Coca-cola Europe has launched a fun online campaign where you can use Google Maps to locate your house or that of a friend's and add virtual decorations to it. Once you zoom in and select your area you can simply click your mouse to add a scattering of lights or drag-and-drop a number of neon characters including snowmen, stars, dancing figures, and gifts. Add some music and the whole piece is turned into a movie where a camera zooms in from space to centre in on the house and deliver your holiday greeting. Below I've added some fun neon decorations to our studios here at CTV.

If you're a fan of ElfYourself try out YourDancingChoclate.com where you can select a piece of chocolate candy and choreograph a dance routine for it involving arm waves, slide steps, and doing the Tequila amongst other routines. Once you select some music and add a personal note you can then send it off as a greeting to a friend who will no doubt thank you for the sudden chocolate craving they have.  [More]

The Assassin’s Creed series is an extremely complicated one. It involves a battle between two secret societies that takes place throughout history, the rise of a hero who fights for the common folk, a story within a story, one told in the past and the other in the present, a series of complex city systems with an array of different tasks, and like a thread drawn through it all, a Dan Brown-inspired conspiracy theory involving religion, world leaders, strange artifacts, and possibly aliens from another planet. That Ubi Soft Montreal can find a balance in all this is why they are one of the best game studios in the world and with their second game they have done more than merely extend the original concept, they have dramatically improved upon it, finding a new way to tie all their complex ideas together with infinite ease and immense joy. [More]

Last night I watched Night At The Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian on DVD and as is sometimes the case I had my laptop open next to me so I could occasionally check my Twitter and Facebook feeds. This time however, in amongst the “tweets” and “status updates” from friends and contacts, I received a number of messages from the movie itself. Occasionally Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Amy Adams, or even Dexter the capuchin monkey would pop up in my feeds as if they were “friends” or if I were “following” them, and send me bits of trivia and behind-the-scenes info on the movie, all perfectly timed to arrive in order to match the very scene I was watching on my television. And, just like my friends on Twitter, they sent me links that opened up quiz pages and encyclopedic entries in a web browser. [More]

In preparation for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games Google will be sending their camera-mounted cars out onto the streets of Vancouver and Whistler once again to capture special Olympic footage for their Street View feature on Google Maps. Starting next week on November 30th, the Street View cars will head out to target special areas including Canada Hockey Place, The Richmond Olympic Oval, the Olympic Villages, and other venus for the games. The recorded footage will be assembled into a Street View special collection, the first one for Canada. As with their previous Street View sessions, faces and license plates will be blurred to protect individual privacy.

With elaborate in-store displays, early 5 am openings, and jaw-dropping sales, “Black Friday” is traditionally the busiest shopping day in the US, but a number of changes have started to bring the hysteria north of the border. The weakened economy is expected to bring larger crowds looking for a deal and retailers, intimidated with the prospect of managing the stampedes and all-night campers, are shifting more of their sales online. Combined with the stronger Canadian dollar this becomes an attractive online opportunity for Canadian shoppers. In response, many Canadian retailers, including TheSource.ca, and Apple.ca are holding their own Black Friday sales events. [More]

Impressive isn't quite the word. The OGCOpen is an online golfing simulation that delivers an astonishing level of 3D graphics, character customization, and course designs, and ball physics. There's no software to install, everything happens right inside your browser, and because it offers a multiplayer mode, there are online tournaments to join. Although it's currently in beta, the game looks very polished, so much that it's hard to believe this is running in Adobe Flash and that it's free. Tee up, give it a try, you'll see what I mean.  [More]

The curiosity around digital books has reached an all-time high now that there are two major players on the market with headline-grabbing devices. Both Sony and Amazon offer eBook stores and slick eBook readers, but because they use the same Electronic Ink screen technology and offer a similar book selection, it can be challenging to try to pick one brand over the other. So here to help, I offer up this comparison and yes, recommend a winner. [More]

NASA's exploration of Mars has resulted in a multitude of imagery and data, too much for the institution itself to sort in a timely manner, and so they have created the Be A Martian website, an online activity for those curious about exploration of the red planet, where users can participate in help to sort through the collected imagery as well as learn more about the exploration being done. There are two mapping tasks you can take on, both presented in the style of a game where you can earn reputation points. The first involves aligning images, using directional arrows to overlay one set of photos to match against a larger background image. The second involves counting craters, a key to measuring the age of small areas,where you simply identify craters within provided photos. Both activities can earn you points and badges. In addition to the helpful games there's also a town hall where you can ask and vote on questions for NASA experts, a large archive of movies and educational videos, and a Google Earth-styled zoomable view of the planet itself. [More]