Last week marked the ninth year anniversary of the death of Aaliyah, who at the young age of 22 died in a horrible plane accident. She is the prime example of young talent gone far too soon, and I want to dedicate this playlist to her memory. I was very young when she died and it affected me deeply and now that I am older (just days older than she was when she died) I still have not gotten over this loss. Many of the artists in this channel are some of the all-time greats, and we should cherish all of their contributions to music. This channel focuses primarily on vocalists, as there are many other instrumentalist who have passed on as well.

Some of my generation owes a lot to these musicians who we never got the chance to see live. Especially this fella, who my mom assures me had a lot to do with me ever coming into this world.

Rest In Peace
Aaliyah, Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, Notorious B.I.G, Tupac Shakur, Kurt Cobain, Otis Redding, Michael Jackson, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, George Harrison, Ray Charles, Selena, Jam Master Jay, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Rick James, and the many other greats who have passed on. You are gone but certainly not forgotten!

Here is a prime example: Remi dresses up in a Kangaroo suit, does a series of nonsensical things, and finally mid-hop, kicks an unsuspecting golfer into a pond. Instead of chasing Remi down with a raging golf club, the golfer proceeds to drag himself out of the pond, drop his club, and brisk-walk towards the already skipping away Joey. Perhaps this inaction can be attributed to the shock of being assaulted by a giant velor kangaroo.

However, golfer karma does kick in when Remi gets whacked with a golf club by a peeved bystander in a later video where he pulls the PAC-MAN prank.

Remi justifies his actions by his life motto “C’est en faisant n’importe quoi qu’on devient n’importe qui” or “It’s by doing whatever that you become whoever.” He does become whoever he wants, especially when it comes to professional athletes. He has a series of Sports Impostor videos, where he manages to fake being a part of several sports teams. In one of them, he pretends to be a football player in the 2002 Coupe de France finals. He takes part in the winning celebrations, holds the trophy, smiles brightly in team photos, provides autographs, and is even congratulated by the then president of France, Jacques Chirac.

One of my personal favorites is this one. I can’t say anymore or I will give it away, and nobody likes a spoiler. Do yourself a favor and check him out!

Some of this year’s luster is definitely lost with the absence of several big players due to injury. The men’s defending champ (Juan Del Potro, wrist injury) was recently added to the list of star player who will be unable to compete in this event. Justine Henin is out with an elbow injury and Serena Williams won’t get the chance to erase the bitter memories of her exit from last year’s tournament with her fourth US Open title.

But none of this will prevent this from being a phenomenal tournament, which is pretty much guaranteed whenever Nadal and Federer are in the mix. Also keep an eye on Novak Djokovic, who in addition to doing very well in this event in his career, made a name for himself at Arthur Ashe stadium a few years ago for his now famous impersonations.

There is an ample selection of cartoons as well ranging from Ducktales to the Jetsons. Growing up there was no opening credit song that I loved more than The Wonder Years;  Joe Cocker’s raspy voice never failed to grab my attention. Despite how much I loved Fred Savage as Kevin Arnold, I may have been a bigger fan of his little brother Ben as Corey Matthews in Boy Meets World. I guess we all have our preferences.

I apologize in advance for some of the poor grainy quality of these videos, but hey, there was no HD when most of these shows were made!

But just as big of a story this year is Miss Venezuela Marelisa Gibson, who looking to extend Venezuela’s already unprecedented winning streak in the Miss Universe pageant. Miss Universe 2009 Stefania Fernandez made Venezuela the first country in the history of the pageant to win the title back to back.

The USA currently leads Venzuela 7-6 in the tally for the most Miss Universe winners in the competitions history. USA won in 1956, then in 1995 and 1997 and Venezuela won in 1979 and 1981. Curiously, between the Venezuelan triumphs of 1979 and 1981 the winner was from the USA, and between the two USA wins in 1995 and 1997 the winner was from Venezuela. There is no doubt that eyes will be following these beautiful young ladies closely. Not to mention the 81 other beautiful young ladies from around the world, make sure you tune in to NBC at 9-11PM ET on August 23rd to see the crowning of the next Miss Universe!

P.S. There will be a musical performance by John Legend and the Roots, which is guaranteed to be amazing!

So how do you get to the hover icon option? First, open Cooliris in Firefox or Safari and select the preferences icon in the lower right (it looks like a small gear). Unfortunately, this feature is not available for Chrome at this time. We hope to have it ready soon!

You will now see the preferences tab with access to all of Cooliris’ customization options. The check box for the hover icon is under wall settings.

Make sure to save your settings and enjoy your customized Cooliris experience!

Live life vicariously through the eyes of dashing Don Draper on the hit AMC series, Mad Men. Our new featured channel, Mad Men Mania showcases the incredible 60’s lifestyle of advertising executives; red lipstick, elaborate undergarments, cigarettes, booze, sex and drama. (Don’t worry, they smoke herbal cigarettes on the set!)

Unfortunately while we can’t all be Don Draper, we can at least learn from the legend. In four easy steps Don teaches you how pick up women.

If you are obsessed with the show as many are, you can go to extreme lengths and Mad Men Yourself creating your very own Mad Men avatar. You can even start collecting Mad Men Barbie dolls!

Our channel features interviews, photos, and some entertaining spoofs. Being the feminist that I am, one of my favorites is Mad Women, reversing the blatant sexism portrayed on the show.

Enjoy !

The best moment in basketball is when a player explodes into the lane giving the defender  a split second to make a simple decision: Get up or get out of the way. The most elite defenders in basketball can rise to the occasion, get a hand on the ball and emphatically reject the shot. Less lucky defenders will find themselves in the bottom corner of an NBA poster, ducking for cover while they get dunked on.

This playlist is a compilation of the best and worst dunks and blocks  inspired by this old Mountain Dew commercial.

Some ballers are so notorious for throwing down on opponents that it was impossible to single out their best dunks, and we used top 10 videos instead (Jordan, Kemp, Wilkins). As you will see in the playlist, the defense is not always the biggest impediment to getting the ball through the cylinder: in one video the rim is torn down with a dunk and in another gravity just seems to get in the way of the player. Hopefully, you enjoy 36 of the most incredible moments in basketball history.

We have a lot of sports fans here at Cooliris and we look forward to rolling out much more  content for all you sports fans out there in our featured channels!

PS Congrats to Scottie Pippen who was recently inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame, probably all because of this dunk.

One of my favorites on the playlist is the Bay Area hit – “Teach Me How To Dougie.” There is even an official Teach Me How To Dougie Contest where you can create a video of yourself dougie-ing and send it in, or you could just sit back, watch and rate the contest entries. Some of the videos are hysterical, some hideous.

Get the “Dougie Fever !”

OH P.S Wyclef Jean is officially running for President of Haiti. Check him out in The Black Eyed Peas songs on the Party Playlist.

In the week since Discover was launched, we’ve hit 150,000 downloads of the app!

And what’s more – we’re in the the New and Noteworthy section in the App Store. Thanks Apple!

We can’t say enough how immensely grateful we are to all the users who have helped make Discover such a success. Please help us continue to improve the app by emailing your feedback to discover@cooliris.com. Don’t forget to also rate us in the App Store!

- United States
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Ireland
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Hong Kong
- Singapore
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- Switzerland
- Belgium
- Germany

Other stores will be coming soon, so stay tuned! We are also currently working on localized language versions, so if you do not see your country in the list or you would like a localized version for your country, please sign up here to be notified.

Don’t forget to give us a rating in the App Store! Thanks!

We’d love it if you would rate and/or write a review for our app! To do so, please go to the App Store.

Lastly, we’ve just submitted a new version (v 1.0.1) that improves the user experience based on initial feedback from users. Look for it to appear in the App Store soon.

If you have feedback on how we can improve our app, please feel free to email us at discover@cooliris.com.

Again, thanks for your continued support!

We perfected our elevator pitch for the mixer which featured “60 second spots” from the attending startups.  Our pitch, delivered by Jeff, stole the show!  The event also included the chance to network with the startup community over some drinks.

We look forward to interacting with the startups we met more in the future. Thanks to pariSoma for organizing this awesome event!

Discover is already the 4th top free app in the store – wow! We’re super psyched about it around the office and can’t wait to see more feedback in the coming week. Thanks for making our first iPad app such a hit!

Creating innovative, better ways to navigate content is our specialty, and this is no exception. With Discover for iPad, we’re making our first foray into information and textual navigation, using stunning graphics, an intuitive user interface, and seamless page-by-page navigation. Check out this demo:

Discover for iPad has been submitted to the iTunes App Store, but is not yet available to the public. To get notified when the app is available, please sign up here.