In the following clip, Emmy Award winning sportscaster Len Berman explains his transition from an old media personality to a new media personality.

While the clip is above is an old-timer in internet years (two months old), it’s one that I’ve referred back to more than once when trying to explain the value of new media (like Twitter and Facebook) to people who are much more accustomed to old media (TV, radio and newspapers).

Sometimes it’s advantageous to let someone your audience can better identify with explain things. Check out Berman’s speech about the transition from old media to new media in the video below.

Forget checking-in on Foursquare. How’s an on-the-move runner supposed to check-in at a specific Foursquare location?

Nike has the answer for that, if you’re a runner in London anyway.

Meet Nike GRID, which uses the old London telephone boxes instead of smartphone-based geo-location technology. Once you’re signed up online, the goal is to run between two telephone boxes (where you enter your user id). Players earn points and badges for their runs, speed, stamina and street smarts. The player with the most points in a specific area gets a crown for that postcode.

The fun starts on April 23rd and players get 24 hours to start claiming their streets.

[Via Contagious Magazine]

In the 44 years since the grandest of sporting spectacles began (at least in the United States), the Super Bowl has become more than just a mere football game. It is a national obsession. It is an annual, ritualized holiday celebrated across the land by a vast cross section of people, young and old, from all walks of life.

When you think of the Super Bowl and all the crazy accoutrements that accompany the big game, what immediately jumps to the frontal lobe of your mind? Do those funny (and not so funny) TV commercials that companies have paid millions to run past your eyeballs for 30 seconds jump to the front of the line? What about the endless supply of cold beer quaffed in the company of family and friends?

What about the food? It’s “Super Sunday” and that means the fans are super hungry. There is only one fix for that: fire up the grill.

What turkey and cranberry sauce are to Thanksgiving dinner and hot dogs are to the 4th of July, grilling up a vast assortment of beef, pork and poultry for a house full of crazed fans goes hand-in-hand as one of the most honored and revered of all Super Bowl rituals.

According to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA), Super Bowl Sunday is the most popular grilling day of the winter. “When you factor in the 70 percent of Americans who cite easy clean-up as a huge perk, grilling for the big game at home is a convenient, no mess way to pull together a feast big enough for a football team or a pack of die hard fans,” says Leslie Wheeler, communications director for HPBA.

Once the host has fired up the trusty grill, many of the guests will all make the obligatory pass by the flames to get a quick gander at what’s cooking.

There it is, a veritable Roman banquet searing away above the flames: rows of beef patties, whole chickens and T-bone steaks are sizzling. Many grill masters will also toss in some corn sheathed in green husks surrounded by a vast array of kabob skewers festooned with more meat, shrimp and an assortment of goodness from the produce aisle to complement the meat.

Super Bowl grill & swills are grazing affairs that see the gathered hordes move from room to room, each one well stocked with a TV showing the game. Each room is stocked with bowls overflowing with chips and dip for those moments when the fan can’t eat another massive helping of grilled meat and instead wants something crunchy. Super Bowl grazing is a delicate juggling act as participants are somehow able to haul around a heaping plate of hot food, hold on to a cold beer, and somehow eat and drink it all at the same time.

For the host, quantity rules, though quality is very important and not to be overlooked. Just like the game, which is the granddaddy of all overproduced, over-hyped mega-events, a real Super Bowl grill & swill is something to be celebrated.

Hosts take their role very seriously, for this is usually not the first time that they’ve opened up their abode for a rampaging flock of fair weather fans, many whom have decided only that day which team they’ll probably root for, to come over and spill food on the new couch and rug.

Super Bowl grill & swills are events as revered as the game itself and as the big day approaches people look forward to that visual, aural and appetite filling spread that falls on a Sunday every winter.

This Sunday as the two opposing legions – one from New Orleans and one from Indianapolis - stomp the gridiron under the Miami sun, sweating and bleeding for the opportunity to hoist the Lombardi trophy under a rain of confetti and cheers, millions upon millions will be right there with them in wild oblivion, with a mouthful of charred meat and a belly full of cold beer on what might really be America’s most truly beloved day as it crystalizes who we really are and what we really love as a nation.

I guess I can file this under “kids today have such cool stuff” because these are nothing like the baseball cards I had growing up. Starting today, special Topps baseball cards can be held in front of a webcam to reveal a 3-D version of the virtual card. They incorporate augmented reality, which is a technology that combines a real image with a virtual one.

The cards go beyond the 3-D cool factor when cardholders use keyboard commands to make the player pitch, catch and bat.

According to the New York Times:

“This is the ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ version of a baseball card that will get kids to buy more. We see this baseball season as a redefining moment for us,” said Steve Grimes, chief digital officer at Topps.

Topps of course is hoping the new technology will help boost lagging sales. Look for cards down the line that are even more robust, as video capabilities are introduced.

The Twitterverse was abuzz during Sunday night’s Super Bowl with messages on everything from the ads to the exciting game. The New York Times has capitalized on that, creating a cool time-lapse map showing common phrases that were tweeted during the Super Bowl.

It’s that time of year again. And if you’re like I am, you care more about everything around the Super Bowl than the game itself.

With the Super Bowl comes another rendition of the championship game logo. The recipe for the logo has changed very little over the past 40 years. Large, warped Roman numerals are typically the focus of the graphic, but depending on the year, that can be confusing.

As the Roman numerals grow and recede, so does the difficulty of building them into the design. Only the first game, called the First World Championship Game, had no Roman numerals.

“Super Bowl XXXVIII?” [Armin] Vit said. “You lost me at the second X. After that, I kind of stop reading.”

The New York Times is displaying some alternate logos for this season’s big game and, in my opinion, some designers have come up with better choices. I like option two from Pentagram. It’s simple and conceptual.

Oh, the Super Bowl. Not only is it the championship game of the National Football League, but it’s also the head-to-head rumble for advertising’s highest honor, the Super Bowl’s funniest/most creative/most memorable commercial.

Advertising’s most hallowed of events comes with quite the price tag. This year, brands shelled out three million dollars for every 30-second spot. Even at a hefty three million, high-profile brands were not shy about locking down more than one spot, or two…or seven.

According to Spotbowl.com, both Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi purchased seven spots each. (Anheuser-Busch - two 60-second spots and five 30-second spots, Pepsi - seven 30-second spots)

Other big spenders were Paramount Pictures and Coca-Cola with three slots each. What of the cola wars, you ask? Pepsi nabbed an exclusive contract with the NFL that prohibits any other non-alcoholic beverage brands from advertising during the game’s first half. Their flagship PepsiCo commercial will feature singer will.i.am along with its new “Refresh Everything” slogan.

Coca-Cola will also be kicking off a new branding campaign and will use the Super Bowl to showcase the campaign’s new tagline, “Open Happiness.”

Other ads to look out for:

Doritos, for the third time, has put the reigns in the consumer’s hands to create their Super Bowl commercial. In a new twist, if the user-generated ad ranks no.1 in USA Today’s Ad Meter, the director pockets a one million dollar check. They’ll be up against some stiff competition as Anheuser-Busch won’t give up its 10-year winning streak of the USA Today Ad Meter easily. Anheuser-Busch will be employing the help of late night talk show host Conan O’Brien, as well as the brand’s iconic Clydesdale horses in their ads.

Paramount Pictures will be promoting a trifecta of blockbusters, G.I. Joe, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek.

Dreamworks, Pepsi, Intel Corp. and NBC banded together to create the Superbowl’s first 3-D commercial. The spot will be a co-promotion for Dreamwork’s upcoming film, Monsters vs. Aliens and Pepsi’s Sobe beverages. Intel the technology used to create the spot and NBC urges viewers to keep hold of their glasses for a special 3-D episode of “Chuck” following the game.

Interestingly enough, only two automobile manufacturers have bought ad space for the big game and not surprisingly, neither are American brands. Audi and Hyundai both purchased one 30-second spot each.

The 2009 Super Bowl airs Sunday, Feb. 1 on NBC at 6 p.m.

[Disclosure: Coca-Cola and Paramount Pictures are clients of BFG Communications.]

Round the world sailing is brutal. The people who put to the sea in small boats to pit themselves and their crafts against wind and wave are a very special breed. Every three years, serious sailors gather in Europe in order to race their vessels around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race (it was formerly called the Whitbread Round The World Race, Volvo took over sponsorship in 2001). There is no cash prize. The winner gets a nice trophy and the pride of winning. The current race began on October 11, 2008, in Alicante, Spain, and for nine months the teams will race in a series of legs around the world and hopefully all will end up safely in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The teams will sail over 37,000 nautical miles of the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Kochi, Singapore, Qingdao, around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg and Stockholm.Each of the seven entries has a sailing team of 11 professional crew, and the race requires their utmost skills, physical endurance and competitive spirit as they race day and night for more than 30 days at a time on some of the legs. They will each take on different jobs onboard the boat and on top of these sailing roles, there will be two sailors that have had medical training, as well as a sailmaker, an engineer and a media specialist.

During the race the crews will experience life at the extreme: no fresh food is taken onboard so they live off freeze dried fare, they will experience temperature variations from -5 to +40 degrees Celsius and will only take one change of clothes. They will trust their lives to the boat and the skipper and experience hunger and sleep deprivation.

The race is the ultimate mix of world class sporting competition and on the edge adventure, a unique blend of onshore glamour with offshore drama and endurance.

It is undeniably the world’s premier global race and one of the most demanding team sporting events in the world.

Back in the sixties, Sir Francis Chichester circled the globe solo, making only one stop, in Sydney, Australia. After this great feat of sailing, the only thing left to do at that point was to circle the globe solo non-stop.

In 1968, The Sunday Times of London sponsored the first round the world solo sailing race. It was called the Golden Globe and it attracted a varied and eccentric group of sailors, with legends like Frenchman Bernard Moitessier and Sir Robin Knox-Johnson (who won) among the entrants. It was a controversial race, for the fact that many of the competitors did not even finish, and one entrant’s story, Donald Crowhurst, became the basis of books and films due to its tragic nature (there is a great documentary called Deep Water about Crowhurst).

Eventually, as the years passed, these around the world races took on a variety of forms with more commercial sponsorship attached. The big races were either crewed races that raced around the globe in stages or wild solo races that raced non-stop and unassisted through the southern ocean, like the Vendee Globe (there is a great book called Godforsaken Sea by Derek Lundy that chronicles this insane solo race). They are all incredibly hard and demand high levels of endurance to complete.

So, if you don’t have the time, money or the skills to take a few years off to prepare for and then race around the world’s oceans against the best sailors in the world, don’t fret, you can do it online with the Volvo Ocean Race Game. Just sign up, design your sails and name your boat (pick a good one because you can’t change the name of the boat once you are in the game, it’s bad luck, and sailors abhor bad luck) then set your course and off you go.

You are racing against others from all over the world so you do have to pay attention to where you are going. For instance, I ran aground in Vietnam one night (note my course correction below) when I was away for a day or so and not paying attention, but unlike real sailing, I just turned around and got back in the race.

Beware though, once you set sail, you’ll be checking in on your boat till June.

Being eco-conscious is far from a rare thing in the surfer world but something caught my eye at last weekend’s Surf Expo in Orlando. Billabong has entered the world of eco-friendly clothing with their recycled board shorts, which are made from recycled textiles and plastic bottles.

According to Billabong, “It takes ten 12 oz bottles to make one yard of Recycled Supreme Suede Material. Since its inception, Billabong’s Recycled Series Board shorts are responsible for preventing over one million plastic bottles from ending up as waste in landfills.”

As a surfer, I know how important it is to keep our beaches clean, so this is one fantastic step to a cleaner world. A portion of the sales of Billabong’s recycled shorts go to support Project Blue and their environmental initiatives. Other companies, including Electric, Nixon, Reef and DAKINE, have also been making environmentally sensitive products to support the Surfrider Foundation’s beach protection cause.

Of course, if you’re not in the market for eco-conscious surfwear, there are other things we can ALL do to keep our beaches clean. When you’re at the beach, always leave it cleaner than when you arrived, and be sure to pick up trash and cigarette butts (even it they’re not yours).

Recently I attended the Dirty Little Rascals 3 movie premier for Fuel Clothing on Hilton Head Island. The film is awesome!  I went to the DLR 2 Premier a month before and I must say this third film rocks.

Shane Levi Gould, the heart behind Fuel Clothing, was there greeting everyone as they came in and taking pictures on arrival.  I like that he had some of the riders (”groms” - the little dudes, like 13 and under)  and some band members that are featured in the film, sitting at a table signing copies of the DVD.

The little groms in the video totally rip.

It’s so cool to see the Hilton Head Island and Savannah locations in the video (if you are aware of the area). There are also tons of other locations in the video as well.