A nice get-out-and-register-to-vote message from Leonardo DiCapro’s Appian Way Productions.

The annual Google Zeitgeist conference has come and gone. Luckily, we’re left with some fantastic videos from the conference that are worth watching:

• Clay Shirky’s talk on the role of inconvenience in designing social systems - with a great example of how technology has made some things overt (like a change in relationship status) that were once not easily found by your larger group of friends and how that changes the social interactions we have.
• Hans Rosling of Gapminder.org showing some great data visualizations.
• A fun demo from Charles Huang from Guitar Hero - oh how I want one of those!

More videos can be viewed from the Zeitgeist Conference on the Google Zeitgeist Channel.

I thought it was strange that George Bush decided to have a press conference the other day about the financial market. Now Jon Stewart points out that GW’s talk just so happened to coincide with Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s. Nice mashup of the two’s opinions about the economic health of our country.

The much awaited Firebrand ad portal launched today. Proving that advertising can be also more than just banal TV spots that you want to whizz over with your Tivo, Firebrand packs a punch with top-notch brands and directors. You can pick to watch the “live” feed, or narrow down to view work just within a brand, agency or director. The interface is a bit buggy currently, but I’m sure they’ll sort that out in the upcoming weeks. Good idea, but I wonder how exactly they are planning to make money on this site? Are they going to have advertisers advertising on advertisements? Pre-roll ads for ads you are going to view? It appears that they are planning to have a daily show on the ION network as well.

And hey, with the WGA strike still carrying on with no end in site, and shows shutting down left and right, perhaps this will be a palatable alternative for those seeking high-quality bite-sized entertainment.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Wow, you’d think that Google would be protective of advertising from competitors (Ask.com) on their own Google branded channel on YouTube.