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Alright, so I am not too much of a social gamer. I get invited to them several times a day, but time has never allowed me to venture out of my to-do list to see what they are all about. It’s intriguing, I have to admit that. However, I always see those reports that say social gaming easily creates an addiction and that if you can stay away from them, it will benefit your creativity. Even though I don’t think I would get glued to the screen because of some game, I am still hesitant to check them out. Why are these social games so popular and what makes them so addicting?

Since I am not too much into these kind of games, I couldn’t answer that question myself, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to it, naturally. Just have a look at the data that Prism Casino put together, and you should get an idea about just how popular these games are and possibly why as well. The infographic is quite straight forward, and if you thought FarmVille, Bejeweld Blitz and Mafia Wars were the games that users find most satisfactory, I am afraid you are rowing the wrong boat.

As a matter of fact (and data), it is actually Garden of Time that users find to be most satisfactory. So far, they have about 7.4 million active users per month. That is quite a lot of people playing one single game, wouldn’t you say? There are of course other games out there that have way more users than this game though. By the looks of it, it is in social gaming where the big bucks are waiting to switch hands. No wonder pretty much every game studio in the world is trying to create a mmorpg game with a real currency system. We will see what will come from all this in the end. Companies want to make money, and they are probably hard at work putting together the ultimate experience as we speak. We’ll just have to wait and see what that might be. Hold on to your wallets people, this could get ugly.

Via: [Daily Infographic] Header Image: [Martijn Reintjes]

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There are some people out there who are downright sick of infographics. I don’t know why, but they are. I can understand that it gets a little overwhelming at times when seemingly everything is made into an infographic and then published on pretty much every website. We here at Bit Rebels try to switch it up a little in order to not get too repetitive. But every once in a while, there comes along an infographic that is not only interesting, but also visually crazy. Usually the format of an infographic is based on ordinary straight forward graphics and layout. There’s not too much to get excited about more than the actual data presented in it.

However, there are people out there who have a new approach to all of this. One such person is Paul Marcinkowski who decided that flipping it up a little would be a good idea for his school project. His approach was to make an infographic about tattoos. It’s not just any boring infographic though since it’s actually done by tattoos! Don’t get too crazy now because of course they are not real tattoos, they are just a creation made in Photoshop.

It looks really good though, and it is by far the coolest infographic I have seen to date. It’s really well done also. I find myself wondering what grade he must have gotten for this badboy since it must have been the coolest project in his class pretty much. Now, hopefully infographic designers of the world have gotten a boost of inspiration so they can start making up some new concepts for how an infographic should look. Even though I haven’t gotten tired of infographics just yet, I still feel they are becoming a little bit too repetitive in their format.

Via: [UFunk - French]

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Not a single year goes by without some doomsday prophet saying the earth will break apart, and life as we know it will stop. So far nothing has happened, and we get to enjoy the beauty of our blue planet for yet another day, month or year. With all the catastrophes around the world however, who knows when all hell will break loose and global chaos will come to surpass, right? Well relax, there are no signs of global distinction just yet, and there is still a lot of time to check out some of our geeky content here on Bit Rebels. I mean, who doesn’t like to geek it up a little to get the creativity juices flowing?

If you keep worrying about the end of the world though, I think I have the right thing for you. It’s the Apocalypse Tomorrow 2012 Calendar. Yes, there is one, and it is ultimately sexy… from a cartoon perspective. It’s actually a ’50s style pin-up calendar that will certainly get you excited about the different doomsday prophecies. Apparently you will survive anything if you are a sexy girl… or maybe it’s just depicting the fem fashion for your average global destruction event.

The calendar is created by the talented illustrator Andrew Tarusov and will totally catch your attention each morning when you wake up. Nothing gets the adrenaline going like a global disaster I reckon. I have no clue if it is for sale yet, but if you head over to Andrew’s website, you might find out. I don’t read Russian, so I couldn’t tell and I couldn’t find a purchase button or a price either. I am sure that such a fine example of creative thinking will be available for us all soon. They are truly beautiful illustrations and a baller idea for sure.

Via: [UFunk - French]

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We have heard it in the news, and it has become quite apparent when you see all the changes that Facebook and LinkedIn are focused on lately. I am talking about businesses and how they do business with each other. If you are a company or a B2B (business-to-business) marketer, it can be hard to choose what social networking platform to use in order to maximize your reach. Just a couple of years ago, I didn’t really have a clue about this whole area of Facebook and LinkedIn (and I can’t say that I am a maven on it now either), but today I understand enough to know that it is important and quite a vital part in today’s business climate.

However, in order to reach other businesses and close deals in quantity, you need to be at the right place doing your marketing. But where is the right place and how do you decide what that is? This is something that Bop Design can answer better than me actually. For Bit Rebels, this is a vital and highly important factor of our every day business since our whole business model is to sell our services to other companies.

It’s easy to think straight up that LinkedIn is definitely better, and that it doesn’t even compare to Facebook since it is completely based around business and the relationships between them. But Facebook is, as stated in the infographic, not to be overlooked. This giant in social networking is actually making up for it with sheer activity. This is valuable information for any business-to-business marketer and should definitely be considered. There is nothing that says you should just focus on one of these when you can actually focus on both of them. It’s just a matter of time, as always. The more time you have, and the more people you have working on it, the better chance you’ll yield better results, naturally. All you need to do is stay focused and determined. Every business that has ever made it big has been built by pure dedication and trial and error, so just go for it!

Click Infographic To Enlarge

Via: [Daily Infographic]

business-to-business-comparison-infographic

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Yup, we are slowly getting accustomed to the new Facebook Timeline and the whole redesign. Personally, I quite like it. It gives us more freedom to pimp it out in various ways, and that is key if you want to be original and impress people with your profile. For all you marketing people out there, this new way of expressing yourself is also a good opportunity to show your genius. I know, my own profile is lame, and I should really do something about it. I need to work up some kind of master plan to redesign my whole header image and see if I can make some good likes that way. But as always, time isn’t exactly growing on coconut trees.

Until now, there hasn’t been too much info or many tutorials about how you could possibly “hack” the Facebook header image and make something really unique. The person to deliver it is Nico Grienauer who writes for Ausgertock. He actually created a template that will give you the freedom to make whatever header image you want, lame or cool, to impress all your friends and subscribers on Facebook.

I have been searching for a good template for this new Facebook profile page that will enable me to “hack” it, visually that is. So now that I have found it, there is no excuse why my profile page looks so darn lame anymore I guess. There are countless numbers of cool, funny examples of new and refreshing profile page designs for the new Timeline design out there. All you have to do is search for it using any of the leading search engines, and you will be presented with tons of great ideas. But as they say, to be original you can’t be a copycat. You have to find your own approach, and when you do, people are definitely going to notice you. Let your creativity flow! You can find the PSD Template over at Ausgetrock.

Via: [Dude Craft]

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Enough of the owling in front of the computer! It’s time to get up from that chair and start moving. Put on a good song and start dancing. When you get old, you won’t be able to dance as geeky as you can now, so time is of the essence. I think geeks of today are way too shy to strike a pose and kick some major butt, at least in movies. Maybe it’s because of the music we listen to, or possibly the fact that movie makers have an obscured idea of how a geek really acts. I mean, there are countless examples of how geeks create the hipster moves in movies. Take Napoleon Dynamite for example. That dude created headlines with his performance in the movie with the same name.

For a geek who is not used to dancing, striking a good move might be as foreign as feeling the rays of the daylight straight in your face. It’s a good time to bring out the heavy artillery and put some boost into those feet. If anyone, the Dancing Plague of 1518 can help us all with that. They have created the ultimate dancing posters based on iconic performances throughout movie history that will surely get your partner to join in on the fun.

I am a little surprised however to find that the moves in Grease aren’t represented. Maybe it is because John Travolta once again showed his moves in Pulp Fiction. Either way, they would make for a good addition to this set of posters. Now, let’s start spreading some joy and get some exercise out of it at the same time. God knows we need it sitting in front of our computers as much as we do, right? As always, the question is what dance to start learning first. Hmm…

Via: [UFunk - French]

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Planning and executing a startup is one of the hardest things you can do in order to make sure you stay on course. Having an intricate plan for how you will scale your business is key to your success in many cases, and it’s a necessity to stay inspired and not lose focus. However, building the perfect plan is anything but easy these days. If you want the best possible start, it’s vital that you use the Internet to your advantage. This will in turn require quite a few different tech roles to be included in your master plan. Everything from a web designer to your customers need to be aligned with what you offer, and the better they understand your concept, the better your results will be in the beginning.

To further give you an idea about the different roles in a startup, Udemy has taken their “data” to Column Five to produce an infographic that will guide you through the different positions, if that is what you could call it. It’s evident that they have spent some time building this badboy, and the fact that they have used the animal kingdom as their form of data visualization is quite interesting. I don’t know if it makes it all clearer though, or if it just jumbles it up, but that’s all the same.

The purpose of this infographic is purely to give you a better understanding about the different roles in a startup and what might be their focus and “enemies” as you progress your startup from idea to reality. For anyone who isn’t inside the core of a newly formed company, it could be hard to understand what each role really does within the startup, but this thing should clear that right up. After having looked at it for a few minutes, I must say however that it takes a while to get used to the whole animal concept of it all. Once that hurdle is gone, it is a quite neat and interesting infographic that could really open some eyes regarding what it takes and what roles are involved with a great idea when it comes to gaining success.

Click Infographic To Enlarge

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In the beginning, there will be a tsunami of people who will invest in Facebook when the IPO is launched. People have started to look closely at Facebook as a business, if that is even possible. They thoroughly check and read up on pretty much everything. It’s good to know what you put your money into, and that is something that is going to be the main focus for the next few months for investors I take it. However, one thing they seem to forget is to look into the numbers when it comes to fanatic Facebook users. These are the people who log into Facebook an obscene amount of times each day and totally get lost in all their likes, pokes and status updates. They are the ones who drive Facebook forward.

So just how crazy have we all become when it comes to Facebook and what has Facebook done for us more than strip away all of our free time? For some people, work has even been degraded to second place on the priority list, even when they are at the office. This question could best be answered by Daniel Koren and his 10 cloned buddies who’ve formed the Koren Ensamble. Daniel, who is a musician, has put together what could possibly become the new Facebook theme song.

It depicts the ultimate madness that is slowly infecting us all when we use this highly addicting social networking service. If you have ever wondered just how nuts we are all becoming, and if you want to know exactly why that is, just have a listen to this song and you’ll definitely understand. I think all the pokes, likes and updates are starting to affect me since I think this thing is truly amusing. I like how he harmonized the melody in this short but intense little jingle. Let the madness roam free! After all, we only live once, and it’s time to let the crazy take control over us for just a day or so. Well on second thought, maybe cutting down on our Facebook usage is a better idea.

Via: [Neatorama]

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There are a million ways you could make your home just a little bit more epic. Some people make it look like a Star Trek inspired apartment while others take a more subtle approach and just switch out the living room carpet. If you are looking to impress people, you should really put your back into it. Sure, custom making everything in the Star Trek apartment must have taken years of hard work (and to know it might be disassembled is just heart breaking), but if you want to really make people’s jaws drop when they walk into your home, you need to do something really spectacular and original.

One approach might be to create an epic floor like South Korean artist Do Ho Suh. Don’t expect it to be super easy though since it might take you years to complete it. Why? Well, because the 40 tile floor piece is created out of 180,000 plastic figurines holding up the glass floor. It’s a marvel to behold, and the intense visual is something that will stick with you for days. Trying to place 180,000 figurines as close as possible to each other is one thing, but to model them all at the same height so they can hold up the glass might just be as epic as it can possibly get.

I mean, as an artist, what are you going to create after you have shown people this art piece? They won’t possibly be impressed by yet another “ordinary” painting, will they? I guess the only way to up the ante is to create something even more time consuming. But what the heck would that be? We’re talking about 180,000 plastic figurines holding up 40 glass sheets here. I am as impressed as I can get right now. Sure, there is always someone out there that will take things just a little further, but this is certainly worthy of the word epic in every sense of the word. I wonder if Do Ho Suh was a little bit hesitant to step on those sheets of glass when he was finished with the artwork to take a picture. It’s not like you could just redo it in a couple of minutes or so.

Via: [My Modern Met]

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If you are an every day developer for the Internet, it is always important to stay on top of the trends when it comes to what is going on and what is going to be the next big thing. It is of course almost impossible to know exactly what will be the next success, but that doesn’t keep us from predicting it. Usually this works to at least stay in the path of what is coming and not completely put us going an opposite direction. There is a lot of data from last year that can help us point our feet in the right direction. It’s just a matter of putting it all together and crunching the numbers. The result should be somewhat of a road map for 2012, and where Internet usage might be heading.

That is exactly what the people over at Slots of Vegas have done. They took their findings and created a fresh and quite interesting infographic. It’s a voyage through the different areas of the Internet, and the predictions are quite clear. Internet usage isn’t about to get any less important. As a matter of fact, it’s going to increase by quite a lot. Online gaming, in particular, is going to become even more widespread. Games we have only seen on consoles and computers before will spring to life entirely powered by the servers on the Internet.

A negative aspect of it all is that they predict that 51% of the users on the Internet will suffer from e-anxiety. It’s a particularly nasty experience which origin lies in the inability to check one’s email or Facebook profile. The Internet has become so widespread today that if we are not able to check our services or pages, we get stressed out to the point where we will actually get physically sick. But, there are of course more positives than negatives when it comes to increased Internet usage. For example, the long term effect of this is that more and more people will be able to do their work from home. Well, if that is good or not depends on your ability to stay focused I guess.

Click Infographic To Enlarge

Via: [Daily Infographic]