Melanie Coles, a young web designer and artist, has painted a giant mural of Wally from ‘Where’s Wally?’, and has invited people around the world to find him using Google Maps.

Google have yet to update their (heavily confidential) satelite schedule with Wally, so you’ll have to give him another couple of months before looking!

We’ve been keeping a close eye on the US primaries and, if this duel was down to online popularity, the winner appears to be clear.

Never before has there been a political contest fought so strongly using this medium as a campaign tool. Figures produced for the month of March indicate some staggering results in favour of Obama. In that month alone, he received $40,000,000 in contributions via his website compared to Clinton’s $20,000,000. On YouTube, users watched Obama content for ten times longer than they watched videos of Hillary! And in an analysis of the length of time visitors spent on the candiates’ social pages (Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, MeetUp and YouTube), Obama received 78% of the share to Clinton’s 22%.

Surely it wouldn’t be the worst move by our politicians to adopt the same approach? A few dissenting voices however may recall this from Mary Harney and its subsequent response! 

Our thanks to Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch.com for the stats.

Admit it, we’ve all googled ourselves. But did you ever think about actually getting in touch with these other versions of you? Well, Jim Killeen Googled himself and, with a film crew, went around to all the other Jim Killeens of the world and interviewed them. This interesting movie debuts on YouTube today.

Facebook Chat, an instant messaging application, has launched in Ireland and the UK.

The social ‘utility’ has been gradually rolling out the service across its networks. Facebook confirmed that chat has gone live across all networks as from Thursday.

There are over 1,200 chat and IM related applications available on the social network from third party developers – many of which will surely become redundant in the wake of Facebook Chat’s launch.

Internationally acclaimed contemporary artist Spencer Tunick will be offering the public the chance of a lifetime to become part of his first back to back city art project in both Cork and Dublin this June. Multiple groups of nude participants will be photographed outdoors by Tunick as part of his series of installations that have previously taken place in cities around the world including New York, Amsterdam and Mexico City.

Here’s a little taster from a previous exhibition in Germany.

Those interested in bearing all for Ireland can sign up here!

With the 25th Anniversary Edition of Thriller hitting the shelves, Sony has teamed up with Big Stage to create one of the most unique digital experiences to date. Big Stage specialize in technology that allows users to create life-like 3D avatar of themselves, and then utilise them in almost anything (digital movies scenes, TV shows, video games, virtual worlds, still images, user-generated content, instant messages, emails, social networks and more). In this instance, fans can create themselves and step into Michael Jackson’s shoes as he moves through the Thriller video!

So far at least one of these fan generated Thriller videos has reached the Top 25 viewed Entertainment videos on YouTube. You can view some of the Thriller YouTube videos here.

How cool is this viral from the computer game, Fifa Street 3?

It rocks. Even if you’re not a football fan!

The Globe and Mail reported last week that the British music industry is pushing for a tax on music uploaded to portable devices like iPods.

This proposed “iPod Tax” would tax users when they transfer music from their pc to their iPod, whether the music was purchased online or as a cd. The Music Business Group (MBG), who is proposing the tax, say it is designed as a means to fairly compensate artists.

Although it is currently illegal to ‘rip’ a CD’s contents onto your computer, there is a bill to legalise the practice currently on the table. MBG, however, insists that any such bill must include the iPod tax. There have been instances where other countries, such as Canada and the Netherlands, have considered similar reforms. Ultimately though, these plans have been scrapped before implementation occurred.

Our congratulations to Prosperity Recruitment, who accepted two prestigious prizes at Thursday night’s ERA (Excellence in Recruitment Advertising) Awards in the Westin Hotel. Not only did they pick up the top award for the Sales and Marketing category, they also scooped the Grand Prix Award for best recruitment advertisement of 2007/2008.

Online advertising spending is set to overtake TV spending in the U.K. next year, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau.

The economic slowdown is partly responsible for the continued internet advertising boom, said Guy Phillipson, CEO of the IAB in the U.K. “Online budgets are pretty much ring-fenced. Marketers can see exactly where their money is going, and it’s the last medium to have budgets cut,” Mr. Phillipson said. “Given a choice between traditional and online media, you’d maintain your online spend.”

A 38% hike in internet advertising spending brought total online budgets up to $5.6 billion in 2007. Growth is expected to continue above 30% for 2008 and remain strong in 2009, with the result that the internet will overtake TV’s $8 billion revenues next year.

Although internet growth is inevitably slowing down, it is still stronger than expected: In just three years, online advertising spending in the U.K. has increased by $4 billion. The U.K. media advertising sector as a whole grew much more slowly, with 4.3% growth in 2007 to reach $36.8 billion.

The report, compiled in partnership with Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the World Advertising Research Centre, shows that online advertising currently accounts for 16% of media spending.

Mr. Phillipson said that growth of the internet as an advertising medium has been driven by “cheap technology and the fantastic broadband infrastructure in the U.K. Around 50% of us use wireless, and a PC plus two laptops is not uncommon in most British homes. More and more marketers are taking advantage of the technology and using rich media and video online to build their brands.”

The biggest spenders online are recruitment advertising (25.7% share of the internet ad market), automotive (11.9%), technology (10.4%) and finance (10%). Advertisers in some of these categories spend up to 25% of their overall marketing budgets online.

This information was sourced at AdAge.com