Super Bowl Sunday's come and gone, but we're still reeling over the sublime TV debut of Google's "Search Stories" campaign. "Parisian Love," which aired in the third quarter of the game, relates a classic story — an American finding love in Paris — in a fresh new way: the language of search.

The effort's interesting for a few reasons. To start with, Google went against common wisdom that if you're gonna blow cash on a Super Bowl spot, it better be on something incendiary and new. "Parisian Love" has been circulating the 'net for the last three months, and the positive responses it received drove Google to submit the piece at the last minute.

"Parisian Love" also serves as a reminder that search is now the world's true "official language." It's a skill that must be taught if you want to develop a mastery, and the ad shows clearly how the simple act of running searches can "teach" you maximize the likelihood you'll find what you're looking for — even if the goal is unforeseen and intangible, like love or meaningful long-term relationships.

More importantly, it positions Google as the "owner" of this language. Search isn't really about newer, faster technology. It's about connecting people — we, the creators and curators and consumers of data — in useful, intuitive and occasionally compelling ways.

Of course, a meme ain't a meme until it's been parodied. This one, which takes the Paris/romance stereotype and flips it, is our favourite:

If so inclined, read more about telling stories with interfaces, a piece by digital storyteller Robin Sloan, whose muses now include "Parisian Love."

Being shocked over sexting is so last year. Literally. So what to do once the horror wears off?

Admit it's the new face of romance, at least according to Red Tettemer.

The Philly-based agency concludes "the world has moved past the quaint ritual of getting to know one another face to face." This means flowers, chocolate and dinner are dated analog rituals, and you should probably leave them to people that still have '90s haircuts.

This year, grab the future by the balls and sext with Red Tettemer. You heard us: sext with Red Tettemer. From now through Valentine's Day, RedTettemer.com will be inviting users to SMS-text steamy fantasies to two apparently attractive male/female silhouettes.

We sexted, no response since, which is shocking, given that if we had to apply our creativity to being phone sext slaves for a week, we'd be all over it with a kink that would make a paper centerfold blush.

Our first prospective response, regardless of the other person's opening line: "Ready the fondue tub. I shall fetch the iguana."

Hoping to draw more female clients (and kindly drain shelves of a product that chafes our eyeballs), Fiat introduces Pink My Ride, in which 131 bottles of pink nail polish are exhausted to paint a white Fiat 500 the colour of Pepto Bismol.

This is compelling, if only because you don't have to witness the painstaking effort of one peppy-looking guy, varnishing a car with a teeny nail brush, in real-time. It takes us two hours to paint our own nails, and it took him four days to finish the Fiat; we bet he was vomming en rose by the end of it.

Painfully adorable work. But — because the world can't help but pose the question — What would Xhibit say?

Here's a story that probably keeps Steve Jobs' toes warm at night: one Dan Woolley, an aid worker in Haiti, credited his ability to survive under rubble for 65 hours to the American Heart Association's Pocket First Aid & CPR App.

When the story was picked up by CNN, he called the $3.99 application a "high-tech version of a Swiss Army knife that enabled me to treat my own injuries, track time, stay awake and stay alive."

Impressive, given that our own iPhones won't even stay powered for six hours' worth of Bejeweled sessions.

The resulting coverage hiked the AHA app to the top 50 paid apps in Apple's app store, sending it from a steady No. 97 to No. 49 in just a handful of days, AdAge says, where it trails other (apparently) must-have life staples like "Grand Theft Auto" and "Call of Duty."

Pocket First Aid & CPR was released in October 2008 by Jive Media in partnership with the AHA. Neither party is commenting on the revenue derived from Woolley's story, but Jive co-founder Doug Kent conceded "the sales increase has been pretty dramatic," with the application crossing the threshold of the top 15 highest-grossing apps by revenue. It's now also No. 2 in the App Store's health and fitness category, up from what had been a stationary position between 60 and 70.

Obviously not every app trying to break past the marketing sound barrier is going to be gifted with a story like this to run with. But Woolley's situation teaches developers two crucial things:

A single testimonial that sets your brand afire is a chance you should be ready to seize.
Invest quality work into your application; you never know where it's going to end up.

Moral of story: get ye out thar and improve the world! ...one iPhone application at a time.

Ahh, the internet finally comes full-circle. Playboy, which represents one of the classier ways you can sell your skin without gaining too much skank cred, has made it possible for aspiring cover girls to build their books on the 'net.

CastingPlayboy.com, created by Grey/Buenos Aires, sports a virtual photographer who'll "shoot" girls in their own depressing little 40-square-meter studio apartments. Strut for dude while he records your best angles.

At the end of this lonely pretend photo shoot, girls can compile their own digital books and invite friends to rate them. The books remain on Playboy, which will choose its next bunny from among the favourites.

The effort isn't as democratic as it appears at first blush. Seasoned webcam girls obviously have a competitive advantage...

Still smarting from responses to "We are Animals," whose imagery left a few women feeling slightly freaked, Wrangler compensates with with Manipulate a Man, a curious introduction to its spring/summer 2010 collection.

Think "Subservient Chicken" for estrogen-charged battleaxes. Enjoy the ambient music of Markus Hasselblom while tearing off model Tony Ward's clothes or just flinging him back and forth across your screen. You can unzip him, rip buttons asunder, shove him off ergonomic chairs and be otherwise creatively violent. It may spur your rage to note that he doesn't wear socks in his penny loafers.

What, Tony, you couldn't get a pair of those to go with your hanky-inspired necktie? Take THAT! (*ricochets him violently across three browsers*)

To be honest the effort freaks us out. And, knowing that committees exist to protect male rape/abuse victims — in New Zealand, anyway — we imagine it's only a matter of time before they latch ferociously onto this otherwise-innocuous effort, giving it the coverage and scope it probably doesn't deserve.

Meanwhilst, we'll probably send Tony careening across the internets a few more times. God, we're bad people. Such bad people.

Brought to life by Swedish agency Kokokaka. Learn more about its innovative! new! character drag functionality in this handy-dandy video:

Amsterdam Worldwide latest interpretation of Asics brand Onitsuka Tiger's ongoing "Made in Japan" campaign is slightly more interesting than the stuff that came before it: it digs into Japanese puzzle culture and produces a giant shoe composed of handmade boxes, cabinets and chests carved in the Tansu style.

The giant wooden sneaker frontlines Onitsuka Tiger's 2010 line. It's a curious collection of puzzles, which you can experience at the website, where a digital reconstruction of the shoe was made. Some of site content can only be unlocked if you locate a key or a code in the depths of the handmade shoe.

Those that want to see it in person will find it touring flagship Onitsuka Tiger stores, as well as fashion trade shows. Naturally, puzzle crackers win prizes.

We want to dig all up in it, crack open its little vaults and find treasures.

About three years late on the "everybody should have a proprietary social network!" train, TurboTax launches Friends Like You, which promises to make it easy for "people with similar tax situations to share their tax prep experiences and opinions with each other."

The platform is powered by online recommendation tool Friendlyzer, which draws reviews from sites like Facebook and Twitter to give the site a transparent and super-sharey vibe. (The first review we saw gives TurboTax two stars and labels the service "decieving." The user complains that while it's easy to use, the total at the end is different from the $29.99 you initially expect to spend. This is followed by a glowing five-star review titled "Turbo Tax is my best friend.")

Reviewers are profiled by family life (married/student/etc), prior tax preparation method and general financial status (whether they own their own home, for example). Material on the site can be shared across the usual array of socnets and voted up or down with little thumbs.

In the event that you forget who this is all for, a sub-navigation bar — shown at top — encourages you to "See what people like you like about TurboTax!"

Guess you can't hate on TT for trying to make taxtime feel less like solitary penance. And it only stands to reason that people are gonna want to connect with taxpayers in similar straits, if only to compare to what degree they're getting jilted this year.

We're jiggling in our boots.

In the unlikely event that you need taxtime to be even more social, sit around and wait until February 7, when TurboTron launches. The latter will feature sports announcer Chris Berman, who'll introduce "creative ways for people to engage and connect with the TurboTax brand and its customers."

Here's a promotional tactic that solves a big gaping problem in the music industry: Australian apparel label General Pants is launching a record label, Major Label, which will appear on the website after March 1.

(Diggin' the pun? Yeah, it's cute.)

Not only will Major Label grant artists copyright ownership, full creative control and 100% royalties from digital retail sales, it shall empower them with contract-free single-releases. Look at this as a way to get your inner indie-rock singer discovered.

Speaking of, here's how: All 700 retail staff will be converted into talent scouts, which (I guess?) means any General Pants retailer whose face you sing wantonly into has the potential to give you the keys to your pipe dream. It'll be them uploading tracks onto the site, and them with the unhappy task of serving as street teams and publicists. You will know them by their trendy outfits and tired scowls.

With help from Peer Group Media, which will manage creative, PR and artist relationships, Major Label will release three singles a month following its March 1 launch. Each will be livestreamed on the site and available via select online retailers.

If you're wondering how this ties back into General Pants' brand equity, Brand Manager Jethro Lyons puts it thus: "The program engages our staff and customers and puts General Pants Co. on the dance floor of the Australian music scene, which is an exciting place to be right now."

Makes sense. What clothing label doesn't want to be wrapped around the next John Mayer or Lady Gaga?

Last week we were merched on the idea that buying Girl Scout cookies could quite possibly save the world. If you need something equally altruistic to wash down all those Tagalongs and Samoas, you might wanna check out the Pepsi Refresh Project, which is allotting grants to ideas with the potential to "refresh the world."

The concept is a bit like Kickstarter, except you're being asked to vote and not donate money. (Pepsi does all the cash-dispensing for you. It claims it'll give out a total of $1,300,000 per month.) Gotta say we dig the interface, which integrates neatly with Facebook Connect and lets you share projects on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

And there are goodies to be found! The3six5, a project in which a different person blogs each day in 2010, is seeking funding for print publication. You can also vote to have rain ponchos provided to the homeless or improve the living conditions of boys in a New Hampshire group home.

Work by TBWA\Worldwide. The piece above is for online seeding; below is the :30 TV spot: