Still, it’s fun to throw out some jaw-dropping numbers from time to time, isn’t it?

Last night, according to Twitter, during the last three minutes of the SuperBowl – there were 10,000 tweets – per second.

What were all those tweets about? Which Manning brother is better? Gisele’s outfit? We can’t tell you, but we can say that Twitter is the place to go to share opinions and to hear reactions to massive events all around the world.

See the source article on TechCrunch here.

Here‘s the original post from TechCrunch about the IPO.

And an interesting follow-up article is here – so many people wanted to check out the details the SEC website crashed!

Moneytime!

Spotify was around in Europe for quite a while, but only made it into the US (for copyright reasons) within the last year.

Spotify is social. Even if you don’t use Spotify, you may have seen it pop up in your Facebook – “Your Mom is listening to ‘Margaritaville’ by Jimmy Buffet.”

In addition to showing what listeners are enjoying in real time, you can create custom playlists to share with friends, or with the world.

Which brings me to a fun article on Mashable right now, sharing a New England Patriots’ pregame playlist for this Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Check out the article here, and sign up for Spotify here.

Happy listening -

And, since they’re one of the hottest nightclubs in the Los Angeles area, we get to use them as guinea pigs for tools for bars and nightclubs. Here’s one we helped them with a few months back: Stickam.

Stickam is a turnkey solution for streaming video on your Facebook business page.

There are so many fun uses for this – hotels can live-stream the view from the roof, retail stores can host a little fashion show, restaurants can show what it’s really like in the kitchen.

Remember: people love feeling like insiders! Let them in behind the scenes!

As always, have fun with it.

Here’s the info for getting started with Stickam: Getting Started on Stickam.

If you were on google today (and let’s be honest, you were) you probably saw an unobtrusive link to this page.

Google is introducing Search, plus Your World. The idea is simple:

You can now Google search not only public information (directions to the dentist, the capital of Malaysia), but also private information (Cabo Spring Break ’98) of your own (for example, your Picasa images) and your friends (shared through Google Plus).

How do you feel about this?

Google has a very fine tightrope to walk here, as they continue to turn up the heat in their competition with Facebook.

On the one hand, even though Facebook gets a lot of heat about privacy, let’s be honest: it is, and always has been, a site designed for sharing personal information.

Google cannot say the same – they need to be careful about how they change their role in the lives of their users.

That said, we’re all for simplicity and ease-of-use. So having one place to search for all types of information, personal and public, will be very useful.

In the last article we described what a QR CODE is and mentioned there are tons of fun new ways to customize them beyond the stock black and white.

QR Codes can be not only full color – they can also incorporate some amazing designs.

See this article in CNN Money on some great examples from big name brands (Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and more).

We were so inspired by this we decided to do the same with our Multibrain QR Code. We’re still tweaking, but above is one of the variations we’re playing with.

What do you think? Leave a comment or email us.

Some people call them “3D Barcodes.” The official name is QR CODE and they are really, really cool — both for you as a consumer and for your business.

Here’s how it works:

• Download a QR READER to your smartphone. (Our favorite is RED LASER.)
• Open the application when you see a QR Code.
• Snap a photo of the QR Code
• Let the magic happen!

Yes, I know what you’re thinking right now: But Andy, just what kind of magic are you referring to?

Without ruining the surprise completely, QR Codes work like hyperlinks. As such, you can be directed to a website, a YouTube video, etc.

As you can imagine, the real world and business applications are very cool… a movie poster at a bus stop with a QR Code linking to a video of the trailer, etc.

Look out for more blog posts diving into some fun ways to use the codes and amazing and beautiful designs people are doing with QR Codes (turning them into art!)

Stay tuned

Well, it turns out they quite like us too! Below find Mylene Dane, owner of gym TRAIN west hollywood, talking about her relationship with Multibrain and what we’ve done for her

After the video, be sure to check out Mylene’s gym HERE

However, we certainly don’t believe you should share everything with everyone. So here we begin a mini-series on Privacy.

This first post is about Google Alerts, yet another amazing and free tool from Google.

Google Alerts are email updates about new Google search results for a certain keyword. See where this is going? You should set up Google Alerts for:

• Your name
• Your business
• Anything else, personal or professional you would like to track on an ongoing basis

Google Alerts are such a beautiful thing because they begin to take the mystery out of the web. All of a sudden the web is not a “scary black hole” but rather a constant current of information that you can easily and quickly monitor.

And, since we love being Social online, think about this: if you’re a restaurant, and a local food blog writes about you.. you may never see the story (a tree in the middle of the forest doesn’t make a sound…) However, if you have a Google Alert set up for your business name, you will be alerted. You can then thank them via Twitter — now you’re being Social!

Setting Up a Google Alert

It’s easy:

• Go to google.com/alerts
• Type in your search query (i.e. the words you want to track — in this case your name)
• Answer the questions: what type of results you would like to see, how often you would like to receive alerts and how many alerts you’d like to see (so you don’t get overloaded)
• Enter your email address
• Click Create Alert

That’s it! You are now one step ahead of the game — when someone talks about you, you’ll be the first to know.

Okay, so maybe you weren’t wondering about THAT cloud.

But you’ve probably been hearing a lot about CLOUD COMPUTING lately.. from commercials (“to the cloud!”) to Apple’s new iCloud to.. a number of other services.

Here we break it down for you and tell you what you need to know.

In the most basic sense, Cloud Computing means SHARED COMPUTING. When a lot of people think of “their computer” they think of a magic box under their desk that does things. Sure, it’s connected to the internet, but it does most of the legwork itself (it stores all your data on the hard drive, etc.) Cloud computing is built on the OPPOSITE notion: that computing is not a PRODUCT you buy but a SERVICE you USE. In other words, let the big boys i.e. tech companies do the heavy lifting in huge server farms (the storing and sometimes computing of the data), and your humble macbook will just GRAB the data from them.

Here’s an example, using one of our ALL TIME FAVORITE SERVICES, Dropbox. Dropbox creates a folder on your computer, called “My Dropbox.” Every time you place a file in your Dropbox folder, it will automatically be uploaded to “the Cloud” (i.e. Dropbox’s massive servers), where it will then be pushed to all of your other computers that ALSO have Dropbox installed.

And then here’s where the real magic happens: you are on vacation with your family in Hawaii and realize you need a file. If it’s in your dropbox, you can access it through the dropbox web interface.. i.e. straight from the hotel business center without even touching your computer. Magic!

At this point in the conversation, a lot of our friends and clients say.. That’s all good and well, but what about my STUFF? Is it… safe?

Our answer is this: it’s like anything else — you need to trust the service you’re using (in other words, don’t just trust any service that says CLOUD). We will say this, though: reputable companies like Dropbox use the same encryption for your files that Bank of America does.. yes, it’s that serious.

And remember — while it might be scary to think that your data is on someone else’s servers.. it’s even scarier to think that all of your memories, music and more are on one fragile little box under your desk — a box that can crash, be lost, burned in a fire, etc.

In other words, TAKE THE LEAP! We’ll see you in the cloud