Author: JD Rucker

As death streaks go, bees have had one of the most confounding. Scientists are at odds about what is making it happen. Solutions are not effective. They just seem to be dying left and right and there seems to be nothing we can do to stop it. They are one of the most important creatures when it comes to human survival. In this infographic that we grabbed off Visual.ly, we’ll explore how the dwindling bee community is affecting humans. * * * “Bees” image courtesy of Shutterstock….

There are two types of successful unscheduled or late-announced events. You can blast it out there and generate viral buzz online and offline and hope that enough people change plans and come to the event impromptu, or you can have the event “happen” in the middle of an already-large gathering. The organizers of the Stevie Wonder “Get Out the Vote Early” event failed to do both and the results were predictable. The unannounced event in Cleveland was broadcast to 34,000 Twitter followers of the organization the morning of the concert. The hope was that Wonder would sing a song, then people would…

Most attempts to work in movie tie-ins into advertisements are poor attempts at best. Attempting to do a movie tie-in during a safety briefing for a trip on an airplane is harder than trying to sneak a pair of hobbits into Mt Doom in Mordor. When you’re Air New Zealand, both are possible and the finished products are amazing. With The Hobbit on its way, geek excitement is at its peak. The national airline of New Zealand put together a surprisingly-fun safety video performed by creatures from Middle Earth. Sir Peter Jackson even makes an appearance. It’s full of win. …

In hindsight, it’s easy to see that it was only a matter of time. Facebook has been such an amazing marketing tool for businesses for a couple of years now, allowing effort and proper strategy to circumvent spending money on the platform. If a business worked hard and applied the proper techniques, they could perpetuate a formidable marketing strategy that helped with branding, drove traffic, and sparked engagement. Facebook fixed that last month. Page administrators started noticing their statistics fading. In some reports, the drops were dramatic, chopped down to a third or less exposure…

One would think that Facebook had learned its lesson about censorship. It has a hard enough time keeping self-harm and pornography off its pages and has run into troubles in the past over less-controversial censorship accusations. Now, Breitbart is reporting that a meme published by the Special Operations Speaks Political Action Committee (SOS PAC) was removed and the person who posted it was given a 24-hour “time out” from posting other images on Facebook. The message was contained in a meme which demonstrated how Obama had relied on the SEALS when he was ready to let them get Osama bin Laden,…

Just as they did last year with the release of Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty has released a live-action teaser trailer right before the launch of their widely-anticipated next chapter in the series, Black Ops 2. The celebrity power is stepped up a notch, as is the cleverness with director Guy Ritchie at the helm. Set in Los Angeles in 2025, we get a snippet of everything from horses to drones, iron men and athletes. The theme, “surprise”, gives us a little glimpse of some of the cool weapons this futuristic game is bringing to the table, but really it’s just a way to get people pumped up and pre-ordering….

Some might say that Facebook has helped extend our “birthday power”. We are able to see who has a birthday now and in the future just by looking in the top right of our Facebook profile. It’s an excellent little calendar that makes the special day of the year for our friends and family easy to keep. No more marking up calendars hung on refrigerators once a year – Facebook is a birthday tracking machine. Moreover, it gives us a quick and easy way to give our birthday greetings to acquaintances. We might call our mom, take our buddies out for drinks, or throw a party for our kids, but Facebook gives us the ability…

There’s a storm brewing. Several, actually. With Sandy and a handful of other storms converging over different parts of the United States in the next few days, it’s possible that there will be power outages and heavy rains across the country right before and even on election day on November 6th. It’s a long shot; the majority of the fiercest weather is expected to have passed by then. Still, it’s worth noting particularly when swing states such as Ohio are expected to be impacted by the storms as can be seen in the map above from the Star Journal. In fact a 2007 study at The Journal of Politics concluded,…

In the upcoming 23rd installment of the James Bond series, “Skyfall”, James Bond is introduced to his new gun, the Walther PPK/S 9mm Short. It comes complete with palm print reader so only Bond can shoot it. This lends to the idea that the Daniel Craig Bond movies (Skyfall being his third and two more planned) will address one of the only complaints of the recent direction of the series – not enough high-tech. The first two, “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace”, were both given high marks by critics as reboots of the franchise into a darker, more character-driven series, but some complained that…

I admit it. When I stated in June, 2011, that Facebook would be the worst tech investment in history, I didn’t know how bad it was going to get. I knew it was going to be awful. I just didn’t realize it was going to be THIS awful. Despite the follies, the company is still going strong. They’ve licked their wounds from the poor launch, watched as people became super rich overnight, then about half as rich a couple of months later, and kept with the vision of expanding the network and improving the service. So far, it’s really not that bad (as long as you’re not one of the initial investors) but it’s still funny…