Today’s videos feature Link from Legend of Zelda trying to pawn his tri-force, a wonderful James Dean tribute, a really angry college basketball coach, and a hilarious soccer goal.

Upon first viewing you might not have noticed anything strange about this post-game celebration. However, listen to John Elway at the 0:33 mark. I’ve listened at least ten times, and I think he’s saying exactly what it sounds like. HA.

Along with being a pretty down to earth sounding dude, Seth Green looks to have some clairvoyant powers. Who else would have called this back in 1999?

Come on Link, go get the other pieces and MAYBE you’ll have something of worth. Also, does anyone else find cheap “bald” make-up effects as amusing as I do?

Some pretty nice seats, the best part of the video is one of the guys’ names is Chris Smokes. So you never will get seats this good or have an awesome name like that.

David Cross is a pretty funny guy and has been attached to some well made projects throughout the years. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked will most assuredly not be one of them. He seems to have loathed the experience so much his interview with Conan gets kind of uncomfortable.

The No Pants Subway ride is a pretty nifty idea and they received a really good turn out for it, shown in this official video. However, I think most of us agree Santa should probably always wear pants (skip to 0:46 for the view).

If you know the history and work of James Dean you’ll enjoy the video, if you don’t know about him then you’ll enjoy the video and want to go learn more.

Two Friendly Ghosts from Parker Ellerman on Vimeo.

This video is great for two reasons. First, it’s always funny to see an awkwardly made soccer goal. Second, hearing soccer announcers yell GOALOLOLOL is one of the more cathartic experiences you’re bound to have.

Seeing sports coaches go crazy is always great entertainment. Especially in college basketball, there’s just something so personal about it. This Iowa coach did it exactly like the angry college basketball coach forefather Bobby Knight did it…slamming a chair.

If you don’t like Kevin Hart then I probably don’t want to know you. (Warning NSFW: language)

The game took place at New York’s famous Rucker Park, the legendary basketball court that has hosted the game’s greats from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Kobe Bryant to Wilt Chamberlain. It’s basically a basketball holy site, where many NBA stars got their start.

Last night was Durant’s first time at the historic court. His team won a close game, 99-93. Durant scored two-thirds of their points. That’s right, he dropped 66 including 9 for 11 shooting from downtown. He hit five straight in the 4th quarter and as the video below will show, they are from well-beyond NBA range.

Yeah, I know, who’s really going to guard him out there, right? Say what you will, that’s an impressive performance.

The Twitterverse is going crazy over the performance.

It’s good to see that he’s keeping sharp for the (possibly) upcoming season.

“We did it,” he says in a video linked from his Twitter account. “19 years, baby, I wanna thank you very much. That’s why I’m telling you first, I’m about to retire.”

It looks like Shaq has jumped the traditional channels such as ESPN or an official press conference to tell his 3.8 million followers on Twitter the big news first. He has tweeted a few times within the last hour, using the hashtag #ShaqRetires.

The 7ft. 1 in. star played in the NBA with 6 teams, most recently the Boston Celtics. He began his career with the Orlando Magic and spent the majority of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers.

The announcement video he linked to on Twitter is on Tout.com, a short video sharing app that links up with Twitter, Facebook and other social outlets for quick “video status” sharing. I Wonder if Shaq has a stake in the startup? Here’s the video, pulled from YouTube:

[Image Courtesy Shaq's Twitter Account]

In typical Twitter fashion (see last year’s NFL Playoffs), Twitter is encouraging basketball fans to follow their favorite players and teams on Twitter. The company has on official blog post up providing resources for building your Twitter fandom.

Twitter points to this @NBA list with all the teams (not just the playoff teams):

They also have a list of about 200 players.

Twitter suggests following the following accounts for actual coverage:

In the meantime, perhaps you’ll enjoy watching the new YouTube series The Lebrons.

If you’re really a hardcore basketball fan, it might interest you to know that the Basketball section in our own Twellow (Twitter yellow pages service) has over 30,000 accounts to follow, including players, coaches, teams, sports news publications, and other fans.

VCU is the top-searched team in the Final Four with searches for “VCU basketball” up 143% this week, Yahoo says. Kentucky is the second-most-searched team, followed by Butler and then UConn.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest a good portion of the people searching for VCU are people that have no idea who VCU is, and are therefore looking to find out.

The top coach searches are as follows:

1. Shaka Smart, VCU (searches up 2,199% this week)
2. Brad Stevens, Butler (searches up 416% this week)
3. John Calipari, Kentucky (searches up 252% this week)
4. Jim Calhoun, UConn

“VCU coach Shaka Smart has caught the country’s attention,” Yahoo says. “People seem most interested in his bio, wedding and ethnicity with searches for those things spiking off the charts on Yahoo!”

Some other nuggests from the search trends:

-  As Butler appears in the Final Four for its second straight year, there are 119% more searches this week for “Butler basketball” than there were during the same week last year.

- Searches for “unthinkable Final Four” and “lowest seed to make Final Four” are spiking off the charts this week, Yahoo says.

- Fewer people are searching for Final Four tickets. Searches this week for “Final Four tickets” on Yahoo! are 42% lower compared to searches last year,  and 94% lower compared to searches in 2009.

UConn’s Kemba Walker is the most-searched player in the Final Four – 2.4 times higher than searches for Kentucky’s Brandon Knight, 6.4 times higher than searches for Butler’s Matt Howard and 13.6 times higher than searches for VCU’s Jamie Skeen.

- Bing will be able to share its brand with a devoted and passionate fan base.

- Bing will be the official decision engine of stormbasketball.com.

-  Bing logo and name will appear on the front of the Storm’s home and visitor jerseys and shooting shirts, and in-arena signage.

-  Storm will debut its new uniforms when the team hits the court for the season opener of its 11th season on Sunday, May 2.

-  Bing is the third major marquee partner to the WNBA.

"The Seattle Storm is a major sports franchise in a major market, and we are thrilled to join with them and invest in our hometown," said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Marketing for Bing at Microsoft. "Bing shares in the passion and dedication that the Storm organization has for the Seattle community and this partnership helps Bing reach the Storm’s dedicated fan base in a unique way."

Bing is certainly not letting up on the marketing.

Storm President and CEO says both the Storm and Bing are "leading organizations in our respective fields." I wonder what Google would have to say about that or 2009 WNBA Champions the Phoenix Mercury for that matter.

While I sometimes wonder why people get so attached to brands and think it’s a little weird, I have to admit that I am almost over the top with my Coke addiction (go ahead and snicker and insert silly drug reference here). I actually refuse to drink other soda products unless there is literally no other choice. Also, I just like the logo and the sense of Americana it carries. Of course, with the amount of aspartame I have ingested drinking Diet Coke for years I will likely prove those lab rats correct but, hey, everyone has to check out of here for some reason, right?

Anyway, back to the marketing stuff. Posterous has teamed with Coke but there is a unique business spin on this one for Posterous which is a free “blog service” to consumers. You see, Coca Cola is actually paying Posterous for it being the platform for a contest they are running that will be part of the NCAA Basketball Tournament this year.

TechCrunch provides the overview

One of Posterous’ first “clients” is Coca-Cola, which is definitely a good first start. Coca-Cola is using Posterous for its NCAA “Dept of Fannovation” where people can come up with ideas to improve the experience of being a fan, and a chance to win $10,000.

Coca-Cola’s use of Posterous revolves around the “post moderation” feature. Any Posterous site can be enabled so that anyone can email post@sitename.posterous.com. The site owner can then moderate those posts, and publish them with a single click. This feature can be used to crowdsource images, video, and text from users.

I have not followed through on the idea submission process on this one so I have not seen this in action. I do see though that on the “Dept. of Fannovation “site” which is a very dark site in its theme because the actual Coke product for this is Coke Zero, there is a nice yellow Posterous tab that could do quite nicely to make the service more well known to a crowd (college hoops fans) that is young enough to understand it and get it.

So it looks like Posterous is taking the same tact as Twitter and deciding that the money to be made is in the corporate market. Keep it free for the regular folks so they can be herded for companies to pick apart and market to the ones they need. Sounds cold and analytical but marketing can be that sometimes, can’t it?

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MSN’s Hoops Hysteria Survey reveals 45 percent plan to at least enter one tournament pool this year, and 20 percent plan to enter three or more. Over half will fork over $20 to play while about 15 percent will drop less than year. About 10 percent are planning to be college hoops party poopers by insisting on responsible money management during uncertain economic times.

Besides, that could dip into their St. Patty’s Day green beer money. Bad times are good times for drinkin’, right?

MySpace is already on top of things this year, announcing its Bracket Challenge, sponsored by vitaminwater. The most accurate bracket on MySpace scores himself $10,000. WhatIfSports.com will be providing a nifty game simulator for those who don’t want to trust their guts or their knowledge of college sports.

Filled Out Your Bracket Yet?

CNBC sports business reporter and Gatorade blogger Darren Rovell says March Madness is big business, worth at least $3 billion as various pools begin at offices around the country. There’s another cost according to consultancy firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas: at least $1.2 billion in lost productivity, with $260 million of that coming in the opening Thursday and Friday days of the tournament. We would like to help everyone get back to work as quickly as possible.

To help you out, here is a list of places to play or run your brackets from the convenience of your work cubicle. All of them require free site registration to participate and must have entries before tipoff of the first game on Thursday, March 15.

1.  ESPN
Many people think of the Worldwide Leader in Sports when they think about the tournament. ESPN’s Tourney Challenge dangles $10,000 in front of the top winner of its contest.

ESPN’s drag and drop brackets, and team analysis that pops up when doing a mouseover of a school, make it a visually appealing application. Up to five entries can be submitted.

2.  Yahoo!
Yahoo will run its Tournament Pick’Em ’07, as they continue what has been an excellent program of fantasy sports games. They will reward perfect rounds with chances to win prizes from H-P, $50,000 cash, or the top prize of $1 million for a completely perfect sheet of picks.

Players will notice a little letter ‘i’ in a box for each matchup on Yahoo’s brackets. Click it, and you’ll see a brief synopsis of both teams, plus the Yahoo Outlook for each. Once the games get rolling, Yahoo’s Scenario Generator will show who needs what to happen for a shot at winning the contest.

3.  CBS Sportsline
CBS Sportsline not only offers its Bracket Challenge for players, but a Round By Round Challenge with a new competition each round. If your brilliant upset picks didn’t quite pan out well, Round By Round can give you new life.

The Bracket Challenge will pony up $10,000 for the overall winner. Its nifty little programming trick shows up as you pick teams. A mouseover of a team name will show the percentage of other players who picked that team for that position. If you’re a Notre Dame fan, enjoy the silence, because not many have picked them beyond winning one game.

4.  Fox Sports
Fox Sports has MSN as its fantasy partner, including the College Bracket Challenge. Naturally, Microsoft products figure in the prizes, as they plan to award five first prize winners an Xbox 360 system. The grand prize winner gets a 60" flat panel HDTV.

Like Yahoo, Fox/MSN provides matchup information for each bracket. People who want suggestions from the peanut gallery can opt to fill in their brackets automatically with Top Seeds, Popular Picks, or Expert Picks. The experts seem to like the one seeds except for North Carolina, they think Georgetown will beat them in a 1 versus 2 Elite Eight matchup.

5.  AOL Sports
AOL Sports has its Coke Zero-fueled Bracket Mania on tap for players this year. They’re offering a 42" plasma screen to the first place winner, and Best Buy gift cards to the next 19 finishers.

Entering brackets is a click to pick process, with a tiebreaker selected at the end. AOL’s gimmick is the NCAA Bracket-O-Matic, with slider controls that let people make their picks based on preferences like weighting a senior lineup over freshman in matchups, strength versus speed, state universities against private ones, etc.

All of these games will let people get in, make their picks, and get back to work quickly. The real time consuming starts when the games do, as people start following their upset choices and live and die with each three-pointer and free throw. At least a little productivity will be saved during the selection process.

We’re WebProNews, and we’re glad to help.

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After I scanned all the chatter about Strumpette and his/her ridiculous and faceless prediction that I will not last in my new job, as an antidote I spent an hour watching this fascinating interview with Mark.

I hardly know Mark. We traded a few emails about blog search and he was kind enough to give me tickets to a Mavs game. Yet, I feel like he’s my unofficial mentor. I have read and re-read his outstanding lessons on success and motivation dozens of times. He is to me like Ann Rynd’s characters are to him – an inspiration. Now that some at least feel that I too am a “public figure,” I look to Professor Cuban for more wisdom. The timing of the interview’s release was perfect.

As I watched the piece I kept thinking “what would Mark do if he were in my situation?” What would he say if he pulled up an IceRocket search to find dozens of bloggers speculating that he was selling the Mavs or getting out of films or whatever the case may be. The answer is he would keep being Mark. Despite his billions, Mark makes himself completely approachable. He answers a good many of the 1000 emails he receives daily from fans and, I bet, foes. This shows he’s true to himself.

Mark Cuban is a maverick. No doubt. He saw the PC and broadband revolutions coming long before we did and, god bless him, he capitalized. More recently he turned around a fledgling basketball team by making them more fan-friendly. Now he’s trying to reinvent entertainment distribution, basketball and even PR in the process.

Mavericks have friends and they have enemies because they’re often successful revolutionaries. They’re pushing what Robert Scoble (another revolutionary) so eloquently calls the membrane. Mark is taking plenty of heat for his revolutionary plan to distribute movies on DVD at the same time they’re in the theaters. But you know what, he listens, occasionally takes on his critics and does his thing.

So that’s what I take away from this whole Smurfette episode. I listen, do my thing and continue to be part of the revolution. After all, that’s what I was hired to do. If I veer from that then I will let everyone down – me, my employer and perhaps even you. That’s not going to happen if I can help it. And I can.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.