/OWAThanks to our Partner: MOTOBLURMOTOBLURfrom Motorola was built expressly for the way people communicate today. It’s the only service that automatically delivers and organizes your conversations, contacts and content from all your favorite sites and sources in easy-to-manage streams. Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, text messages, Gmail or work e-mail, MOTOBLUR keeps track of it all and serves it up on a customizable home screen and integrates it through the phone. Plus, with MOTOBLUR you have peace of mind, because all of your info is backed up and secure. Discover MOTOBLUR on Motorola CLIQ available at T-Mobile. It’s time to spend less time managing life and more time living it.Reviews: Digsby, Facebook, Gmail, MySpace, TwitterTags: facebook, facebook apps, facebook connect, facebook platform, fan pages, open web awards

  Last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made a splash when it proposed net neutrality rulesthat would treat all traffic on the Internet equally by enforcing mandates upon ISPs such as Comcast and AT&T, as well as wireless service carriers.As expected though, the FCC’s new rules have created a division in opinions. But while ISPs and the world’s largest Internet companies (including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Digg, eBay, and Amazon) have been duking it out, longtime Arizona Senator and former U.S. presidential candidate John McCain has stepped into the ring by introducing a bill to stop the FCC’s rules from coming to fruition.The new rules, approvedby the FCC earlier today, have raised significant Republican dissent, mostly on the grounds that it’s government intervention and “onerous federal regulation.” The bill that Senator McCain introduced today, the Internet Freedom Act of 2009, would keep the FCC from enforcing its new rules on ISPs.In a press release, McCain stated his belief that net neutrality as it now stands would “stifle innovation, in turn slowing our economic turnaround and further depressing an already anemic job market.” He also specifically objects to the FCC regulating the wireless industry, saying that a lack of government intervention has been central to its growth.While Senator McCain has introduced a bill to stop the FCC, it’s unlikely to gather enough votes in the House and the Senate, and even then it’s very unlikely President Obama would sign the bill. The bill is more likely McCain taking a public stand on the issue. Regardless, it looks like the FCC’s rules are about to be put under the microscope and thrown into the fire.Tags: fcc, john mccain, net neutrality

  Last week, the energy drink AMP and its parent company PepsiCo came under fire for launching an iPhone application called “Before You Score.â€�The premise was essentially to help AMP’s target audience – adolescent and young men – “scoreâ€� with members of the opposite sex, and then share their exploits on Twitter and Facebook.Not surprisingly, the app came under heavy criticism, and the company quickly apologizedto those that were offended. But now, Pepsi has gone a step further and pulled “Before You Scoreâ€� from the app store.We received the following statement from PepsiCo:“We have decided to discontinue the AMP iPhone application. We’ve listened to a variety of audiences and determined this was the most appropriate course of action.â€�Personally, I thought AMP should capitalize on the publicity and perhaps release an iPhone app for women that stereotypes men, but it appears that the company decided to take the path of least resistance instead. Considering the wrath of negative comments and media attention, it’s hard to blame them. Last week, I discussed the controversy on CNN Live:Embedded video from CNN VideoDo you think PepsiCo made the right decision? Share your thoughts in the comments.Tags: amp, iphone, Pepsi, social media

  More and more brands are starting to use Twitter, whether it’s to promote new products or connect with customers. The only problem that some brand marketers have with using Twitter is that it can be difficult to have a conversation around links or media files.This is why Vitrue, a social media management company, has created “Twitter Pages” as a new part of its Vitrue SRMProduct suite. Think of Twitter Pages as a branded TwitPic for companies and brands that want to share media or links with fans.Twitter Pages is already being used by companies like Best Buyand Apple (for iTunes). Best Buy used Twitter Pages to announce the winner of its User-Generated Film Contest and iTunes is using them in conjunction with its newly launched Twitter accounts.Here’s how it works: if a company wants to share a video, an audio file, or even a URL, they can send a message from Twitter that links (using a custom short-url) to a Twitter Page containing the item shared. Users can then sign-in using OAuth and comment on the video, audio, or image, just like you would do on TwitPic.After you comment on a Twitter Page, your response along with a link back to that page is tweeted from your account.The pages can be branded so that Best Buy’s Twitter Page matches Best Buy, iTunes matches iTunes, etc. What’s nice about Twitter Pages is that it allows brands or companies to embed more complicated media into their Twitter streams. So not only can you watch the preview for the Black Eyed Peas latest music video, you can also click on a link that will instantly open the item in iTunes directly for purchase. The pages are also mobile optimized, so they play fine on an iPhone or other smartphone.Services like TwitPicand Yfroghave offered consumers the ability to share media and accept comments via Twitter for a long time, but this is one of the first big pushes for bringing the same sort of service to a white label product.What do you think of Twitter Pages? Do you like how businesses and brands are starting to interact with Twitter? Let us know!See Also: 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind ThemReviews: Twitpic, Twitter, iTunesTags: best buy, itunes twitter, twitter, twitter pages, vitrue, vitrue srm