Weekend Digest: The Super Bowl Edition

For our weekend business and political readers, it’s the Super Bowl edition of The Weekend Digest:

NOT SO GOOD
You know them, you love them and can’t wait to see them every year. And in some cases it’s what some viewers look forward to even more than the game. We’re talking about the ads of course at this Sunday’s Super Bowl between Baltimore and San Francisco. But despite the millions sponsors pay for those ads, sometimes the results don’t turn out so good.

There are cases where you’d think somewhere down the line someone in the room might have said, “No, seriously you want to run this?”

So Mashable has put together its list of “The 10 Worst Super Bowl Ads of All Time.” See if you agree by clicking this link to view.

I’LL BET ON THAT
It’s fairly common knowledge that wagering on the Super Bowl grosses the biggest betting haul in Las Vegas each year not to mention money passing hands from office pools to side-bets between co-workers. But betting on just the game is not the only place where the action is.

Proposition bets, or prop bets, let you wager on everything from the Super Bowl going into overtime, to Beyonce’s hairstyle at halftime.

A lot of this year’s prop bets are focused on San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. There are 30 different lines on him at William Hill US – some of which go beyond the football game itself.

For more on those wild prop bets, we’ll wager you’ll need to click here for more inside information from NPR’s Marketplace.

USE TWITTER TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SUPER BOWL BUZZ
That’s right, says All Twitter. Even if you can’t afford an ad – and most companies can’t – you can take advantage of the Super Bowl buzz for much less.

The final three minutes of last year’s Super Bowl generated 10,000 tweets per second (TPS), with 13.7 million tweets sent overall. And this year’s TPS are sure to top it.

So how can you take advantage of this insane amount of traffic and not break the bank?

Get the full scoop on how “promoted trends” or “promoted tweets” could be “a great advertising investment” by clicking here.

WAS  OBAMA  ‘UNCOMPROMISING’?
Many pundits as well as Republicans were caught off guard by the tone of the President’s inaugural speech and many said his uncompromising tone would not help his agenda even with moderate Republicans. From The Economist:

When viewed as a tactic to advance the President’s agenda in Congress, the speech seemed unwise, as it likely hardened the resolve of the opposition.

But are my colleagues ascribing to the President a goal he does not have?

Perhaps Mr. Obama’s uncompromising tone was not a fault of the speech, but a deliberate provocation. Perhaps it is part of a broader, longer-term strategy that, far from seeking reconciliation with Republicans, aims to increase their rigidity until the force of public opinion breaks the party.

The Economist suggests the President has decided to play the long game.

What is the long game and why may Obama be playing it? Click here to find out.

THE LEGACY OF ANOTHER CLINTON AND THE FUTURE
As her career as Secretary of State comes to an end, The Washington Post takes an in-depth look at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as America’s top diplomat.

Clinton leaves with a mixed record: She has garnered wide admiration around the world, but has no major diplomatic achievements on par with those of other well-known secretaries of state, such as Henry Kissinger or George C. Marshall.

Many of Clinton’s successes appeared to be due largely to her personal popularity and famous work ethic — attributes that were on display in her final days in office.

What were her successes and her failures? And does The Post agree with most that she will not be leaving public life and would be the favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2016? Click here for a look back at Clinton’s State Department career and a possible look ahead.

NEW DIGITAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGIES FOR 2013
While handshakes and hugging babies out on the campaign trail will always be effective, digital web strategies are now a huge part of the campaign budget.

Big gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, not to mention a special Senate election in Massachusetts and mayoral races in New York and Los Angeles, could see campaigns devote record shares of their budgets to digital strategy.

Politico takes an advance look at what to expect in 2013 as campaigns unfold and massive amounts of advertising dollars are spent on online advertising.

“The campaigns that were the most successful in 2012 were the campaigns that took digital the most seriously and invested heavily in online advertising and social media to raise money, persuade people to support their candidate and to motivate their supporters to actually turn out on Election Day,” said Rob Saliterman, who manages Republican advertising at Google.

Click on this link to find out what the analysts and experts expect from digital campaign advertising in 2013.

AN INDIANA JONES FIND THAT YOU CAN DIG UP
It’s true. Now you actually see a piece of gold recently uncovered from the making of Raiders of the Last Ark.

Take a look inside the mind of Indiana Jones. An old draft for Lawrence Kasdan’s Raiders of the Lost Ark script has appeared over at Cinephilia & Beyond with tons of notes in the margins from Harrison Ford himself.

Dig into this adventurous link from i09 to read Indiana Jones’s lines complete with Harrison Ford’s notes and edits.

ISOLATED RUSSIAN FAMILY UNAWARE OF WWII
It was a family of five living in what was described as conditions from the middle ages. They were discovered by chance by geologists in one of the most remote, and desolate areas of the world, Siberia. And when the geologists found the family living by 17th century Russian Orthodox style, what they saw astonished them.

The sight that greeted the geologists as they entered the cabin was like something from the middle ages. Jerry-built from whatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow – “a low, soot-blackened log kennel that was as cold as a cellar,” with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells. Looking around in the dim light, the visitors saw that it consisted of a single room. It was cramped, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists and, astonishingly, home to a family of five.

Go inside this incredible story from Smithsonian.com to learn more about how this family got there, why they stayed, and what happened to them after being discovered.

MOON WATER
Is there actually water on the moon or even Mars? If inhabited, having a fresh source of water would be a must for space travelers. So how do you know for sure? As usual NASA has an answer. It’s a robot called RASSOR.

Meet … the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot — RASSOR, for short. The robot (pronounced as “razor”) is an excavator device, designed to extract (yes) water, (yes) ice, and (yes) fuel from the soil of the moon. And from the soil of similarly dusty bodies (like, say, Mars). NASA is envisioning that RASSOR, currently in development in prototype form, will not only perform the Greek-fable-meets-rocket-science-reality task of getting water from rocks; it will also take the remaining dust and convert the chemicals it contains into two things crucial to astronauts: air for breathing, and fuel for moving. “The robot,” NASA says, “would be the feeder for a lunar resource processing plant, a level of industry never before tried anywhere besides Earth.”

The Atlantic has posted an inside look at RASSOR and its multi-purpose design. When could it actually begin its work deep in space? Blast off here to find out.