Mozilla Labs has released a new Firefox plugin, Personas, that allows you to add lightweight, custom themes. The collection of themes available right now isn’t great, but they have easy instructions on how to create your own. I created one with my nifty logo in the top right and a little lighter shading. I must say I’m enjoying the new look.

Update: Mozilla now has a decent sized collection of themes for you to choose from.

A new study by Harvard University reveals that more than 60% of Americans don’t trust the media’s coverage of political campaigns. Four out of five people believe coverage focuses too much on trivial issues and that media coverage has too much influence on American voting choices. Other key findings:

• 92% say it is important that the news media provide information on candidates’ specific policy plans, but 61% say the media does not provide enough coverage of policy plans.
• 89% say it is important to hear about candidates’ personal values and ethics, but 43% say there is not enough coverage of personal values and ethics.

Firstborn Multimedia, one of the best interactive agencies in the world, redesigned its site. The new site is slick and fluid and provides easy access to the catalog of great work Firstborn has done since its inception in 1997. While some may not see this site as being that great, I’ve glossed over the code and this was no simple redesign. Firstborn devoted some serious time and talent to create this new site. It’s very organized and built in a smooth, professional manner. Well done.

The much anticipated Sony Bravia ad shot in NYC is out. The crew used two and a half tons of plasticine and stop-motion photography to create quite a unique advertisement. Sony is spending a lot on these ads that included bouncy balls in SanFran, exploding paint in Glasgow and now the NYC bunnies. CNET dubbed Sony as the “first big tech company to embrace the idea of advertising as content.”

How do know what’s going on in our community, the communities next door and the rest of the world? Most of us rely on the traditional new gathering and distribution establishment (ie, CNN) to provide us information. In some occasions that source can have real value. But in others it can really under deliver.

Over the past few years I’ve begun to seek additional news sources to stay informed. I’ve subscribed to the WSJ, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur Mag, Wired, Fast Company, Business 2.0, and Inc. I learned an enormous amount by reading these publications. But the most valuable new source I’ve developed over the years is citizen news.

Blogs, videologs, podcasts, and social news sites provide a wealth of news that the networks ignore or simply never hear about. They also provide great coverage on very niche topics while giving you opinions that the networks are afraid to express.

I thought I’d share the news sources that I find most valuable to my tastes and interests:

• Digg.com — social news site
• BoingBoing — obscure but entertaining news
• TWiT’s This Week in Tech podcast — great tech news discussion
• CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast — more tech news discussion
• BusinessWeek’s podcasts
• NPR’s podcasts
• A ton of blogs — complete list is here

I first heard of David Attenborough after getting addicted to Planet Earth, a revolutionary nature show that aired last spring. The show’s groundbreaking scenes and footage drove me to learn more about the team that captured these great moments.

Attenborough has been writing, producing and acting in nature videos for over thirty years. I’ve had the chance to watch a lot of his work, and I must say I have yet to be dissappointed. His DVDs have become one of my favorite things to watch. Here’s a short list of some of them along with their IMDB score (out of 10):

• Planet Earth, 9.8
• The Blue Planet, 9.4
• The Life of Mammals, 9.7
• Life in the Undergrowth, 9.5
• The Life of Birds, 9.4

Here’s a short clip of one of the best scenes in Planet Earth. It shows great white sharks hunting seals off the coast of South Africa. The action is slowed down to 1/50th speed to give you every detail:

If you’re trying to reach the 18-34 demographic, it’s everything. Below is a quote from a NYTimes article about legendary music producer Rick Rubin:

This summer, Columbia Records began a program called Big Red. The company invited 20 college students from Harvard, Penn State and the University of Miami to work on various music projects. The interns concentrated mostly on the digital marketing and promotions departments in Columbia’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, which are on Madison Avenue in a granite skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson.

At the end of their paid internships, the students took part in focus groups that were closely observed by Steve Barnett, Rick Rubin’s co-head at the label, and Mark DiDia, whom Rubin brought in as head of operations, as well as by other Columbia executives. The focus groups may have been the real point of Big Red — Barnett and the New York executives, especially those who had been at Sony for years, wanted to try to take the pulse of the elusive music audience. “The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed what I — and Rick — already knew,” DiDia told me afterward. “The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.”

An interesting side note is that MySpace is not so cool anymore. In fact, and I’ve heard this argued before, Facebook is loosing its cachet pretty quickly as well.

I found this on Digg today and it’s the most powerful thing I’ve stumbled upon on the web in quite some time. This isn’t for the faint of heart as some of these images are very graphic. Below is a sample of some of those images, but you should visit the site to read the descriptions accompanying the photos.