Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

I first got a hint of the fi-yaah! Apple’s “One App At a Time” campaign was working with while watching the Olympics, when I peeped their iPhone 3G Lonely Planet Mandarin Audiobook commercial. The software appears to hold hundreds of common Chinese phrases, all spoken fluently by natives. One can play any of them back upon command, seamlessly turning communication within a complex tongue into something as easy as pointing.

So they had me at hello, but, yo: That iPhone 3G Shazam app commercial, above, where you put the phone up to a music source, it tells you what the song is you’re hearing, and even takes you to iTunes to buy a copy, is one of the frostiest things I’ve ever seen. (Apple-style, in the advertisement, the track Shazam detects is the very one playing in the ad advertising Shazam, the Submarines’ yummy, Beatlesesque “You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie.”)

Has anybody gotten this toy yet? I noticed the “Sequence Shortened” copy in the ad, above, but still: Is it as niiiiiiiiice to use as it looks?

Siberian-born Marina Bychkova’s immaculate Enchanted Dolls wield world-weary attitude, bristling sexuality, fully fleshed-out backstories, and better clothes than you.

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Testicles, from the series Body of Love,
Lambda print, 40×28 in., 2002-2005, by Sheffy Bleier

Meat After Meat Joy, at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York City (511 W. 25th St.), “brings together the work of contemporary artists who use meat in their work (raw meat, the concept of meat, its symbolism and viscera) in order to investigate the paradoxical relationship meat has to the body.”

From Sheffy Bleier’s photo of bull’s testicles, above, to Zhang Huan’s beef muscle suit, right, to Simone Rachell’s wax paper sculpture of a toilet made of meat, it’s a show you can intellectually, ahem, sink your teeth into…or, then again, harshly protest with 30 of your closest vegan comrades. Through Nov. 15; daneyalmahmood.com.

[via BoingBoing]

I’m not really a true fan of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (Mondays, 8 pm ET), and haven’t even watched a full episode yet. But every time I see it come on, I blast its uber-cool intro.

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In case you missed one of the over 700 newspaper front pages, in 66 countries, commemorating the Obama victory—for example, Tel Aviv, Israel’s Maariv, above—now you can go to the Newseum’s web site and collect the whole set.

Take a look at some of the best American ones, below, after the jump. It’s interesting: When you check out a whole bunch, and see the designs, you can kind of detect which papers were inspired (e.g., the Hartford Courant, of all places), and which were just phoning it in. Also, actually, I think Will Smith was right, on Oprah, today: The Chicago Sun-Times did a cool cover, but, man, the Philly Daily News kinda came wit’ it.

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On July 1, 2008, Bill Gates, above, stepped down from full-time work at Microsoft Corporation, the company he founded with friend Paul Allen in April 1975. How does his departure affect the now-and-future direction of this corporate behemoth, a company whose software runs over 90% of the world’s computers, with assets of over $70 billion, and whose market capitalization approaches a quarter of a trillion dollars?

This is the fundamental question Mary Jo Foley provocatively addresses in her new book, Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era. Foley is a guest, today, on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, November 7, 2 pm ET.

Then, Alisa Lagamma, curator of a show running at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End,” will talk about the exhibition and the wide universe of visual materiel the continent’s cloths present.

You can hear their ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, check out our archive for up to two weeks after broadcast.

With all the talk about Sarah Palin possibly running for president in 2012, could it come to this: A showdown with her former, now 77-years-old-but-still-fit mentor, John McCain?

Kind of reminds me of something Darth Vader once said: “I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the Master.” Word is, Vader looked awesome in a burgundy, crocodile-print stiletto, too.

[via Panopticist]

Two years ago, Microsoft’s soulful “Mad World” commercial, directed by gaming ad auteur Joseph Kosinski for the debut of Epic’s Xbox 360 game, Gears of War, posted a brand new level of artistry for the marketing of videogames.

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What’s interesting about McCain’s concession speech, this week, was, in that brief presentation, he showed all of the statesmanness that was absent during his campaign. He was gracious, no-nonsense, and direct.

So is the cyborgian monster as which he’s caricatured, above, on this t-shirt. Well, maybe this guy’s not so gracious. S-XXL, $16, in red, white, or blue, from Hoodman.tv.

With McCain-Palin now lying at the bottom of the ocean, and the ship’s rats swimming away from the wreck, the truth is now coming out about what a fistful Sarah Palin was to deal with.

According to The Huffington Post,

Now that the 2008 election is over, reporters are spilling all the juciest, and previously off the record, gossip from the campaign trail. Much of it is about the infighting between Palin and McCain’s staff, as Newsweek‘s treasure trove of post-election gossip reveals.

However, perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked “a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency,” in part because she didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA, and she “didn’t understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself.”

It gets worse, and I’m not even going to spoil it for you. Watch the clip, and hear about her tantrums and infighting, then read about her other clothing sprees, the boner-rific way she once greeted McCain staff, and why she was silent during McCain’s concession speech. 2012 awaits, bay-bee!