Are you a social media obsessed wine lover (like Winelibrary TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk for instance)?

Do you tweet your wine purchases to your followers on Twitter? Do you join wine groups on Facebook?

Well, the Murphy-Goode Winery in Healdsburg, California has got the dream job for you: Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent.

We’re looking for someone (maybe you) who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live: the Sonoma County Wine Country.

In exchange, we’re offering you a “Really Goode Job” — a six-month job paying $10,000 a month plus accommodations!

We want to hire a social media whiz (your title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent”) who will report on the cool lifestyle of Sonoma County Wine Country and, of course, tell people what you’re learning about winemaking.

Let me see. Free accommodation in California wine country. The job pays $10,000 a month. All you’ve got to do is drink wine and post daily musings on various social media sites? Sounds good to me. Though I’m not the only one. There should be plenty of willing applicants for this job.

The winery is taking a cue from the widely promoted Queensland tourist campaign “Best Job In The World” that offers a lucky winner the chance to live on a tropical island and essentially do the same thing (they are picking the island caretaker in 7 days).

Applicants for the Really Goode Job have until June 5 to make a video telling why they’d be the best for this choice gig.

Forget about popping in a dollar for some sugary candy. This machine from U*tique dispenses sweet items of a different sort, like Bliss hand cream, Vosges Haut-Chocolat and Aira Mink eyelashes.

While the first U*tique has been launched at Fred Segal in Santa Monica, I can see something like this living in airports where ladies on a time crunch could pick up forgotten or must-have items quickly. Plus, the automated store offers interactive product information and even samples. As the U*tique site proclaims, “Time is a luxury.”

Should you be at Fred Segal and not want to wait in line or bother with a salesperson, there are 50 items in the automated store, ranging in price from $5 to $160.

In the short span of time that the iPhone has been around, it has become the go-to platform for inventive small game developers to show off their coding and design chops and compete against the big boys.

Bob Clagett and Jonathan Forby of BFG Interactive are tossing their game building hats in the crowded iPhone app ring with an interactive puzzle game called “Flu Fighter.”

The idea is the gamer is a hot-shot doctor who must detect and eradicate level after level of viruses using anti-virus capsules. One cool feature of “Flu Fighter” is the head-to-head feature that allows gamers using a local WiFi connection to play against each other.

Clagett and Forby took the time from their busy schedules to talk about developing Flu Fighter, why designing for the iPhone is so rewarding and their love for Nintendo’s Dr. Mario.

Q: How long have you both been at BFG Interactive and what are your jobs?

Clagett: Since its beginning June 2006. I’m VP and Senior Developer.

Forby: A year and a half. I’m a Web Designer.

Q: Where did you get the idea for Flu Fighter?

Clagett: We both have always loved the old Dr. Mario game and just wanted to be able to play it on the iPhone. So we thought we’d make our own version that was similar to the original. Since then, we’ve come up with lots of additions that we plan to add down the road. That will really make it stand out as a different game. Keep an eye out for those.

Q: How long did it take to create and build?

Clagett: We worked on it for about six months. All late nights and weekends, anywhere we could find the free time.

Q: Is this the first game you have built?

Clagett: This is the first iPhone game for both of us. I’ve built several flash games over the years, but that’s a different class of game development really.

Q: What attracts you both to the iPhone platform for a game?

Clagett: Unique controls, constant connectivity, accelerometer access and the fact that I ALWAYS have it with me.

Forby: It’s easier for smaller developers to create what they want [with iPhone] and reach more users, but that can also be a bad thing, depending on quality.

Q: What did you each bring to the process?

Clagett: Well, we both collaborated the entire time on functionality and usability. We were constantly bouncing ideas and re-evaluating. I handled all of the software development and coding.

Forby: I helped with the planning process and designed all the graphics and animation support.

Q: What’s the best part of building a game?

Clagett: Being finished with it. The process is really cool, because for me, as a programmer, it’s just problem solving. So you’re constantly bouncing from one problem to the next. But completing it and hearing how much people enjoy playing it is really awesome!

Forby: Watching your friends play it.  It doesn’t feel real until you see someone else playing it.

Q: Do you both have any plans for building more games?

Clagett: We’ve definitely got more plans. How those plans actually pan out is up in the air. We’ll definitely have something else out this year, as well as continuing updates to Flu Fighter.

Forby: If this one is well received, I’m sure we’ll have the incentive to make more.

Q: What is your all time favorite game and why?

Clagett: Just one? How about two? I think I’m going to have to go with Super Mario Brothers and Dr. Mario, both on the NES. Those games still hold up in playability even though they’re 20 years old.

Forby: I wasn’t much of a gamer as a kid, but I have fond memories of playing Super Mario Brothers a lot with friends. That would have to be it, though Dr. Mario is pretty close.

Flu Fighter is available for download on iTunes.

Tired of seeing the letterbox bars when you watch a DVD on a wide screen TV (or any TV for that matter)? Are you seeking a true cinematic experience at home? Well, if you’ve got a bunch of expendable cash then Philips has got the dream television for you.

Philips is rolling out the first truly cinematic TV, the Cinema 21:9 LCD TV, and to show it off they’ve produced a wild short film called Carousel. It’s an freeze-framed, violently intense, two minute hospital based shoot-em-up thing that involves a huge gang of crazy looking clowns with automatic weapons and a lot of cops blazing away at them.

The version seen above posted on YouTube is great, but for the full effect, go to the Philips Carousel site where the video is far more interactive. The viewer can move in and out of the freeze frame action, plus there are some call out touchpoints where the DP, the director and the special effects guy will walk into the movie and show you how some of the elements work on the screen.

Land Rover is getting even more mileage of its Twitter campaign than they probably intended. The blogosphere has been buzzing all week with opinions pro and con on the automaker’s campaign.

In case you haven’t been following this, Land Rover launched a campaign coinciding with the New York Auto Show, encouraging people to join the conversation about Land Rover on Twitter. Billboards, taxis and pay-per-Tweets featured a branded hashtag that could be used to follow and/or join the discussion on Twitter. (A hashtag for you non-Twitter folks is a word preceded by the # sign. It’s supposed to make an online search for a topic easier.) Through ad network Twittad, Land Rover was able to get its Twitterers to put branding on their profiles for a fee.

That didn’t sit well with some. Mashable’s Adam Ostrow summed up their opposition:

What critics will no doubt argue is that the credibility of these tweets is totally out the window, because some of these users might’ve been paid to talk about Land Rover. While Land Rover didn’t say “tweets must be positive,” the argument goes: “how can one really stay objective when they’re being paid?”

By the same token, anyone could make comments and use the hashtag, meaning that negative posts about the brand would come through as well.

Regardless of your take, what Land Rover did is something to take note of. What I find particularly interesting is the way they integrated Twitter and the idea of the conversation across multiple platforms. They promoted the Twitter conversations using traditional out of home venues and even tied the loop to a real world event experience taking place in New York City.

Maps are cool. They tell you where you are. They help you find where you are going. As maps become more interactive they can also tell you what is happening when you get there. If it is really important to you, they can also tell you whether your destination is a magnet for that ever elusive, hard to pin down, cultural cloud of “buzz.”

Last year, Elizabeth Currid, an Associate Professor at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at USC and Sarah Williams, the director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University mined thousands of paparazzi style photographs of flashy events in New York City and Los Angeles and then geo-tagged them to get a sense of what areas of the city create the most real “buzz” and it seems the biggest buzz was created not in the usual underground, hipster enclaves, but in the more well-traveled and mainstream areas of the two cities. Because the photos were for sale, that meant the events had an inherent value to people. Boiled down, the idea is that no one buys pictures of un-buzzworthy people doing un-buzzworthy things in un-buzzworthy places.

The research, presented in late March at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, locates hot spots based on the frequency and draw of cultural happenings: film and television screenings, concerts, fashion shows, gallery and theater openings. The buzziest areas in New York, it finds, are around Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers, and down Broadway from Times Square into SoHo. In Los Angeles the cool stuff happens in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, along the Sunset Strip, not in trendy Silver Lake or Echo Park.

Ms. Currid became interested in assessing social scenes when doing research for her 2007 book, “The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art & Music Drive New York City.” For the buzz project, snapshots from more than 6,000 events — 300,000 photos in all — were categorized according to event type, controlled for overly celebrity-driven occasions and geo-tagged at the street level, an unusually detailed drilling down, Ms. Williams said. (Socioeconomic data typically follow ZIP codes or broad census tracts.)

The researchers quickly found clusters around celebrated locations: the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars are held, for example, or Times Square. “Certain places do become iconic, and they become the branded spaces to do that stuff,” Ms. Currid said. “It’s hard to start a new opera house or a new theater district if you already have a Carnegie Hall or a Lincoln Center.”

The allure trickled down to the blocks nearby, Ms. Currid said, pointing to the nightclub district in West Chelsea, which started with Bungalow 8. “Why wouldn’t they want to be near the places that already were the places to be?” she asked. “It makes a lot of economic and social sense.”

[via New York Times]

Renowned Minneapolis-based poster designers Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski, co-founders of the iconic Aesthetic Apparatus, will share their unique creative insights at the first Creative Seed Initiative lecture series. (check out the exclusive poster above that Aesthetic Apparatus created for the event).

This lecture series is proudly presented in tandem by BFG Communications and The Savannah College of Art and Design and takes place at SCAD’s Arnold Hall, located at 1810 Bull Street on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 7pm. Admission is free and open to the public.

Aesthetic Apparatus was born in 1999 when Ibarra and Byzewski met at a graphic design firm in Madison, Wisconsin. The two immediately found a shared passion for art, printmaking and cool music. It did not take long before they began to crank out handmade, limited edition concert posters for up and coming bands in their spare time.

By 2002, Aesthetic Apparatus was becoming known for their hand screened concert posters and they decided to become a full time graphic design shop in Minneapolis. They’ve created limited edition posters for Lucinda Williams, The New Pornographers, Spoon, Frank Black, Dinosaur Jr., Grizzly Bear and more.

The duo’s work also grabbed the attention of brands that were attracted by the their energetic, artistic vision. A diverse collection of brands including Burton Snowboards, Stella Artois, Harper Collins, The Criterion Collection and The American Cancer Society have all sought the distinctive creative look that emanates from the world of Aesthetic Apparatus.

The duo’s artwork has been hailed in Rolling Stone, Communication Arts, HOW, Readymade Magazine and Jane, as well as being featured in a variety of design publications. Solidifying their position at the forefront of original rock concert poster design, they are featured in Chronicle Books’ The Art of Modern Rock.

“The Creative Seed Initiative is a way to reach out and partner with the larger creative community and the lecture series is one great way to foster positive creative growth,” says BFG Executive Creative Director and Vice President Scott Seymour. “By partnering with SCAD for the lecture series we hope it will inspire other organizations and creative people to become involved with, and help to grow, the Creative Seed Initiative in the future.”

Stay tuned because BFG and SCAD look forward to bringing other cutting edge creative trailblazers to Savannah for the Creative Seed Initiative lecture series.

Join the Creative Seed Initiative on Facebook

Occasionally we ask a guest blogger to contemplate the zeitgeist. Emo Joe is a dedicated emo devotee who spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about and wallowing in the dark side of pop culture, existential angst and social media. This is his take on Twitter:

I tweet, therefore I am. I now express each ruminative and esoteric thought in 140 characters. I exist in an expressive, yet minimalist world. I float in a metaphorical champagne flute bubbling with tweets.

I have embraced Twitter.

My dark, twisted thought processes, once clouded by the incessant chaos and utter despair that comes from flailing, sans life vest, in the swift, unyielding current of the pulsating datastream, is now unburdened, and at liberty to tweet or not to tweet.

No longer am I bound by the crushing social psychosis unleashed by millions of glittering and obtrusive MySpace profiles. No longer must I yield to those insipid Facebook pokes, quizzes and 25 random things. No longer will I be confronted by another invasive and unbecoming photo tag that always shows me at my worst.

With Twitter, I escaped from a slow, man-sized iron pot that simmers on a low flame, in a deep jungle clearing, lit up by a moon that mocks me. The pot is surrounded by a gaggle of barely tolerated online friends and very loose acquaintances, all whipped into a dancing frenzy of incessant oversharing. More and more people I do not know, or hardly know, began to “add” me to their growing list of friends. Who are you people? I don’t know you.

By slowly turning up the heat on me, one new “friend” at a time, as you would a passive frog in a cooking pot, they thought I wouldn’t notice the temperature change. But, I did notice, and the moment they became distracted updating their status or compiling another dumb list, I quietly freed myself from their loose tethers, climbed out of the pot and slipped away into the Twittersphere.

I am now free to roam in a new online social atmosphere where nothing at all is expected of me. I can happily follow and be followed by a fluttering flock of blue tweetie birds that sing the sweet song of tweets.

With Twitter I was able to catapult over the social ramparts and discover a Zen garden full of freshly raked pebbles of knowledge. I discovered the true yin to my online yang.

Many world-shaking things, like Twitter, come in small packages. The master Yoda spoke in lilting haiku and his wise mutterings emanating from the swamps of Dagobah would be perfectly at home in the pure stream of heightened consciousness that envelopes the expanding Twittersphere.

Obi Wan Kenobi would even say that the Twittersphere, like the Force, is “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”

This means all of us; Ashton, Demi, MC Hammer, Lance, Shaq, you and I are all within one tweet of each other’s auras.

In Twitter there is simplicity and pure social harmony.

I am, therefore I Tweet.

Follow Emo Joe.

CBS is bringing together what many networks treat as separate, the TV and online mediums, with a new show “Harper’s Island,” a 13-episode murder mystery. A month before the show’s television premiere, webisodes began airing on companion site Harper’s Globe and racking up hundreds of thousands of views.

The Harper’s Globe site follows character Robin Matthews, who is creating a digital archive of content from the island’s local newspaper as drama begins to unfold.

The pre-seed of video content is one interesting part of the series but what’s notable about the Web-TV venture is that it’s bringing CBS into the realm of social TV. They’re not treating the Web as a second box for displaying content. Instead, they’re making the site a place for fans to interact and participate in the story. They’ve incorporated a robust social networking component, which includes communication with characters and other viewers, and the ability to contribute to a wiki that follows the storyline.

The content is also available in an embeddable widget or on the iPhone. Either way, it gives viewers immediate access to video, the online discussion and of course the show’s Twitter feed.

The series and its Web synergy shows how technology is changing the game, according to TV Week:

“The whole paradigm for how shows are created, piloted and rolled out between the Web and TV and vice versa is in flux,” said Will Richmond, analyst with VideoNuze.com. “Each medium has its own advantages, and the trick is to figure out how to best capitalize on them and bring audiences along.”

Can you go one day without wearing your shoes? Would you head to work or school without wearing shoes? It’s such a simple thing. You probably never think about doing it. It’s just a normal procedure to put on a pair of shoes before stomping out into the world (unless you’re stomping down to the beach and even then you’re probably wearing some flip flops). Though many people worldwide, especially kids, don’t get to make that simple decision. They have to walk and work barefoot in some pretty squalid conditions.

Tom’s Shoes is sponsoring One Day Without Shoes on April 16th. It’s all part of their One-For-One business model that says for every pair of Tom’s Shoes you buy, Tom’s will donate a pair to a child that really could use a pair of shoes.

It may seem like a little thing, a small gesture, but for a kid who may have never owned a pair of shoes, it’s a big deal. Here are just a few things to think about.

Walking is the primary mode of transportation in developing countries, and children have to walk miles for food, water, or medical help.

The leading plague in developing countries is soil-transmitted parasites.

Shoes prevent cuts and sores from unsafe roads and contaminated soil.

Often, children cannot attend school barefoot- shoes are a required part of a student’s uniform.

Since Blake Mycoskie founded Tom’s Shoes in 2006 after traveling through South America where he saw too many kids going barefoot in less than ideal conditions, they’ve given away over 140,000 pairs of shoes. They hope to reach their goal of 300,000 shoes in 2009.