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The Social Path

A jargon-free journey through the world of social media.

Arcade Fire launches HTML5 (oh, and a new album).Yesterday

If you've felt a bit behind on understanding HTML5, an emerging new standard for Web content, here's a pretty cool way to see the features and potential for yourself.

Indie rock band The Arcade Fire has launched an interactive music video in partnership with Google Chrome to promote both the new album, "The Suburb," and the power of HTML5. The video illustrates techniques such as choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom-rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing and 3D canvas rendering. I don't even know what those are, but I now know they are awesome.

Visit TheWildernessDowntown.com to experience the video, which involves some interesting viewer interaction. You'll probably want to try it in Google Chrome, though it theoretically works in Safari too.

Whatever your take on the song, you have to admit it's a pretty inventive concept and a great way for a lesser-known band to hitch its wagon to something so buzzworthy. Between this and Arcade Fire's live-streamed concert earlier this month on YouTube, they might just supplant

20 cool uses of Augmented Reality.August 31

I've been remiss in not sharing my colleague David Stutts' fantastic series of case studies called "20 Interesting Things." (I previously posted his list of 20 Foursquare examples.) As Luckie's Director of Brand Planning and digital safari guide, David sifts through tons of information each day and compiles the best into easy-to-read reports.

Today I wanted to share his SlideShare deck on great examples of how Augmented Reality is changing the way we interact with the world around us. Check it out:

20 Interesting Things: Augmented Reality

View more presentations from David Stutts.

To read more insights from David Stutts, be sure to follow him on Twitter and read his updates at Luckie's agency blog, The ReThink Tank.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company a

How to get your business started with Facebook Places.August 24

As you've probably heard, Facebook has finally launched its own location-based feature, which lets users check in from almost anywhere in America. By checking in, you let your friends know where you are, what you're doing and maybe even what you think of the place.

While there's a lot to talk about from the user point of view — namely what this means for privacy and security — today I wanted to focus on how business owners can get a jump start on this potentially game-changing (and free) resource.

Why should your business use Facebook places? Well, because your customers probably already are. And even if you've ignored other location-based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, now's the time to get serious about it.

Facebook has 133 million users in the U.S. and 500 million worldwide. When you compare that to Foursquare's 2 million user base, I think it's safe to say that checking in just became a phenomenally bigger deal.

Ready to get started? Check out our step-by-step guide, after the jump.

Step 1: Play around with it.

Before you start setting up an official Place for your business, try it out as a us

Mobile is crushing online in ad effectiveness.August 17

Here at Luckie, we recently invited mobile analyst Joy Liuzzo from Insight Express to come share her thoughts on trends and technology. While she had a lot of fascinating insight to share, here's a slide that really blew me away:

Essentially, this chart shows that — based on three years' worth of research data — mobile advertising is twice as effective as online advertising when it comes to ad awareness, and a whopping six times more effective in the "holy grail" category of purchase intent.

Later in the presentation, she sliced it even thinner, showing that for the retail sector specifically, mobile ads were 14 times more powerful than online in the area of aided awareness and 8 times more effective in purchase intent.

I was simply flabbergasted by these numbers, so I followed up with a brief Q&A asking Joy to help put these findings into context. Check out her responses after the jump:

Q: These numbers were taken from your quarterly Digital C

Why is Antoine Dodson funny? Two candid perspectives.August 16

Antoine Dodson. If you don't know the name, you probably know the face, and you almost certainly know his warnings that "They're raping everybody out here."

It's been more than two weeks since a news crew in my hometown of Huntsville, Ala., interviewed Dodson about the attempted rape of his sister by an intruder. Dodson chased off the attacker, but that's not what made him a YouTube sensation. Instead, it was his surreal and candid demeanor as he warned TV viewers that the assailant is "climbing in your windows; he's snatching your people up."

Internet comedians The Gregory Brothers turned the news clip into a catchy song, which has become a top download on iTunes, with millions of views on YouTube. (To their credit, they're sharing proceeds with Dodson's family.)