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Over the last few years, Coca-Cola has had some fun with the concept of what went on inside a Coke machine after someone dropped some coins into it to make a purchase. This past week, they’ve shared something a little different, focused on the concept of the “happiness machine.” It’s created a bit of buzz around the Web, and shows no signs of slowing down. Check it out.

Fan of Christmas (or Nike, for that matter) or not, you’ve gotta love the Christmas-themed spots featuring the MVPuppets that Nike’s currently running on TV right now. Check out the series, which kicks off with Blitzen (or Lupe Fiasco) throwing some beef Santa’s way, followed by Santa’s response (via the ever-awesome KRS-One), and finally Kobe and LeBron dunkin’ on some reindeer (dunk…dunk…dunkin’ on some reindeer).

Here’s the whole series:

Some awesome tidbits: “Santa lookin’ shook, Kobe lookin’ shook, LeBron lookin’ shook, I threw your ball on the roof.” Check for Santa’s “NP” jacket and LeBron’s “rap” around 1:30 in the third vid, too.

Previously, New York Lottery thought it would get your attention with cute little bunnies. Now, they’ve moved on to cute little everything, in “Sleepy Time.”

The New York Lottery is hoping that you like bunnies.

These are links. You should click them. Here are some reasons why.

• In this week’s edition of “What Exactly Is Gawker’s “beat” These Days” news, I point to their recap of last night’s “Mad Men” and turn my head like an RCA dog.
• How fast is Usain Bolt, really? Some ESPN staffers found out.
• In case you missed this one, check out some fun that the New Yorker had with a recent NYT review of The Beatles: Rock Band.
• Could the “Tribute in Light” that graces lower Manhattan every year around September go dark in 2010?
• Gruber points to William Safire’s favorite New Yorker cartoon.
• If you were a digital Robin Hood, apparently you’d start at Facebook and head back to MySpace with whatever you’ve got. Or something like that. Or maybe you’d just sit on MySpace all day and post updates to Twitter.
• The amusing thing about this computer tumor is that it’s probably totally representative of the RAM bloat that your applications are chomping on, and will give you a good idea when you need to reboot.
• Trash your coach on Twitter, no Twitter for you, says Texas Tech coach Mike Leach.
• No coverage, no problem, say the Los Angeles Kings.
• OMG “Star Wars” bathrobes! [via Gizmodo]
• Dabitch seems to feel the same way that I do about the latest Windows 7 commercial.

Have you seen the latest set of Microsoft ads for Windows 7, featuring the little girl, Kylie? I’m a huge fan of this particular spot, “Good News,” purely on the amusement factor, and Kylie’s use of word “responsive” to make it happen.

Today, I’m seeing buzz on Twitter about how there’s a new spot that’s been added to a campaign, and I’ve gotta say, this one takes it down a notch. or seven. Check out “Kylie’s Conversations” below.

“Good News” is a good spot, IMHO, because it’s quick, it briefly shows the origin of the text she uses, and most importantly, it’s fun. Kylie mispronounces “responsive” – as she should as a 4 1/2-year old (though maybe she’s five by now, considering this spot, “The Rookies,” is from February).

The second ad, “Kylie’s Conversations,” just “piles on” to what “Good News” brought to the table, seemingly hoping to garner the same respect its predecessor had. The reasonably random behavior of a young girl playing around on her dad’s computer is legit. I can suspend enough disbelief to think that she’d know how to throw a slide show (or get her photos together, like in “The Rookies” spot, and so forth, but to think that the little girl is going to continue to crank out slideshows of “happy words” is just silly, no? Isn’t there something else she could be doing on the computer?

To me, this is a PERFECT example of a “oh, THIS one worked like a charm, let’s make another one just like it.” Except that’s where it fails.

It isn’t just like “Good News” at all – it’s just another way to use Kylie as the medium to push the positive reviews about Windows 7 through. Oh, and while we’re at it, it’s nice that we broke down Microsoft PowerPoint to a point where we can have multiple popping bits of text on one screen. Gasp! Now I’m impressed.

Great execution on the the “Rookies” and “Good News” spots, but the “Conversations” ad completely missed the mark for me.

A lot can be said (and already has) for an ad that contains great music and the effect it has on potential customers for the advertiser, and in this case I find myself not only loving the song in the first place, but thinking it’s one of the better ad / music matchups I’ve seen in awhile. Check out this spot for the new Cadillac SRX, featuring Phoenix’s catchy “1901.”

Music supervision for the win.

Here’s today’s batch of Links You Need To Click…

• Gothamist points to some news in the NY Post about Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to “shoeprint” all footwear. Hello, CSI and L&O land!
• Congrats to Allison for finally getting to see Moby in NYC! It’s kinda nice to get to do things that you’ve wanted to for years and years.
• Plax goes to jail. Wonder if he’ll spike the ball on the field after not being touched when his knee was down on his first play in the prison yard.
• Hey look, it’s Microsoft’s Guru Bar!
• You see, I feel all cool as I’m coming to a close of Year 1 for the 365 Days Project on Flickr, and the damn stormtroopers have go to and one-up us all with Stormtroopers 365. [via Kottke]
• Look! Over there! It’s sponsored tweets from celebrities, courtesy of Ad.ly.
• Over at the Voce Nation blog, Chris Thilk asks what marketers would have to do if (shudder!) social media tools weren’t available for their programs, and he wants to hear from you.
• Speaking of Chris Thilk, wonder if he’s seen this juiced-up WALL-E.
• For those of you up for a challenge, Fred Wilson has one for you – as Tumblr.

On Thursday morning, the ever-thinking-about-cool-stuff David Pogue tweeted about those “You Will” television spots AT&T did in the early 1990’s, pointing out how “amazing” it was how many really came true. I guess we really shouldn’t be surprised by the seemingly brilliant future view that the company had, as surely they already had seen what would go into the products featured, which included everything from digital medical records, GPS, or the fact that one day, you’d have “borrowed a book…from thousands of miles away.”

And if you thought the voiceover sounded familiar, it was. Over at TV Squad, Bob Sassone reminds us that it was done by none other than Tom Selleck. Having lived the better part of my life in the neighborhood of the Holmdel, NJ location of Bell Labs, AT&T and the Baby Bells, etc. were always in the local news for one thing or another, and it was certainly a matter of local pride that a lot of cool stuff was created. Tens of thousands of patents and multiple Nobel Prize winners can’t be wrong.

Good show, AT&T.

On Wednesday night, I was scrolling through my RSS reader and checking out some articles of interest when I came across this post on ReadWriteWeb where Sarah Perez discussed a copyright infringement issue on photo sharing site Flickr. The issue at hand was a “Jokerized” photo of President Obama – “Jokerized” meaning made to look like “The Joker” in “The Dark Knight” flick – being pulled off the service for copyright concerns, namely that the familiar TIME magazine cover layout was built around the photo. Now I’m certainly not going to argue that particular issue here, but a main point in Perez’ article was whether this “transformative” photograph / artwork was something that would make it past a legal review. What happened next is the fun part.

As I continued reading the article – I typically read my posts in RSS if full feeds are available and click through to comment or read comments – I found a fascinating advertisement that took me to a poll on NewsMax.com, a well-known news organization typically identified as being on the conservative side of the political spectrum. The ad, as you’ll see below, might be considered a “parodied” look at Barack Obama with a medical cap on, with the link taking you to a poll focused on his health care policies.

So while we’re here, I think it begs us to ask the question as to whether this item (transformative or derivative – you decide!) would pass the same legal “test” as the “Jokerized” image.