Twitter has launched its new music service in New Zealand (and some other non-consequential countries), called Twitter #Music. Unlike Google Music or iTunes, #Music is right now purely a music discovery tool – helping users find new and popular artists using its millions-strong network.

Commercials for soft drinks often show that by drinking them, you’re likely to splash around in the water laughing with your attractive young friends or engage in some kind of impressive athletic pursuit at a very high level. Very rarely do they show visual representations of masturbation, use the phrase dry hump or generally “reveal the truth behind the facade and bravado of misspent youth” in a humorous fashion. But you get all that and much more in three new quasi-music videos for Sprite Europe that were made by JWT Denmark and Yukfoo’s Anders Schroder.

Twitter’s ad platform works by targeting users with interest signals (such as who they follow), with its new feature for advertisers Twitter hopes to tap into what people are talking about.

In becoming only the 13th country in the world to legalise same sex marriage, New Zealand’s garnering a lot of attention from around the world. PLUS: Video of Parliament spontaneously bursting into song.

It may never be the best Steve Jobs movie, but at least it’s the first.

Like the name suggests, Triage is designed to be the first step towards taking the knife towards your email bloat.

The Sony Cybershot RX1 is a small camera that’s all about the big picture. Inside its compact body beats the heart of a full format sensor, giving image quality you won’t see in any other camera this size. However, all good things come with compromises and there were plenty made to create the RX1. With one hand Sony giveth and the other it taketh away.

If you’re going to write a “hardcore propaganda manual”, then use propaganda to promote said manual – it’s probably a good idea to make sure your campaign works. Goodness knows, no dictator (whether politician or ad executive) wants to buy propaganda manuals that can’t deliver.

As part of its “Lounge of the Future” concept for Milan Design Week, Heineken recently debuted Ignite, a new, more interactive twist on the simple beer bottle that uses LEDs and wireless sensors to light up when bottles are clinked together, to flicker when taking a swig, or even to be remotely controlled.

Rhys Darby fights the good fight to protect Kiwis’ data and TSB ad shoots at an easy target – Aussie-owned banks.

Foodstuffs has signalled major changes to the way it procures packaging, telling store owners to stop selling veggies on meat trays and looking to eventually achieve 100 percent kerbside recyclable packaging for both produce and private label items.

TSB launched its historical epic over the weekend. And 2degrees and TBWA\ have followed suit, with Rhys Darby—AKA The Furious Fantail—facing up to a big telco-inspired beast and re-enacting a few scenes from the past to launch its new Carryover Data product.

Kordia has sold its residential ISP arm Orcon to a group of New Zealand investors in order to shift focus back to B2B.

Journalism is under “significant threat” from commercial interests, says Scoop Media founder Alastair Thompson, who last week launched the Scoop Foundation to give public interest journalists a sword to fight with.

Start “Wheedling” says a bright green button in an email sent to me over the weekend. Its owner and namesake uses the verb to mean buying and selling online, but in the last six months it’s taken on a new meaning in programming circles – software that fails spectacularly.

Creativity and originality go together like peas in a pod. But Auckland designer Kate Cullinane’s thesis, a book called Sample Copy: An Exploration of the Role of Copying in Design, takes the stance that imitation is a part of the creative process. And it’s just won an international Art Directors Club Gold Cube award, as well as being named in the top three in the global Type Directors Club Awards for Typographic Excellence (the final rankings will be announced in July).

Amidst news of massive job cuts, Telecom is sprinkling something more positive into the mix with the launch of its new business incubator called Digital Ventures.

.99 is often thought of as a retail shop. That is its main area of expertise, of course, and there’s no doubt its production processes and studio facilities are a big part of its appeal to clients—and one of the major reasons it won five out of five pitches in recent months and managed to recover super quickly from a horror year in 2012. But it has had its creative moments as well, perhaps none more so than the inflight videos for Air New Zealand, and it’s shown its creative stripes once again for one of its new clients Genesis Energy, with a brand refresh that centres around a split-screen TVC that shows how the company is ‘in it for you’.

Paul Spain isn’t your average media personality. The scruffy haired 40-year-old geek owns IT company Gorilla Technology, has more phones than all the pockets in his wardrobe to hold them in and is incredibly up to date with the latest gossip on the government’s fibre roll out. Spain is a technology podcaster – and he also happens to be the country’s top one at that.