(Also see past annual roundups: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.)

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2011 Fun Stuff Winner:

Fantastic song made by autotuning Google Translate. You don't even need to know Chinese.

Runners-up:

Outstanding video: musical remix of footage from Johannesburg.

Start the video 38 seconds in: watch "Dot Dot Dot", a dramatization of an online user review. (And the game featured in that review - "Super PSTW Action RPG" - is itself great. Find it on the games list.)

How many 80s movies can you spot? Don't You Want Me music video.

Debbie Downer: funny SNL skit about a family at Disney World.

A moth flies into a web. Dark but stunningly good animation.

Very catchy song about learning Chinese (which I'm doing, slowly). Recommended.

I don't even watch the show but I loved this video by the cast and crew of Dr. Who. Let's have more joy like this!

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All other Fun Stuff entries in 2011:

Brilliant sendup of restaurant websites.

A frozen card trick on Craig Ferguson, courtesy past Gel speaker Jamy Ian Swiss. (See Jamy's Gel video.)

Every Arnold scream from Arnold's film career so far. (No longer governor, now he can record a few more of these on screen...)

Entertaining remix of Luke Skywalker.

How to irritate fans of Tolkien, Harry Potter, and Star Wars with one simple image. (Thanks to Christopher J.)

Everything is a Remix, Part 2: Very well done review of remixing/references in Hollywood films. There is nothing new under the sun, apparently...

Tiger Mom Says: fun catch phrases to "help" your parenting, the Tiger Mom way.

Twitter cartoon in the New Yorker - drawn by Matt Diffee, Gel 2011 speaker.

Live action version of classic Mario Kart game.

Funny Robocop valentines.

Fake movie trailer for the movie "Jerry the Great"... starring Jerry Seinfeld.

Super slo-mo objects from a hotel room (via mathowie)

This Angry Birds cake actually sends birds flying. (Thanks, Colt)

What if The Empire Strikes Back was made in the 1950s?

Gel friend Charlie Todd describes his latest prank: "I helped a 400-year-old king give autographs in front of his Velasquez portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Here's the prank recap.

Detailed instructions on how to give the worst possible presentation. Posted on Ask Metafilter, founded by Gel friend Matt Haughey - watch his Gel 2010 video.

Uncover the cute photo in this toy by mousing over the circles. (Interesting interface - could be the basis of a fun casual game, for anyone with a few hours to program it.)

Listening to 5 seconds of every #1 pop hit time warped me straight back into 6th grade and went from there. (There's also a Part 1, which starts back in the 1950s.)

A song for Mardi Gras. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

And finally, the pinnacle of the Internet.

All the neighbors got together to sing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Joyous.

One of the funnier things I've seen in awhile - Julian Assange, houseguest.

Funny, even if a hoax - messing with a friend's Facebook photos.

And finally, I never knew Rebecca Black's song is about chicken.

Gravy and Toast, the new song by Gel 2011 composer Andrew Huang, who just celebrated 7 years of his Songs To Wear Pants To project, writing songs from often bizarre suggestions by viewers. (See also his Gel 2007 performance.)

Juggling demonstration by robotic helicopters.

From The Onion: NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move

Super Mario with real-world sounds.

Videogame voices acted out by a face. Awsm.

Brilliant short documentary finds out what New Yorkers are listening to.

A Bryan Adams song, bluegrass-like. (Click play.) Yet another reason to love MetaFilter.

Watch "Gotta Share" the musical surprise we sprang at Gel 2011, designed by Charlie Todd and Improv Everywhere. (more info)

A dad dresses up 170 schooldays in a row to amuse his son on the bus.

Yawn... just another video of 3D choreography in a wind tunnel (amazing stuff, watch it)

Beatles + Tchaikovsky = awesome. (via)

Several fun on-location dance videos, all worth watching.

Gotta hand it to our friend Charlie Todd for another outstanding Improv Everywhere mission: Carousel Horse Race. (Charlie's contribution to the recent Gel conference was Gotta Share, now over a million views.)

My favorite source of "the average color of the New York City sky, updated every 5 minutes" has got to be nskyc.com.

I really hope this "happy hot dog" is a hoax.. or some cookouts this weekend will be really strange.

Son of Strelka, Son of God: Brilliant remix of Obama's autobiography (the audio book) into a new story.

Christoph Niemann's "useless stereotypes" is a small masterpiece - on NYC, the US, and the world: take a look.

A brief animated summary of "The Wizard of Oz."

Watch two guys go crazy in an empty airport. Crazy in a good way.

I can't believe more people haven't watched this: New Yorker cartoonists drawing brand new cartoons, on the spot, from audience suggestions.

Speaking of cartoons, here's Yoda trying to order a pizza.

A love story with milk cartons.

Sometimes I miss the 80s. (Video of "Big in Japan" by Alphaville.)

An impressionist does Shakespeare - includes the best Garrison Keillor imitation I've ever heard.

Gel friend Charlie Todd pulled off another MP3 experiment - good stuff.

Some light reading: a visual representation of the U.S. debt in stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

Say Something Nice presented New Yorkers with a megaphone to do just that. Created by our friend Charlie Todd (who was behind the Gotta Share prank at Gel) - this is one of his best.

Duck Tron. Geek humor overload.

I love that movie! More more more geek humor. (OK, I'll stop for now.)

Jump-roping at the Naval Academy - how to rev up a crowd. Wow.

Autocorrect lulz. Just revolutionary.

From New Zealand, a Gel video gets lip-synced: job well done by Auckland schoolkids.

Enjoy the ride: calm down and watch this. Nicely done.

Ultimate caption fail: Fun autocaptioning experiment by Gel conference friends Rhett & Link.

Codecademy.com is really impressive. Trust me, spend 30 seconds doing the exercise on the homepage. Really well done.

100 years of fashion. Fun.

Latest gem from the Gregory Brothers: singing reality hits you hard, bro.

Fun and surprising draw toy - try it for 10 seconds and you'll want to keep going: drawastickman.

Perfectly edited: a Twilight Zone-like episode on the streets of San Francisco: Why is Everybody Here? (hat tip to Kevin Kelly)

NYC cartoonist Jess Hale draws awesome stuff: 1, 2, and my fav, 3. Thx to @noahscalin.

All of a sudden, presidential candidates are starting to make sense.

Beautiful animation of sheet music.

15 people you'll see at every videogame/comic/nerd convention.

From last night, photos of a Halloween haunted house. Of the people, not the scary stuff.

These visual soft drink machine instructions are a little strange. (Somewhat related: a sign for hot and crusty customers.)

Beautiful visualization of a Bach cello suite. This is what info visualization should be: elegant, beautiful, yet aimed at new understanding.

Brilliant (and satisfying) Star Wars trailer - a prequel to those awful prequels: watch it!

Whoa. First our Gel friends Rhett & Link created this viral taxidermist commercial, and then Gel friends the Gregory Brothers songified it to become Chuck Testa remixed. Worth a watch.

Crazy talented: Christoph Niemann drew cartoons of the New York City Marathon while he ran it: here's the entire set.

Wow. The aurora borealis - from space. Thank you, NASA.

Funny how movie posters seem to fall into certain patterns. (By Christophe Courtois, translated from the original French, by Google Translate. thx, @muguide)

Speaking of patterns, here's a certain musical lick. Good stuff.

I enjoyed scanning through some mind-blowing facts.

Gandalf seems to be wondering how his career got to this point.

Someone should compile the worst food pics posted online by customers, like this lettuce wedge.

Here's a fun dance video by the Japanese troupe World Order.

Pictures of eye bombing.

Then-and-now location visits from one of the greatest movies of all time, "The Blues Brothers".

Beautifully shot short, A year in New York.

Great visual illusion. Look at the dot.

Gotta name this comic strip of the week.

24 hours of the (Star Trek) Enterprise engine noise: for when nothing else is on.

Kirby's new venture is a Kickstarter project called This Is Not A Conspiracy Theory, which he describes as "a multi-part series that will explain the major ideas, events and human quirks that have shaped where we are right now politically." I'm a proud backer of the project.

P.S. For more on copyright and patent issues, required listening is the recent This American Life episode (hosted by Gel 2007 speaker Ira Glass) called When Patents Attack:

The book is full of assignments you can take on to get "unstuck" in any project you're working on - often in the form of two-minute assignments.

My favorite section is "Creativity vs. the Inbox," pages 186-187. (Just zero the inbox!) But that's just one of many ideas for getting unstuck. Suggested assignments range from multi-hour projects to actions taking just 30 seconds. Example: write down columns of adjectives describing each of the themes you're working with. Now mix-and-match across columns - you're literally forcing lateral thinking.

You can buy "Unstuck" from the Amazon link above, or from your local indie. Let me know what you create!

I was at a conference where the construction and development team responsible for putting together and constructing the new Minnesota Twins baseball stadium gave a detailed presentation on the project. One of the first things they mentioned is that they required their entire management team to read "Bit Literacy" prior to starting the project so they could come up with a communication system via email and task list tracking system that was fast, efficient, and effective. There was no room for time wasting procedures and methods. The new stadium project was one of the more complicated professional sports stadium constructed in recent history.

Read the whole review.

(Bit Literacy is now a free ebook on the Kindle store and the Apple iBookstore.)

Now Zappos is facing its own crisis: a site-wide security breach that compromised the passwords of all its customers. What has Zappos learned from the Netflix debacle?

Today, Tuesday January 17, is the first business day after the breach. Here is the Zappos homepage, with not a single mention of the security breach:

And here is the blog. Apparently the "ultimate t-shirt design contest" is pretty important because it gets top billing, while the security breach doesn't get a single mention.

No mention in the customer service center, no mention on the "Create a New Password" page, no mention anywhere I can find on the site.

Is it just me, or shouldn't a major breach of customer information be mentioned somewhere on the site?

Update: On Twitter, Zappos_Service responds, "An e-mail was sent to all customers. Here is the link to what our CEO sent all Zappos employees: blogs.zappos.com/securityemail"

My response: "thanks. how can i get to that page from the zappos homepage or your blog (where the t-shirt design contest is now shown)?"

Zappos responded: "Searching 'security' on our website will bring you to a page with the link to that page."

I still find it strange. Yes, an email explaining the situation went out to customers. And a blog post went up for employees. But what if someone wasn't a customer; was there any way for them to find out what happened? (Other than somehow knowing to type "security" in the search form?)

This isn't an insignificant question. As more of our information gets posted to the cloud, these security breaches will become more common - and there should be some better-defined practices for companies to notify customers about what happened. Posting things clearly on the homepage and/or a blog page would be a good place to start.

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As we entered the room with this installation, our tour guide reminded all of us not to sit down on the bench. "You'd be surprised," she said, "at how often people sit down there and an alarm goes off. Happens all the time."

Walking closer to the bench, I noticed the sign shown in the photo below. It reads: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.

I immediately told the tour guide why museum visitors continually sat down on the bench.

Now you're ready for the quiz!

Question 1: Why do so many people sit down on the bench? (Are they careless, malicious, or just too tired to stand? Or is something else at work?)

Question 2: What would be one way to address the problem?

When you have your answers, check my answers (what I said to the tour guide). Feel free to post your answer in the comments below - perhaps you have an even better solution.

This is the sort of quiz I would give anyone applying for a job in customer experience. Consider what it requires to create a solution:

• empathy: being able to see the scene from the visitor's perspective is the most important skill in the process. And it's hard to do - even for the staff of a world-class museum!

• analysis: noting the many different things at work in the scene: context (museum), object (figures and bench), instructions (sign), and subtle cues of position (sign's placement almost directly in front of the first figure people see).

• synthesis: putting it all together to figure out why the problem is occurring, and what the solution might be, is a rare skill.

Note that the quiz doesn't ask you to "list the popular methods you know how to use," or to "define how 'interaction design' is different from 'user experience.'" The skills of empathy, analysis, and synthesis are essential in solving customer experience problems. That's what I look for when hiring someone new.

It's also what you should look for when asking someone to work on your customer experience. (Contact us at Creative Good if we can help.)

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