If you have been paying attention to some of the major buzz words being thrown around by the online community, you have most likely heard people talking about social media, GPS turn by turn navigation, and mobile gaming in one context or another.

What seems like three totally random and independent topics just joined forces in a new mobile platform called Waze. The app is free on all the major mobile platforms, including Android, and it brings a full fledged social gaming element to your mobile phone’s turn by turn navigation.

Waze uses an advanced algorithm to provide its community with driver generated GPS and turn by turn navigation. What that means in simple terms is that instead of waiting for the maps to update with the newest changes and developments on the road, the Waze users do it both actively and passively by just having the app open.

Waze launched a new version of their iPhone app that adds a gaming element, which encourages its users to help update the maps, thereby helping other members of the community on their journey. Basically, in addition to the advanced GPS technology, and in addition to the user generated maps, Waze now incorporates a contest in which your vehicle is represented by a Pac Man like figure and as you drive, you eat prizes along the way, thereby collecting points and competing against other users.

If you drive on a new road that has not been updated on the Waze map, and collect the “goodies” along the way, you receive even more points than a regular road, and rank higher on the global scoreboard. By competing in the contest, you enjoy an entertaining gaming experience, but more importantly, you contribute to the Waze community by helping to build the map, which is then used by other Wazers.

What Waze has really done here with this new version of their already popular iPhone app is combined three of the hottest spaces online, social, gaming, and mobile GPS, into one fun and intuitive interface.

If you’re Adidas and you’ve got a Star Wars-inspired collection rolling out in January, what better way to promote it than by using social media? Adidas, however, has taken its online marketing initiative one step further integrating Facebook and Google Maps to create the Star Wars Death Star Superlaser.

The Adidas Originals application uses Facebook Connect to personalize the application experience, even granting you power over the Death Star control deck so you can blow up your Facebook (Facebook) friends’ streets with help from Google Maps (Google Maps).

The application experience is straight out of a Star Wars movie, and on the first go around you’ll notice that your location is the first target of the superlaser. After your street is blown to smithereens, however, you can target a friend’s location by selecting any one of your Facebook friends to attack. This is where the Google Maps integration comes into play.

Tweeting via Fax Machine

Dorothy Miller has hopped on the Twitter bandwagon, but the 80-year-old grandmother doesn’t use a computer or mobile device to update her status. Nope, Dorothy tweets away with the help of a fax machine and a New York-based service called Celery.

Celery allows users, many of them computer-phobic senior citizens, to submit tweets, blog entries, Facebook updates or emails via fax machine and then posts the content online for more tech-savvy friends and family to see.

Dorothy loves the service, commenting to a local news station: “I don’t usually write to my daughter that much because she talks too much. And that takes up too much of my time, but she can read my twitterings here and she can see what her mother’s doing and know that her mother’s okay.”

Created by Online Education

Google has already monopolized the world wide web, leading in several markets such as search, email (Gmail), mapping (Google Maps/Earth/Street View) and video (YouTube). If Sergey Brin and Larry Page are ’sick and tired’ of the online business, maybe they would consider venturing out to other non-tech-related businesses, and grab a slice of the pie in the the auto, airline, or even the entertainment industry. Below are some pictures of what will happen if Google ruled the world

Source : Worth1000

So how often do you see a page like this on Google? Graphically designed, almost creative, quirky copy writing, animated even? Almost never, let alone as a “maintenance” page for Google Wave… Ok so it makes complete sense for Wave, but rarely do you see anything like this from Google! So enjoy the moment, or perhaps what might be the start of more to come!

Click here to check it out!

Sometimes its not enough to know how to design, because you also need to know how not to design.  Enjoy this selection (unbelievable how some “designers” make this kind of mistakes and still make it to the cover of a magazine) :

Maxim Magazine had a photoshoot with Kata Dobo. Think she’s in nice shape? Maybe, but its funny that the tiles on the walls are not so in shape.

Here we have an example of a self-firing weapon.

In this image straight from Vanity Fair we see Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet together… but were they really together? Well, unless Sam was wearing a very unique shirt that has one sleeve normal and one sleeve with a built in coat, then no, they were not together.

OMG … look at her fingers!

I dont think you can carry a computer this way…

Entertainment Weakly (October 31 issue) has an unintentionally spooky extra floating plate in the Roseanne pictorial.

I know, it isn’t a photoshop disaster, but it’s just so charming… (link to the Fiat Dealer)

Some girls wish they had a belly button. This girl is one of them.