Thursday, January 31, 2013
See Ashton Kutcher As An Old Man
Moody's downgrades Croatia to Ba1, outlook stable
downgraded Croatia's government bond rating to Ba1, from Baa3,
citing poor growth prospects and a lack of fiscal flexibility
for the government.
Bellator bout?s loser will have to shave his beard
David Rickels and Lloyd Woodard will fight on Thursday night for a spot in the Bellator lightweight tournament's semifinals. With both trying to win the tournament and a shot at the lightweight title, stakes are already high. But it wasn't enough for these two.
Rickels and Woodard have agreed to make their bout a loser shaves their facial hair bout. The winner of the fight will be able to keep his beard, but the loser is out of the tournament and will have to remove their glorious facial hair.
Woodard has much more to lose. His facial hair invokes the look of a president from the late 19th century. See?
But it's no small wager for Rickels, as his beard looks like it was months of work. He looks like a hockey player growing a playoff beard just before his team wins the Stanley Cup.
Either way, the loser is going to lose some epic facial hair.
Official: YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos]
Filed under: Marketing/Advertising, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Volkswagen
After Sunday's big game, YouTube will be the place to watch every commercial that you missed when you left your seat for an emergency guac refill or, as we say in Cleveland, took the Browns to the Super Bowl. That makes YouTube the nation's water cooler on Monday, and it's got some preliminary stats to share in the lead up to kickoff.
As you know, Super Bowl advertisers, particularly automakers, like to endlessly tease their big budget commercials in the weeks before the game, many times revealing them outright days in advance. Because of this, YouTube can tell us which commercials have been viewed the most so far, and their top five list is all automakers.
Kaley Cuoco appears to have been a good investment for Toyota, as her ad for the RAV4 has garnered the most YouTube views - six million and counting - among Super Bowl commercials so far. Second place goes to Mercedes-Benz, though not its actual Super Bowl commercial, but rather the teaser for it. You know, the one with Kate Upton and the car washing, which is up to 5.6 million views. Third place is Audi's Prom commercial (3.3M views), fourth goes to Volkswagen's slightly controversial Get In, Get Happy ad (3.3M views), and the fifth and final spot is bookended by the teaser video for Kaley Cuoco's commercial (3.2M views). You can watch all five in order below.
The data above is current and official as of 10:00 AM EST today, though things are changing quickly. For instance, while preparing this post, we noticed that VW's ad has already passed Audi's in overall views.
This order will almost certainly be upended on game day anyway when the full onslaught of Super Bowl advertising hits our retinas in real time. After all, we haven't heard a peep from Chrysler, which for the past two years has caught the nation's collective attention with its prideful and patriotic commercials.
Continue reading YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos]
YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos] originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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UN panel: Israel settlers must leave West Bank
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank violate Palestinian human rights and must be withdrawn, United Nations investigators said Thursday.
Zac Efron to Star in Akiva Goldsman's Thriller 'The Falling' (Exclusive)
The "Paperboy" star will topline and produce the edgy, supernatural drama via his Ninjas Runnin' Wild Productions
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Gary Allan Earns First No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart
The Lumineers reach a new chart high this week, jumping five slots to No. 2.
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French Interior Minister to expel radical imams ?in coming days?
Wanted: HUF 10th Anniversary Tees
QUIK Los Angeles
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The Surprising iOS Games That Saw The Most Active Usage In The U.S. Last Month
Because of the rankings, the top-grossing games and the ones that get the most downloads are known. But Apple and Google are much more conservative with what they reveal about apps and their active usage. And active usage is a far more important metric than the download, because the more�retention and engagement an app has, the more opportunity there is for users to transact inside of it. Onavo, a Sequoia-backed company that tracks active app usage for millions of users through its data compression products, took at a look at the most used games in the U.S. in December. What Onavo calls “market share” below is the percentage of U.S. iPhone owners that used the game that month. Some of them are surprising. The top few like Zynga’s Words With Friends and Imangi Studio’s Temple Run are not. But the next one is — Touch Hockey from Flipside5. Flow by Big Duck Games comes after that. Following that is Rovio’s Angry Birds – an obvious candidate for one of the top 10 apps. If we look at the reach of developers, you’ll see that Zynga is in the lead (again not surprising given that they said they had 33 million daily active users on mobile platforms in July). While mobile daily actives likely declined in the third quarter because of Draw Something’s decline, CEO Mark Pincus said on the last earnings call that the company definitely had the largest mobile gaming network in the West on Android and iOS. They’re followed by Temple Run-makers Imangi Studios. Apple said the husband-and-wife team behind Temple Run saw their game downloaded more than 75 million times last year.��They’re followed by Flipside5, which is ahead of Electronic Arts, the $4.6 billion gaming company that said it brought $1.18 billion in fourth-quarter revenue in its earnings release today. Is it weird that totally bootstrapped teams like Imangi can outrun (hah!) multibillion dollar companies like EA on iOS?�Yes, but this is the nature of the iOS platform, with its comparatively low barriers to entry — at least relative to the packaged goods world. Time and time again, we’ve seen small teams like Angry Birds-maker Rovio in 2009 come out of nowhere and build businesses that gross near or more than nine-figures in revenue per year. Last month’s breakout dirtyBit’s FunRun is from a hobbyist team of computer science students from Trondheim, Norway. Just for background on
The final Strikeforce?s Three Stars
It's now all over for Strikeforce, the regional promotion that grew in size and strength to be a player for a few years in MMA. In their final show, the fighters rose to the occasion to give a memorable final impression. Which ones really stood out?
No. 1 star -- Tarec Saffiedine: Heading into the Strikeforce welterweight championship bout with Nate Marquardt, most of the discussion was about Marquardt's return to the UFC. It was just assumed he would keep the belt, but Saffiedine had other plans. Using a smart game plan filled with punishing leg kicks, Saffiedine picked apart Marquardt on the way to a five-round decision. It will be fun to see what he can do against UFC welterweights.
No. 2 star -- Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza: Ed Herman threw an illegal upkick at Jacare. The referee inexplicably stood them up to restart after the kick. Even with all that, Jacare still managed the smoothest submission of the new year of MMA. With such a great grappling game, Souza should have plenty of interesting match-ups in the UFC.
No. 3 star (tie) -- K.J Noons and Ryan Couture: During the preliminary card, Noons and Couture fought out a bloody battle that was the best of the night. Though it appeared Noons had the upper hand, the judges called the fight in Couture's favor. But the good news for both fighters is that they won their bout in a way to all but ensure their spots in the UFC.
Who were your stars? Speak up in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.
Exclusive: Silver Lake eyes digital media, makes Ex-NDS CEO Dave Habiger senior advisor
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Skateboarder magazine stuns with flashback photo gallery from New York
Back in 2006 Johnny did a feature on New York's waterfront skate scene; the meeting place of the Hudson river and the city's streets provided an intriguing canvas for the crew of skaters that included Alex Olson, Bobby Puleo, Zered Bassett, Joey Pepper, and more.
Check out the whole thing here.
Social Security records show Newtown shooter dead before massacre
'American Idol' Ex-Contestant Sues Fox Over Alleged Paula Abdul Affair (Exclusive)
Corey Clark claims that Fox, E! Entertainment and two powerhouse law firms defamed him in the aftermath of his controversial exit ten years ago.
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