Check out this adorable infographic proposal from an associate editor of D: All things Digital, a self-professed geek, to the woman that he loves, who is Mashable’s President of Marketing and Communications.

Awww.  With all those statistics to back him up, how could you say no?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Days after Superbowl XLVI, we continue to see commentary on ads shown during the game as well as the ads themselves airing outside of the Superbowl.  One of the biggest ad splashes was the new M&M’s character, Ms. Brown.  This ad has been described as one of fans’ favorites.

You can see the full “Meet Ms. Brown” ad here.  She is a smart, polished, professional with little patience for the behavior of her counterpart, Mr. Red. Voiced by Vanessa Williams, Ms. Brown is the brains behind the M&Ms operation, as Chief Chocolate Officer.  Ms. Brown is definitely a different character in the M&M’s lineup.

There are a number of compelling State of the Union visualizations online that highlight President Obama’s most commonly used words and themes, the time in the speech during which they were used, and how they compare to his past speeches. 

One of the most compelling, from NPR’s State Impact, features a word cloud of the President’s speech compared with a word cloud of the Republican Response, delivered by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

Here is the State of the Union:

Easily, the biggest words are American, America, and jobs.  A few others that pop out are tax, get, and energy.  The biggest focus of the President’s speech, the economy, is clearly visible through this word cloud.

This is Governor Daniels’ response:

Here, we see Americans, Republicans, and government pop out, with national, wrong, and must as close seconds.  Predictably, Governor Daniels focuses on the Republican strategy for addressing the President’s proposals.

For those of you who watched the State of the Union, did the featured words surprise you?

Today, Wednesday January 18, 2012 marks an important day in American legislation. Today, the Web is demonstrating its dynamic power through coordinated resistance against two American bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). So what is at the heart of these two bills—one in the House and the other in the Senate, respectively—that could prompt such determined defiance? The infographic displayed on Google’s ‘take action’ site illustrates that the concern is clearly not over the foreign piracy that the bills seek to shutdown; rather, the slippery slope of censorship it would induce.

“Showing the strategic ability worthy of the best political campaigns, some of the Internet’s most popular sites are about to unleash a splashy weapon—Internet blackout day—to block proposed antipiracy legislation,” the Wall Street Journal (interestingly a News Corp. owned, Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy member) states.

Regardless of position on the bill, the Google graphic that displays support of Web giants such as AOL, Twitter, EBay, Facebook—in addition to each of their individual efforts like Wikipedia’s blackout page—makes us wonder, exactly how much political power do these internet forces and social media savvy companies have?

Only time will tell whether coordinated advocacy for the protection of innovation, economic growth and free speech can effectively block or force a revision of SOPA and PIPA; and—perhaps more importantly—only time will tell what sort of precedent today’s struggle will set.

A common complaint of energy efficiency proponents is the phantom energy use of chargers for electronic devices.  These chargers continue to use energy and attempt to re-charge the device, even after the battery is full.

Bracketron, Inc. has come up with a solution that is both environmentally friendly and visually appealing.  Its chargers have cable reels, are small and compact, and are just plain cute.  Best of all, it automatically shuts off power when it senses that the device is fully charged. 

Here is the charger for the iPhone,  Once plugged in, just press on the green button to begin charging.

A recent discovery has found that it is possible to learn new tasks and skills with little to no conscious effort through fMRI manipulation, also called decoded neurofeedback.  Instantaneous learning like this occurs in the movie The Matrix, in which the characters literally download knowledge straight to their brains, and become experts in, for example, kung fu, or learn how to fly a helicopter.

The research, supported jointly by National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, has many implications for the future.  For example, it has the potential to turn anyone into an olympic-level athlete…though it could also make someone bark like a dog on command, as Digital Trends postulates.  What do you think?  Can everyone be an expert?

GOOD has compiled a collection of infographics from 2011, their “Best Of” infographics from the year.

This one shows the relationship between education and income across America, using a color coded Venn diagram where green represents the intersection between college education and income, and purple represents the intersection between high school education and income.  Darker pink and yellow represent greater concentrations of that level of high school and college education, respectively, in the population, and darker blue represents a higher income.  There are some interesting pockets of color – for example, dense dark blue and green in the mid-Atlantic East Coast, and a great deal of pink towards the center of the country.

Take a look at this and the rest of GOOD’s selection for your Friday visualization fix.

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday, a member of the Maga staff took a trip overseas to France. While there, she found this book in Nantes and really appreciated the entertaining look at the two most (arguably) beloved cities in the world.

This book, Paris vs. New York, created by Vahram Muratyanf is a whimsical visual comparison between Paris and New York.  He shows the differences between the two cities on numerous elements, from famous fictional women associated with each city (Amelie and Carrie) to bread associated with each city (baguette and bagel).

A few examples of comparisons we found especially humorous:

le peche mignon (guilty pleasures)

In France, a guilty pleasure is Napoleon from a patisserie, and in New York it’s a pastrami sandwich.

La course (the race)

In France, a “race” is waiters delivering drinks to thirsty patrons.  In New York, it’s a marathon of runners.

Check out Muratyan’s work!

With the ever growing number of social media outlets, it can be quite a challenge deciding where, when –and even if– you should post a status message. The decision graphic below was posted on Breaking Copy earlier this fall and seems to now be making the rounds on, among other social media sites, Facebook. We liked this graphic for its sense of humor, honesty and ease of use for all audiences.

We all know someone who may be a little more active than average with the posts, check-in, updates and just information about/comments on their day’s activities in general. Frequently these little forays into a friend’s (or colleague’s as the case may be) day can be entertaining, they may not always be situationally or audience appropriate.

The graphic below will help those frequent posters ask themselves a few quick and simple questions to help them filter and appropriately post…and potentially save themselves some awkward moments professionally.

Google frequently changes its traditional search page logo to a “Google doodle” for particular holidays.  This year, it has grown even more whimsical with its doodles commemorating different dates, people, and media.  These Google doodles are a unique visual commemoration of both important holidays and less celebrated and sometimes forgotten events.

Today’s doodle commemorates the birthday of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie.  Marie Curie won the prize in two sciences, physics and chemistry, and was the first researcher to do so.

Other favorite Google Doodles from this year include:

April 12, 2011: 50th Anniversary of First Man in Space

May 9, 2011: 76th Birthday of Roger Hargreaves

And lastly:

June 15, 2011: Total Lunar Eclipse.  This doodle was interactive – the moon started out normal, as seen above, and then became eclipsed, as seen below.

What’s your favorite doodle?

Google recently celebrated the one billionth download of their ‘Google Earth’ satellite imagery program. Over the past six years since the free program was released, it has become available for use on phones and tablets in addition to the original computer platform. What’s more, Google has created a OneWorldManyStories website to supplement Google Earth by offering a place for people to share their stories, ‘follow their dreams, discover new and distant places, or make the world a better place’ –according to VP of Engineering Brian McClendon.

In light of the milestone, Google commissioned JESS3 to create a series of infographics to capture the storytelling dimension that Google Earth creates as users travel around the world. As you look at the graphic you’ll notice that JESS3 chose to comment on the fact that the 1 billion users is comparable to the population of Africa and also highlighted the most viewed locations in their various representations.

Every employee in our company gets a Mac (whether they want it or not!) and the reason is simple – the MacBooks are our calling card.  Yes, we have a segment of the workforce doing hard core design and the Mac is essential for Illustrator, video work , etc.  But, for the rest of the staff, where any machine could work – we very much want clients (most of whom MUST use the standard PC) to see our team and our staff representing the design community by using a different tool.

For me, as a leader who has spent my career around the DoD and Federal government, there is a little more to the story.  NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command) is the place I spent my early career. In a Navy organization of over 38,000 people across eight different cities around the country in the mid 90′s, nearly half of the desktop computers were Macs.  I believe that NAVAIR was the most innovative, out of the box, community-oriented military command of its kind at that time.  The Mac was symbolic to many of us of the tool of choice that sparked creativity, productivity, and in the very early, pre-internet (pre-netscape at least) era, it was the best way to help tie our organization together in many ways (thank you, Appletalk).

Later, the Navy decided to move away from the Mac as the workplace computer,  which was a key reason for leaving the Navy when I did.  So, it gives me great pleasure to be able to bring great design, help the Navy, and have a small tribe of Macs march in and out of DoD offices each day.  Steve built a community, and he gave it the tools to stay connected and made it so easy for us to join. (If you want to create your own community or tribe, Seth Godin’s great book, Tribes, would be my recommended reading for how to do this for your product or organization.)

As a loyal member of the apple community, to say that I’ll miss Steve Jobs is an understatement.  I am encouraged by the fact that so many are moved by his accomplishments and do believe his DNA will live on at Apple.  Our everlasting appreciation of Steve’s innovative life simplifying tools and simple design aesthetic are our daily homage to the greatest CEO of our time.

The reason that people like, make that LOVE something, and they aren’t really even sure why … that’s design.  It is so funny to me that from the moment we had a mouse driven Mac 1 in 1984 to the multi-color iMACs 15 years later, the basic recipe of very clean, intuitive and highly professional design and its ensuing revenue generation has not been a focus for more companies.  One really can’t look at the sea of PC laptops in their shades of dull gray and black, compared to the unibody machined aluminum of the MacBook, and not quickly conclude which product has more design dollars built in as a percentage of product cost. 

So, we all know that though design wins in so many products and services in our world, it is the first thing to be short-changed, cut out, and eliminated from the equation of so many projects and organizations.  Design is thought to be subjective, but design principles are black and white.

Usability stems from design.  It facilitates productivity and reduces time dedicated to support and training.  Support and training are big cost and revenue drivers no matter what industry you are in, and design is at the heart of all of these.  Design is not frosting, it’s not a “nice to have” – and the winning products in nearly every category teach the laggards this lesson time and time again.  Maga Design was founded on this premise – and it is the philosophy we spend all day, every day, sharing with our customers. It is simply our calling – our purpose.

Whether creating a $100M fighter jet, the latest web technology, or the next flavor of ‘YourTown’ Cupcakes – the endless loop of listening to customers and the marketplace vs. envisioning the possibilities that people haven’t thought of yet seems to mire so many projects and organizations.

Steve believed he knew best – and so far history shows that he was right.  Many people would argue that the business models that sprang from his innovations were not always what consumers would prefer – but, if it was about elegance, ease of use, viral sharing, and just plain ‘cool’ – Jobs (across the 6 industries he is credited with altering, creating or turning upside down) was spot on.

We need to provide leadership to our customers, and while we need to listen carefully, too, we can’t let the listening stop us from making decisions and moving forward.  I think that Jobs had a few anchor principles that didn’t change – find those for your industry, your project – and think a little bit more like Steve.

I think that anyone can be visionary.   Seeing what is around the corner in your industry or interest area is something that can be a function of listening to others, as well as focus and time spent paying attention to stimuli.  However, translating the vision into your style through leading a team and inspiring others to join you is not everyone’s first instinct.

Make and dent the universe, make things insanely great, think different!  These were not just advertising slogans or messaging lines.  Steve believed.  He moved millions of people to action, and he did it, most notably with flair and creativity, style and substance.  This also can be learned.  I think for many, it’s about courage to get up, put yourself out there, and be willing to bring emotion and to create emotion with your audience.  In our Maga ecosystem of federal agencies, technology and consulting organizations, there is a LOT of room for a little Steve in our day.