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I don't always follow basketball, but when I do, I follow the Heat. Actually, those who know me know I never watch basketball, but there are certain people in Boston that cannot stand loosing, so Dave, this is for you.

This must be the week for the new Microsoft Surface; I explained yesterday the marvelous new design, and today I just found this new piece of gold. While demo'ing the new Surface, the entire OS froze completely on the presenter he was showing the new Internet Explorer, which should serve as a hint: please discontinue IE, please! On a positive note, the presenter actually handled it pretty well it's not easy to keep going in these situations.

Microsoft announced this week their new Microsoft Surface for Windows 8 RT and Microsoft Surface for Windows 8 Pro. After careful analysis we now understand the main competitive differentiation against laptops, tablets,

SapientNitro hosted a seminar Monday at Cannes, called Global Brands vs Global Celebrities: Who's the Smarter Marketer? As globalisation and digitalisation continue to break down the barriers between cultures and geographies we're seeing a rapid rise in global brands, but also in true global celebrities. Celebrities, for better or worse, are brands in their own right and they operate in areas that are passion points for consumers and frequently leverage immense social currency. To some celebrity marketing is a lazy option but celebrities aren't lazy marketers. Omar Epps, who plays Dr Eric Foreman on the global TV hit House, joins SapientNitro to explore the way celebrities are leveraging cutting edge marketing techniques and leading in adoption of new digital platforms such as Pinterest, Instragram, or Beeyoo. Global brands can learn from global celebrities to be more effective, but can global celebrities learn from global marketers? Our open dialogue debate the strategies and communication tactics adopted by both global marketers and celebrities while sharing some of our experiences and insights around supporting global brands. Can 'brand purpose' compete with 'celebrity brands' or do they exist in harmony? Who's the smarter marketer? In asking who is winning consumer interest we will explore the differences to find new ways to reach consumers, build brands, and drive sales. Check out this little excerpt from the seminar.

Microsoft just announced they're launching their own branded Surface for Windows 8 RT and Surface for Windows 8 Pro tablets. I guess it's safe to assume that the old Microsoft Surface is dead, since they reused the name and url for the new tablet PC. It measures 9.3mm, has a 10.6", 16:9 widescreen HD Display, and comes with an integrated Kickstand and a revolutionary, 3mm thin, pressure sensitive cover that doubles as a fully functioning keyboard and trackpad. The Standard Version has a 1080p resolution, while the Pro Version comes with an amazing 4096p. I personally still don't see the point of the netbooks, ultrabooks, or new marketing slang of the day ... Is anyone using them? isn't a Macbook Pro / AIR and an iPad enough?

Now that's a brilliant execution! Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung just went digital, and as they celebrate entering the Digital Newspaper era, they printed the entire front page in binary.

The Apple WWDC Keynote is hours away and we're expecting to hear about iOS6, Siri, new Macs, and my personal favorite, the new Apple TV SDK.

Awesome Viral Video ad by Samsung titled Seductive Motion , featuring their new motion controlled Smart TV. Everything is going motion and voice controlled, with nice features such as face detection; which makes me think that voice detection (know who I am by my voice) should come next ... If I say 'favorites' to trigger a list of my favorite channels, it should know to display my list, even if me, my wife, and my kids are in the room. <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Dt3SWp9IjkA?rel=0" frameborder="0" width="640" height="360" </iframe

Pinterest is now the 3rd most popular social network site in the U.S., and ecommerce stores can leverage its popularity to significantly increase traffic and sales (as seen in this Pinterest Ecommerce Infographic ). To better understand how Pinterest is impacting the ecommerce industry, Shopify analyzed data from over 25,000 online stores. Interestingly, referral traffic from Pinterest to Shopify stores is equal to traffic coming from Twitter; of that traffic, shoppers are 10% more likely to make a purchase compared to those who arrive from other social sites. Of those purchases, the average order is double the average order from Facebook. Pinterest has already become a huge player in the world of ecommerce. Check out all of our findings in the Pinterest Ecommerce Infographic below. Please click on the image to view it in full screen.

Collection of charts summing up a perspective and Facebook IPO Analysis curating and focusing on all the buzz leading up to the big event, and the controversy proceeding it. Shares in the social media giant Facebook (NAS: FB) have been public for more than two weeks now. The bad news is that they're down more than 35% since opening at $42 on May 18\. The good news is that things could have been a lot worse.

If you had traded FB Stock the IPO Opening day based on Twitter sentiment signals, how would you have done? Think Twitter could be a valid indicator of Facebook Stock Price ? Probably pretty well! Claims data collection and analysis company Datasift. They monitored Twitter’s social data and its relation to the Facebook stock price. What they found was pretty interesting: the positive and negative posts on Twitter mirrored the fluctuations in Facebook stock price.

Awesome hack by StinkDigital they setup a Nike+ FuelBand to measure the “health” of their twitter account. It’s been rigged up via an Arduino board and motor kit to read TweetFuel tagged tweets, digesting each tweeters followers, along with total retweets and mentions to power the spins of the Nike+ FuelBand, ultimately measuring the health of their own Twitter Feed.