Dating

Brands and agencies pull out all the stops to make an impression on the game's captive audience. Most frequently, they turn to the bizarre and the offbeat, seeking to burn messages into viewers' brains with humor.

Who can forget the beer-shilling frogs whose guttural utterances joined to say "Bud-wei-ser"? Or the Monster.com kids with decidedly underwhelming ambitions in life? Last year, a young Darth Vader wannabe elicited laughs for Volkswagen.

And the ads had better be funny; commercial slots are going for a whopping $3.5 million a pop this year.

But with so much sensory overload on Super Bowl Sunday every single year, it can be hard to keep track of the best 30-second spots of all time. Here, Mashable shares with you a top-10 list put together by the team at MentorMob, a content curation and aggregation startup based in Chicago.

Maybe you don't agree with this list, though, and think the MentorMob folks forgot a few classics. (Ribbit.) No problem. MentorMob's model allows its users to edit public playlists of videos and webpages as they see fit. So if you want to add something, just click on this link to head over to the MentorMob site, and sign in to make your changes.

What do you think is the funniest Super Bowl commercial ever? What are you going to add to this list? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS GALLERY: Who to follow on Twitter for the Super Bowl XLVI scoop

1. @SuperBowl2012

The official account of the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee is a must-follow for fans going to the game. It will function as one of several channels directing fans to entertainment venues and addressing logistical concerns from the committee's social meda command center.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Advertising, Super Bowl, Super Bowl XLVI

Op-Ed Contributor: I Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 06:12 PM PST

Asperger syndrome was the wrong diagnosis for me. I was really just an awkward teenager.

Op-Ed Contributor: Asperger’s History of Over-Diagnosis

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 05:30 PM PST

People with social disabilities are not necessarily autistic, and giving them diagnoses on the autism spectrum often does a real disservice.

Op-Ed Columnist: Who’s Tough Enough?

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 06:28 PM PST

Can backbone propel you to the front? Team Mitt and Team Barry compete on spine spin.

Op-Ed Columnist: The Politics of Dignity

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 06:20 PM PST

From Cairo to Moscow, humiliation has been the most underestimated force in politics.

Editorial: Making It Worse in Europe

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 05:38 PM PST

European Union leaders agreed to sign a new measure to enforce fiscal austerity and restrict stimulus, which could be a dangerous approach.

Opinionator: Finally, Good News About School Lunches

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 06:00 PM PST

New government guidelines regarding school lunches are a significant step in the right direction.

What Humans Want: More Domestic Robots [STUDY]

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 06:45 PM PST

People would like to have their own Rosie the Robot — think The Jetsons — and would even borrow money to buy a robot that could complete domestic chores.

A survey from the marketing analytics firm Persuadable Research shows that 68% of people surveyed would like to use a robot for domestic purposes such as cleaning windows, washing dishes and doing laundry. "Moving things" topped the list of desired robot tasks, with 55% of respondents saying they would like a 'bot to help with this chore.

Others said they would like a robot to act as personal assistant, reminding them of appointments and errands to run. Also, babysitting children or the elderly was a task many people would like to designate to a robot.

The majority of survey respondents said they'd want a robot that looked human-like, with a voice that was neither masculine nor feminine, and with customizable features.

Thirteen percent of people who said they would pay for such a robot said they would fork over more than $15,000. But the majority said that they'd pay a maximum of $999.

The fantasy of a robot to take your place at work or complete difficult tasks is an idea that people began tinkering with decades ago.

Scientists and researchers are already creating and perfecting robots to do dangerous work, for example enter war zones or demolished buildings. Some robots can already be used for environmental monitoring.

Robot owners can already activate their machines from remote computers with MyRobots, a self-described "Facebook for robots." Which is kind of like messaging your very own Rosie the Robot and asking her what she's doing at that moment. Some robots can even mimic your emotions.

But there's yet to be an all-in-one, chore-completing, personal assistant robot. For now, though, the Roomba can let you check "clean floors" off your to-do list.

Would you like a robot to help you with tasks? What would you have it do and how much would you be willing to pay for it? Tell us in the comments.

More About: robotics, robots

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The 10 Most Blatant Design Ripoffs in Social Media

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 06:24 PM PST

Pinspire vs. Pinterest

It doesn't get more blatant than this. Pinspire is pretty much a pixel-for-pixel Pinterest clone, created by the serial digital ripoff artists at Rocket Internet. It's a bit obscene just how much of a copycat Pinspire is -- from concept to functionality to the cursive-style logo. Will it be as lucrative for the Rocket's Sawmer Brothers as their other projects, an eBay clone they sold to the real auction site for $50 million or the European deals site that Groupon gobbled up? Or will someone finally serve them with a cease-and-desist letter? If that happens, someone please pin it.

Click here to view this gallery.

In the world of social media, discovering that worthwhile original idea for your app or website is by far the hardest thing to get right. It's so hard, in fact — and the field so potentially lucrative — that many parties who jump into the field tend not to bother. Why should you create something original when there are so many successful sites and services that you can just rip off?

At least that appears to be the thinking behind many Internet companies whose concepts, web design or apps appear to owe a lot to other, more successful forebears. Once you start looking, it's not hard to find digital ripoffs. At best, they're quirky homages inspired by a successful digital brand. At worst, they're ersatz imitators looking to cash in on someone else's idea — just a step or two above malware.

Perhaps that's a little harsh. After all, the humor writer Josh Billings once said, "About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." If you substitute "web designer" for "writer," he may have been talking about the state of digital design today. After all, it would be impossible to find a design that isn't at least a little derivative.

SEE ALSO: Top 5 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make

Still, there's a difference between borrowing some core design ideas and wholesale imitating. In social media, where the essential premise of connecting and sharing with your friends provides a basic architecture, perhaps the line between the two is blurrier than in other fields. After all, Facebook was called a MySpace clone, which was called a Friendster clone before that. But they are (and were) nothing like each other.

While building on existing concepts will always be part of design, so too will mimics, where the cloning is so pervasive and total that the site is nothing more than a copy of the original, merely slipped into a different skin. Here are the 10 most flagrant design ripoffs in social media today, at least to Mashable's eye.

More About: BlinkList, Copycats, delicious, DianDian, digg, DZone, Facebook, foursquare, Funded By Me, hacker news, heello, instagram, kickstarter, picplz, Pinspire, pinterest, reddit, scvngr, Social Media, tumblr, Twitter, web design, yammer

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