Mindblossom has teamed up with Reebok and Footlocker for the launch of the Reebok Classic Remix Collection. Reebok has recruited emerging Hip Hop artists to create exclusive music and video content that’s available for download once you  purchase a pair of the shoes.

People who buy the shoes at a participating US Footlocker store will receive a scratch card with a pin number. The pin number unlocks video footage and an exclusive MP3 download. Users are also able to peruse the shoe collection and compare the new Remix Shoes with their 80’s counterparts.

They certainly didn’t have technology like this in the 80’s. The underlying system is a Grails content management system that manages all user data and application content. The user experience was developed using Adobe Flash and ActionScript 2. The two tiers are integrated using a series of web services.

New artists and new content will be released monthly for the next six months, so be sure to check back regularly.

… but apparently not always at work…

Forget six degrees of separation. How about three degrees of happiness? Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have mapped the relationships of happy people and found that happiness is a collective phenomenon that spreads like a virus through social networks - affecting even strangers three times removed from each other. Here is the article.

The theory builds on the notion of emotional contagion, the process at work when a person smiles back at someone who smiles at him. Human emotions appear in clusters, behaving like stampeding animals, says study co-author Nicholas Christakis.

“You would never think to ask a particular buffalo in a herd, ‘Why are you running to the left?’ ” says the Harvard Medical School sociology professor. “The whole herd is running to the left.”

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I read a pretty compelling, albeit morbid, email the other week from Jason Calcanis, founder of Mahalo. He spoke about “The Start-up Depression” in the wake of current economic conditions in the US. He followed up with an equally forceful article titled, “Good News for People who Hate Bad News“. It sounded more like Armageddon was imminent. His words were harsh and foreboding:

“The severity of what has happened can’t be underestimated. There will be no white knight. Even the massive coordinated government action–including the first global rate cuts and bail outs–has done nothing to stop the panic or create a bottom (at least from where I sit). Bottom line: there is zero chance of a short or medium term-rebound. Zero.”

It’s clear that he’s not overexaggerating. Market conditions are impacting investing. Here are some harsh realities:

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