GE's energy division has released a unique online ad to promote its windmill technology.  While you'll have to view the video to truly understand, it can best be described as a digital hologram that's displayed on your computer screen.  When you print out the template and hold it in front of your webcam, the hologram will appear and move in sync with your template.  You can even make the windmills spin faster by blowing into your microphone.  Click here to see the video.

With Christmas coming and Black Friday only two days away, holiday shopping is going into full swing, even if we are in a recession.  To make spending on others a little more interesting (I've always preferred spending on myself), several retailers are experimenting with gift cards that double as actual useful objects.

Target's card for 2008 doubles as a digital camera!  It even comes with its own USB cord, driver disk, instructions, and a voucher for 40 free prints.

Say what you will about the digital camera card above, this one is my favorite.  Best Buy's 2008 card comes with an integrated speaker with a cord and plug.  It also goes really well with an iPod under the tree, as it allows you to share the music with more than one person on Christmas morning, even if the iPod only comes with headphones.

Several months before the digital camera above was released, Target offered a gift card with a Speed Racer-themed 60+MB flash drive.  It came preloaded with wallpaper files, video clips, printable coupons, and a cheat code for the upcoming video game.  Self promotion doesn't get much better than that.  While it appears that they are no longer available, used ones can still be found on Ebay.

Of course, radio personality Clark Howard has his own solution.  Click here to view an alternative to all the gift card craziness; a printable certificate you can wrap around cold, hard cash.

Jason Calacanis sent out a message to his e-mail list several days ago titled How to Demo Your Startup, and TechCrunch recently reposted it.  Though it's about presenting a startup company's product (often to get funding), many different types of people will find this information extremely helpful for many different reasons.  I highly recommend reading the full text of Jason's e-mail here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startup/

Avon, which hit a 52 week high yesterday, has announced a new men's fragrance created with Patrick Dempsey.  It's called Patrick Dempsey Unscripted, and will be available in the US in November and globally in 2009.  Normally, this wouldn't be something I'd be interested in writing about (I buy Burberry Brit from Holt Renfrew), but I started thinking about how this partnership could be expanded.  Isn't one of Avon's largest consumer groups actually its distributors, and aren't the majority of Avon distributors female?  I would have thought that bringing Patrick Dempsey on board to create a women's perfume would have been a guaranteed hit.  Is it coming down the pipeline, did Avon miss the boat, or am I missing something?  Maybe they simply couldn't get the trademark rights for the perfect title:  McDreamy.