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What more could a dog lover ask for? That’s right, a defecating dog lamp for your living room.

The Good Puppy Table Lamp and the Good Boy Floor Lamp are designed by a Polish born artist who now lives and works in London and goes by the equally funny moniker What’s His Name.

The two dumping dog lamps, a Chihuahua and a Great Dane, both have On/Off switches shaped as dog turds that needs to be pressed, or in case of Good Boy lamp, stepped on. Awesome!

Originally created to be part of London’s the Art Below exhibition on London Underground stations, the lamps were ultimately rejected for being offensive. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have your own poopy puppy lamp. The artist is making each lamp available in limited numbers.

Our hair-brained idea to pilot a Brazilian Pavilion at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt has taken a life of its own!

We expected 10 startups to show interest. Boy did we underestimate… There are now — wait for it — 76 Brazilian startups that have signed-up to take part in the Pavilion! This is on top of the 23 Israeli startups that have lined-up for their own Pavilion.

But the surprises didn’t stop there. Argentinian startups emailed us, asking if they can have their own dedicated Pavilion as well. The answer was, ‘por supuesto amigos!’

Let’s wind this back a bit… Last week we announced that Disrupt SF will feature both the staple Israeli Pavilion and a new Brazilian one.

Flying half a world to attend Disrupt isn’t cheap, especially for early stage startups. That’s where the Pavilion packages come in. They include:

• A cocktail table for the entire duration of the event.
• Two tickets for the entire duration of the event.
• Signage.

Note that only startups with less than $2M in funding and are less than two years old are eligible to participate. Also, Pavilion startups are not eligible to be voted for as the daily ‘Crowd Favorite’ (that goes up to present on the Battlefield stage).

• Israeli Startups can sign-up, here.
• Brazilian Startups can sign-up, here.
• Argentinian Startups can sign-up, here.

If you are interested in sponsoring either Pavilion or have any questions about participation, email me at: roi@initial.vc

Back in 2008, during the last presidential election, Amber Lee Ettinger went viral as Obama Girl, when she praised Barack Obama in her YouTube hit, ‘Crush On Obama,’ which has racked up over 24 million views to date.  This week Justin Brown, calling himself Obama Boy, has surfaced with a remake of Obama Girl’s hit song, focusing on Obama’s support of gay marriage.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

News, particularly when it is local and thus not widely available, has marketplace value. Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, is planning to mine that value by moving all of its 80 community newspapers doing business online to a paid model by the end of the year.

Acccording to PaidContent, The New York Times and Forbes, the company expects this new online subscription model to contribute an incremental $100 million in earnings to the publishing segment annually beginning in 2013.

The company also expects to generate significant incremental advertising revenue from digital platforms.

Gannett’s papers include the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Hattiesburg American, the Greenville News, the Salem Statesmen Journal, the Great Falls Tribune and the Montgomery Advertiser, to name a few.

Online access will be metered and allow readers access to five to 15 stories free, depending on the market.

The company’s flagship paper, USA Today, is exempt.

A few hours watching the Discovery Channel can prompt extreme survival fantasies involving frog licking and urine drinking, but what basic skills would you actually need to survive in the wilderness? Here’s a look at the basics you need to become an adult Boy Scout straight from a cadre of survival experts. More »

One young man is making great strides in the modeling world despite what many might see as a significant impediment—he has Down syndrome. His name is Ryan, and he appears on page 9 of the new Target circular, just a few months after making an appearance in the Nordstrom catalog. A blog called Noah's Dad, written by the father of a different boy with Down syndrome, posted the Target ad this week and lauded the retailer for being seamlessly inclusive without drawing attention to itself. "This wasn't a 'Special Clothing For Special People' catalog," he writes. "There wasn't a call out somewhere on the page proudly proclaiming that 'Target's proud to feature a model with Down syndrome in this week's ad!' And they didn't even ask him to model a shirt with the phrase 'We Aren't All Angels' printed on the front. In other words, they didn't make a big deal out of it. I like that." Ryan's mother commented on a separate post about Nordstrom, where she writes: "We are very pleased that Nordstrom placed Ryan in their catalog. The whole process of modeling is an extreme confidance booster for him. He received so much warmth and caring from the Nordstrom crew that he thought they were there just for him! We are honored that Ryan is making the Down syndrome community proud. He is a beautiful boy inside and out. He makes us better parents, and a better family."

The toughest fire I ever remember having to start was when I was on a Boy Scout campout in February. One of the challenges issued to scouts during that campout was the one-match fire: you’re given exactly one match to start a fire, and if it doesn’t work out, you don’t earn whatever merit badge that you were competing for. On top of that, if you don’t get the fire started, you don’t get to cook dinner, either. Picture this: it’s February. There are 7 inches of snow on the ground, and anything flammable is covered and imbued with frost. It’s also 15 degrees out, and you’re 11 years old trying to start a fire to cook on and stay warm by in two hours before it gets dark.

Starting a fire requires three things: heat, air, and fuel. Air was no problem, even if it was frost-laden. Heat was a single match, and all the fuel was wet. Oh, and we couldn’t cheat, or I would have just poured a gallon of gasoline on the wood and called it a day (and a fireball).

The trick with starting a fire under those conditions is careful preparation. You have to find some dry tinder and kindling (deadwood still on trees), break it off, and then shave it with your pocketknife until you have what looks like a loofah made of wood shavings. Around that you put twigs and smaller branches in a sort of tent shape, then larger branches around that. When you’re done, you have what looks almost like an American Indian lodge. It’s okay for the outer layers of the wood tent to be wet – as long as the first few layers are dry wood, the rest will dry over time from the heat.

I made my pile of shavings eventually. Did I mention it was 15 degrees out? Shaving wood with a small penknife when it’s cold enough to numb your fingers in minutes is painful, but the alternative is worse: if you don’t make enough shavings, the twigs and kindling won’t warm up enough to catch. I couldn’t make a big pile either, because I was running out of time and the sun was setting.

Finally, I had my wood tent set up. I checked the time – about 15 minutes to sunset. It was now or never – and if my preparation wasn’t sufficient, I was going to be very cold and very hungry that night. I grabbed the one match I was allowed from the scout master and lit it as close to the wood shavings as possible. Smoke, some initial sparks, and then finally a flame. The wood caught fire, and I could have a warm dinner that night.

There’s a fine balance between rushing to get the job done before the deadline and doing it well enough that your single match will catch fire. Likewise, in digital marketing, there’s a fine balance between building your base (audience) and making your offer, lighting the match. Like the campfire, for any given campaign, you get only one match, one shot to start a fire or go hungry. Most marketers these days err on the side of rushing to light the match with too little preparation, and it’s no wonder that they and their sales teams are going to bed with empty stomachs and cold feet.

Do your preparation work as best as you can given your time constraints, and you’ll go hungry a lot less often.

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Related posts:

1. Die In A Fire
2. A Week With A View: Fire
3. SMJBOS Homework: Grilled something or other

Boy, the creation story for breakfast cereal doesn’t make the stuff sound so appealing:

The [Kellogg] brothers developed breakfast flakes by accident in 1893, when Will abandoned a pot of cooking wheat to attend to business matters. He returned to find a mixture with a stale and hard consistency. Unwilling to waste the food, the brothers forced it through rollers with the hope of forming long sheets of dough. Instead, they created wheat flakes, which they toasted and served to the San’s patrons as a breakfast cereal.

Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:

Nintendo Japan Announces Title List For Their Game Boy Advance 3DS Ambassador Program

A Look At The Radical HP Rebranding That Never Was

Pogoplug Launches New Hardware, Brings Unlimited Storage To Your PC

Virtual Active iOS App Detects Your Exercycle Speed, Takes You On World Tour

Kickstarter: Cam Crate, A Simple, Rugged, Waterproof Camera Case

It’s now video game history: after the 3DS didn’t sell as well as expected, Nintendo decided to go for a sudden, massive price drop for its portable console worldwide. In Japan, for example, the price fell by 40% from 25,000 yen to 15,000 yen. Later, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata apologized to buyers and promised a bunch of free games for early adopters, no matter where the device was bought.

It took them a while, but Nintendo finally sent out an email to users in Japan that contains all ten Gameboy Advance titles that are part of the so-called “3DS Ambassador Program” (which is to make up for the price cut).

Here are the titles:

- F-Zero (“Maximum Velocity”)
- Super Mario Advance 3
- Zelda: The Minish Cap
- Fire Emblem – Seima no Kouseki
- Kirby & the Amazing Mirror
- Mario Kart Advance
- Mario vs Donkey Kong
- Metroid Fusion
- Wario Land Advance
- Made in Wario

3DS users will be able to download these (pretty solid) games this Friday, free of charge. Expect Nintendo in the US and Europe to follow up soon.